Lady's Maid by Margaret Forster7/1/2023 and retell the Barrett Browning story - with its Italian denouement - from a "downstairs" perspective. There, the rich widower Edward Barrett ruled supreme while upstairs his eldest daughter, the poetess Elizabeth, attended by her lady's maid, artfully languished with a vague 19th-century ailment.Įlizabeth Barrett Browning's biographer Margaret Forster has recycled the knowledge she assembled in her well-received 1988 study of the author of "Sonnets From the Portuguese" to gain admission to the servants' entrance of 50 Wimpole St. was a quintessential example of these social laws in action. One London residence - the subsequently legendary No. Husbands enthusiastically dominated Victorian wives fathers intimidated children elaborate middle-class families with multitudes of offspring ran like clockwork because servants knew their places. A century or so ago, particularly in England, it is arguable that all relationships could be distilled into the stark essence of master and servant or the ruler and the ruled.
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