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. Write your abstract here.
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