Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

"Absorbing...Heartbreaking...Forster paints a vivid picture of class, station, hypocrisy and survival in Victorian society....Grips the reader's imagination on every page."
-- SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
She was Elizabeth Barrett's lady's maid. But "Wilson" was more than that. She was a confidante, friend and conspirator in Elizabeth's forbidden romance with Robert Browning. Wilson stayed with Elizabeth for sixteen years, through every trial and crisis, and when Wilson's affairs took a dramatic turn she expected the same loyalty from Elizabeth....

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, British Literature, Victorian, 19th Century, Romance

547 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Margaret Forster was educated at the Carlisle and County High School for Girls. From here she won an Open Scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford where in 1960 she was awarded an honours degree in History.

From 1963 Margaret Forster worked as a novelist, biographer and freelance literary critic, contributing regularly to book programmes on television, to Radio 4 and various newpapers and magazines.

Forster was married to the writer, journalist and broadcaster Hunter Davies. They lived in London. and in the Lake District. They had three children, Caitlin, Jake and Flora.

Reviews

[Evie Byrne]

This book did a good job portraying issues of class and privilege in Victorian society. It's also paints a vivid picture of servant life in that period--and I love servant tales. BUT it is relentlessly depressing. I just want to put that out there as a warning.

The back of my book was covered with glowing blurbs, one of which said it had a happy ending. Well, maybe it does by lit fic standards. Certainly I'll admit that it ended better than say... The Road. (Yay! She kept her limbs! Happy!) But it ended in a bleakish unresolved spot, like the author just got tired and decided to stop there. Then historical notes at the end, which tell us the few facts known about her life, made me feel even worse.

Also, while I was content to read this as fiction based on real people, I'm seeing in other reviews that this book has made other readers think the Brownings were horrible people. From what I can tell, we know little of the relationship between the Brownings and the maid, Wilson, so much of this tale is spun out of the author's imagination from a few facts. It should not be taken for gospel.

And if you want to read this because you'd like a juicy insider's view on the Browning's romance, don't get your hopes up.

All that said, the story was so depressing I thought it must be entirely fact-based because who would choose to voluntarily write such a long bleak morass of indecision, confusion and depression? I mean, authors have choices! I kept reading, lulled by that false promise of a happy ending, waiting for the maid to find her spine. Or just fall into better circumstances. Or at least to take action on on the matter of her child--I don't want to get spoilerish but what I'll call a "child issue" dangled through the later part of the book and to my utter amazement the author chose not to resolve it on the page.

I read this two days ago and am still depressed.

[Emmeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not part of the plan but, fighting a virus and with all kinds of family visiting, it turned out an undemanding but interesting historical novel was what the doctor ordered.

I thought the historical aspect of this was very well done; the tone felt realistic without slipping into pastiche. It's the story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's maid, who accompanied her on her elopement with Robert Browning and subsequent life in Italy. Though long for my taste, the novel convincingly and evocatively depicted Lily Wilson’s changing character and circumstances, her small-scale romances, her adventurous streak and the sheer drudgery of her life as a servant (with the attending hypocrisies of being loved but underpaid by her employers, considered a person and yet not given the privileges of full personhood).

I was peeved, googling around a bit afterwards, to discover how much of this was fictional; or rather, how much of it deviated even from the scarce records there are of Wilson. Real people in novels is always something I’m uneasy about, and all in all I would have preferred a book about a fictional maid to a fictional famous poet closely based on Barrett Browning.

Still, this was a good read, though slow in places and abrupt in its conclusion, it was particularly moving in its depiction of the close, and fraught, relationship between mistress and maid. In a way, it's a book about female friendship, but also about benevolent exploitation.

[Natalie Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fact meets fiction in this story, told from the viewpoint of Elizabeth Wilson, lady's maid to Elizabeth Barrett and the love story between Barrett and Robert Browning and the most famous elopement in history. This was very engrossing and readable and a vivid insight into the lives of the haves and havenots and that no matter how much a friendship may develop between both, a line must not be crossed. I really felt for Wilson and the difficulties she faced in the mid 19th century. I'm now looking foward to reading more of Forster's books.

[Hermien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written giving a real sense of the relationship between Elizabeth Barrett and Lily Wilson. Flush by Virginia Woolf is also worth reading as it covers part of the same story but told from Elizabeth's dog's perspective.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slow. Very, very slow.

When I took this book out, the premise sounded so promising--so interesting. The book crawled along, and about half way through, I asked myself why I was going to finish it, when, to be honest, I didn't like the characters, didn't appreciate their struggles.

Well, I did read it all, and it started to pick up the pace a bit after I hit the half way point. Unfortunately, it didn't continue to move along. Maybe I just don't appreciate that there were such constraints on people's lives, and the need to conform to conventions. But I just didn't develop any empathy for these people. If it was the intention of the author to show what mind numbingly boring, hopeless lives these people were forced to live, she succeeded. She didn't succeed in making me care about them.

[Dorothy · Rating 2 out of 5]

So many opportunities missed by the author in this book, what a shame!

The first and glaring one - why isn't this in first person? The story is in Lily Wilson's point of view throughout, so why choose third person? And why, oh why, is Lily always referred to as "Wilson"? Sure, Wilson is what she's called by her employers - but we, as readers, don't want to know Wilson, the dehumanised servant - we want to know Lily, the real person. I felt the combination of the formal surname and the third person kept me distanced from Lily, even when the text spoke of her feelings.

Using "Lily" in the narrative would've been so much more effective. We would be watching her growing devotion to the Brownings yet always being reminded, every time they address her as "Wilson", that they're not as much her friends as she wants to believe.

Thirdly - when you read the notes at the end, you find that Lily is a real person, but all we really know of her comes from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's letters. Which means that much of the story is fictional. If that's the case, why did the author make Lily's life so terminally boring?

It felt as though the author really wanted to write a biography of the Brownings, decided she needed a clever "angle", lighted on the idea of using Wilson - and then was stuck with the problem of not knowing much about her life. Because writing the biography was her priority, it didn't occur to her to manufacture more of a life for her narrator than was absolutely necessary. And the fact that she could refer to her as Wilson, not Lily, throughout, says something about the author's involvement with her character.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lady's Maid is the fictional life story of Lily Wilson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's maid. Since all I knew about either of the Browning poets before starting this book was the little bit I remember from high school English, I wasn't sure if this was the book for me; fortunately, it really is the story of Wilson (as she is called throughout the book), and background knowledge about her employers is not essential. In fact, being famous poets, I expected to see them romanticized, but they're not; this is an unflinching tale of the conditions of 19th century servitude, including low wages and the impossibility of starting a family and retaining work as a maid. Parts of the book are likely to leave the reader angry with the Brownings, which may be disappointing for fans of their work.

The book is narrated in the 3rd person and almost entirely from Wilson's perspective, but peppered with letters she writes to friends and family, long enough that at times it feels as if the book is jumping back and forth between 1st and 3rd person. The beginning positively drags, but the pace picks up slightly as the book goes on and Wilson travels with the Brownings and courts several different men. I found this to be an engaging book and well worth reading if you're interested in seeing life from the servant's perspective; somehow all those books where the main characters are served fail to portray the difficulty a servant faces if she dares to want a life of her own. And Lady's Maid is also an interesting study in co-dependency in its portrayal of Wilson's relationship with her mistress. At 550 pages, the book at times feels overlong, although I understand the difficulty in trying to cover 17 years of a woman's life while including enough concrete scenes that we still feel connected to her.

Overall, I would recommend this book if you have the patience to see it through and still think it worth your time. If nothing else, it's an honest look at relationships that transcends any specific time period.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was by far one of the best and most engrossing books I read this year. Actually I listened to it on audio. There's nothing better than a superb book with a very engaging, well-spoken narrator. This book is about Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband, Robert Browning. But the story itself centers around Elizabeth's maid, Wilson. I can't honestly remember when a book evoked so much emotion in me: joy, happiness, resentment, anger, outrage. The writing was so beautiful, and so true to the period. If you love reading vintage women's fiction like Jane Austen or Edith Wharton, then you'll love the writing style and narrative of this book. While a few liberties were taken (explained in the book's epilogue), much of it centers around fact. However, I was still unable to discern if Elizabeth Barrett Browning was such a selfish, mean-spirited and confused person as portrayed here, or if the author used her creative license to vilify Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I'm not going to recreate the synopsis, since many have already done so. I'm simply recommending it as a truly gripping story of love, loss, devotion and social injustices. It's a bit slow in parts, but I listened to it almost straight through -- never was I bored or indifferent about the storyline in any way. Every piece of it is wracked with feeling in some form or fashion. Enjoy!

[Kristin Lennert Murra · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was very interesting until about two-thirds of the way in, when the tone seemed to change and it became very slow going. It was as if all the characters just got tired of each other, and there wasn't anything compelling for me to stay engaged with them (except that I hate leaving a book unread).

[Mary Ronan Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lily Wilson is not in her first youth when she is hired in 1844 to be lady’s maid to Elizabeth Barrett. She finds a seriously dysfunctional family, under the complete control of the Barrett father, who forbids any of his children to marry. When Lily arrives Elizabeth Barrett is seriously neurotic, but also suffering from an unidentified lung condition and an addiction to opiates. With the help of Elizabeth’s sisters Lily slowly encourages EB to leave the house and eventually to take walks in the park.

Lily Wilson was a real person though no letters to or from her have been found and all we know of her is what we read in EB’s letters, a highly biased account. Margaret Forster has taken the few things we know about Lily and the many things we know about EB and created a first-rate novel.

Lily would like to marry and have children but she has trouble finding a man since “followers” are forbidden in the Barrett household. When EB becomes friends with Robert Browning, falls in love with him, and then secretly marries him in 1845 Lily sees a chance for herself when she accompanies them to Italy.

I stopped reading there, at the end of Part I. The book continues on to tell of the birth of EBB’s son and her death in 1861 and the story of Lily’s marriages and children but I decided to stop and enjoy this first part, which works as a self-contained short novel. The book was published in 1990 so you may need to go to a library or ABE.com to find a copy.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a masterful work of fiction.
Written in the 1980s it could have been written in the 1800s. Ms. Forster really got the time beautifully
The juxtaposition of the servant class and their "masters" is hard to fathom in our own much more egalitarian age. Servants saw to every need, physical, emotional of the people they worked for an were not really viewed as whole people, Downton Abbey, no matter. It brought to my mind our our American history of slavery where the slaves were not accorded being thought of as fully human.
The Lady's maid in question is Wilson who is a shy country girl who becomes a maid to Elizabeth Barrett, the poet who later becomes Elizabeth Barrett Browning. By today's standards Wilson was not treated fairly or well by the Brownings but Wilson was devoted to them, particularly Elizabeth and her son Pen to whom she was a second mother. Brava.

[Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

5.5/6 -- Have you ever liked an actor in a movie and then seen them interviewed and wished that you had never seen the interview because your opinion of them changed (for the worse)? Well, now I am not sure I like Elizabeth Barrett Browning... her selfish, self-centered personality was immense. Altho I did find the book sort of interesting, I would have difficulty in recommending it to many people: the writing is slow, so the reader must have a definite interest in period writing and an interest in history.

[Natasa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Forster does a good job of pulling us into the plight of Wilson, the maid. She demonstrates the selfishness of employers and the desperation of servants in that era. The book is long and sometimes slow and seems to repeat itself in certain points, but overall I liked it and wanted to see how it ended.

[Colleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't read. 500+ pages of gloom.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lady's Maid is a fictional account of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's maid. It started out interesting, and I found myself truly enjoying the story of Barrett's strange home life and interaction with her father, and her courtship with Robert Browning. But it went downhill from there and became slow going until the end. It was interesting to learn about the Brownings' lives, but the story started to plod along, and I found it hard to finish. If you like historical fiction you'll probably enjoy this novel, but it isn't the best the genre has to offer, by any means.

[Jodi · Rating 5 out of 5]

In middle school or high school I read the Barretts of Wimpole Street and I LOVED the book! When I saw this book on the library free shelf about the Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband, Robert Browning from the viewpoint of her lady's maid, I grabbed it! I really enjoyed this book and a peak into what life may have been like for a servant in this era and specifically in this household. It angered me that the Brownings never raised Wilson's wages for 8 years and when she asked for a raise they were awful about it. They only finally sort of agreed to her increase by calling it a clothing allowance because notbody else would work the the wage they paid Wilson. Then when Wilson finally fell in love, they delayed allowing her to marry. Once Wilson was close to giving birth to her first child, they sent her away and refused to allow her to bring the baby back to live near her. Ugh! With the second child, she was pretty much fired but allowed to run a boarding house for the Brownings. Frankly, they were awful to her and I'm glad there are modern laws to help workers to have a better work/life balance. Wilson endured low pay, long seperations from her husband, and never getting a chance to raise her first child.......yet she was with her lady until she died.

In the afterward from the author, I found it interesting to read that Elizabeth's only child, Pen, and he invited Wilson to live with him in America until she died. In many ways she was more of a mother to him than his own mother.

[Gail Amendt · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a really long time to read this book, and that is partly because it is a very busy time of the year for me, and partly because it is not a happy book, which makes it difficult to read much at a time. It tells a fictionalized story of the real Lily Wilson, who was poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's lady's maid. Wilson, as she was always called, arrived at the Barrett house to care for the invalid Elizabeth, witnessed the budding romance between her mistress and Robert Browning, helped them elope, and then served them for many years in Italy. As a servant, she was prevented from having much of a life of her own, and her efforts to create a life often resulted in heartbreak. It is difficult to know how much of this story is accurate, and how much is speculation, but I think it is a good portrayal of the relationship between servants and those they serve. The characters are very complex and well developed, and have complicated relationships. The Brownings are not portrayed in a very flattering light, which might offend some readers, but which added a degree of believability for me. It may not be the truth, but it is plausible.

[Bowerbird · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very many years ago I saw the musical "Robert and Elizabeth" in London and fell in love with their characters. Wilson and Flush just appeared on the periphery. However, the musical only went as far as their leaving for Italy. If I had read this book at the time I would have been devastated to find that two poets could be so selfish. Maybe I thought poets had more insight into life and its traumas than ordinary people. But of course they treated servants just as others of that period would - invaluable when needed but expendable once a difficulty arose. Their expectations of loyalty left Wilson isolated and virtually friendless. Her duties made her Elizabeth's confidante so she grew to believe that Elizabeth saw her also as a friend. Their closeness gave us a real insight into the Barrett/Browning marriage but we also discover that as a maid you were never able to cross the line or have a life of your own. You might be a devoted and caring servant always willing to go the extra mile, but no matter how much you might love your employers you were always replaceable.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

A charity-shop discovery that I am truly glad to have made. It narrates the semi-fictional story of Elizabeth Browning's made, Wilson. But really, what it narrates is life. Life in its progressively increasing depth, sadness, and disillusionment. It has been a long time since a novel moved me thus, and I have found myself shedding more than a tear on the long bus journeys I undertake every day - or weeping, as Wilson would put it. Only a woman could have written something like this- and this is, of course, meant as a praise. I fear life may indeed be as Wilson shows it bo be. I found it truly sad, but also very moving and very true in the way it narrates a daughter's love for her mother, a mother's love for her children, a woman's fascination with another woman, and a wife's progressive 'disenchantment' with her husband. "Sad but true" (hopefully, things can also go differently though).

[Fiona Hutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I simply cannot understand the critique of the pace of this book: that's the whole point. Wilson and Barrett were aquainted(/friends) for 16 years! That is almost two decades, and life is never, ever, always a page turner. Similarly the critique of its depressing nature: this is to be expected when reading a book about an intense relationship crossing classes in 1844. This book was marvelous, painful and joyous to read, frustrating and satisfying all at once. For anyone who likes to savour a story and get attached to characters, this is the book for you.

[K.J. McCall]

I just quit on this book so it isn't fair to rate it. Why did I quit? My copy is 536 slow-going pages of tiny print. Feels like I've been reading forever and I'm only on page 98. My time for pleasure reading is at night and I love looking forward to bed with a book. But, pleasant anticipation with this one just isn't there. So, yep, I'm going to quit and move on.

[Emerald Dodge · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever reached DNF status on a book so fast. Everything about it felt off, from the hideous formatting (multiple speakers in the same paragraph, for crying out loud), strange narrative choices, confusing shifts of POV, etc. And over everything was a feeling of utter gloom that didn't abate. And it was such a disappointment, because this book had so much potential. Shame.

[Debbi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Based on a true story about a complex relationship between a lady and her maid. They were together some 16 years and the book is nearly 600 pages so it is a little slow at times but it is also fascinating.
3.5 stars

[Iz Rob Rho · Rating 3 out of 5]

This does a great job of satisfying my noseyness in that I felt like a fly on the wall of some really interesting history and people's lives. But it took me a long time and a bit of a break to get through it - very long and unendingly depressing.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

1844 -

Now I want to know more about the Brownings!

I need to read this again.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glad for it to end

This book started out to be fairly interesting and promising reading. It became so long, slow moving and depressing that I was glad to get to the end.

[Grace Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the way Margaret writes, but found the book to be a little boring and not what I expected.

[Kingfan30 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I confess I know very little about poetry so was not al familiar with the Brownings. In fact I was quite a wayinto the book before I realised that this is based on true events. It started off pretty well, and despite not being my normal type of read, I found myself enjoying it. It was only as the book progressed that I started to feel it was becomming a bit repetitive. I understand times were hard and very different but, the some topics seemed to be dwelled on for far too long in my opinion. The relationship between Mrs Browning was quite interesting and at times I was shocked at how Wilson was treated by the pair. Overall a slightl6 depressing read but not bad, it probably could of been quite a lot shorter.

[Jenny Mitcham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been sat on my bookshelf for about 18 years and I finally got round to picking it up to read. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it from the very start. I found it to be a really good read and despite being long, it mostly kept be interested all the way through. There was a slightly boring middle bit to be sure, but not too bad. I liked reading about the real Wilson in the afterword at the end. Solid 4 stars.

[Brenda Moreels · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very repetitive, depressing, and long.