The Good Daughters
British suffragettes fight for women’s equality in Brigitte Dale’s gripping historical novel The Good Daughters.
In 1912, after compromising her “virtue” in secret, Charlotte heads to Cambridge to study at England’s first women’s college, though she is still expected to behave and to aspire most to marrying well. She finds relief among the suffragettes, who introduce her to an “intoxicating” world in which women are encouraged to speak out. Convinced that “a woman can be elegant and intelligent, a rebel and a reformer,” she heads to London once expelled, determined to be a part of the next wave of the work toward the women’s vote.
Beyond Charlotte’s middle class story are the stories of Beatrice, the daughter of a lord who wants to participate in the movement, but whose threatened inheritance prevents her from doing so; Sadie, the perspicacious American who unlocks Bea’s heart; and Emily, the women’s warden’s daughter. At first, Emily considers the jailed suffragettes a bit mad, but she is compelled by Charlotte’s friendship and bravery. In time, she realizes that women’s invisibility is an “everyday commitment” that she’s no longer willing to make.
The short chapters progress at a swift rate through suspenseful snapshots of the women’s perilous, promising suffragism and deepening friendships. Thrilling scenes capture both the danger and the delights of the movement. In one, Charlotte marvels at the magnificence of women “stretching out in every direction as far as the eye can see … women singing and laughing and ambling from the sidewalks toward the center of the park, adjusting their tricolor sashes.” But this Hyde Park gathering of a quarter million women also marks a switch toward more precarious methods of protest, including hunger strikes in the jail. The novel pushes toward a riveting ending that holds the promise of hard-earned change––and, for some, hopeful new beginnings.
Brave but marginalized women from all economic backgrounds refuse to be silenced in the lively, inspiring historical novel The Good Daughters.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
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