Take a photo of a barcode or cover
bigskyreader 's review for:
Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
by Kate Summerscale
The Mrs Robinson in question is an upper class Victorian woman, caught in a lifeless marriage. She develops an intense but fairly harmless crush on a young married doctor, which is where her troubles began. She seemed to have no close confidantes, and in the fashion of the era, confided her thoughts, feelings, and increasingly her fantasies to her diary. Unfortunately for her, Mr. Robinson chanced upon her diary and read it. The divorce laws in Britain had just been moderated to not require an Act of Parliament to accomplish it, and her husband was taking full advantage. The diary, excerpted in the newspapers during the course of the trial, was a sensation and a scandal. The book has some interesting things to say in its portrayal of marriage and marriage laws in late-Victorian society, but I thought the pace was slow, and the writing hard to get into. The book has been getting great reviews, which is why I picked it up, but I don't think it lived up to them. Actually, I felt the same way about the author's last book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher.