I have favourite books which I read again and again ..... some of which I've already posted about ..... another one which was written in 1861 by Mrs. Henry Wood, is East Lynne ...... I'm not sure I'd describe this as a 'woman's book' ..... as I think the use of the English language will delight any reader .... I've copied the following from the fly sheet ......
The main plot of East Lynne (underscored by a linked sub-plot concerned with murder) is concerned with love and marriage. It turns upon the axis of the sexual fall of its heroine, Lady Isabel Vane, to one of the most superbly malevolent and caddish villains in all Victorian literature, Francis Levison. Its morality is retributive and unforgiving. The divorced Lady Isabel returns as unrecognised governess to her own children, living on through the second half of the novel with the status of a wraith, or spectre, as if fetched from her grave. At the very moment of her sexual 'sin' she morally dies: is to be considered as a walking, watching corpse of womanhood, her features scarred by the train-accident, her eyes mere optic nerves peering through the disfiguring green lens of disguising spectacles, seeing but unseen, her bastard child dead, her husband lost to Another, her legitimate son dying under her eyes. No one can see her. When she is recognized, the servant faints with terror, thinking her a ghost. She ought to be, and would definitely be happier, in the grave. For her existence is cancelled. This is demonstrable, for she is replaced. Her vacated place is taken, the wronged husband taking to his bosom a replacement wife, who assumes the attributes and most of the habits of her predecessor: sings her songs at her piano, bears the good man's children, hangs on his every word.
I have read it several times and it never fails to give me a 'jolt' of emotion !
