What Empty Things Are These
Judy Crozier

What Empty Things Are These by Judy Crozier

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


As soon as Adelaide Hadley finds herself in want of a bookmark, you will be rooting for her. Domestic crisis or no, her page of Wilkie Collins must be bookmarked! I sometimes wonder how the plucky heroines of historical fiction get to be so, well, plucky. Most of them seem cursed with pluckiness upon conception. But not Adelaide. She has to earn her pluck. She has to earn it and work at it, and let me tell you it is hard—especially in nineteenth-century London, where women of every class are expected to be virtually incapable of discerning their own priorities, let alone making decisions or (heaven forbid) reading and writing. To decide even to attempt such unfeminine faux pas requires a resolve that Adelaide must struggle to sow within herself and nurture, having been stifled all her life not just by patriarchal society, but also by violence and a loveless domestic life; belittled even by her son, imprisoned in needlework and heavy furniture, confined by hoops and veils and crinoline that barely allow her to move. In beautiful and subtle prose, J.L. Crozier weaves portraits of Victorian women of all stripes—from wealthy wives in gilded cages to servants, street urchins, and spiritualists—together in a dark tapestry as seen through Adelaide’s eyes while she herself, marginalized and powerless, dreams of independence.



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