A Proper Education for Girls: A Novel

By Elaine di Rollo

Book Overview

A rollicking tale set in 1857--the year of the Indian Mutiny--this dazzling debut is about feisty women; the devotion of sisters; and the Victorians' obsession with empire, experiments, and photography.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307408345
• ISBN13: 9780307408341
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Crown
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

One of my favourites.

I cannot love this book more. It was such a treat to read. Twins Lilian and Alice live with their father Mr. Talbot who collects strange and rare objects. The twins themselves seem to be part of the collection! When Lilian is compromised by Mr. Hunter she is married off to a boring missionary who whisks her off to India leaving Alice with her aunts in Mr. Tablots strange world. Mr. Blake is hired as a photographer to catagorise every piece of the collection. Alice who has gone against the conventions of her time acts as his assistant. He is perplexed to find that he is attracted to her despite her obvious plainess, though Alice is unaware of his feelings. When she comes into possession of some 'racy' photographs that Mr. Blake brought with him she blackmails him into marrying her so that she can escape her father and rush off to India after her sister. To her surprise he is more than willing to agree.There are even rumours that she is a hermaphrodite! The malicious Dr. Cattermole enters the picture who claims he can 'cure' her conditon. Meanwhile Lilian is thriving in her new country while her husband does nothing but complain. She learns the language and even goes as far to wear sari's which scandalises the english population. Just as she thinks that she has settled into her life Mr. Hunter returns to her life and confesses than he made a huge mistake. Lilian is not having any of it but with revenge in mind she leads him on. The sisters ultimately struggle to be together and are strong heroines who go against convention. I absolutely love them! I was saddened when it ended. Give this book a shot. It's unusual. I love it! It's hilarious.

"What use are men, when they bring us only pain and unhappiness?"

This novel is a surprisingly clever rout of Victorian mores and pretensions, the hypocrisy of an era stripped bare as twin sisters, Lilian and Alice Talbot find themselves at the mercy of a science-obsessed father and his friend, the evil Dr. Cattermole. Talbot House filled with his "Collection", the sisters' father is an avid member of the Society for the Propagation of Useful and Interesting Knowledge, each room filled with artifacts and curiosities. After a scandalous incident, Lilian has been married to a missionary and dispatched to India, her name never to be spoken in the home again. Alice is devastated, left to care for her father's oddities as well as their deceased mother's fertile conservatory. Dabbling in photography, Alice is somewhat comforted to learn her father will soon have a new assistant, Mr. Blake. In chapters that alternate between Alice's bleak existence at Talbot House to Lilian's adventures in India, the author excoriates the particular attitudes of Victorian England and the British occupation of India, the male hubris that dominates both societies and the restrictions females must endure, an enforced childishness that renders them helpless without a male's superior intelligence to guide their every move. While Alice submits to her father's demands, supported by the frivolous fluttering of five charming elderly aunts, Lilian thrives in India, ignoring her husband's voluble complaints. Even when Lilian is confronted with a face from the past, she barely breaks stride, shedding the shackles of society for freedom from restriction and a well-planned revenge. Alice is not so fortunate, the object of Cattermole's compulsion to wield his surgeon's scalpel. Alice's situation is dire, the young woman in great and irreversible danger. With a vengeful eye and a sharp wit, diRollo mines the Victorian repression of womanhood in a subtly subversive novel, exposing the pomposity of men who disguise their carnal appetites in scientific research, their obsession with experimentation veiling a thirst for all things libidinous. Faced with only two options, institutionalization or marriage, Lilian and Alice are the heroines of the piece, charged with outwitting the males who dominate them and escaping the control of those who view women as objects. Crowded with sentiment, theory and bizarre curiosities, this is a novel to be savored, fools left sputtering in confusion as two sisters soar above the petty presumptions of their era. Luan Gaines/2009.