![]() She can’t even dye her hair when it starts to turn gray. ![]() Lydia has no money or property, and can’t have a career. And, as a wife, her husband has rejected her, giving her no prospect of enjoying sexual pleasure again, without risking her way of life. As a mother of a certain class, her babies have been taken from her at birth, her breastfeeding discouraged, and her teenage daughters entrusted to the care of another (Branwell’s sister Anne). ![]() As a woman, her education has been limited, designed only to give her the requisite accomplishments to land a man. Trapped in a loveless marriage, with no access to divorce, my protagonist Lydia is more privileged than many Victorian women, but still, essentially, powerless. My book is fiction, but it’s based on the true story of an older (read: 43-year-old) woman who had an affair with Branwell Bronte, the Bronte sisters’ (then 25-year-old) brother. It’s all I can do not to laugh.īy this point, they’ve usually read my novel, Bronte’s Mistress, or, at least, listened to me talk about it for the best part of an hour. “Would you like to have lived in the nineteenth century?” people ask me, their voices crackling over the poor Zoom connection. As a writer of historical fiction, there’s one in particular that gets me every single time. ![]() If you ever write a book, you’ll get used to answering silly questions. This Valentine’s Day, be glad you don’t live in the times of Bridgerton … ![]()
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