Early 20C morals: Adultery and Redemption

Expiation by Elizabeth Von Arnim published 1929 There is one book by this author that I really love: Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther. Others – not so much; My notes on one of them read: Dreadful. Absolutely awful. Two horrible girls. Dire. I didn’t like Enchanted April, or her Garden. I do like the fact that her books are numerous and very varied: Vera (1921) was an unexpected, compelling read, a very accomplished & not at all cheerful picture of a marriage, supposedly descriptive of her own bad times. I just read a comment that it was as if Wuthering Heights was written by Jane Austen, which makes me want to read it again, despite its grimness. There is intriguing foreshadowing of du Maurier's Rebecca, which came 17 years later. Expiation I’d never heard of before (she wrote a lot, as I say) but I liked the setup. Persephone Books have re-issued it.A well-off, respectable man, Ernest Bott, dies unexpectedly. He has a wife, no children, but a large family of siblings and in-laws.…