What is it, in summary?: A Victorian adventure novel about a woman called Jill who runs away from home to escape from her gold-digging stepmother. She ultimately finds employment as a lady's maid to the proud and emotionally repressed Kitty, an old crush of hers, and the narrative is pretty explicit (by Victorian standards) about how fascinating and attractive Jill finds Kitty, and how she'd lay her heart at Kitty's feet if Kitty showed the slightest sign of reciprocating her feelings. The novel as a whole is great fun, very fast-paced and a little bit silly. Jill's various escapades make for entertaining reading, but the real heart of the story, for me, lies in the Jill/Kitty relationship and its sense of unfulfilled pining and missed connection.
What do you love about it?: It contains many elements that I find extremely iddy: emotionally repressed characters, a mistress/maid relationship, identity issues, discussion of social class, intense queer longing, unfulfilled romance…
What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: Jill/Kitty fix-it fics xD
Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence): Very period-typical attitudes to working class and non-British people. Dillwyn, to her credit, does try to comment upon the difficulties faced by servants and to present different cultures in a positive light, but there's still very much a sense that white, upper class, Anglo-Saxon Protestants are inherently superior to everyone else.
Jill — E A Dillwyn
Jill
Media:
Novel
Approx length:
About 300 pages in paperback form
Where to find it:
Available on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/53489
What is it, in summary?:
A Victorian adventure novel about a woman called Jill who runs away from home to escape from her gold-digging stepmother. She ultimately finds employment as a lady's maid to the proud and emotionally repressed Kitty, an old crush of hers, and the narrative is pretty explicit (by Victorian standards) about how fascinating and attractive Jill finds Kitty, and how she'd lay her heart at Kitty's feet if Kitty showed the slightest sign of reciprocating her feelings.
The novel as a whole is great fun, very fast-paced and a little bit silly. Jill's various escapades make for entertaining reading, but the real heart of the story, for me, lies in the Jill/Kitty relationship and its sense of unfulfilled pining and missed connection.
What do you love about it?:
It contains many elements that I find extremely iddy: emotionally repressed characters, a mistress/maid relationship, identity issues, discussion of social class, intense queer longing, unfulfilled romance…
What sort of things are you likely to request for it?:
Jill/Kitty fix-it fics xD
Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence):
Very period-typical attitudes to working class and non-British people. Dillwyn, to her credit, does try to comment upon the difficulties faced by servants and to present different cultures in a positive light, but there's still very much a sense that white, upper class, Anglo-Saxon Protestants are inherently superior to everyone else.