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Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady - Kate Summerscale
Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
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3.60 125
"I think people marry far too much; it is such a lottery, and for a poor woman—bodily and morally the husband’s slave—a very doubtful happiness." —Queen Victoria to her recently married daughter VickyHeadstrong, high-spirited, and already widowed, Isabella Walker became Mrs. Henry Robinson at age... show more
"I think people marry far too much; it is such a lottery, and for a poor woman—bodily and morally the husband’s slave—a very doubtful happiness." —Queen Victoria to her recently married daughter VickyHeadstrong, high-spirited, and already widowed, Isabella Walker became Mrs. Henry Robinson at age 31 in 1844. Her first husband had died suddenly, leaving his estate to a son from a previous marriage, so she inherited nothing. A successful civil engineer, Henry moved them, by then with two sons, to Edinburgh’s elegant society in 1850. But Henry traveled often and was cold and remote when home, leaving Isabella to her fantasies.No doubt thousands of Victorian women faced the same circumstances, but Isabella chose to record her innermost thoughts—and especially her infatuation with a married Dr. Edward Lane—in her diary. Over five years the entries mounted—passionate, sensual, suggestive. One fateful day in 1858 Henry chanced on the diary and, broaching its privacy, read Isabella's intimate entries. Aghast at his wife’s perceived infidelity, Henry petitioned for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Until that year, divorce had been illegal in England, the marital bond being a cornerstone of English life. Their trial would be a cause celebre, threatening the foundations of Victorian society with the specter of "a new and disturbing figure: a middle class wife who was restless, unhappy, avid for arousal." Her diary, read in court, was as explosive as Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, just published in France but considered too scandalous to be translated into English until the 1880s.As she accomplished in her award-winning and bestselling The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, Kate Summerscale brilliantly recreates the Victorian world, chronicling in exquisite and compelling detail the life of Isabella Robinson, wherein the longings of a frustrated wife collided with a society clinging to rigid ideas about sanity, the boundaries of privacy, the institution of marriage, and female sexuality.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN: 9781608199136 (1608199134)
ASIN: 1608199134
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages no: 320
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
Bambbles Rambles
Bambbles Rambles rated it
3.0 Review: Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale
This was a really cool book! I love that it's actually true. In between the story of Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace is woven other tales of the Victorian Era. Charles Darwin features often in the second half of the book. Dickens is mentioned as well. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants to kn...
Caffeine Reviews
Caffeine Reviews rated it
3.0
Author Kate Summerscale seems to have done quite a bit of research for this book. Lots of famous and not so famous names seem to be coming out of the woodwork. She does give you an inside glimpse of Victorian medical practices and cures of the time (an boy they had some pretty strange ideas back the...
MEslaymaker
MEslaymaker rated it
Women are so scary.The rise in the diagnosis of sexual mania in women corresponded to an intense contemporary anxiety about unsatisfied female desire. It had recently come to light that there was an excess of spinsters in Britain. According to the census of 1851, the country contained half a million...
Bettie's Books
Bettie's Books rated it
0.0
heads up from Brazilliant: 'don't waste your time with Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace'
The House That Books Built
The House That Books Built rated it
0.0 Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
sadly this was one of the few books I failed to finish this year. I think I had not read the reviews of it properly beforehand as I had expected it to be a fictionalised version of events rather than a historical account..it was just too dry for me.Early divorce cases are interesting though..I very ...
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