GIVING PROMISES IN ELIZABETH INCHBALD'S A SIMPLE STORY

Drawing on Thomas Hobbes's distinction between contract and gift, as well as Hannah Arendt's discussion of promise and forgiveness, this essay argues that Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story should be read as a complex moral fable about making contracts and giving promises in spheres neglected by social contract theory: the spheres of sexual love and difference, marriage, parenthood, and inter-generation bonds. The novel shifts our moral attention away from the contract to the promise and its alternative ethics of the gift, while emphasizing forgiveness as its necessary, and corollary, structural pair.