The Woman's Way

by Charles Garvice

Charles Garvice was a popular writer of romance novels in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

200 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2007

About the author

Charles Andrew Garvice was born on 24 August 1850 in or around Stepney, England, UK, son of Mira Winter and Andrew John Garvice, a bricklayer. On 1872, he married Elizabeth Jones, and had two sons and six daughters. He got his professional start as a journalist. On 1875, his first novel, "Maurice Durant" was published in serialized form, but when was published as a novel, it did not sell well. He concluded it was too long and too expensive for popular sales - this early experience taught him about the business side of writing. On 1910, according to Arnold Bennett in 1910, he was ‘the most successful novelist in England’. He published novels selling over seven million copies worldwide by 1914, and since 1913 he was selling 1.75 million books annually, a pace which he maintained at least until his death. Despite his enormous success, he was poorly received by literary critics. He published over 150 romance novels, and also signed some of his novels under the female pseudonym of Caroline Hart .

He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on 21 February 1920 and was in a coma eight days until his death on 1 March 1920.

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the hallmarks of a melodrama are here. Secret identities, hidden connections, a despicable villain, an innocent man who has been blamed for the villain’s misdeeds, and a beautiful ‘angel’ of a woman who doesn’t believe the lies for a moment.

Honestly, I don’t enjoy traditional melodramas. They generally are far too earnest and moralistic for my taste. This on the other hand is a fairly self aware novel. A number of times throughout the story it felt like the author was winking at the reader and saying ‘ridiculous, I know’. Here is a direct quote from the book:
“No, I can't tell you. Confound it all, I'm like a man in a beastly novel, a man 'with a secret,' a mystery."

If you like old-fashioned stories with impossible coincidences and a happy ending, this might be the book for you.

[Alisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Celia, a well-born girl who has come down in the world since her parents' death, lives in a boarding house where she makes the acquaintance of two of her neighbors: an elderly, impoverished gentleman named Mr. Clendon, who is the ultimate in kindness, and a young, desperate and mysterious engineer who tries to take his own life, until Celia steps in and prevents him. That one act sets in motion the whole story. The young man, whose name Celia doesn't know, stands accused of forgery and is willing to take the blame for it. Celia is certain that he is innocent, and he admits to her that he is. She helps him to get away from pursuing authorities. How he thereafter gets to South America and back, and how she loses her job and gains another with a wealthy family who has lots of skeletons in the closet, are the plotlines that lead them back to each other...and to Mr. Clendon.
Nice minor character is Reginald Rex, a blossoming mystery novelist who prides himself on his ability to find out things and speak straightforwardly. He also subscribes to the theories of physiognomy, a branch of "science" that was very popular in the 19th century, that says that you can immediately tell what kind of character a person has based on their facial features, measurements, physical proportions, etc. This is why some novelists of that era devote so much space to describing what kind of forehead a person had or how their eyes were positioned, etc. (You can find instances of this way of thinking in many MANY books, Jane Eyre for one.)
Anyway, a pretty fast and enjoyable read.

[Lucinda Elliot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderfully bad stuff. There are even more improbable co-incidences than usual.
Derrek Dane accidentally and unknowlingly meets up with his father (a Marquess in disguise as an impoverished violin player), his mother (a Latino aristocrat) his uncle and his cousin (naturally, a conniving one who shifts the blame for a crime onto Derrek).
Features it shares with the truly dreadful 'The Outcast of the Family' include:
1. This aforementioned blame shifting Conniving Cousin who frames the male lead for his dastardly deeds: in this, fraud and seducing a low-born ' confiding girl'. In this she has a baby. In 'The Outcast of the Family', where the Conniving Cousin commits murder and seduces a village girl, she doesn't.
2. An honourable man - socially inferior - who falls for this girl despite this, and 'makes her an honest woman' features in both.
3. A wild young aristocrat who gives up his position to earn his living by playing the violin; in this,that is the hero's unknown father, while in 'The Outcast of the Family' that is the male lead.
4. The heroes of both fall in love with the heroine for believing in them when no-one else does. This is quite an achievement in both, as in 'The Outcast of the Family' Lord Fayne is a social outcast given to drinking before breakfast and fighting everyone in sight, while in 'The Woman's Way' Derrek Dane is just on the point of blowing his brains out before he is arrested for fraud.
5. A clever detective who finds out who the real criminal is features in both, and in both urges him to run for it. In 'The Woman's Way' he does. In the 'Outcast of the Family' he doesn't.
Love, of course, prevails and all turns out well for the 'good guys'.
In this, there is an interesting account of how to live on £1 a week (in Edwardian times) .