The Lady's Maid by Margaret Forster
Lady’s Maid
Margaret Forster
Review by Enchanted England
The Lady’s Maid by Margaret Forster
The lockdown continues and so does the clearing out of bookshelves at Enchanted England. They are mysterious things aren’t they books? Firstly – how did we end up with so many of them. We can’t possibly have bought them all surely? Are they breeding high up in the dark recesses of bookcases? Is there a random library tribe that has colonised and taken over all the corners of the house.
So, when the Lady’s Maid fell into my hands, I took one look at its pious cover and shuddered. No doubt, no doubt this novel would be a historical drama aka Downton Abbey with domestic servants, tugging forelocks, opened mouthed at the beauty of their mistress’s dress, house, furniture, husband etc. Scenario one: A ghastly Victorian morality (I’m a good girl, I am with a mock cockney accent – apologies Eliza Doolittle) and a pregnancy out of wedlock that would be the very worst thing that could happen to a sweet maid. Or, scenario two: Dear reader forgive me, I am still getting over the Barbara Cartland experience last month, a poor domestic is transformed like Cinderella into a princess by marrying a handsome prince in the form of the rich son of the house.
Well, how wrong I was – I was gripped from the opening sentences…
‘Wilson sat up very straight. This was the first letter she had ever written in her life and she wished it to be correct in every particular.’
From here the reader is led through a complex, ambiguous account of Wilson’s life with her mistress, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, where both women exploit and compromise their relationship. This is strange partnership that nevertheless is only broken by the poet’s death nearly twenty years later.
At the start of the novel, Wilson wishes to marry. Elizabeth Barrett tells her that marriage is servitude yet elopes with the writer Robert Browning, taking Wilson with her. Later the tables are turned. Wilson confesses to the Brownings that she was pregnant before she married her husband Ferdinando, footman to the household. The scenes when Wilson was turned out to have a baby alone in England while Ferdinando is ‘kept on’ are truly harrowing. It generates a sense of complete outrage. On Wilson’s eventual return to service, she has had to leave her child behind to look after the Browning’s only son.
Yet Forster is too clever a writer to allow us to make an easy judgement against the Brownings. Wilson is also guilty of exploiting her sister’s childlessness and her own servants when she is able to do so. We are told Wilson condemns a girl who is taking too long to wash the floors of her boarding house but Forster shows us that this entails drawing water out of a well during the fierce heat of an Italian summer and then carrying the heavy bucket up flights of stairs.
Forster’s detailed grasp of domestic life is illuminating. An account of a terrifying return journey in winter from England to Italy is masterful. And while not one carriage was overturned in a blizzard (Barbara Cartland please note), due to her husband’s utter incompetence in planning the stages and inns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was fortunate to survive the experience. Meanwhile, the black edged envelopes that announce death are not, as I always assumed, a stuffy nineteenth century convention, but a warning that the letter’s contents is bad news. Sit down, these envelopes warn kindly, get tea, fetch a friend, prepare yourself; a notice that this reader was grateful for at times.
At the end of the Lady’s’ Maid, Wilson still questions whether the relationship she had with the Brownings was friendship, love or life given over to service that generates a debt the Brownings can never hope to repay.
In the days of #METOO which can cast women into the role of victim – it is easy to forget how much women depend on each other to make their lives easier. But where does dependence end and exploitation start? Elizabeth Barret-Browning described looking after her own child as slavery. Does paying a salary compensate someone sufficiently for the sacrifice of giving up family and children to look after other people’s.
During the lockdown, it has been discovered that that the most important people today are our caregivers, our shop workers, our delivery teams. Yet they remain the most vulnerable and underpaid section of workers in our society. The questions explored by Wilson draw uncomfortable parallels for our times.
The Lady’s Maid remains one of the most deeply humane, profoundly moving and thought-provoking books I have read for some time.
I thank the library tribe for preserving this book and one to keep.
Sarah Keen
Enchanted England.