Vera (Summarized Edition)

Vera (1921) is a chilling anatomy of coercive marriage. Young Lucy Entwistle, newly bereaved, is swept into the orbit of widower Everard Wemyss and taken to The Willows, still haunted by his first wife's fatal fall. Von Arnim turns social comedy into mordant irony, using close psychological realism to show how paternal kindness becomes domination. Cool, lucid prose and claustrophobic interiors mak...