A Circle Of Sisters
(Judith Flanders)
This account of the lives of four
remarkable Victorian sisters is readable and also well-researched, with
end-notes, a bibliography, an index and interesting photographs of the many
members of their large circle of friends and relations. Two clichés about English
nineteenth-century life are brought into question: the position of women and
the immutable class-system. The womenfolk of the Macdonald family certainly
showed the expected subservience to their husbands? needs and ambitions but
they also exercised an amazing amount of independence, sometimes, for instance,
spending long periods away from home. The apparently iron-bound rules governing
social distinctions are also shown to be more easily broken than is often
suspected. All four of these sisters rose from their humble origins in the
modest home of a Methodist minister to membership of the cultural and social
elite of the country. Alice
was the mother of Rudyard Kipling; Georgiana married the pre-Raphaelite painter
Edward Burne-Jones; Agnes?s husband, Edward Poynter, was president of the Royal
academy; Louisa?s son, Stanley Baldwin, became Prime Minister. From the
correspondence and diaries of three generations a fascinating picture is built
up of everyday life in the upper middle classes of Victorian England. Their
perspectives on art, family life, politics and ethics varied according to
individual temperament but together they form a coherent picture of this age of
opportunity for the elite.
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