Emily Bryce

The novel’s heroine, Emily Bryce, is a young woman who grew up in the English countryside with a respectable and wealthy family. She is described as having fair, ash-brown hair, grey eyes, and a thin, tall, angular frame. When the novel opens, she is living a life of boredom and privilege, crushed by her parents’ snobbery, strict rules, and the grief from her brother’s death at war. She wishes to join the war effort and volunteer her services as a nurse like her best friend Clarissa, who she writes to throughout the novel. She feels like a “bird in a gilded cage” and wants to be set free (2). She regularly visits the convalescent home nearby with her mother and there, she falls in love with an Australian flight lieutenant named Robbie Kerr. Soon, she turns 21 years old, the age of majority and independence, and at...