Faithful Margaret: A Novel

About the book

Margaret Walsingham has cared faithfully for Ethel Brand, but the elderly woman's gratitude takes a form Margaret dreads. Convinced that her companion can reform her dissipated grandson St. Udo, Mrs. Brand makes marriage part of the arrangement governing her estate. Margaret urgently hopes the grandson and a lawyer will arrive before the dying woman can no longer alter her plans. The opening establishes a conflict between genuine affection and the power of a benefactor to impose an unwanted destiny. Written under the name Annie Ashmore, the novel tests its heroine's endurance through pressures of money, social position, and moral expectation. Her loyalty is treated as a virtue, yet it also makes resistance to another person's supposedly benevolent wishes painfully difficult.

• Coercive benevolence
• Loyalty and autonomy
• Inheritance and marriage

Why read it

The deathbed scene makes the proposed reward itself the source of suspense, because Margaret understands the harm its giver cannot see.

English J. Ross Robertson edition of 1880, titled under Annie Ashmore