The Life and Death of Harriett Frean is a novel by the English author May Sinclair (1836–1946), first published in 1922.[1] Praised as a “small, perfect gem of a book” by the literary critic Jonathan Coe, it is an account of the life of a female child raised to be the perfect Victorian woman, but who disasterously rejects the man who loves her, leading to her “moral degenaration”.[2]
Synopsis
Harriett Frean is born into a comfortable middle-class family in a London suburb. When a young woman she attends a boarding school, where she meets Priscilla Heaven, and falls in love with Priscilla’s fiancé, the charming artist Robin Lethbridge. But true to her ingrained sense of duty, she rejects him when he proposes to her, a decision that haunts her subsequent years.
Following her parents’ financial ruin and deaths, Harriett settles into a monotonous routine in a modest Hampstead cottage, trying to convince herself that she did the right thing in rejecting Robin’s proposal. Meanwhile, Priscilla becomes paralysed, and increasingly dependent on the ministrations of her husband, Robin. As Harriett sees Robin lift Priscilla out of her wheelchair one evening, her face “had a queer, exalted look of pleasure and triumph”.
References
Works cited
External links
- Full text of The Life and Death of Harriett Frean at Project Gutenberg
