Résumé
Résumé de La Fortune de Frances Kane
Go deeper: the whole of La Fortune de Frances Kane
About 3 h 50 min to read.À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
Readers who love domestic Victorian stories, warm-hearted heroines, country gardens, family loyalties and love affairs set right by clever friends will feel at home here, along with anyone fond of gentle comedy.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
What do we owe the people we love, and what do we owe ourselves? Frances Kane, twenty-eight, runs a failing country house in northern England almost single-handed. Then a letter arrives from Australia, and ten years of waiting seem to end. Later a second blow lands, and she must weigh her own happiness against her father's comfort and his home. L. T. Meade, the Irish writer who filled late Victorian years with stories for girls, tells it with warmth and humor. Around Frances move a sunny young cousin, a cautious lawyer, a rich invalid and a man who has crossed the world.
Dans ce résumé
- 1Frances runs everything at the FirsFree
- 2A butterfly arrives in the heat
- 3Philip returns and a letter brings ruin
- 4Frances sells her freedom for three hundred a year
- 5The squire schemes to keep his daughter
- 6Fluff turns detective for love
- 7A schoolgirl scheme and an invalid's heart
- 8Duty, selfishness and the people we miss
- 9How the story is told, and two more tales
Point clé 1 sur 9
Frances runs everything at the Firs
The story opens on a June day in the garden of the Firs. Frances paces the gravel path, deciding which fruit can be sold and scolding the old gardener Watkins. She manages the fields, the servants, the accounts and, above all, her father.
Squire Kane comes from an old family that once had money. Now his land is mortgaged, and only Frances keeps the house standing. He sits in a velvet skullcap, sure that he rules. In truth she steers him with an iron rod wrapped in silk.
Two letters arrive. The squire learns that his young cousin Fluff is coming to live with them. Frances reads her own letter in the rose arbor. It comes from Philip Arnold, whom she believed dead in Australia. He loves her still, and he is coming to ask her to marry him.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Go deeper: the whole of La Fortune de Frances Kane
About 3 h 50 min to read.Questions about La Fortune de Frances Kane
What is Frances Kane's Fortune about?
It follows Frances Kane, who runs her father's failing country house in northern England. When her old love Philip Arnold returns, she must choose between her own happiness and the debts that threaten her father's home.
Who is Fluff in Frances Kane's Fortune?
Fluff is the nickname of Ellen Danvers, Frances's seventeen-year-old cousin, who comes to live at the Firs after her mother dies. She is cheerful, fearless and clever, and she sets out to help Frances.
What does the title Frances Kane's Fortune mean?
The fortune is the money Philip Arnold has earned in Australia over five years, saved with Frances in mind. It is also the good luck that, with Fluff's help, finally comes to her.
When was Frances Kane's Fortune written, and is it a true story?
It is a work of fiction by L. T. Meade, who died in 1914, and it belongs to the late Victorian tradition of family stories. Its money worries feel realistic.
What else is in this volume besides the main novel?
The volume also contains two shorter tales: Monsieur the Viscount's Friend, about a young nobleman in a prison during the French Revolution, and The Yew-Lane Ghosts, a village story about a boy afraid of a haunted lane.