Welcome to Litsy!

Highly-strung, very silly, very cringy. Possibly the first example of (non-explicit) slash “erotica“ written by a virgin young woman with access to a stash of “forbidden books“, but definitely not the last 😂
The politics are muddled but interesting. There is a lot of internalised classism and sexism, as should be expected in a 1884 book.

I'll read a more mature work from this author before passing judgment on her.

A young heiress plays gender-bending domination games in life and in bed with a young working-class man, who's trapped and unwilling. I can see how revolutionary and subversive this is for a 1884 novel written by a then 24-year old female writer, but it is a bit of a slog for me: decadent, fin-de-siècle works aren't my cup of tea. I can see that it would appeal to others, as it did to Oscar Wilde, who made a hidden reference to it in Dorian Gray.