Wing of Azrael, Volume 2

In Volume 2 of Mona Caird's devastating feminist novel, Viola Sedley stands on the precipice of destruction. She is days from marrying Philip Dendraith, a man whose cruelty has already revealed itself in violence toward animals. When Viola begs her mother for help, she receives only the chilling response that a wife can "mould" her husband. The wedding occurs. The cage closes. Harry Lancaster, who has fought desperately to save her, finds himself powerless against the machinery of respectable society. Then Sibella Lincoln arrives in the village, a woman ruined by rumor for allegedly leaving her husband. Together, these two outcasts work to reach Viola, now trapped in a marriage that promises only darkness. Caird writes with fierce precision about a world that sells women into captivity and calls it propriety. This is Victorian feminism at its most unflinching: a novel that understands marriage can be a prison, and that seeing clearly is the cruelest burden a woman can carry.