An Eye for an Eye

The novel follows the consequences of a young woman's seduction by an aristocratic heir, her ensuing pregnancy, and his anguished decision whether to marry or abandon her amid family and social pressure. It traces how that choice reverberates through rural households, affecting reputations, relationships, and legal and moral responsibilities. A parallel thread recounts a woman confined to an asylum whose obsessive demand for justification and retribution frames the work's meditation on memory, guilt, and justice. Detailed scenes of estate life, coastal landscape, clerical involvement, and private remorse provide the social texture against which characters confront conscience and convention.