🚢 Charlotte is an English woman, and she goes on the journey to Germany with her brother's family - Reverend Charles Morisson, his wife Marion, and their teenager daughter Ellie. On board the steamer Charlotte sees a man who resembles and reminds her of her youth lover, from whom she was separated by her brother and sister in law because they felt he didn't suit her. The man was Charlotte's only passport to happiness. Instead, she was forced to live as a retainer of the family - someone invisible and whom no one ever noticed.
🚢 It turns out the man isn't her ex lover, but a husband and a father. She begins to be infatuated with the man, even fantasizing and dreaming about making love with him, whom, in her dream, reciprocates her feeling, and treats her like how she had wanted to be treated. Then something happens that ends those fantasies, and it is at that point that Charlotte's change begins.
🚢 Charlotte had actually received a fortune, bequeathed by a Mr. Ransome, to whom she had been a caretaker. She could have had her independence then, but I think the repression of her brother and sister-in-law had been too much that she felt helpless to start an independent life. Charlotte's life had been regulated to the family's needs for too long for her to begin a new one which is her own. Loneliness is also an issue she's afraid to face.
🚢 On the whole, it's an intriguing novel, without much plot or action, as the biggest "turmoil" is happening inside Charlotte's mind. It's not an easy read for me as sometimes the line between reality and fantasy or dream is blurred. I think that's what the writer had intended it to be, and it worked. Ann Schlee captured the Victorian spinsterhood repression beautifully, though the story feels more like in the late 1910s or even 1920s.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sounds an interesting read, Fanda. Sometimes it is explorations of the mind that can be the most complex Glad yoy enjoyed it!
ReplyDeleteAt first I thought it's a light reading, but I was wrong. It's gentle but deep.
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