The Three Brides

Three new daughters-in-law are expected at Compton Poynsett on the same day, and their arrivals unsettle a household devoted to its widowed mother. Mrs. Charnock Poynsett, confined to her room after a riding accident, prepares to welcome Cecil, Rosamond and Anne. Each marriage brings a different background into the family: Raymond has married a carefully educated cousin, Julius a soldier's daughter, and Miles a young woman he met at the Cape. Anne reaches England exhausted from the voyage, and her reserve makes the first meeting awkward.

Charlotte M. Yonge builds this English domestic novel around the practical and emotional adjustments of married life. Visits, parish duties and conversations about a church bazaar connect the family home with its neighbours. In the middle excerpt, Julius praises Anne's work in the parish while discussing her plans to settle in Africa with Miles. Readers interested in nineteenth-century family expectations will find affection, religious commitments and competing obligations expressed through small exchanges and everyday decisions.