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. In her quest to marry Bram and free her fellow humans from the insidious consequences of Mor’s bargains, she forces herself to adhere to unwelcome social codes of behavior, and the costs that she pays for this choice continue to mount as the narrative catapults toward its violent yet largely unresolved conclusion.

By embroiling Ivy and the other debutantes in a dog-eat-dog tournament-style conflict, the author also critiques the Victorian outlook on marriage, which decreed that women’s only value lay in their ability to secure respectable positions as the wives of prestigious men and manage upper-class households for the rest of their lives. Ironically, even though Mor holds far more power than any human king ever did, she chooses to retain England’s restrictive societal expectations for human women. Thus, even the magical elements of the story amplify the historical injustices of the Victorian era.

As the novel unfolds, Smith’s use of Victorian social standards conflicts with her intention to create decisive, independent female characters—and the results are often muddled at best. For example, the stipulation that those who lose the contest cannot marry anyone else dooms women to remain burdens to their families rather than improving their families’ financial situations via strategic marriage. And even when the debutantes choose to work together instead of engaging in conflict and sabotage, their actions do not quite manage to break free of the limitations imposed by their society’s Victorian-style norms. This issue becomes clear when Faith and Ivy give up their rivalry and work together to, for this shift only occurs because Ivy realizes that Faith has no romantic interest in Emmett. When Ivy learns the truth about Faith’s platonic relationship with Emmett, she says, “Sorry for seeing you as competition when I should have been supporting you” (376). Thus, even the women’s moments of solidarity are predicated upon their relationships with the men in their lives.

The ingrained inequities of the novel’s world are further supported by the copious evidence that male characters continue to enjoy freedom, power, and sexual liberty. They are allowed to retain their good reputations even when they keep mistresses or date multiple women: behavior that would condemn women to be cast out of society altogether. Likewise, the men enjoy exclusionary spaces, such as drawing rooms and Kendall’s gentlemen’s club, while Ivy notes that “Women generally aren’t allowed in places like this” (204) and risks much when she challenges this rule and she goes to the club with Bram. Even men’s romantic decisions demonstrate their social freedom, for they have the latitude to marry those they love rather than forging unions for purely utilitarian reasons. Thus, Emmett is “a romantic in the way only men can afford to be” (305); he refuses to marry Faith because he doesn’t love her in a romantic sense. Even in the novel’s conclusion, men remain ascendant while the female characters—such as Ivy, Lydia, and even Mor—find themselves caught in prisons of one kind or another.