Portrait of a Scotsman (A League of Extraordinary Women)
London, 1880. When banking heiress Hattie Greenfield is caught kissing financier Lucian Blackstone at an art exhibition, upper-class conventions of the Victorian era dictate they marry to avoid disgrace. Under family pressure Hattie acquiesces, despite her strongly held suffragist beliefs. Lucian, however, turns out to be more than the hard-headed businessman she expected, their relationship gradually improves, and prospects for marital happiness begin to look hopeful. Until she finds out that his role in ‘the kiss’ was less innocent than she assumed. Can the marriage be saved?
There is a lot going on in this novel. Since Hattie is an art student at Oxford, we gain insight into the constraints upon women’s education as well as into the suffragist movement; when she takes up a camera, we find out about early developments in photography; when she accompanies her husband to visit a neglected mine in Scotland, we learn how workers, including women and children, were ruthlessly exploited by wealthy mine owners, and safety conditions ignored in favor of profit; ignorance, sometimes wilful, and aristocratic privilege insulate the upper classes from the wretchedness of laborers, who struggle in harsh conditions to earn enough to feed their starving families.
The tension between realistic details and the conventions of romance are not quite resolved, and the wealth of this information at times threatens to overshadow the romantic plot, which is a variant on Beauty and the Beast. Consequently, the resolution feels optimistic, tinted with an idealism at odds with the cold practicalities of the business world. An absorbing tale, nonetheless. Strongly recommended.
