![]() Frame knows that she must be deeply hurt by her husband's treachery, but where is her resentment? This duality of feelings, Frame thinks, must be the cause of her pain and creeping paralysis. To the outside world she is the constant wife, patiently suffering her husband's trial and conviction, and even though she knows the horror of his sexual misadventures, still intends to meet him in Paris when he is released. And he finds the perfect subject for his new treatment in Constance. His revolutionary theory, hidden anguish and visible pain, will make his name and fortune. In his passion to rescue stifled women from being butchered with hysterectomy for hysteria, or drugged with morphia when all else fails, he sees himself as a medical Sherlock Holmes. Martin Frame, a young doctor, enters both these worlds. Clare Elfman paints a vivid picture of this Victorian world: genteel rooms where gentlewomen buttoned to the throat and trapped in leg-o-mutton sleeves take tea amid the lady fern and aspidistra, while in hidden rooms a fin-de-siecle decadence culminates in the shocking trial of Oscar Wilde for gross indecency. ![]() This is a fascinating novel about the world of late Victorian England, the new medicine, sex and scandals, and a revealing portrait of the suffering woman who was in the shadows during the famous Oscar Wilde trial - his wife, Constance Wilde. ![]()
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