The Doctor's Wife

Inspired by Madame Bovary this has a very different tone. I really enjoyed it. Isabel is a very foolish immature girl. There are a lot of references to the popular romances of the day. I loved Smith the penny novel writer and his explanation of how he writes.

This was the group read for 2024's Victober. A good introduction to Mary Elizabeth Braddon, although I think I would like her sensation novels better. She has a great sense of humor, and I did enjoy her alternative take on the same themes as Madame Bovary. None of her characters was particularly likeable, but I think they all illustrate the theme of seeing others the way we want to see them, and not as they are. A good point, but this book did get repetitive, hammering the same points over and over again. The ending was convenient and far-fetched, but more satisfying than Madame Bovary, and certainly showing Braddon's sensationalist roots. I really want to read "Lady Audley's Secret" now!

George, "the Doctor", visits his friend Sigismund at his lodgings and falls in love with the landlord's daughter, Isabel. Isabel is addicted to novels and seeks to live as a fictional heroine, but nevertheless agrees to marry the prosaic George. Then she meets a rich neighbour, the idle Roland, and begins a very romantic dalliance with him.

Initially I quite enjoyed this story, and all the scenes featuring Sigsmund and his endless plotting of his trashy instalment novels were entertaining. I also perked up every time the wise and straight-talking Mr Raymond appeared. However, the plot moved very slowly and repetitiously, and then at the end went a little berserk, admittedly with a couple of twists I hadn't anticipated. There was a fair show more amount of sentimentality and death bed repentance etc - I was skimming to an extreme extent for the last 10%. The very frequent references to the novels Isabel had read and to the characters in them and the ways said characters suffered or loved etc became extremely tiring and was a much overdone device.

Apart from the slow pace and the Victorian mawkishness, my main problem was that Isabel was so completely stupid, helpless, passive and naive, and that I did not believe for a moment that Roland would have felt anything more than a passing attraction to her. She would have driven him mad after 5 minutes. Also, why did Isabel and George not have a baby, or at least express concern that they had not? show less

Isabel Sleaford lives in a dream world filled with characters from novels by Dickens, Scott and Thackeray. She longs to break away from her boring existence as a children's governess and live the exciting life of one of the heroines in her favourite books. When parish doctor George Gilbert proposes to her, she accepts but quickly finds that her marriage isn't providing the drama and adventure she's been dreaming of. George is a good man, but he's practical, down to earth – and boring, at least in Isabel's opinion. After meeting Roland Lansdell, the squire of Mordred Priory, she becomes even more discontented. Roland is romantic, poetic and imaginative – in other words, he's everything that George isn't...

This is the second Mary show more Elizabeth Braddon book I've read – the first was the book that she's best known for today, the sensation novel Lady Audley's Secret. Apparently The Doctor's Wife was Braddon's attempt at writing a more serious, literary novel, with a plot inspired by Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. The Doctor's Wife is not very 'sensational' – apart from maybe the final few chapters – and although it's interesting and compelling in a different way, if you're expecting something similar to Lady Audley you might be slightly disappointed. At one point in the book, Braddon even tells us "this is not a sensation novel!"

The focus of The Doctor's Wife is the development of Isabel Gilbert from a sentimental girl with her head permanently in the clouds into a sensible and mature woman. I didn't like Isabel much at all, though I'm not really sure if I was supposed to. Throughout most of the book she was just so silly and immature – wishing that she would catch a terrible illness or some other tragedy would befall her, just so she could have some excitement in her life – although as several of the other characters pointed out, she wasn't a bad person, just childish and foolish. It was sad that her own romantic notions and ideals were preventing her from having any chance of happiness.

I thought some of the minor characters were much more interesting and I would have liked them to have played a bigger part in the story. I particularly loved Sigismund Smith, who was a friend of both George and Isabel, and a 'sensation author' – probably a parody of Mary Elizabeth Braddon herself. Sigismund (whose real name is Sam) is a writer of 'penny numbers' – cheap, serialised adventure stories. His enthusiasm for his work and his unusual methods of researching his novels provide most of the humour in the book.

Due to Isabel's reading, almost every page contains allusions to characters and events from various novels, plays and poems – most of which I haven't read - so I found myself constantly having to turn to the notes at the back of the book (until I decided I could follow the story well enough without understanding all the references to Edith Dombey and Ernest Maltravers).

Overall, this was another great book from Mary Elizabeth Braddon, although not quite what I was expecting. show less

Curious book. Quite funny at the start but later turned quite dark.

I think this is really more of a 3.5. Need to think on it some, it's early yet to completely decide, but it's not a 4 and I don't think it's a 3. So 3.5 will do.