THE SWAN'S NEST

The clandestine love affair between Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning is set against a background of slavery and injustice in Jamaica, with implications for the Barrett family, “dirtied by profit from the West Indies.”

“I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart—and I love you too,” the not (yet) successful Browning declares, in 1845 England, in a letter to the invalid Barrett, whom he has never met yet already admires for her work and searching intelligence. Too fragile to be visited during the winter, Barrett prevents Browning from calling for five months, but the couple exchange a frantic correspondence, while their siblings meet socially in a circle that includes proto-feminist and abolitionist Lenore Goss. While spending time in Jamaica, where her family owns a sugar plantation, Goss met one of Barrett’s brothers, Sam, who was managing his own family’s plantation. Before his death from yellow fever, Sam had taken a Black woman, Mary Ann Hawthorne, as his mistress, and had a child with her, David. Mary Ann and David have recently come to London seeking acknowledgment from the Barrett family and an education for the boy, requests that are denied by the clan’s patriarch, a stern, controlling figure who dominates Elizabeth’s life and health. Browning, younger and poorer but ardent, wants to marry Barrett and take her abroad for her health, a commitment viewed anxiously by his sister, Sarianna, whose lot is to tend their elderly mother. While the men have freedom, it’s the women’s predicaments and situations that interest McNeal, switching among them sympathetically until the poets make their escape, marrying secretly and fleeing to Italy. Now the storyline hews more closely to the two central figures and their romantic but precarious journey, while maintaining a sensitive watch on its scattered cast.

An eternally satisfying love story is retold, backed by a detailed examination of colonial privilege.