Gabriel had been elected to one of the open seats at the end of May. He was already making a name for himself, zealously advocating for improved conditions for those in the Rookery.

“Not until ten,” he said, gathering her in his arms.

“It isn’t much time,” she remarked as she encircled his neck. “But I shan’t be greedy. We have our whole lives together, after all.”

“Forever,” he said huskily.

“Forever,” she whispered back.

He bent his head to kiss her. “I suggest we make the most of it.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Rules for Ruin was inspired by many facets of Victorian history, from fashion and feminism to literature, law, and tragedy. For more about these inspirations, see my notes below.

Great Expectations

I first read Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel, Great Expectations, when I was a girl. The character of Miss Havisham made an enormous impression on me. Jilted by her fiancé on her wedding day, she withdraws inside her dark, dismal manor house, where she stops all the clocks to the hour of her abandonment. There she remains in her bridal gown, her wedding cake growing moldy and her mind sinking into madness.

The underlying facts of Miss Havisham’s sad tale played a large part in inspiring the origin story for Miss Corvus and her Academy. Like Miss Havisham, Miss Corvus was jilted by a disreputable gentleman working in concert with her dissolute half brother. Also similarly to Miss Havisham, Miss Corvus takes on orphan girls with the goal of transforming them into weapons. However, unlike her Dickensian counterpart, Miss Corvus is forging her Academy girls not into weapons against men but into tools for combatting the patriarchy, with the ultimate goal of advancing the rights of women.

The Married Women’s Property Act

Prior to 1870, a married woman in Victorian England had no right to her own earnings or property. Her very existence was subsumed by her husband. It was he who controlled her money and property, for good or ill. In order for married women to gain some measure of independence, the married women’s property law would have to be reformed.

Rules for Ruin takes place in 1864, exactly seven years after the last piece of legislation to reform the married women’s property law had failed. It wasn’t until 1868 that reformers would make another attempt at a bill.

Victorian women weren’t idle in the years preceding that attempt. In her book Wives & Property: Reform of the Married Women’s Property Law in Nineteenth-Century England, historian Lee Holcombe states that “The year 1865 marked the dawn of a new day in the history of English women.” Victorian ladies were beginning to organize and to discuss all manner of reforms, not only in law but in education and “all subjects relating to the position of women.” These organizations included the Kensington Society and figures such as Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme-Elmy, a champion of commonsense education for girls.