The Mistressclass again demonstrates Roberts’s interest in complex and multilayered narratives, with an epistolary thread combined with a third-person narrative using multiple points of view. The letters are imaginative reconstructions of those sent by Charlotte Brontë to her teacher and mentor, M. Heger, in Brussels, linking this text to the rewriting of literary figures already seen in Fair Exchange (1999) and The Looking Glass (2000). As in several of her other works, Roberts does not insist upon a historically accurate rendering of events, but creates a fictional narrative saturated with grief and longing. Further intertextuality is also apparent in the novel, with references to fairytales, to Jane Eyre and, in the party, flower buying and the primacy of London itself, to Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. The contemporary narrative details the twisted relationships between two sisters, a...
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Citation: Falcus, Sarah. "The Mistress Class". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 July 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10501, accessed 09 June 2026.]
