Ruskin was repelled by Effie's body Millais used her as a model in some of his greatest paintings. Effie was regarded as mentally ill, immoral, and certainly tainted - Queen Victoria initially refused to receive her - while Ruskin was seen either as noble and virtuous or deranged and impotent. Ruskin, Millais, and Effie were exposed to the kind of gossip today's wannabe celebrities can only dream of. That she could then dare to hope for respectability and even happiness as the wife of artist John Everett Millais fuelled a scandal that was to reverberate around Victorian society for years to come. When Effie Ruskin sought escape from her desperately unhappy life with art critic John Ruskin, she shattered the Victorian illusion of the perfect marriage.

In so doing, she gives a remarkably full picture of women emerging from Victorianism and entering the sexual wilderness.Victorian scandals don't come much more intimate and revealing than a wife seeking an annulment from her famous husband because their marriage has not been consummated. Merryn Williams gives an account of each woman's literary achievement and shows how all the women dealt with a society that gave them confused and contradictory messages. All six writers suffered from these strains, and commented in different ways on what was happening to the post-Victorian woman. Middle-class women were becoming much more mobile, adventurous and independent, but they were still expected to lead different lives from men and be perfect wives and mothers. The six women writers discussed in this book - Olive Schreiner, Edith Wharton, Flora Macdonald Mayor, Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy L.Sayers and Antonia White - are all post-Victorian, and lived through a time when ideas about class, religion and the family were changing drastically. All six writers suffered from these strains, and commented in.

Clare and Effie by Merryn Williams