The Passions of Emma by Penelope
Williamson
Classic Writing!
With skill and beauty, Penelope Williamson conveys the power and
poignancy of many kinds of love in this moving story of an all-consuming,
forbidden passion between a high-society beauty from late-19th-century
Rhode Island and the impoverished Irish revolutionary who is married to
her new friend. Emma Tremayne, bound by duty in a luxurious, highly
restricted world, unconsciously yearns for something more. Gradually she
reaches out to a poor Irish woman, a pregnant millworker with a husband
and two children, who is dying of consumption. In Bria McKenna, Emma
finds a soul-deep friend who quietly transforms her, opening her eyes to
new joys and possibilities. Observing Brias rock-solid love for her
husband Shay, Emma begins to find within her own heart a previously
unknown capacity for passion and devotion. Yet Emma dares not reveal to
Bria that shes fallen in love with Shay. Williamson captures this time and
place, and these complex relationships, in vividly realized, highly visual
scenes, creating a memorable novel of real and enduring characters, with

language whose elegiac tone captures the fleeting beauty of life. --Ellen
Edwards
Personal Review: The Passions of Emma by Penelope
Williamson
br />Overview: The Passions of Emma is not only Penelope Williamson's
most evocatively-written and emotionally-nuanced work, it is one of the
best Romance novels I've ever read. It is an all-around "great read" that
would satisfy a wide general or literary readership.
Plot: In 1890s Rhode Island, a young heiress struggles to "find" and
express herself in the repressive high-society of her birth. She embarks on
a moving friendship with a tubercular Irish immigrant woman, and falls in
love with a dirt-poor Irishman.
Let's get the negatives out of the way (and do note that there are several.
They simply do not eclipse the overall quality of the novel).
***SEMI-SPOILERS ahead!******
Negatives:
1. Several coincidental or overwrought plot devices: It's true that
women were often committed to asylums for deplorable reasons, but
adding this PLUS the sleigh accident PLUS the suicide PLUS the fire
PLUS the ghosts/clairvoyance, etc. seemed like overkill. On the other
hand, many people's lives really are this fraught, so judge for yourself.
(The frequent equation of rain with the characters' miseries needed work,
though).
2. A minor character portrayed throughout the book as sympathetic
later commits a very unsympathetic act. I won't reveal how the character
knew our protagonist, but suffice it to say it was character category often
revealed as a spiteful meddler in numerous works of fiction.
3. A bit of stereotyping: surely not EVERY upper-crust character was
as racist and unfeeling as those in the book; perhaps there were at least
one or two poor Irish immigrants who didn't come from Gaelic-speaking
areas, or who weren't saucy and pugnacious?
4. Loose ends: the Madeline/Stu storyline is left up in the air, though I
disagree with other reviewers that the mother's storyline was abandoned.
(In fact, the mother's was quite poignantly ended--see the scone-eating
scene).
5. BIGGEST NEGATIVE: Because it is being marketed in the
Romance genre, this book has a small number of conventions to fulfill:
namely, a focus on a couple's courtship, and an ending with the promise of
long-term happiness for their union. Given that a moving love relationship
is the very purpose of this genre, I'd say the book fails somewhat in
delivering an effective love story. Emma's epiphany that she loves the
male protagonist is abrupt and fairly unsubstantiated given their past
encounters. From there on out, the relationship is a mystery, hurtling into a
sexual affair with very little indication from the hero that he has (a) gotten

over the recent death of his beloved wife, and (b) that he strongly desires
Emma, much less loves her.
*** In short, the romance is believable in terms of "real life" (so many
widowed spouses have jumped into love on the rebound; so many
relationships where one partner's love is stronger than the other's). But in
terms of Romance genre expectations? No, the relationship falls short in
this capacity. I won't reduce the 5-star rating, though, because I recognize
that the novel will have a broader appeal outside of the genre, and, as
such, should not be appraised solely in generic terms.
Neutrals:
1. The protagonist Emma makes decisions in the name of friendship,
love, and self-discovery that are not in the best interests of her mother, her
sister, her family name, her fiancé. Make of this what you will. In my
opinion, this made for a more nuanced and realistic character: would you
take seriously a character who experiences a blossoming self-discovery
yet never once falters in her self-sacrificial obligations to friends, family and
society? Returning again to genre, a character whose eyes are opened to
the brutalities of her "gilded age" society, and who tastes love and liberty,
only to return at last to her social tethers and confinements does not, IMO,
satisfy the "promise of happiness" ending that characterizes the Romance
genre. That ending could belong in a number of genres or in "mainstream"-
marketed fiction, but not in Romance.
Now, for the Positives:
1. Well-written. This book has some of the deftest and most evocative
writing I have read in genre fiction. Although some of the scenarios are
dramatic tear-jerkers, the writing itself is never florid or convoluted; rather,
it has a natural and pleasing rhythm. Above all, it is deceptively simple--
you will read well into the novel before you realize the author's style has
quietly impressed you.
2. Skillful use of dialogue and regional accents. Yes, yes, the notorious
"writer's brogue" is out in full force for the Irish characters. But, it is still one
of the better depictions of brogue that I have read. (If you have read bad
brogue or Scots before, believe me: you know it, and have cringed).
Dialogue is almost always believable and wonderfully indicative of
character.
3. Superb portrait of female friendship, something sadly lacking in
much of print fiction and in almost all of modern cinema and television. The
relationship between Bria and Emma is truly moving, far more so than the
romance between Emma and the hero. Several notable passages describe
the entwining of the women's hands across the table, the feeding of berries
to one another, the recognition of each other as "mirrors" of one another,
and the natural discomfort as class barriers come tumbling down.
4. Lovely depiction of an "everyday" kind of romantic love--that
between Bria and her husband. Like many relationships of the time, it
began out of social necessity but blossomed into something powerful and
affecting. Sadly, this makes Emma's own romance pale in comparison.

5. Painfully genuine and heartfelt exploration of one woman's psyche,
of her journey into self-awareness and her struggle to discover her place in
the world. I especially recommend this book to men who have claimed
trouble "understanding" women's particular struggles, and to male writers
hoping to improve characterization of their female protagonists. In the end,
it's a story of self-discovery, poignant for males or females, for the Emmas
and the Brias of the world.
"She thought about how these stone walls, these white birches, had borne
witness to the whole of her life....She felt as if she'd always been holding
herself back, saving it, and she had a terrible fear she would end up saving
it forever. That she would die with whole parts of herself unused." (pg, 51,
Warner 1997).
6. A happy ending made happy because of the woman's choices and
the woman's "saving the day." A socialite's fall from the comfort and power
of wealth to become the wife of a dirt-poor Irish laborer with three children
from a previous marriage--does this sound like a happily ever after, or
even a woman-affirming ending? It can be when it is the heroine's
resources and strength that will lift out
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