Story-wise, this is the fourteenth volume in the Jalna series, and the house is about a hundred years old. There is time to reflect here, so that when a new character, like Humphrey Bell, is introduced, readers are reminded of all the other characters who have lived in his
Although following Finch’s Fortune directly, the fortune only recently received and dispensed, Master of Jalna was actually published more than twenty years before Finch’s Fortune. It’s easy to imagine why the author would have wanted to revisit the Whiteoaks before the events of Master of Jalna play out, to
I am about eleven years old, sitting cross-legged on the floor, in what we called the sewing room. Next to the sewing machine is a brick-and-board bookcase filled with paperbacks. (There was a bookcase in nearly every room, regardless of what the room was called. Now, even my kitchen
When I began to read this series, I worried - needlessly - about keeping the characters straight: actually, the main character is Jalna itself. "Everything about the house had been put in perfect order. Workmen had been there to mend the roof, tighten the supports of the shutters, and give
There were “few openings for women in the nineties” and, so, Mary Wakefield is forced to consider work as a governess in the 1890s. She is fortunate, in fact, that Ernest Whiteoak is seeking a governess for his brother’s young son (nine years old) and daughter (seven years old). Their mother
