Barbara Taylor Bradford sold her first novel, A Woman of Substance, in 1976. When it came out in 1979, it made a home on the New York Times‘ list for 43 weeks and remains to this day one of the best-selling novels of all time.
At its centre is Emma Harte, described by Taylor Bradford as “a woman who was strong, independent, driven, ambitious and courageous. She was willing to go out and put herself on the line and do something. I created a woman who wanted to conquer the world.” At the height of her success in the 1970s, one of the novel’s two narrative settings, Emma Harte is the richest woman in the world.
In the latest television adaptation of A Woman of Substance, BritBox not only spotlights Emma Harte’s rags-to-riches story, fueled by ambition, vision, and a driving need for vengeance, but also examines the lives and choices of the other women in her world.
In doing so, they create a rich portrait of women’s lives in the 1910s, the time of young Emma (Jessica Reynolds), where most women were imprisoned by societal norms and preyed on by the men who benefited from them.
How these women — Adele Fairley (Leanne Best), her sister Olivia Wainwright (Lydia Leonard), and young Priya Chandra (Hiftu Quasem) — find their way despite the paths dictated and the obstacles designed to keep them contained and controlled forms a fascinating contrast to Emma’s meteoric rise on a tide of her own making.
Women of Substance
There are no women in this story without substance. Yes, as the protagonist, Emma Harte, played by Brenda Blethyn in the 1970s setting, proves she’s made of something special. Supremely confident in her abilities, ready to take on the world, always exceeding expectations. It’s not advisable to question her intentions and even more dangerous to underestimate her.
However, it’s her mother who stokes the flames of discontent, instilling in her a desire to climb to a place of financial comfort and safety. Before dying tragically, Elizabeth Harte (Sophie Bould) reminds her daughter at every chance that she must never let herself get distracted from the Plan. Emma’s Plan (with a capital P) means working harder and taking every opportunity to get ahead.
That opportunism nets her a spot early on as Mrs. Adele Fairley’s personal maid. The Fairley household is a complicated construction. Adele suffers from unnamed mental health challenges and self-medicates with alcohol while her sister, Olivia, runs the household at Adele’s husband’s side.
Into this quagmire of relations, a potential marriage of convenience ensnares Priya, the daughter of a wealthy business associate. Priya’s education and enlightened upbringing position her with a foot in two worlds: one of established tradition, where a wife is property, and the modern other, where a marriage is an equal partnership built on love.
The Mad Wife Upstairs
Leanne Best portrays Adele Fairley as a charismatic and intelligent woman brought low by crippling anxiety and intense mood swings. As she tells Emma in the series premiere, “I’m frightened of disappearing, of being forgotten.” Devastatingly, her mental illness traps her in her room, much to her own frustration.
The only arena where she can assert any control is in her relationship with her husband, Adam (Emmett J. Scanlan). She blatantly plays to his passions, which he eagerly falls in with. With Olivia, she lords her sexuality and fecundity over her sister’s effective spinsterhood.
Adele’s powerful personality and equally powerful episodes of manic behaviour belie her fragile confidence. When sober and regulated, she wields her charm and sharp commentary with vicious precision, weapons to bring down the people she sees as dangerous.
Owning a Life in the Shadows
Meanwhile, Olivia is just as trapped by her sister. Serving as her stand-in, she enjoys the privileges of being the lady of the house without any legitimate right to them. A fact Adele persistently points out.
Olivia recognizes that she cannot become Adele. Instead, she demonstrates her value as Adam’s helpmate in business matters and in running the household.
When she tries to emulate Adele a bit by wearing a more flamboyant dress to the opera with Adam in Episode 2, he immediately criticizes her for not looking “herself.” But when she calls an early end to the evening and tells him she plans to leave Fairley Hall, he grows frantic at the thought.
Despite Olivia’s desire to be a good sister to Adele and be of service to the Fairley household, there’s a will in her that wants something for herself, too. It’s unfortunate that, being self-indentured to Fairley Hall, Adam’s the only something she can avail herself of.
One could imagine that in different circumstances, away from the toxicness of Adele and Adam, Olivia would come to value her own abilities, nature, and pleasures.
The Freedom to Think
The woman most parallel to Emma Harte in the retrospective plotline is Priya Chandra. Although born to wealth, she is also a bright, outspoken idealist.
While Emma and Edwin have romantic feelings for each other, there’s no chance they could ever marry. Meanwhile, Adam’s plan is for Edwin to marry Priya to secure her father’s investment in the Fairley mills.
The question is whether Priya’s idealism can survive the pragmatism of such an arranged marriage. Will she accept that there will always be a part of Edwin’s heart devoted to Emma? Or will she refuse to comply despite expectations and her father’s business interests?
It’s fascinating to note that because Emma came from such poor beginnings, she had nowhere to go but up as she strove to better her life, while Priya’s privilege chains her to a potentially loveless marriage to a cruelly dysfunctional family.
As the series unfolds, opportunities for Priya to prove what she’s made of are sure to arise. In light of the impressively nuanced ensemble of women already in play, one would predict that Priya Chandra will exhibit some enduring substance of her own.
The Harte of the Matter
Ultimately, A Woman of Substance is Emma Harte’s story. And it’s a helluva of a ride, to be sure. Both Jessica Reynolds and Brenda Blethyn convey the passionate drive and energetic magnetism that propel Emma from housemaid service to the top of a corporate empire.
But that rise to power is made even more remarkable and thought-provoking when juxtaposed with the stories of the women young Emma sees living the life she dreams of.
By reintroducing Emma Harte to the world, BritBox has reframed one woman’s tale to encompass a spectrum of women’s access to and use of power. Like Ms. Harte, it is not to be underestimated.
The first two episodes of A Woman of Substance are streaming on BritBox, with new episodes dropping on Wednesdays.
