Precaution
First sentence
"I wonder if we are to have a neighbor in the Deanery soon," inquired Clara Moseley, addressing herself to a small party assembled in her father's drawing-room, while standing at a window which commanded a distant view of the house in question...
Description
The entire focus of this novel rests on the determined though sometimes woefully mistaken efforts of three British families--the Moseleys, the Jarvises, and the Chattertons--to arrange suitable marriages for their respective sons and daughters. The bulk of the early-nineteenth-century action is therefore played out through dinners, social calls, visits to summer resorts, and development of various designs employed toward the end of matrimony. The "precaution" displayed by Mrs. Wilson in guiding her niece Emily Moseley through the treacherous shoals toward a sound Christian marriage furnishes the novel's title and indicates the author's moral and ethical position.