My father was a politician who spent a lot of time driving the back roads of the province to talk to voters. As a child, I often accompanied him on those trips and came to learn a great deal about the people and the land that I love.
People joke that Victoria, British Columbia, is more English than England, and the British heritage of the province is very strong. Back in 1862, there really was a society devoted to proper tea drinking as described in the novel. When I was growing up, many of my friends’ parents were British immigrants who kept the culture and traditions of their homeland strong in their adopted home.
I have always been a great fan of the historical fiction writer Georgette Heyer, whose novels are set in Regency-period England. She had a tremendous ability to bring to life the social discourse of the time, and I drew upon her writing for inspiration.
You did an extensive amount of research. While Charlotte is fictional, many of the characters and incidents in the novel are real, including Charles Dickens. What scenes in the novel might readers be most surprised to know are lifted right from history’s pages?
Much of the scene in the London Tavern, where the plan to launch the brideships was discussed, is based on fact. The Lord Mayor of London spoke to the issue, as did the bishop of Honolulu, and my dialogue closely represents what they said. A letter from the Reverend Lundin Brown from Lillooet was read out, prompting someone to ask what should be done with the upper-class old maids, eliciting the response I wrote in the novel. The emigration scheme was indeed the brainchild of Charles Dickens and his friend the heiress Angela Burdett-Coutts.
The voyage of the Tynemouth was a hellish journey, especially for the sixty emigrant women, and the ship almost went down in a massive storm. One woman died from a suspected case of food poisoning, prompting Captain Hellyer to dump the fresh food he brought on board at the Falkland Islands. Both notices for the Tynemouth’s departure and arrival are word for word taken from the historical announcements.
I moved the Barkerville fire from 1868 to 1863 to serve my story. It levelled most of the town in just two and a half hours, but many of the buildings were rebuilt in six short weeks. Florence Wilson, one of the original brideship women, purchased the Theatre Royal and, with her Cariboo Amateur Dramatic Association, staged many celebrated performances as described in my novel.
Charlotte is a great reader, and she references many works of fiction that were new and popular in her time and are classics to us modern readers today, including Little Dorrit and Pride and Prejudice. Did these books influence your writing? What other books or films inspired you?
The common thread in much of Dickens’s work centres on challenging the social ills of the day, and his writing influenced the themes I developed in my book. In Little Dorrit he satirizes the lack of a social safety net for impoverished people and the class system, two topics the characters in my book discuss. Dickens’s desire to address real-life problems led him to develop and support the brideship program.
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, set in the Regency era, is a brilliant treatise on marriage as the most important decision in any young woman’s life, one that would determine her entire future. As in my novel, the protagonist feels pressure to marry for wealth all the while wishing to marry for love.
Whenever I travel, I purchase nonfiction books produced by local writers that feature people or events of that place. While in Bermuda, I picked up The History of Mary Prince, an autobiography of a local woman who was enslaved and suffered horrendously. But when Mary’s master travelled to England with her, she escaped. There, Mary learned to read and wrote her autobiography, which was the first story of a black woman’s life to be published in England. She inspired my character Henry Roy.
I got the idea for Harriet’s laudanum addiction from the Aubrey–Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian, in which the ship’s physician, Stephen Maturin, becomes addicted through self-medication.
Questions for Book Clubs
When the novel opens, Charlotte is pressured to marry George. While she doesn’t love him, she resigns herself to her fate. What does this say about the options available to women at this time?
Charlotte often bemoans her corset in the novel. What does the corset literally and figuratively represent?
When George attacks Charlotte, he threatens her into silence, saying, “Whose version do you think people will believe?” Later on, Harriet tells Charlotte that it doesn’t matter what actually happened between her and George. What’s really being left unsaid here about truth and reputation? Do some of these views still persist today?
Charlotte is rather naive at the beginning of the book. Beyond George’s assault, what events show her that not everything is always as it appears?
Charlotte and Harriet have different ideas of what marriage should be. How is Harriet a product of her environment and her upbringing? How does she exert power within her constraints?
Harriet is said to have made a brilliant match with Charles, but her marriage crumbles when she can’t produce an heir. Contrast her experience with the one encountered by Sarah, who is ostracized for being a pregnant widow. How does this reflect the expectations and standards for women at this time?
How is Charlotte’s character arc a coming-of-age story? How is Harriet’s a cautionary tale?
Brideships like the Tynemouth promised women the chance to have a better life in the colonies than they had in England. In what ways was this true? In what ways were women still disenfranchised?
Compare and contrast Charlotte’s prospects with those of the other emigrant women. How do class, money, and social status limit each woman’s opportunities? What different freedoms do they enjoy?
Consider the different marriages we see in the novel: Charlotte’s
