I have a soft spot for gothic novels. I get the sense that Rebecca James set out to write the most gothic novel ever in The Woman in the Mirror. Although the supernatural persists in the background throughout the novel, it’s mainly the reflection of two women who encounter the mysterious Winterbourne Hall, high on a cliff over the Atlantic in Cornwall. Rachel Wright, in the present day, is a self-made woman. Overcoming the life of being raised an orphan, she has opened a successful art gallery in New York City when she receives an unexpected letter informing her that she’s inherited an expansive property in England. Not knowing who her parents were, this is a world-changing surprise, so she heads to Cornwall to find her past and to figure out what to do with her inherited property.
Her story is intertwined with that of Alice Miller. An English woman from two generations past (I’ll come back to that), Miller grew up with a bully for a father and a desire to make it on her own. She’s hampered, however, by a past secret. She takes up employment as a governess at Winterbourne where a Rochesterian Jonathan de Grey is lord of the manor. His two children, fraternal twins, require keeping and the last governess threw herself off the cliffs—you see what I mean by most gothic—so Miller takes the post. The massive house, however, has a strange effect on her. Not only on her, we learn, but on most of the women who live there. The final housekeeper, however, does seem to be immune, perhaps because she’s older.
The story is slow paced, with a fair amount of romance thrown in. Both Rachel and Alice have lost lovers and are coping with their pasts. They never meet, of course, being from separate generations. Perhaps this is just the perspective of an old geezer, but putting Alice Miller in, presumably, her twenties in 1947 doesn’t really seem long enough in the past for the story to unfold as it does. I couldn’t help but think that this makes her about my mother’s age and I would have to admit that my own daughter is old enough to inherit an estate while having already become a successful artist in Manhattan. The timing just seemed a little off to me. The perfect gothic novel seems to require some Victorian aspects, in my opinion. Nevertheless, this story becomes quite gripping toward the end. If you want a modern-day gothic romance, you’ll likely enjoy The Woman in the Mirror.
