Lady’s Maid Forster, Margaret

Description

Product Description
“Absorbing…Heartbreaking…Forster paints a vivid picture of class, station, hypocrisy and survival in Victorian society….Grips the reader’s imagination on every page.”
— SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
She was Elizabeth Barrett’s lady’s maid. But “Wilson” was more than that. She was a confidante, friend and conspirator in Elizabeth’s forbidden romance with Robert Browning. Wilson stayed with Elizabeth for sixteen years, through every trial and crisis, and when Wilson’s affairs took a dramatic turn she expected the same loyalty from Elizabeth….
From Publishers Weekly
Elizabeth Wilson, maid to Elizabeth Barrett, witnesses with ambivalence her sickly but charismatic mistress’s affair with Robert Browning. This example of top-drawer historical fiction was a BOMC main selection in cloth.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
When history is retold from the viewpoint of a “peripheral” character legendary events may be rendered ironic by intimacy. So, too, “great works” of the leisure class can be seen in another light when looked at from the perspective of the servants whose shadowed lives sustained them.
Lady’s Maid, written from the fictional perspective of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s personal maid, is a subtle and disturbing record of the relationship between the social classes in nineteenth century England. On the surface, Wilson has a good situation and a kind mistress, but as her service stretches over decades it becomes apparent that the “friendship” between mistress and servant is distorted by a dramatic imbalance of power. Margaret Forster’s fictional account is gracefully understated; the ramifications of this imbalance develop only gradually, as Wilson’s life is consumed by the priorities of the family she serves. The personal tragedies suffered by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning seem melodramatic compared to Wilson’s quieter tragedy.
Lady’s Maid leaves one thinking hard about the role that personal choice plays in a definition of happiness. By the end of the book, a woman’s entire life has been spent in service to circumstances beyond her control; this is a powerful and significant story in itself.
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From ; review by Kirsten Backstrom
From the Publisher
This is an intimate and complex look at the relations between the classes in the mid-nineteenth century. Women of all classes had far fewer choices in lifestyle than women do today; however, if you were the “Lady’s Maid”, as Lily was to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, your choices were limited by your class to an even greater extent, and therein lies the subtle tragedy of this book.

This is a thought provoking and well wrought novel. The truth is that the freedom that feminists have won for today’s women is far more real for women of the middle and upper classes than for working class or poor women. The legacy lives on.

If you enjoyed Margaret Atwood’s ALIAS GRACE, LADY’S MAID is an novel you will really enjoy.
From the Inside Flap
ing…Heartbreaking…Forster paints a vivid picture of class, station, hypocrisy and survival in Victorian society….Grips the reader’s imagination on every page.”
— SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
She was Elizabeth Barrett’s lady’s maid. But “Wilson” was more than that. She was a confidante, friend and conspirator in Elizabeth’s forbidden romance with Robert Browning. Wilson stayed with Elizabeth for sixteen years, through every trial and crisis, and when Wilson’s affairs took a dramatic turn she expected the same loyalty from Elizabeth….