Viaje por el Rin

Charlotte, a woman already labeled a spinster, accompanies her brother, the strict Reverend Charles Morrison, and his wife and daughter on a steamboat trip along the Rhine. It is 1851, the height of the Victorian era, and our protagonist has always lived a dependent life: twenty years ago, her brother and sister-in-law prevented her from marrying the young man she loved and placed her as housekeeper for an elderly vicar. But now the vicar has died, and Charlotte is his heir: she is no longer "the poor relation," although they continue to treat her as such, and she can decide what to do with her life. She believes she recognizes her former suitor in a fellow passenger, and although it is an illusion, the presence of this man, about whom she begins to dream, stirs up her frustrations. She laments her lack of "a formula for life," feels a terrible "spiritual emptiness," her sister-in-law tells her she is "the spitting image of a ghost," and she only wishes "not to see a single face that might demand anything of her." On the other hand, her niece feels passionately attracted to a Prussian soldier she has met by chance, which also brings back memories of her own unfortunate love story.