More On Mary Stewart’s “Madam, Will You Talk”: What I’m Not So Keen On

Yesterday I talked about what I loved best about Mary Stewart’s Madam, Will You Talk: namely a brave and resourceful heroine, Charity Selborne, with a clear moral compass, who is still has a great deal to offer readers fifty nine years after first publication in 1955.

There is one aspect of the book though, that I am not so keen on, which is that Stewart does stick with the persistent ‘romantic’ trope that it is credible for a woman to fall in love with a man who has terrified and threatened h...