SOURCE: Introduction to Hester: A Story of Contemporary Life by Mrs. Oliphant, Virago, 1984, pp. ix-xxi.

In the following introduction to Hester (1883), Uglow discusses the novel's themes of loneliness, employment, finances, and male-female relationships, and how these motifs reflect the realities of Oliphant's own life and the values of the Victorian era.

Hester is a witty, ironic, forceful tale of women who run their lives either by choice or by necessity without the support of men—fatherless girls, old maids, widows, domineering sisters. But being alone, as its author knew, is not the same as being independent, and all the women in the book are presented in different ways as being entangled in complicated nets which hamper their freedom of action; almost invisible chains woven of family duty, financial need and the unspoken codes which governed "correct behaviour" for their sex and class. The main narrative traces the struggles...