Umm so this book has so little reviews, and it's astonishing as it's amazing, up there with Stead's best. It's more sparse, relatively minimalist than her other sprawling works like House of All Nations and The Beauties and Furies, but it still has her wit and mastery voice. Eleanor is a beautiful and free woman, every schmuck wants to bed her, whisper sweet nothings and marry her, but she sees through their facades. She eventually settles down with Harry, has two children, but he ends up being an emasculated, gaslighting turd burger. Stead weaves a story about how every law and cultural norm works against women, and if a woman has a mind of her own, wants to earn her own guinea, then she is nothing more than a promiscuous Bohemian.

It saddens me so much how little Stead was, and possibly still (presumed from the lack of Goodreads reviews) under-read.

"You want everyone to love you and lick your face like a dog. Life is not a dog and people are not kind; people are savages and brutes. We must set our teeth and put our shoulders to the wheel." pg. 191

"Do you believe that an idol which has seen many sacrifices is impregnated with the smoke of the burning blood and just as much with the mystic adoration, the mental fumes, steeped in thousands of past lives in dead history? Do you believe you can tell by 'feeling' that a rope has taken a man's life? I believe that blood has a voice; the worm has a voice that we can hear if we try, so Blake suggests; and the blood of torment has a voice. Otherwise sacrifice is aimless, the realists win and the rest of us may as well cut our throats." pg. 235 ( )