Book Review: Brontë’s Mistress

Lydia Robinson lived in a world of wealth and class, surrounded by servants, tutors, and governesses, while residing in an extensive manor and enjoying nights of parties and plays. High society Victorian England, with all its pomp and genteel elegance, marked her everyday existence. But, beneath the facade of wealth and elegance was a life of tragedy, sorrow, and longing that has been ignored and in some cases, disdained by history. Known only as the unscrupulous mistress of Branwell Brontë, Lydia Robinson never got a chance to tell her story. 

In Finola Austin’s new historical novel, Brontë’s Mistress, Lady Robinson finally makes her voice heard. Through her eyes we see a tormented woman who is no longer loved by her husband, harassed by her mother, and plagued by an indifferent patriarchal society that she can neither accept nor deny. With Anne Brontë of the famed Brontë sisters as her governess, she both envies and resents the Miss Brontës for making their own living. She is above them, yet somehow she knows that her life, with its dichotomy of luxury and restrictions, is much worse off. 

“A girl’s vanity is a fragile thing, her worth determined solely by a market run by men.”

What humanizes Lady Robinson, amidst all her complaints and elegant Victorian lifestyle, is her inward desire to be seen and loved—to be recognized as more than just a wife and mother. But this is not a goal with a clear beginning and end—a desire that can be won like reaching a mountain top. She oscillates, at one moment rightfully laying claim to her needs while in another capitulating to the will of society. We see her grieve the loss of her daughter, Georgiana. We see her plead for her husband’s love and attention. We see her battle with her role as a mother, trying to protect her daughters from her own fate while never actually showing them a separate path. 

The main thread of the novel is, of course, her affair with the tutor, Branwell Brontë. The author does well developing this relationship showing both its nuance and its consequences. The author does not shy away from either the physical or emotional aspects of such a relationship, nor does she avoid the complicated reality of their age and class differences. It is well imagined and completely plausible while also accounting for the historical facts known of both characters’ lives. 

“My heart, poor caged thing, did a death throe inside me.”

But the relationship, like the title of the book, is not what this story is about. The story is something far more profound. It is about one woman’s struggle to do right by herself under circumstances beyond her control and set up for her to fail. Throughout the novel, and throughout her life I would suppose, Lydia Gisborne Robinson Scott saw glimpses of happiness. She reached for them believing, deep down, that she had a right to be happy, only to learn in the end that life takes more than it gives and that her heart “poor caged thing” would never be released.     

Learn more about the author, Finola Austin, by visiting her website, The Secret Victorianist.

Some Favorite Quotes From The Novel Brontë’s Mistress:

“No one had looked at me and really seen me for months—years, maybe—but this boy, his red-rimmed eyes, bore into my soul. I was afraid to know what he found there.”

“Motherhood was about offering truth, not comfort. For all it still tugged at my heartstrings to hear her cry so, Lydia needed to leave behind her childish notions. And I must be the one to disabuse her.”

“He was slicing me apart with a blunt knife, or lacing the strings around me even tighter, cleaving me in two. And I could only lash back at him, like the crushed bee who stings with his final breath.”

“He wouldn’t have the sense of an older man to know when love—or something like it—had run its course, and was best treasured only as a memory for those nights when the moonlight makes romantics, and loneliness fools, of us.”

“This was their world, not mine. And in their world, I could only ever be on the peripheries, setting the stage and ornamenting the room, before slipping away like a servant or shadow. That was a fact as inescapable as church on Sunday’s.”