E. I.

This novel perfectly captures both the hopes and hopelessness of the women of that era who, even when they have enough to not need marriage like Helen, are still expected to meet the expectations of a patriarchal society. The weight and importance of Helen’s bravery and defiance might escape modern readers, so I recommend getting an annotated edition if you’re not familiar with Regency/Victorian English customs. The language gets some time to get used to but once you do, you can’t put it down. The novel does make some questionable narrative choices, particularly the length of Markham’s “letter” to his brother-in-law (he wasn’t written like the kind of man who would expose a woman’s intimacies to anyone in that way) and the description of many of the villains’s demises are rather rushed while some trivial descriptions go on forever.