In 1860s Britain there is nothing unusual in a man beating his wife. When George Hadley's aggression triggers his own stroke and coma, his wife discovers all she thinks of as hers is to pass to her young son Toby. Adelaide seems as powerless as her ladies' maid, Sobriety.

Beyond the strictures of domestic and social expectation, these two women of different class remake the rules to discover what lies beneath the drapes and tassels of Victorian Britain. Life, they find, is urgent, exciting but cheap. Even as they adventure into alleyways, a tunnel and a seance, their innocence is gone.

What Empty Things Are These

is about what happens to women who look into the face of this newly industrialized and still patriarchal age. Change is everywhere, exhilarating, corrupt, terrifying. Fraud and farce abound. Spiritualists prey on the confused; women are encased in clothing that imply both modesty and sexuality; the powerful prey upon the weak. Adelaide and Sobriety, in their way, show us that every era has secrets that must be uncovered for real social progress.

The underlying tale of the vulnerable urchin girl

the nameless victim of this pitiless society encapsulates the truth of the age for them.