The House at Riverton

Grace Reeves serves as the first-person protagonist and the novel’s narrator, whose recollections as a 98-year-old woman frame the story of her earlier life. They center around her role as a domestic servant at Riverton and her relationship to Hannah Hartford. A dynamic and round character, Grace develops as she ages episodically through the non-chronological narrative. This development is used to trace the changing times of the 20th century. Her age matches the year, born in 1900 and dying in 1999, making her a personification of the century and its progress. The novel uses Grace’s fictional lifetime to compare and contrast the early and late parts of the 20th century in Britain.

The novel’s plot is driven by Grace’s gradual revelations of the Hartford family’s secrets, including the truth of her own parentage and relationship to the family. Her position as a servant affords her a unique, nearly invisible vantage point from which to observe the aristocracy, highlighting the rigid social structure that restricts both her own agency and that of the women she serves. Grace’s narrative is a non-linear reconstruction of a past she has deliberately suppressed for over 70 years.