How they loved him, Vol. 1 (of 3)

The Story

The narrative begins with sixteen-year-old Fenella, who has spent five years in a convent school at Ansprach. Raised in the sheltered, pious atmosphere of the sisters, she is a guileless, affectionate girl who clings to the hope of a warm reunion with her mother, Mrs. Barrington. When her mother’s housekeeper, Eliza Bennett, unexpectedly arrives to bring her to England, Fenella is ecstatic, believing that her mother finally wishes to embrace her. The girl returns home with a heart full of devotion, only to find that her presence is an inconvenience. Mrs. Barrington, a woman concerned only with appearances and her own social standing, views her daughter as a threat to her own youth and her plans to circulate in society.

Mrs. Barrington makes it clear that Fenella is to be shuffled off to a quiet seaside location. The mother’s heart is cold, and she views her daughter’s innocence not as a virtue, but as a liability that might expose the artifice of her own life. Fenella, though deeply hurt by her mother’s detachment, remains tragically loyal, struggling to reconcile the idealized image of her mother with the selfish, distant woman she actually encounters. She is sent to a lonely bungalow near the seaside with Bennett, who is herself trapped in a cycle of fear and subservience to her mistress.

Fenella finds herself abandoned in a strange, quiet place, feeling that the happiest years of her life are behind her. In her isolation, she meets Geoffrey Doyne, a young man who shows an immediate, intense interest in her. Fenella, starved for affection and companionship, is quickly drawn to him. She is completely unaware of the complexities of the world—or of the fact that Geoffrey is currently pledged to marry another woman, Jessie Robertson. As they spend time together on the beach and in the surrounding countryside, Geoffrey finds himself deeply smitten with Fenella’s purity and grace, even as he struggles with the weight of his existing engagement.

The turning point occurs as Geoffrey realizes he cannot maintain his charade. He finds the prospect of his marriage to Jessie increasingly "irksome" and "distasteful." Eventually, he makes the momentous decision to break his engagement, believing that his freedom will allow him to pursue his love for Fenella without guilt. He shares this news with her in a moment of pure, albeit naive, joy. Fenella, who has come to view Geoffrey as her entire world, is swept up in his happiness, completely oblivious to the social consequences of his actions or the disapproval he will inevitably face from others.

As the first volume draws to a close, the two are united in a secret, stolen romance. They meet under the cover of dusk, wandering together with a sense of paradise that ignores the brewing storms of scandal and rejection that lie ahead. The narrative ends on this note of fragile, blossoming intimacy, with Fenella still largely shielded from the harsh realities that her mother and society will surely deploy to dismantle her happiness.

The People

• Fenella Barrington: A sixteen-year-old girl, recently returned from a convent, whose defining trait is an unconditional, trusting love for her mother. She is "unstained and pure," but her lack of worldly experience leaves her vulnerable to being discarded by those she holds dear.
• Mrs. Barrington: A vain, self-centered woman who sees her daughter as a "death’s-head" that reminds her of her own aging. She is an expert in "artifice" and "deception," prioritizing her own social maneuvering and potential future remarriage over her daughter’s emotional needs.
• Geoffrey Doyne: An impulsive young man caught between social expectations and his genuine, overwhelming attraction to Fenella. He is desperate to escape his "distasteful" engagement to Jessie Robertson, and he treats his growing bond with Fenella as a second chance at a life of his own choosing.
• Eliza Bennett: A long-serving housekeeper who is both a confidante and a prisoner to Mrs. Barrington. Though she pities Fenella and understands her mother's cruelty, her own "cowardice" and fear of losing her position keep her from ever truly acting as a protector.
• Michael Doyne: Geoffrey’s brother, who serves as the voice of caution and societal pressure. He is acutely aware of the "danger" of Geoffrey’s behavior and tries to steer him toward the social conventions that Fenella is too innocent to perceive.

In Its Own Voice

The author establishes the tone of Fenella’s sheltered life and the inevitable clash with her mother's world.

‘No, Fenella; you will go to England with Mrs Bennett to-night. Your mamma knows you require change, and she has sent for you.’

This instruction, delivered by the reverend mother at Ansprach, triggers the fateful journey that leads Fenella away from the safety of her childhood home and into the orbit of her mother's cold indifference.

‘I am not sure how Miss Fenella and I would get on together. Those old nuns do put such queer ideas in girls’ heads; she’s most likely full of fads about churches and prayers, and the wickedness of pleasure, and so forth, and I couldn’t stand a walking sermon about the house.’

Mrs. Barrington’s disdain for her own daughter’s moral foundation illustrates exactly why their reunion is doomed from the start.

‘So might Paul and Virginia have wandered beneath the banyan leaves of the West Indian isles; or, rather, so might Adam and Eve have explored their new-found paradise, without a thought of the serpent that tracked their footsteps.’

As Fenella meets Geoffrey for a clandestine evening walk, this observation highlights the tragic ignorance of the lovers, who remain blissfully unaware of the consequences waiting for them.

What It's Really About

The book acts as an examination of the cruelty inherent in a society that values appearances over the sanctity of the family bond. At the heart of the story is a conflict between "innocence" and "the world." Fenella represents a kind of spiritual or moral purity—a "white" canvas untainted by the cynicism of adulthood—while her mother, Mrs. Barrington, represents the decaying, selfish reality of a social class that treats people, even one's own children, as obstacles to be removed.

The book questions the nature of love and duty. Is a child’s love for a parent a sacred, natural state, or is it a vulnerability that "selfish" and "worldly" adults exploit for their own convenience? Fenella’s tragedy is not just that her mother is cold, but that Fenella herself is forced to grow up through the destruction of her own illusions. She is essentially an orphan with a living mother, an irony that is underscored by the way she constantly seeks to "comfort" a woman who has no interest in being comforted by her.

Furthermore, the book explores the concept of the "fatal passion." It argues that once an idealized love enters a person’s life, it alters their existence permanently, acting as a poison that can never be fully extracted. Geoffrey’s struggle with his engagement to Jessie Robertson and his subsequent pursuit of Fenella is not presented as a simple romance, but as a dangerous shift in his identity. He is a man acting on impulse, and the book treats his decision to break his engagement with a mix of romantic validation and a foreboding sense of impending doom.

The underlying argument is that the world is inherently "hard" and "unsympathetic" toward those who try to maintain their integrity or their genuine affections. Fenella is compared to a "swallow numbed in the winter"—a creature that needs warmth to survive but is instead met with the biting frost of rejection. The book does not suggest that the world can be changed; it suggests that the "innocent" must either be hardened by their suffering or be destroyed by it. The "serpent" in this story is not a single person, but the entire social machinery that forces people like Geoffrey into unions they despise and mothers like Mrs. Barrington into personas they cannot sustain.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate the intense, gothic-adjacent emotional landscapes of late-Victorian fiction will find much to engage with here. The book is an atmospheric, interior drama that places its focus squarely on the psychological toll of maternal rejection. It feels like a long, slow-burning study of a girl’s awakening—or perhaps, more accurately, her "falling."

The writing is characterized by a specific, dramatic earnestness that is typical of its era. It does not shy away from the melodrama of the heart, treating Fenella’s internal crises with as much weight as one would treat a physical catastrophe. If you are looking for a fast-paced plot, you might find the deliberate, introspective pacing of this volume challenging. It is a book that demands a reader who is willing to sit with the characters in their moments of quiet desperation or sudden, volatile joy.

Be aware that the book carries the period’s attitudes regarding social station and the "proper" ways for women to behave. Fenella’s innocence is sometimes framed in a way that modern readers might find frustrating; her total lack of agency and her tendency to "swallow" her pain to protect her mother’s image can be difficult to watch. However, this is precisely what makes the story compelling. It is a portrait of a trap. You read not to see her win, but to understand the specific, agonizing way in which she is dismantled by the people who were supposed to safeguard her.

What stays with you long after the final page is the contrast between the sunny, idealized beach scenes and the cold, transactional nature of the home Fenella desperately tries to reach. It is a haunting, if intimate, meditation on what happens when a person’s only source of "love" is a dream that never existed in the first place. For those who enjoy character-driven narratives that dissect the "wickedness" of the human heart, this volume offers a sharp, sympathetic, and ultimately devastating look at a young woman’s first encounter with the cruelty of her own blood.