Set during the Industrial Revolution in Victorian England, the story centers around two young women from vastly different social backgrounds: one living in abject poverty while facing a daily struggle to survive, and the other who feels trapped in a life of luxury, privilege, and societal expectations.
As the first in a series, "The Corset Factory: Threads of Destiny" presents a vivid tapestry of mid-nineteenth-century London, exploring themes of social class, gender roles, and the quest for independence within the confines of a rigidly structured society.
Set during the Industrial Revolution in Victorian England, the story centers around two young women from vastly different social backgrounds: one living in abject poverty while facing a daily struggle to survive, and the other who feels trapped in a life of luxury, privilege, and societal expectations.
As the first in a series, "The Corset Factory: Threads of Destiny" presents a vivid tapestry of mid-nineteenth-century London, exploring themes of social class, gender roles, and the quest for independence within the confines of a rigidly structured society.
I pull my shawl tighter around my shoulders. In the black morning gloom, I can make out something that should not be there in this silent grimy street. A large hump, unmoving. Seeing no carriages or folk approaching in either direction, I approach the thing with caution, until I realize it’s a human form. The stench of sour ale and piss hits me in the face like a wet slap. God save us; it’s Sarah’s father. Passed out dead drunk in the street and bleeding from his head, by the looks of it.
I need to get to work, the worry of being late makes my stomach burn. I always seem to be in Mrs. Jellicoe’s bad graces, but I can’t leave him here in such a state. He’ll get kicked or trampled by the first horse that comes along.
“Mr. Matthews!” I shout, bending down to rouse him.
No response but for a snore. At least the man’s not gone to meet his maker, I think, as I hasten back to fetch Sarah’s mum. It takes an age for anyone to answer the door as I stand there, rap-rapping and hopping from one foot to the other. Finally, Sarah appears, eyeing me with obvious annoyance.
“Lottie! What on earth are you doing waking us up at this unholy hour?”
“It’s your dad. He’s lying in the middle of the road. Your mum had best come and get him to move before he gets run over.”
Sarah rolls her eyes.
“Here we go again! I hope he does get run over, the useless lump of lard that he is.”
I’m starting to get agitated, the clock ever ticking. “Can you tell her to hurry? I’ll go and keep watch over him till she gets there.”
When she finally shows up in the street, a good five minutes later, Sarah’s mum has a jug of water that she splashes over her husband’s head as she curses him under her breath. Now I can depart. Hitching up my skirts, I run toward Belvedere House hoping to slip in unnoticed. The streets are sparsely populated—mostly sweepers with brooms, a few besotted souls trying to find their way home, and the homeless, huddled in shop doorways. It’s late November; the air is chill and damp—how these poor souls endure, I can scarcely imagine.
Slipping in through the servants’ entrance, I’m sweating from the exertion and damp from the light drizzle that’s begun to fall. Smoothing down my hair as best I can, I approach the scullery to get what’s needed to light the fires, then stop dead at the sound of the housekeeper’s voice. Oh, no! Someone in there is being severely scolded. Whoever it is, my sympathies are already with them. Mrs. Jellicoe might be tiny, but she has a formidable temper and an icy cold stare that puts the fear of God into me every time she looks my way.
I tiptoe into the room, hoping to grab my bucket of supplies and be gone, but am distracted by the sight of Polly, the laundry maid. Wringing her hands in misery, her chin trembles, and tears slide down her face.
“Just look at these sheets! They don’t even look like they’ve been washed! I don’t understand why we’re paying you if this is the kind of unsatisfactory job you do. Unacceptable, that’s what I call it. You’re lucky the mistress hasn’t seen them.”
A strained silence ensues. I stand stock-still, praying not to be spotted.
“Well? Speak up, girl!”
Polly utters a stifled sob. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jellicoe. I scrubbed them as hard as I could to get them clean, but when I hung them outside … there’s all that grimy soot in the air…”
“Yes, I’m well aware of the soot, but that’s a poor excuse. You should have dried them inside. Stupidity, that’s what I call it. They’ll have to be done again, of course. Today. Or else you won’t be keeping your job.”
Polly bites her lip and wipes the tears from her eyes as Mrs. Jellicoe shifts her focus to me.
“And what are you doing here, Lottie, standing around gawping? Late again, I see! Your wages will be deducted accordingly.”
Trying not to flinch, I bob a little curtsy and breathe a sigh of relief as she turns on her heels and leaves the scullery. I hate being singled out; always do my best to fade into the background. But I also hate seeing people being treated unfairly. Polly doesn’t deserve to be treated like that after all the hours of backbreaking hard work she’s put in.
“I don’t know how I’m going to get these washed again today,” she says. “Not with all the ironing that awaits me.”
My heart sinks for her. Seeing the misery on her face, I have to step in. I can’t possibly leave her to cope with all this, and with the threat of losing her job, too.
“I’ll help you,” I say. “It’s my half-day off, but I could stay and give you a hand.”
Polly looks at me in surprise, her eyes wide with gratitude.
“Oh, Lottie, would you really? Give up your half day? For me?”
“Of course,” I say. “It’s not as if I have anything important to do at home.”
Which isn’t exactly true. I need to finish my sister’s wedding dress, but that will have to wait.
I get to my usual duties as quickly as I can, lighting fires in the downstairs fireplaces, emptying the chamber pots from the bedrooms, hauling buckets of water up the back stairs for the family’s ablutions, sweeping the hallways, scrubbing the floors, dusting, and polishing. As I’m sweeping my way down the main staircase, Miss Elizabeth, the young mistress of the house, passes me, no doubt on her way to breakfast. I step aside and bob a curtsy out of respect with my head down. She passes by without a word, and as I watch her descend, she halts unexpectedly to cast a backward glance at me—a look I can only describe as hateful.
The back of my neck stiffens.
Why would she have reason to dislike me? I don’t think she even knows my name, and I’m sure I’ve done nothing to offend her.
I work non-stop for the rest of the morning, only stopping for a brief pause when I reach the library. For a few precious moments, I gaze in admiration at the spines of the twenty-one volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica before tearing myself away to dust the shelves. If Polly hadn’t needed my help so badly, I might have stolen a moment to peek inside one of those volumes.
The library at Belvedere House is my favorite sanctuary. So hushed and inviting, with comfortable armchairs and bookshelves filled with tomes of all colors and sizes. The room has the sweet scent of wax furniture polish, of leather, dust and ink, and there’s always a cheerful fire burning in the grate. How I would love to spend a few hours there—without a duster or a mop, of course. I don’t tell people I like to read in case they think I’m being uppity. Mum taught me when I was little. We even have a shelf of books of our own at home, although I’ve read all the ones that interest me. It always seems such a shame that this library is full of books that the family never seems to look at. They have other, more glamorous things to do, I suppose. Like going to the theater, or balls, or luncheons.
At the stroke of one, when I should be going home, I hasten downstairs to the scullery, almost colliding with one of the footmen as I go.
“Oh, Lottie!” he says. “Just the person I need. The master rang for me. Take this tray of glasses, would you? They have to go to the pantry.”
“Of course,” I say. I take the tray from him and balance it carefully in my hands as I make my way to the pantry. I’m almost there when—oomph! —the breath is knocked out of me as I’m winded by a sudden impact to my stomach.
I don’t even have time to cry out. The tray sails through the air, and the sound of shattering glass echoes throughout the hallway as I plummet backward onto my posterior. A sharp pain zings through my wrists. Suddenly, I’m looking into a pair of soft brown eyes as a wet tongue licks my nose.
“Pippy, you bad dog!” I hear a voice from above me. I look up to see the pale, narrow face of the master’s son, William, laughing down at me. Nineteen years old and the only son of the house, William is already earning himself a reputation as a troublemaker; drinking, gambling, and debauchery, or so it was said.
“Here,” he says, offering me his hand to pull me up. “She’s just being friendly!”
Swallowing hard, I regain my feet with some difficulty and brush the shards of glass from my dress.
“Sorry about the mess, but I’m sure you’ll have it cleaned up in no time. I mean, that’s what you do, isn’t it?” He laughs at his own joke, then looks at me and frowns. “You won’t tell anyone about this, will you? I’m in enough hot water as it is!”
Then he’s gone, striding off down the hall with the dog bouncing at his heels, leaving me feeling indignant and exasperated, just, of course, as Mrs. Jellicoe appears on the scene. Tutting at the sight of the broken glasses on the floor, her disapproving gaze moves from the mess and lands on me, while my cheeks flush with embarrassment. She doesn’t ask for an explanation, which is fortunate, under the circumstances. Although why I should cover up for William, I’m not really sure.
Careless, she calls me. Foolish. Scatterbrained. Clumsy. I will have to pay for the glasses out of my wages, she informs me, at which point she pauses—probably thinking the same thing that I am—that my wages won’t even come close to the cost of those fine crystal glasses.
At length, she departs, allowing me to clear my mess and proceed, sore-wristed and despondent, to locate Polly. Using the water in the copper pot that Polly has brought to a boil, we scrub the dozen or more sheets twice over with lye soap on the washboard, wring them out by hand, rinse them, wring them again, give them a final rinse, then force them through the mangle—a massively heavy machine whose handles are excruciatingly difficult to turn.
The work is backbreaking, and after several hours of hauling the wet sheets around, I can feel my arms trembling from fatigue. The soap has dried my hands so they feel cracked and leathery, and my wrists are throbbing with pain. Sweat runs down my face as I finish wringing out the last of the sheets, preparing myself for the last part of the job, hanging them out to dry.
We peek outside the back door to make sure it isn’t raining. A dank cloud of acrid yellow fog greets us. We can’t even see across the street, it’s that thick.
“A proper pea-souper,” says Polly. “We’d better hang them inside.”
It’s six o’clock and dark by the time I leave the house and make my weary way through the streets for home. The city is cloaked in a thick yellow-green mist, the dense air making it difficult to see beyond a few feet. I have to pay attention to where I’m going—the gas lamps are doing nothing to light my way through the gloom. Eerie is what it is … people pass me by like shadows as if they’re ghosts, and then disappear as if by magic. Even the sounds are muffled, with only the occasional shouts and clip-clops of hooves drifting through the thick air.
The smell’s the worst. It’s as if you can taste it—a sharp, pungent aroma that burns—a pungent blend of coal, dung, and decay. As it becomes stronger, I know I’m approaching Cripplegate, and once I pass the unmistakable reek of the opium den, I know I’m only a street away.
As I open the front door, I’m greeted by the sight of my older sister Violet, tying on her bonnet as if ready to leave.
“Lottie! Where on earth have you been?” she demands. “I thought this was your half day off.”
“It is, but I had to work,” I say, bracing myself for her usual onslaught.
“I needed you to fix my wedding dress, you silly girl. Don’t you remember me telling you?”
I nod my head, wondering idly where her paisley shawl has come from. It looks brand new.
“Well, you’ll have to do it tomorrow!” She brushes past me and opens the door. “You know, Lottie, they really take advantage of you at that house. You should stand up for yourself. Learn how to say no.”
She tucks a loose tendril of hair into her bonnet and rearranges her shawl so as to better show off her figure.
“You’re supposed to be the clever one. You can read and write and look at your sewing! Get it into your head—you need to leave that paltry job and find something better paid. I don’t know why you’re wasting your time in that place.”
As she opens the door to leave, Violet turns to look back at me with contempt.
“You’ll probably wish you hadn’t bothered to come home, by the way—there’s no more coal for the fire.”
It’s no wonder my brother always calls her Vile Violet, I think, looking over at our mother sitting with her sewing on her lap next to a sputtering candle and a cold grate, empty but for a pile of ashes.
With that, my sister sweeps out of the door, slamming it shut behind her.
This novel switches back between Lottie, a working woman, and Elizabeth, a wealthy aristocratic woman. The two couldn't be more different, in social status or in personality. Lottie works hard and cares for her fellow human beings; Elizabeth has everything handed to her in life and is so selfish and narcissistic that she schemes to make the lives of others miserable. As a result, Elizabeth herself is miserable. Lottie tries to improve the lives of others and herself, while Elizabeth, though trying to provide that she, as a woman, has the intellect of a man and could manage her father's factories, only cares about improving her own life.
This author describes the misery in which so many people lived due to the poverty of the times. She explains how people cannot work hard enough or fast enough to earn a place to live or put food on the table, how workers are exploited by factory owners and other supervisors, and how it's almost impossible to rise above those horrible conditions. The way she explains the circumstances of homelessness and hunger of these people is heartbreaking--as in the style of Dickens's "A Christmas Carol." Her ability to weave prose to bring the miserable conditions alive is exceptional.
Conversely, she is also adept at demonstrating how the other half--the wealthy--live. The descriptions of gowns, ornate homes, private servants (and they way they're treated by their masters and mistresses) show the juxtaposition of the accident of birth of these people. Some, such as Elizabeth, look down their noses at the poor. She is a scheming, conniving, evil person for whom the end justifies the means.
I couldn't put this book down. I love historical fiction, and I believe this author did her research and put it into practice within this novel. This is book one of a series, and I am anxious to read the next one. I recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, or who wants to learn more about this period in history. Or, anyone who might believe that no matter what, if a person works hard, it's possible to "pull oneself up by his/her bootstraps." Sometimes, the person who was born on third base and believes he/she hit a triple stands in the way of the person who works hard. If you don't believe it, just meet Lottie and Elizabeth in this novel.