The repetition of a story at a particular moment in time – in the case of this book, the story of seduction in the later half of the eighteenth century in Britain – prompts at least two different interpretations of how history relates to narrative. The same story might be repeatedly told in order to popularize and naturalize a new historical idea, foregrounding a relation of similitude and emphasizing the mimetic or didactic function of narrative. Or the repetition of a story could denote difference where the deviations within similarity point to a dynamic relation between material conditions and imaginative narratives; in this case, the fact of a story's repetition would indicate both that changing historical conditions open up new objects of understanding and that narrative helps to constitute and to resolve conflicts posed by those new objects. The Seduction Narrative assumes the second formulation to explain how history and narrative interact in the “later eighteenth-century's preoccupation with seduction,” as one historian names the obsessive retelling of the tale. The plot of seduction – where a virtuous young heroine is seduced into believing her lover's vows – dramatizes women's consent to sex at a historical moment when, for the first time, women have “a right to a heart,” as Clarissa boldly claims. The period in Britain under study (1747–1800) witnesses the emergence of companionate marriage as a dominant cultural ideal and this revolution in the history of love carries with it a new social and cultural imperative for women to know their hearts and make choices based upon those affective truths.