Thelma

About the book

Sir Philip Bruce Errington encounters Thelma in Norway, where her beauty and straightforward manner seem inseparable from the remote landscape. Their attachment carries her into an English social world ready to judge a farmer's daughter before meeting her. Drawing-room gossip, rival ambitions, and the management of appearances threaten qualities Philip first admired. Corelli builds the contrast broadly: the northern setting promises sincerity and spiritual intensity, while fashionable society rewards calculation and insinuation. Thelma must navigate people whose politeness does not reliably express their intentions. The novel combines romantic idealization with attacks on social cruelty, following the strain created when private affection becomes a subject of public competition. Its changing settings make marriage the beginning of a new ordeal rather than the automatic end of the story.

• Love and social prejudice
• Innocence and manipulation
• Nature and fashionable society

Why read it

The move from the fjords to English drawing rooms changes the romance's atmosphere and the kinds of danger its heroine faces.

English text