The Rose Bargain

The Rose Bargain spends a great deal of time exploring the various ways in which Victorian-style societies limit women’s freedoms and strip them of any true agency; this aspect of Smith’s world-building is intended to critique the flaws of real-life patriarchal societies. The author therefore draws upon many social realities from Victorian times, creating an alternative, fantasy version of England in which women are expected to marry, manage the household, and remain within the domestic sphere. Smith also centralizes the Victorian stipulation that unmarried women cannot inherit their family’s money or titles; this law forms the underlying basis for Ivy’s determination to go through with the contest despite her preference for Emmett over Bram.

Ivy is torn between meeting the expectations of society and working to overthrow the queen, and her thoughts reflect the impossibility of this dichotomy:

There’s the side that wants only to be a good girl, a good daughter, and to help my family be integrated into society once more, and there is the side that is allied with Emmett, the side that’s willing to risk burning this all to the ground to build a world better than this one (187).

Her dedication to her family’s welfare is thus unfairly set in opposition to her broader ambition to help her country as a whole, and as the novel progresses, she ultimately sacrifices her love for Emmett in order to honor her perceived obligations to both her family and to humanity.