England, 1862. Charlotte Harding and Harriet Baldwin, sisters, were on the edges of British society. Harriet, the older sister is married to the Honourable Charles Baldwin, MP a man of means who is vying for a greater position in the British Parliament. Charlotte is twenty one, unmarried and lives with them, taken in by her brother-in-law when her parents died. The most recent marriage choice for her, an unpleasant man, is key to aiding Charles in his bid for position. This is a time when women were no more than chattel, the British Empire was advancing their colonization into Canada with the attendant issues of racism, small pox and class divisions. Leslie Howard in her first novel The Brideship Wife, takes Charlotte and Harriet out of England aboard the Tynemouth, one of four ships, that became known as a bride ship. This is one of the historical details in Leslie Howard’s novel. At this time of the gold rush, the men that worked the claims were clamouring for wives. Some were impoverished and still panning for gold, while others ‘struck it rich’ either spending their new found wealth or using it to develop their ‘free’ parcels of land. There was little concern about the pasts of the women that arrived on Victoria’s shores. Charlotte, and her sister Harriet, were essentially banished from England by Harriet’s husband. On the ship, Charlotte showed compassion for those on the lower decks. Men in dreadful working conditions to man the ship; women confined to the lower decks by the Reverend and Mrs. Burke bringing religion to this new land. Shipboard romance is another part of Charlotte’s story. But she was determined not to fall into the role of the good wife again.
In reality, bride ships were the result of the Columbia’s Emigration Society’s initiative to bring women to aid in populating the colonies. The Brideship Wife was, in turn, strait laced and lively, as the women were shunted from their lives in England on the three month sea voyage to their new, and hopefully better, lives. Some did marry and raise children, some did not. In general they did find very different lives outside of some of the constraints of English society. This novel is a fast and easy read, despite the details packed within its pages. My only concern was that there seemed almost implausible jumps from one location to another. Possibly my own issue.
All in all, I found The Brideship Wife to be a very enjoyable read.
“After all I’d been doing to salvage my reputation, I was
taking a risk, but I had no other choice.”- Charlotte Harding
~ Leslie Howard, The Brideship Wife
Title: The Brideship Wife
Author: Leslie Howard (raised in Penticton, B.C.; avid interest in her province.
Copyright: 2020
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Canada
Type: Novel
Format: Soft Cover
ISBN - 978-1-5082-5935-0
ISBN - 978-1-5082-5936-7 (ebook)
No comments:
Post a Comment