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jmrprice's review against another edition
3.0
Discovered Ms Summerscale through her writings on Mr Whicher. Found this to be a fascinating look into the Victorian Era: how women fared in the legal system and dealt with repressed sexuality. Should time travel ever occur, Victorian England would not be particularly high on my list.
alienqueen's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
5.0
So good I would listen to it again! Because it references a diary you get an interesting first person perspective which I always enjoy in historical nonfiction makes the listening experience feel less like textbook
labunnywtf's review against another edition
4.0
Absolutely fascinating. This makes me want to read more about the Victorian era.
That's all I've got, my brain's too wibbly for reviews.
That's all I've got, my brain's too wibbly for reviews.
mikewa14's review against another edition
3.0
A fascinating story, but the style of writing is rather academic and dry - full review here
http://0651frombrighton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/mrs-robinsons-disgrace-private-diary-of.html?q=ness
http://0651frombrighton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/mrs-robinsons-disgrace-private-diary-of.html?q=ness
cathyatratedreads's review against another edition
3.0
I found this to be pretty interesting, but nothing that just kept me riveted. Summerscale, I think, does what she can with the material, but it's generally not that exciting. We essentially get the story of what unhappily married Isabella Robinson wrote in her diary, about her private longings and probable affair of some sort with a married doctor she socialized with frequently. And Summerscale fills in background for us so we have a context for the diary and the main characters. But the diary honestly isn't too exciting, and even the trial isn't terribly compelling either. I felt bad for Isabella but did think it was pretty stupid of her to write down everything, given the culture of the time.
I wasn't dying to know how it ended, either (even though I was a little surprised by the outcome of the divorce trial). Rather, the book gave me a slightly better insight into the life of a well-to-do Victorian married woman, though most of it wasn't really news to me. It was more interesting to witness the early days of divorce in Great Britain's courts and how that has fit in to the evolution of marriage and divorce in society even up until now. I think that was actually the strength of the book, but it was just a small portion of the story.
Read my full review, including a rating for content, at RatedReads.com: https://ratedreads.com/mrs-robinsons-disgrace-clean-nonfiction-book-review/
I wasn't dying to know how it ended, either (even though I was a little surprised by the outcome of the divorce trial). Rather, the book gave me a slightly better insight into the life of a well-to-do Victorian married woman, though most of it wasn't really news to me. It was more interesting to witness the early days of divorce in Great Britain's courts and how that has fit in to the evolution of marriage and divorce in society even up until now. I think that was actually the strength of the book, but it was just a small portion of the story.
Read my full review, including a rating for content, at RatedReads.com: https://ratedreads.com/mrs-robinsons-disgrace-clean-nonfiction-book-review/
lizella's review against another edition
3.0
Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace is woven around the public airing of Isabella Robinson’s diary during the highly publicized divorce proceedings brought against her by her husband. The case took place in a perfect storm of civil, social and philosophical shifts that would have far-reaching implications for society at large. Kate Summerscale uses the source material of the diaries and many personal and official documents from people surrounding the case to explore the implications on society and women’s rights.
I found the exploration of the interior life vs. the life of actions to be the most intriguing. Can someone be condemned for something they may or may not have thought and can you prove that someone has done something based on oblique statements in a personal document that may nor may not mirror factual reality?
Summerscale includes some tantalizing tidbits on the broader status of women’s rights, or lack their of, and the unreasonable double standards that allowed men of the time free reign as long as they feigned some level of propriety. While this book is not a broad-strokes history, it explores this topic through the intimate portrait of Isabella Robinson’s experience.
I found the exploration of the interior life vs. the life of actions to be the most intriguing. Can someone be condemned for something they may or may not have thought and can you prove that someone has done something based on oblique statements in a personal document that may nor may not mirror factual reality?
Summerscale includes some tantalizing tidbits on the broader status of women’s rights, or lack their of, and the unreasonable double standards that allowed men of the time free reign as long as they feigned some level of propriety. While this book is not a broad-strokes history, it explores this topic through the intimate portrait of Isabella Robinson’s experience.
tessisreading2's review against another edition
3.0
Interestingly I was reading this one simultaneously with Lady in Red, the chronicle of another scandalous British divorce case - albeit a century earlier than this one. Where Lady in Red profiled its characters, Mrs. Robinson really focuses on the divorce case itself. Sketches are drawn of the principle characters, but a great deal of space is devoted to homeopathy, insanity, marriage, divorce, and diary-writing among the Victorians. It's the story of a case rather than the story of the people the case concerned.
It is, of course, a highly interesting case, but it's stressful in the way that reading about the Victorians sometimes can be stressful: Isabella Robinson was caught between a rock and a hard place, as were many Victorian women - married to a man she loathed but utterly dependent on him. One wades out of the weeds of this book thinking uneasily that it was absolutely impossible for women to win. Summerscale briefly discusses a case in which the woman won her separation petition but, before a different judge, lost custody of her children to her estranged (and unbalanced) spouse. In this particular case, Robinson had to claim that she was temporarily insane and deny having had an affair in order to escape a financially punitive divorce. It's, well, crazy.
That said, it was a little too broad for my taste - I'd have liked to have more outside perceptions of the Robinsons and the case if that were possible, and the digressions into e.g. Victorian perceptions of diaries just seemed to go on for too long. At the very end we learned that Henry Robinson's sister and her family actually preferred Isabella to Henry even post-divorce; that was interesting. And Henry Robinson's own illegitimate children were brought up briefly, but because they were not raised in the court proceedings (infuriating though that is) the author doesn't devote any time to them. The focus on the case meant that the people themselves don't always come into focus, although I'm guessing that part of the issue may simply be that their survivors (or they themselves) burned a lot of the correspondence and papers which might have provided more insight. Overall, a very interesting read, but very much of the genre of book which uses a particular case or situation to bring a more general time period and milieu to life.
It is, of course, a highly interesting case, but it's stressful in the way that reading about the Victorians sometimes can be stressful: Isabella Robinson was caught between a rock and a hard place, as were many Victorian women - married to a man she loathed but utterly dependent on him. One wades out of the weeds of this book thinking uneasily that it was absolutely impossible for women to win. Summerscale briefly discusses a case in which the woman won her separation petition but, before a different judge, lost custody of her children to her estranged (and unbalanced) spouse. In this particular case, Robinson had to claim that she was temporarily insane and deny having had an affair in order to escape a financially punitive divorce. It's, well, crazy.
That said, it was a little too broad for my taste - I'd have liked to have more outside perceptions of the Robinsons and the case if that were possible, and the digressions into e.g. Victorian perceptions of diaries just seemed to go on for too long. At the very end we learned that Henry Robinson's sister and her family actually preferred Isabella to Henry even post-divorce; that was interesting. And Henry Robinson's own illegitimate children were brought up briefly, but because they were not raised in the court proceedings (infuriating though that is) the author doesn't devote any time to them. The focus on the case meant that the people themselves don't always come into focus, although I'm guessing that part of the issue may simply be that their survivors (or they themselves) burned a lot of the correspondence and papers which might have provided more insight. Overall, a very interesting read, but very much of the genre of book which uses a particular case or situation to bring a more general time period and milieu to life.