The Awakening of Mary Fenwick: A 19th Century Romance Audiobook

Writing a century later than Jane Austen, Whitby’s work examines many of the same themes: women and marriage, concepts of honor and pride, passion and love, and self-sacrifice. In The Awakening of Mary Fenwick, we find a naïve young woman who has been raised in a sheltered and isolated home by a grieving father. Mary, calm and responsible, is contrasted with her younger sister Cicely, whose birth resulted in the death of her mother. Cicely is a freer spirit and her exuberance and the painful association with his wife’s death leads the father to send her off to Paris to be raised by an aunt.

Following the death of the father, the aunt assumes a guardianship over Mary and, within a short time, introduces Mary to Godfray Fenwick and they eventually marry. The wedding is a drab affair and on the same day Mary is inadvertently presented with a letter written by Godfray’s sister congratulating him on his successful acquisition of an heiress.

The stage is set and we experience Mary’s humiliation and rude awakening to the realities of her situation. As the novel progresses, both Mary and Godfray evolve and awaken to their desires and disappointments. Whitby handles these evolutions masterfully and intersperses vignettes of village life and personalities. 

If you enjoy the works of Jane Austen, you will find this book full of life, love, tragedy and triumph.

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“We have no hesitation in declaring that The Awakening of Mary Fenwick is the best novel of it kind that we have seen for some years. It is apparently a first effort and, as such is really remarkable. The story is extremely simple. Mary Fenwick marries her husband for external, and perhaps rather inadequate, reasons, and then discovers that he married her because she was an heiress. She feels the indignity acutely and does not scruple to tell him her opinion, her very candid opinion of his behavior. That is the effect of the first few chapters, and the rest of Miss Whitby’s book is devoted to relating how this divided couple hated, quarreled, and finally fail to love with one another. Mary Fenwick and her husband live and move and make us believe in them in a way which few but the great masters of fiction have been able to encompass.”

— Athenaeum