Sometimes reviews give balance to a book - after all, one reader's delicacy, another's poison.
So here is my Review of Proof of Virtue.
Reviewed by Francine:
The last part of the Georgian period
drifting to the Victorian era was a very harsh period in history, and all
despite the great Industrial Revolution in which steam trains gradually brought
about the end of long journeys by mail coach (other) as a means of travel, and
factory mill industrialists began crushing incomes of small country weavers. It
was also a period of change as the poorer people deserted the countryside to
find work in townships. Sadly, the heroine of this novel has lived a
comfortable life but is suddenly cast into a hell pit due to unforeseen
circumstance of death and loss of her home. Thus, with her younger siblings to
care for she is duty bound to provide for them as best she can. But tide of bad
fortune affords no hope of a kindly person to care what happens to them and she
has no alternative but to look to the Workhouse for a roof over their heads and
food to belly.
To understand Emma’s
plight fully, there is the reality that Workhouses were the most dreaded of
prospects next to prison. Subsequently, she braces herself for the humiliation
of it all, but never in her worst nightmare could she envisage the dark side of
workhouses, of those who sponsor them and exploit and abuse the inhabitants,
nor of those who manage or own workhouses. Hence her story is harrowing, one in
which she battles numerous emotions, suffers the wrath of others, and yet finds
friends and allies, and love blossoms in extraordinary circumstances when least
expected. I admire this author’s daring to venture to the
darker side of life, because in reality for those less fortunate in these times
it was a hellish existence. This novel reflects the harshness and the value of
human flesh by those who sought only to further their own finances, personal
aims, and covert desires. So for that reason this is a true depiction of the
dark side of life as young Princess Victoria is schooled to reign by William
IV, the last of the Georgian kings.
