SWC Reads: Bringing Down The Duke

I’ve been in love with Oxford ever since I visited it myself several summers ago so it didn’t surprise me in the least when I fell equally in love with the wild tale of it’s first (fictional) female students.

Living my best life on a trip to Oxford in 2017

This story has everything I look for in a historical novel, exacting precision of the accuracy regarding actual history, beautiful prose, well fleshed out characters whom you feel as though you actually know, and a bit of romance a la Bennet and Darcy. I picked it up once and couldn’t bring myself to put it down until I’d read every word.

The rich portrayal of the suffragette movement in the late 1800s from not one, but several, points of view provides the reader with a proper understanding of what those women were fighting for from dramatically varying vantage points and political avenues. The utterly captivating rendition of original feminists captured within the pages as individuals, all with their own goals, aspirations, ideals, and what each had to lose made the characters, and the story as a whole, devastatingly compelling.

While this book is heralded as a suffragette romance my favorite moments in the story were not those of great romance (though the romance was superb), but rather, those of charming realness. Particularly Hattie, wanting simply to make everything around her beautiful and her resolute stance that it would not detract from her work as a feminist. It was not lost on the reader that of all the suffragettes, she, arguably, had the most to actually lose; at least from a financial stand-point. And while it is powerful to read about people fighting with nothing left to lose, it is far more heroic, at least in my opinion, to read of someone who has everything to lose and yet continues to fight voluntarily.

But the too smart for her own good heroine, Annabelle, stole the show with her absolute refusal to back down on anything she believed in the entire way through the story. No matter what was thrown her way she was an indomitable force and a true delight to read. In fact, I have no doubt this is one book I’ll read time and time again.

xo,

Kate