The Ladies Lindores, Volume 3 (of #3)

This final volume of Margaret Oliphant's The Ladies Lindores concludes this fictional expose of the problematics surrounding the question of marriage for the upper-class Victorian woman. Serialised in 1882 and then published in full form in 1883 by the House of Blackwood, The Ladies Lindores is a frank appraisal of the politics and pressures laid on the Lindores women who are expected to conform to the Victorian ideology of female acquiescence but who stand on the cusp of emancipation.

Having endured five years of an arranged and oppressive marriage, Caroline ('Carry') Lindores ecstatically embraces her sudden freedom but finds that her path to obtaining deep and lasting happiness is still riddled with difficulties. Her sister, Edith, faced with parental pressure to marry a rich and titled suitor whom she does not love, similarly finds her principles put to the test. Their mother, Mary, further estranged from her ambitious husband and increasingly perplexed by her children, questions the very nature of marriage itself.

Written in the later years of her literary career, Oliphant's The Ladies Lindores is a realistic comment on the struggles of the authentic and loyal heart against the calculating coldness of personal promotion and avarice."