Born to a privileged middle-class family in 1830s New York State, Sarah Hicks' decision to marry Benjamin Williams, a physician and slaveholder from Greene County, North Carolina, in 1853, was met with slight amazement by her parents, siblings and friends, not least her brother-in-law, James Monroe Brown, a committed anti-slavery campaigner from Ohio. This book traces Sarah's journey as she relocates to Clifton Grove, the Williams' slaveholding plantation, presenting her with complex dilemmas as she reconciled the everyday realities of plantation mistress to the gender script which she had been raised with in the North. She also faced familial divisions and disharmony with her northern kin and new southern in-laws, and the recognition that her whiteness and class accorded her special privileges in the context of mid-nineteenth century America.

Sarah Hicks Williams was the northern-born wife of an antebellum slaveholder. Rebecca Fraser traces her journey as she relocates to Clifton Grove, the Williams' slaveholding plantation, presenting her with complex dilemmas as she reconciled her new role as plantation mistress to the gender script she had been raised with in the North.

The definitive biography of one of English literature's most beloved, and misunderstood, female writers.
"If men could see us as we really are, they would be amazed," wrote Charlotte Bronte, the outwardly conventional parson's daughter who rarely met any men beyond those of the church of classroom, and whose work "Jane Eyre" would bring her good name scandal and notoriety for the rest of her short and tragic life.
Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte's first biographer, attempted to clear Charlotte of the charges of passionate immorality that were leveled at her--as unmarried woman no less. Rebecca Fraser, 130 years later, places Charlotte's life within the framework of contemporary attitudes towards woman, and addresses how attitudes and perceptions of Charlotte have or haven't changed since the Victorian era. An invaluable contribution to Bronte scholarship, Fraser's biography brings forth only admiration for a woman prepared to stand out against some of the cruelest Victorian ideas about her sex.