Red Pottage

“Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.”

Red Pottage follows the lives of close friends Rachel West, the wealthy heiress, and Hester Gresley, the novelist. Rachel has fallen in love with Hugh Scarlett, a spineless and weak-willed man who has just ended an affair with a married woman. Hester, on the other hand, is stuck living with her brother, a pompous and critical vicar. She must contend with her brother’s disapproval of her writing, a battle which manifests itself as a nervous illness in her. Mentally held hostage by the men who are most important to them, these two young ladies must navigate a deceitful society that attempts to destroy their love and passion for life.

Today Red Pottage is Mary Cholmondeley’s best-remembered book, but when it was first published it caused quite the scandal. With themes of adultery and women’s emancipation, and its satire of the clergy, it journeyed far from the accepted territory of other popular novels at the time.