Victorian women who killed have fascinated writers for over a century. What made the ‘angel in the house’ — a popular idea in the late 1850s — behave like a devil? Especially if they seemed, well, ordinary. Lesley McDowell, author of Love and Other Poisons, wonders what an ‘ordinary’ murderess was. “[She was] an ordinary, […]
Female sexuality in historical fiction
Lesley McDowell wanted to show all the consequences of women’s sexuality in her novel, Clairmont — the tragic and the happy. There was plenty of both in the Shelley-Godwin-Byron circle that shaped her protagonist Claire Clairmont’s life. And female sexual desire needs to be reflected in historical fiction, Lesley says. In a letter to her […]