Miss Marjoribanks

What happens when a young woman decides she's simply better than everyone else in her provincial town, and proceeds to prove it? Lucilla Marjoribanks returns from school to find her widowed father adrift and Carlingford society desperately in need of elevation. Undeterred, she launches a campaign of Thursday evening parties designed to transform the town's social fabric, confident that she knows exactly what everyone needs. Oliphant crafts a heroine who is by turns ridiculous and remarkable, a woman whose absolute conviction in her own superiority is both her greatest flaw and her most fascinating quality. The novel operates on multiple levels: it's a sharp social satire about the ambitions and pretensions of provincial England, a subtle examination of what women could and could not do in Victorian society, and an unexpectedly poignant study of a father and daughter who love each other without quite understanding each other. Lucilla is impossible to admire unconditionally and impossible to dismiss. She wants to be a comfort to her father and a force for good in the world, but her methods are thoroughly, magnificently selfish. This is Victorian fiction for readers who wish Jane Austen had written about what comes after the wedding.