Bill of Divorcement

On the day Sydney Fairfield is to marry, her father escapes from the mental hospital where he's spent nearly twenty years. Clemence Dane constructs a single devastating day in which two engagements unravel simultaneously, both mother Margaret and daughter Sydney are to be married, and the arrival of Hilary Fairfield, legally insane but desperately human, forces every member of this English household to confront what they've been pretending doesn't exist. The dialogue crackles with interwar wit, but beneath the sophisticated surface lies genuine terror: What does it mean when the person society declares «mad» might simply be different? What do women owe husbands who frighten them? What is the difference between escaping an institution and escaping a marriage? Written in 1932, this novel captured something essential about its moment, women breaking free from arrangements that had imprisoned their grandmothers, yet discovering that freedom brought its own vertigo. It endures because its questions haven't stopped being asked.