Suzanne Leal

I'd forgotten the Women's Property Act was post-dated 1865 and that situations like

was really quite difficult for women.

And I think Rose Tremaine explores that quite cleverly in that she makes the women clever on the whole and also people who are working within a men's world, but in a way trying to work around it.

And there's almost a subterfuge going on where, yes, business as usual, men are in control,

But there's a subtext where the women are actually taking over just quietly.

And I think what's interesting about Rose Tremaine, too, is that just when you think that Jane is going to succumb and to be one of a conventional woman who was trapped in a conventional society, she doesn't.

And there's a twist.

And the book turns to the left, first of all, because Jane is attracted to Julieta.

who's the married wife of a publisher called Ashton.

And then later on in terms of, um,

other decisions she makes, whether she should marry, whether to have children and how to live her life.

So I do think that Rose Tremaine is perhaps doing this deliberately where she's letting us go down the path and thinking, yeah, well, look, we know how this is going to end and it's going to end badly for Jane and for the women.

And then she pulls us up and says, actually, maybe not.

Yeah, I think one of the – is it a problem with the subplot, the Borneo subplot, is that the characters in it are so unattractive.

But I suppose, you know, colonialism is pretty unattractive and maybe that's what she's talking about.

What's his name?

Sir Ralph Savage is the most ridiculous character he's –

He has no insight.

He has no particular intelligence, he seems.

He's so easily led.