What About Margaret? Reading Sense and Sensibility with Fresh Eyes

Welcome back to the Secret Victorianist. This month I wrote a guest post for Sarah Emsley's blog as part of her A Summer Party for Sense and Sensibility series, exploring Jane Austen's novel from a variety of perspectives.

In my post I share a close reading of the sections of Sense and Sensibility that deal with Margaret Dashwood. If Elinor represents sense and Marianne sensibility, what are we to make of the third sister in the family? Read my full post to find out.

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The Top 10 Blog Posts from the Secret Victorianist

I can hardly believe it, but I’ve now been running this blog on nineteenth-century literature and culture for over a decade! The blog has changed a lot over the years as I’ve made the move from London to New York City, my interests have evolved, and I’ve become a published author myself. 

So, in a belated anniversary celebration, I decided to look back through the archives to revisit my top 10 performing posts of all time. 

1. Are YOU an Elizabeth Bennet?

I started my blog with a bang and a LOT of enthusiasm, publishing 13 posts in the first month alone (nowadays my goal of two a month is more achievable). This post, a tongue-in-cheek look at whether I would cut it as an Austen heroine, was one of them. Pride and Prejudice (1813) remains such a cultural touchstone I’m not surprised this article still sees traffic every day—I mean, the 1995 BBC adaptation even got a shout-out in the recent Barbie movie!

2. Tennyson’s ‘To Virgil’: An Exercise in Analyzing Poetry

You’ll see a lot of poetry-focused posts in this top 10 list, which was initially surprising to me. When I write about poetry my promotional posts don’t gain a lot of traction on social media, but when it comes to search engine traffic, those articles rise to the top. My hypothesis is that students are stumbling across my blog when looking for homework help analyzing poems like Tennyson’s ‘To Virgil.’ I can only hope they’re enjoying my write ups, and not just plagiarizing my analysis!

3. Introducing Victorian Poetry to Children

More poetry, but this time with a #KidLit twist. In this blog post I share some more accessible Victorian poems to get children excited about reading verse from the period. 

4. The Best and Worst Tropes in Historical Fiction

This 2018 post is focused on my personal opinions about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to historical fiction tropes (and spoiler alert: I’ve already changed my stance on a few of these issues!). I’d be fascinated in hearing other readers’ views on this topic and what makes a historical novel great to them. 

5. ‘This Genealogical Passion’: Hardy, Incest and Degeneration

The high bounce rates I see from this page suggest that maybe an academic blog on nineteenth-century literature and culture isn’t quite what people are looking for when they Googled “incest” (!), but despite this I selfishly wish more people would read Thomas Hardy’s The Well-Beloved (serialized 1892), one of the strangest Victorian novels out there.

6. Review: Against Nature (À Rebours), Joris-Karl Huysmans (1884)

I’ve written quite a lot about nineteenth-century French literature over the years, but this review of the premier text of the French Decadent movement is far and away the best performing.

7. A Victorian Alphabet: W is for Witchcraft

In 2013-2015 I published a series of posts making a nineteenth-century connection to every single letter of the alphabet (yes, some were easier to think up than others!). While the Victorian period isn’t the one we most associate with witchcraft, this post has been a perennial top performer, especially as we approach Halloween. Here, I focus on the accusations of witchcraft leveled against the character of Eustacia Vye in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native (1878). I also link to my review of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novella, Lois the Witch (1861).

8. A Victorian Alphabet: K is for ‘The Kraken’ (Tennyson, 1830)

More poetry and more Tennyson! In this post I take apart every line of this short and powerful poem about a creature from the deeps. 

9. Misconceptions about Victorian Literature

As a blogger focused on nineteenth-century literature and culture, I often have to contend with people’s preconceptions and misconceptions about what Victorians were like. In this early blog post I tackle the misinformation.

10. A Dickensian Masterclass in Repetition

This is the only writing craft post to make the top 10 and I’m not surprised it’s about lessons we can learn from the master of Victorian literature himself—Charles Dickens. While I do references Dickens’s most famously repetitious passages—the openings of Bleak House (serialized 1852-1853) and A Tale of Two Cities (1859)—it’s his lesser-read 1848 novella The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain that I do a close reading of here.

What would you like to see me write about next as the blog goes into its second decade? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Interested in getting regular updates from my blog and on my fiction? Sign up to my monthly email newsletter here.

Theatre Review: Being Mr. Wickham, 59E59 Theaters, New York City

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Austenites never tire of new takes on Pride and Prejudice (1813), so last month I joined JASNA NY’s outing to 59E59 Theaters to watch a one-man play about one of the novel’s most infamous characters. 

Being Mr. Wickham brings us George Wickham on his sixtieth birthday, still married to Lydia (nee Bennet) and reminiscing about the dramas of his youth. The play was co-written and performed by Adrian Lukis, who was the young Wickham in the beloved 1995 BBC adaptation of Austen’s novel, so it really did feel like we were all watching a familiar character age before our eyes. 

Revisitations of Pride and Prejudice range from the canonical (see, for example, my review of Janice Hadlow’s 2020 The Other Bennet Sister) to the more daring (check out my review of Katherine J. Chen’s 2018 Mary B), and this one-act play was firmly in the former camp. Audience knowledge of the source material was assumed as Lukis regaled us with updates on what has become of the other characters from the book, but there were no shocking revelations about the original story gained from entering the villain’s perspective. 

The set and sound design were smart, keeping the play visually interesting and giving us musical interludes between parts of the play respectively, and this helped keep the crowd engaged throughout—no small feat in what’s essentially a lengthy monologue. Lydia’s off-stage voice and a side plot about a drama Wickham is watching through the window gave the impression of a world beyond the stage, and I appreciated parts of the script that spoke to the wider historical context around Austen’s novel (e.g., war and politics). 

This is linked to what I found most interesting about the play, which was otherwise merely an entertaining trip down memory lane. Lukis and his co-writer Catherine Curzon turn Wickham into the poster child for the Regency period itself—a lover of romance and Romance, who models himself on Byron, and approaches life with a total dedication to having fun. The character’s frustration at the prudishness of the Victorian age he now finds himself living in was well-done and Lukis’s comments during the after-show conversation suggested he found parallels between Wickham’s reaction to a period of increased sincerity and his own responses to society and the direction the arts is taking today.

Have you watched Being Mr. Wickham, whether in New York or elsewhere? I’d love to know what you thought of it! Let me know what plays with a nineteenth-century connection you’d like to read me review next—in the comments, via Instagram, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want monthly updates about my blog and other writing straight to your email inbox? Sign up for my newsletter here.

Review: The Grey Woman, Elizabeth Gaskell (1861)

One of the coolest experiences I’ve had since the release of my debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress, was when I was asked to write an introduction to Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) for a beautiful edition from Canadian publisher Plumleaf Press. The book is part of a trio of lesser-read classics by nineteenth-century women writers in the Plumleaf Vintage series, all with introductions penned by women historical novelists publishing today. 

Along with Anne Bronte’s masterpiece, there’s also Lady Susan by Jane Austen (1794), with a foreword by Natalie Jenner, author of The Jane Austen Society (2020). And—I was surprised and delighted to find—completing the set is an Elizabeth Gaskell short story/novella I hadn’t read previously, The Grey Woman (1861). 

Molly Greeley, whose The Clergyman’s Wife (2019) I’ve reviewed on this blog, is the introduction writer for this slight but impactful Gothic tale. Expect to find many of the tropes of the genre—a frame narrative insisting on the veracity of the story; a strange house, filled with secrets; and a vulnerable young bride, whose husband is not all he seems. 

But this isn’t just a ripping yarn, or a familiar Victorian fable about the dangers of rushing into a marriage that appears too good to be true. Of most interest to me in the text was the friendship between our protagonist, Anne, and her lady’s companion, Amante. There are clear lesbian overtones to their relationship—from Amante’s name to her cross-dressing to (spoiler alert) a section where the two are cohabiting and even coparenting. The biggest disappointment of the piece is the “off-stage” conclusion of Amante’s story, though many readers will conclude what Gaskell only suggests—that Anne turns grey less from fear of her murderous husband than from grief at the loss of her female lover.

If you’re studying Gaskell and gender or looking for nineteenth-century fiction with a LGBTQ+ subtext, The Grey Woman is well-worth adding to your reading list. And for general readers? If you’re laboring under any misconception that Victorians all blushed at the sight of table legs, this novella is an entertaining antidote.

Which lesser-known nineteenth-century novel would you like me to review next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Neo-Victorian Voices: The Other Bennet Sister, Janice Hadlow (2020)

A few years ago, as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series, I reviewed Katherine J. Chen’s Mary B (2018). Today, I’m writing about another twenty-first century novel centred on Mary, the plainest of Elizabeth’s sisters in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813)—Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister (2020). 

Hadlow’s Mary is true to Austen’s original characterisation. She’s spectacle wearing, bookish and, oh so very, serious, rejected by her mother for her plainness and uninteresting to her father due to her lack of humour. Caught between two pairs of sisters—Jane and Elizabeth, and Kitty and Lydia—Mary seems totally alone, even at bustling Longbourn. The housekeeper Mrs Hill is one of the few people to show compassion towards her, while Elizabeth’s friend Charlotte Lucas tries to give her practical advice about how a woman without beauty can get by in a patriarchal world. The first section of Hadlow’s novel begins with Mary’s childhood, including her gradual realisation of her perceived inferiority to her older sisters. Then the book covers well-worn ground, rehashing the early events of Pride and Prejudice, up until Mr Collins’s engagement to Charlotte.

At this point, I was intrigued, if not delighted. It was interesting to see familiar scenes from Mary’s viewpoint, especially her disastrous piano playing. And there were great historical details, for instance regarding Mary’s reading material and early-nineteenth-century optometry. 

However, the novel really came into its own when we jumped forward in time to a few years after the conclusion of Austen’s book. When we rejoin Mary, she is the only unmarried Bennet sister. Of no fixed abode, she moves between the houses of her sisters and friends, trying to find her place in the world. Her father is dead. Her mother has despaired of her. The domineering Lady Catherine would like to see her packed off as an unfortunate governess. 

I have an especial interest in this plight of single upper-middle-class women in the period, who found themselves dependent on the charity of their friends and relatives. In my novel, Bronte’s Mistress, I depict what this might have been like for a widow, but unmarried girls like Mary had even fewer options. However, as she matures, Hadlow’s Mary turns these unfortunate circumstances to her advantage, using her methodical mind to assess the different households she visits—Jane’s, Elizabeth’s, Charlotte’s and her aunt Gardiner’s.

Other, non-canonical characters begin to take centre stage, including Tom Haywood, a London lawyer with a love of Wordsworth, who helps Mary discover her more poetic and feeling side. But I also enjoyed Hadlow’s on-going nods to her source material. Mary’s final confrontation with Miss Bingley recalls her sister Elizabeth’s argument with Lady Catherine. A well-described trip to the Lakes with the Gardiners brings back Lizzie’s truncated vacation. 

Overall, while I do agree with some reviewers that The Other Bennet Sister could have been slightly shorter, I’d highly recommend the book to fans who prefer their Austen-inspired fiction to be less radical and revisionist, and more thoughtful and additive. I was worried that spending another book with Mary might be tiresome, but she won me over by the end!

What twenty-first-century written, nineteenth-century set novels would you like me to review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

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December Articles about Bronte’s Mistress

It’s 2021, which means it’s no longer my debut year, but I still have one final monthly roundup of articles about my novel, Bronte’s Mistress. Check out the February/March, April/May, June/July, August, September, October and November editions for a trip down memory lane, but today I’m covering coverage from December 2020. 

In celebration of the season, I was the speaker at the Oxford and Cambridge Society of New England’s (virtual) Christmas Party. It was so much fun sharing how I researched and wrote my book with fellow Oxford alumni, and, yes, so Cambridge people too (catch a recording here).

My final podcast appearance of the year, with New Books in Historical Fiction, also aired. I was in conversation with fellow novelist C.P. Lesley, who wrote a great article, “The Corset of Culture” on Lydia Robinson’s dilemma in Bronte’s Mistress.

My book was named one of the best of the year by bloggers The Literate Quilter and Writer Gurl NY, while the Captivated Reader blog listed my Austen vs. the Brontes discussion with The Jane Austen Society author Natalie Jenner one of the best virtual author events of the year (listen to our debate here).

And Bookreporter included Bronte’s Mistress in their annual roundup of Bets On picks. Carol Fitzgerald’s roundup of 40+ of the best books of the year is well worth watching, so make a cup of tea, settle back and enjoy!

Looking back at the year, here are some quick (not very scientifically counted) stats of what went down (mostly since my novel’s release in August):

I wrote 16+ personal essays about the book, many of which are linked in these August and September summaries. 

I appeared on 10+ radio shows and podcasts, all of which are listed on my website. 

I spoke at 30+ virtual events (check out the blog posts tagged "Video" for some that were recorded).

I kept track of 100+ articles about the book and/or interviews with me, but am sure I missed some!

I am so grateful to the journalists, bloggers, Bookstagrammers, YouTubers, reviewers, authors, bookstores and librarians who have supported me on this most unusual of debut years. From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU! 

The Bronte’s Mistress paperback comes out in June, and I’ve already started receiving some 2021 coverage, but I’ll be pivoting to bimonthly press summaries again to blog a little more about nineteenth-century literature and culture, and a little less about my book. 

Don’t forget that you can always contact me—on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. I also send a monthly email newsletter (sign up below) and Bronte’s Mistress is available in hardcover, audiobook and e-book now. 

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October Articles About Bronte’s Mistress

After a crazy couple of months in August and September, October was a quieter month in terms of press for my debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress, which tells the true story of Lydia Robinson, the woman rumoured to have had an affair with Branwell Bronte, the Bronte sisters’ brother. Still, I wanted to share some of the publications that were good enough to feature the book last month!

In costume for Halloween Gothic panel!

I’m a double alumna of the University of Oxford, with a BA from Merton College and an MSt from Corpus Christi College, so I was delighted that the university’s North American office featured me as the Alumni Author of the month for October. Looking back at their other 2020 picks, I loved seeing the range of topics fellow Oxfordians have written about—from DNA to environmental policy in Vietnam to resilience—but was surprised to be the only fiction writer featured this year.

Clarissa Harwood published a great blog post in support of debut novelists who’ve had to contend with a 2020 release date. I loved seeing Bronte’s Mistress as one of her historical fiction picks. I read and enjoyed A.H. Kim’s A Good Family, one of her choices for women’s fiction, and Tonya Mitchell’s A Feigned Madness and Rita Woods’s Remembrance are definitely on my TBR list! 

Fall in Brooklyn

Writer C.P. Lesley also included my novel on her Fall Bookshelf roundup. I recently recorded an episode for her New Books in Historical Fiction podcast, which I look forward to sharing with you in the next week or so. And speaking of podcasts, check out my appearance on the History Through Fiction podcast, which also aired last month.

Finally, the Attic Girl blog had the distinction of being the first holiday gift guide to feature Bronte’s Mistress! If you’re buying holiday gifts for a literature lover I of course highly recommended getting them a copy of my book! Other novels recommended on the list are Natalie Jenner’s The Jane Austen Society, which I wrote about here, and Rachel McMillan’s The London Restoration.

Zoom on...

Thank you for another month of support, nice messages, and reviews. If you’d like to keep up with all news about Bronte’s Mistress and my writing, follow me on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, and sign up to receive my monthly email newsletter below.

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Neo-Victorian Voices: Mr Rochester, Sarah Shoemaker (2017)

When it comes to Jane Austen vs. the Brontes, Austen definitely has a winning number of twenty-first century novels that take her life and works as their inspiration. However, one of the best parts about releasing my own Bronte-inspired novel, Bronte’s Mistress, this summer has been connecting with other writers who have taken the Brontes, not Austen, as their subject.

I recently reviewed Bella Ellis’s The Vanished Bride and Syrie James’s The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte. This week it’s the turn of Sarah Shoemaker’s 2017 novel, Mr Rochester.

Among modern Bronte readers, Edward Rochester, the hero of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, has a mixed reputation. To some, he’s a swoon-worthy male lead. To others, he’s deeply problematic, due to his time in the colonies, not to mention his mentally ill wife in the attic. Most, I think, find Rochester flawed, but not irredeemable, although this interpretation lends credence to the idea that all a troubled man needs is the love of a good woman to save him.

Sarah Shoemaker makes no apologies for being a devoted Rochester fan and the focus of her novel is on fleshing out his life prior to his meeting with Jane Eyre. The book is made up of three parts, uneven in length—1. Edward’s childhood. 2. His time in Jamaica (including his marriage to Bertha Mason), and 3. The story we’re familiar with from Charlotte Bronte’s most famous novel.

Shoemaker’s prose is beautiful and demonstrates her familiarity with nineteenth-century fiction and Charlotte Bronte’s style in particular. This is the sort of historical novel that could at times pass for a novel written in the period it’s set in. I found this especially true in the early chapters, which chart Rochester’s education and apprenticeship as the neglected second son. Shoemaker paints a believable picture of how a boy in Edward’s position might have been raised, and his experiences provide an interesting, gendered counterpart to the childhood we know Jane Eyre will later live through.

In Jamaica, a young Rochester never fully confronts the horrors of slavery, expressing some discomfort at the idea, and queasiness at the brutal punishments delivered on behalf of him and other White landowners, without having a profound moment self revelation. While this response is believable, I was longing for a little more reflection, as Rochester matures into the man whom Jane can fall in love with.

The section covering the same material as Jane Eyre is close to the source material. While Shoemaker does enhance the plot, adding a few more complications, purists will be pleased to see the reverence with which she handles Bronte’s work. The novel made me went to read Jane Eyre again, or even have the books open side by side to double check what was twenty-first century invention.

In her dedication, Shoemaker mentions her ‘fascination’ with Rochester, and her passion for the character and for Bronte’s book really comes through in the text. But I couldn’t help but wonder if part of a Gothic hero’s fascinating charm is in his unknowabilty. Now that we have access to Rochester’s thoughts, can he be as fascinating as he was before? And at those times when Jane Eyre is inscrutable to him? Well, thanks to Charlotte, we know exactly how she feels.

Do you have recommendations of books I should read next, as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. 

And have you ordered your copy of Bronte’s Mistress yet? Oprah Magazine named my book one of this Fall’s top reads, while Christian Science Monitor calls it ‘a stirring defence of the maligned Mrs Robinson.’

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Theatre Review: Cheer From Chawton, 14th Street Y, New York City

Another post for Jane Austen fans! 

Last month I wrote about attending a marathon reading of Jane Austen’s 1818 Persuasion in the beautiful setting of the King Manor Museum in Queens. This month it was time for another event perfect for so-called Janeites—a one-woman play at the 14th Street Y in Manhattan.

Cheer From Chawton is a play that playwright and actor Karen Eterovich has been performing for over ten years. She’s taken it to museums and theatres, played for British and American audiences, and answered lots of questions from crowds along the way.

The conceit is that Jane Austen has been tricked by her family at their home in Chawton. They’ve left her to tackle an unrehearsed solo performance, rather than engaging in their normal amateur theatricals. ‘Jane’ relates the story of her life and changing fortunes as a novelist, giving us occasional cameos of her most memorable characters. There are even roles for unwitting members of the audience, as Eterovich pulls spectators onstage, or, in the guise of Miss Bates from Austen’s 1815 Emma, moves through the crowd, addressing us by different names.

The play is good fun, if a little chaotic. I did wonder what those who’ve never read Austen, or seen adaptations of her works, would have made of it! But, more than ten years on, the show is still finding its audience—diehard fans, who are so familiar with Austen’s oeuvre that they can move from scene to scene, and even from novel to novel, with ease.

At the close of the show, Eterovich held a brief Q&A session, fielding enquiries about her process and the places she’s taken the play. I asked her what question was the most common on her tours. She told me that she’s often asked about the feat of memory involved in learning lines of early-nineteenth-century prose. Her answer? Memorising Austen is a great way to realise how word-perfect the writing is.

I can well believe it. In an era when many first encounter Austen on-screen, in period dramas complete with lavish costumes, brilliant ball scenes, and the occasional nudity (hello Johnny Flynn in the opening scene of the 2020 film adaptation of Emma!), Cheer From Chawton still delights with few props, no visual effects and no dashing male lead. How extraordinary that Jane’s words are still echoing through the centuries.

Do you know of any other NYC-based shows the Secret Victorianist may want to review next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. And, if you’re on Team Bronte vs. Team Austen, or just love all things nineteenth-century, check out the details about my upcoming novel, Bronte’s Mistress, here.

Neo-Victorian Voices: Westering Women, Sandra Dallas (2020)

In the last three posts in my Neo-Victorian Voices series, on novels set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first, we’ve returned to Jane Austen’s English countryside, entered the cellar of a depraved London taxidermist, and revisited Charles Dickens’s ever-popular A Christmas Carol.

This week, we’re in 1850s America, as, in Westering Women (2020), Sandra Dallas imagines the journey of forty women “of high moral character”, who set out on a journey from Chicago to California in search of a better life. All are ostensibly risking the perilous Overland Trail to find husbands among the gold seekers, but many are running away from the past—abusive men, prostitution, even possible murder convictions.

Westering Women (2020)

The main character Maggie is a mother, who’s been battered by her husband and needs to get as far from Chicago as she can. She is also a dressmaker and I enjoyed how her sewing skills contributed to the story and how her eye for clothing and materials gave us a specific lens on the cities and settlements the women pass through.

Dallas’s research shines through in her depiction of the trail, the physical toll it takes on the women and the changing landscapes and climates they travel through. With a large cast and epic journey to cover, she does a great job in showing the transformative effect of this adventure on the women, in terms of their sense of self worth, the physical objects they value and their relationships with each other. This is a novel about womanhood, sisterhood, motherhood and friendship, where men act at worst as the agents of evil and at best as slightly weak supporting characters.

Sandra Dallas (1939- )

Dallas kept me guessing about who would make it to the journey’s end (spoiler alert: it’s not all of them) and ratcheted up the tension, as the weather, Native American warriors, pursuing forces from back home and men in the wagon train’s midst threaten the group’s safety.

I’d recommend the novel to anyone interested in learning about this period of American history and the mass migration of many (including women and families) under such trying circumstances. The book is focused on the journey itself rather than on California and those panning for gold there, which makes the ending feel a little rushed, but it’s nice to be given space to imagine the surviving women’s lives there.

The novel also walks an interesting line, in being at times heart-warming with a strong sense of inclusive and forgiving Christian morality, while at others dealing with brutal sexual and physical violence. The treatment of, and attitudes towards, black and Native American characters is in line with historical realities, which can also make for emotionally difficult reading. This isn’t escapist historical fiction that will leave you longing for a romantic past. I for one will feel pretty grateful the next time I hop on a quick six-hour flight to California!

Do you have any recommendations for novels I should read next in my Neo-Victorian Voices series? If so, let me know—here, on Facebook, via Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

And did you know it’s now less than six months until the release of my novel, Bronte’s Mistress? Check out the pre-order details here, or sign up for my monthly newsletter below!

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