The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton

About the book

Aliette Brunton belongs to an English world that values restraint, duty, and the appearance of playing by accepted rules. Her marriage to the successful barrister Hector Brunton has not given her the companionship those rules were supposed to protect. Her relationship with Ronald Cavendish brings the conflict between emotional truth and established obligation into the open. Frankau introduces the families around them at length, showing how their traditions, reputations, and wartime experiences shape the judgments they make. The romance extends beyond two lovers because their choices require responses and sacrifices from others. Its governing question is whether loyalty to a social code remains honorable when that code prevents people from acknowledging the actual conditions of their lives and the responsibilities created by love.

• Conscience and convention
• Marriage and emotional truth
• The costs of loyalty

Why read it

The intertwined family portraits make the lovers' difficulty a test of an entire social circle's values.

English F. D. Goodchild Toronto edition of 1922, with Century Company copyright