Vera (Annotated)

Elizabeth von Arnim's Vera (1921) is a chilling study of coercive marriage, psychological domination, and the social machinery that protects male authority. Often read as a dark reworking of the Bluebeard motif and a precursor to du Maurier's Rebecca, the novel follows young Lucy Entwhistle into the orbit of the widower Everard Wemyss, whose charm conceals narcissism and cruelty. Von Arnim's prose...