53 pages • 1 hour read
India HoltonThe Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Cecilia Bassingthwaite
Cecilia Bassingthwaite is the protagonist of The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels. She is the daughter of Cilla Bassingthwaite and Patrick Morvath and the great-niece/granddaughter of Miss Jemima Darlington. She has fair skin and long, red hair. She lives with Miss Darlington throughout her childhood, after her father murdered her mother in front of her.
As a member of the Wisteria Society, Miss Darlington raised Cecilia with the help of other Society ladies and educated her at home in the ways of piracy. Cecilia is an adept fighter, a competent flier, and an avid reader. She yearns to join the Wisteria Society as a full member like her aunt but has not yet been invited to join despite fulfilling most, if not all, of the membership requirements like robbing a bank, blackmailing a marchioness, and flying the Channel. Even after Lady Armitage puts a bounty on her head and sends an assassin after her, the ladies refuse to offer her full membership.
Throughout the narrative, Cecilia goes through many transformations, as her character is very dynamic. At the beginning of the novel, she is meek, reading poetry to her aunt who has decreed that if she goes outside “she would develop a cough and be dead within the week” (1). Cecilia lives under the weight of Miss Darlington’s irrational fears; it is not the grenade through the window that scares Miss Darlington, but “the Great Peril” (81), or Cecilia developing freckles in the sun while walking outside. Cecilia abides by her aunt’s idiosyncrasies, not pushing back or seeing a life outside of Miss Darlington’s home, despite the fact that she has come of age and could leave if she chose to.
After the ladies of the Wisteria Society are kidnapped by Morvath, Cecilia is able to make her own decisions. Ned, though he claims to have Cecilia in his “custody,” lets her be free to make her own decisions. Cecilia becomes more and more self-sufficient, such as when she steals horses for their journey to Lady Armitage by herself. At the end of the narrative, she finds herself conflicted between her past self and her present self. She rejects Ned’s proposal on the basis of feeling “bound in duty to [her] aunt” (311). Miss Darlington, however, tells her that she raised Cecilia to be a “proper scoundrel,” encouraging her to “abandon her duties” and “live in sin” like a proper pirate (312). Miss Darlington’s perspective clarifies the reality of Cecilia’s upbringing. Though Miss Darlington enforced arbitrary rules of keeping warm and avoiding the sun, she still wants Cecilia to be a scoundrel and live according to her own wants and desires. With this new freedom, Cecilia chooses to marry Ned and become independent of the Society’s constraints and the expectations of her aunt.
Ned Lightbourne
Ned Lightbourne is the deuteragonist and love interest of The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels. He also operates under the aliases of Italian assassin Signor Eduardo de Luca, fencing instructor Teddy Luxe, and Her Majesty’s Special Service Captain Ned Smith in his various espionage ventures. He is tall, with tanned skin, blonde hair, and a pirate earring. He grew up the son of a fake fortune teller. Morvath visited Ned’s mother to commune with the Brontë spirits, and he murdered Ned’s mother in front of him after he discovered her fake knocking device that she used to trick clients. After he escaped Morvath, Ned met Cilla, who helped him. In return, Ned promised Cilla that he would make the world safer for her daughter.
In all of his espionage ventures, Ned works to keep Cecilia safe. He takes Lady Armitage’s assassination contract to prevent a real assassin from trying to kill Cecilia. He takes a job as a fencing instructor at the piracy school in hopes that Cecilia would attend, not knowing Miss Darlington educates her at home. He joins Her Majesty’s Special Service to prevent the Queen from targeting Cecilia for her Morvath heritage. He joins Morvath’s cause to infiltrate his plans and prevent him from harming Cecilia. His motivation lies in keeping Cecilia safe even before he first meets her and finds her a “beauty so rare and face so fair” (3), igniting his passion for her and starting their romantic journey together.
Ned is not as dynamic a character as Cecilia, as he does not change quite as much. Still, he develops internally throughout the narrative. He presents outwardly as flirtatious, charming, extroverted, and confident. Cecilia even thinks him a “wicked flirt” (152) after their first kiss and growing emotional intimacy. He uses this perception to hide who he truly is. He kisses Lady Armitage to throw her off the scent of his false identity, he flirts with Cecilia to keep her from discovering his intentions of protecting her from harm, he reads Morvath’s poetry and extols it to gain his trust, and he even charms Queen Victoria into believing his ruse of working for her. These machinations hide the pain of being a child who saw his mother murdered and the emotional vulnerability of falling in love with another person.
As he falls in love with Cecilia, Ned lets himself be open about his past, which prompts Cecilia to think “the wistfulness in his voice shook her—made her think of how he’d gone through all those years without fierce pirate aunts to warm him, scold him, or overprotect him, every time he was chilled by the memory of his mother’s death” (205). Cecilia realizes the true depth of Ned’s pain, which allows their romantic relationship to blossom and Ned to place his trust fully in another person. Ned at the start of the novel would not have told anyone of his pain, hiding behind the facade of charm and charisma. Ned at the end of the novel, however, trusts Cecilia to carry his pain alongside him.
Miss Darlington
Miss Jemima Darlington is Cecilia’s great-aunt and grandmother, as she is the aunt of Cilla Bassingthwaite on her mother’s side and the mother of Patrick Morvath. She is elderly, walking with the help of a cane. Despite her age and mobility aid, she is still an eminent member of the Wisteria Society and an active pirate. She harbors many fears of illness or injury, constantly encouraging Cecilia to stay indoors to avoid any inclement weather or sunshine, even avoiding parrots in the belief that they carry syphilis. This avoidance of birds saved her from an assassination attempt by Gertrude Rotunder, another member of the Wisteria Society. Miss Darlington rescued Cecilia after she fled from Morvath when he murdered Cilla. She raises Cecilia until Cecilia decides to marry Ned at the end of the novel.
Miss Darlington instills strong feminist ideals in Cecilia, encouraging her to live with the “scoundrel” ideals of the Wisteria Society and find her own independence when Ned asks Cecilia to marry him. Due to Miss Darlington’s age and various health phobias, Cecilia feels obligated to stay with Miss Darlington to take care of her. However, Miss Darlington thrives with her independence (with the help of her housemaid Pleasance) and encourages Cecilia to leave and live her own life. Miss Darlington is also a thriving example of a feminist and of India Holton’s subversion of typical gender roles: She has numerous romantic and sexual partners in her youth and places Morvath up for adoption to avoid falling into the heteronormative family structure expected by Victorian society. Even in her old age, when sipping tea and taking luncheons at regular times, she continues on adventures and heists to keep her life exciting.
Patrick Morvath
Patrick Morvath is the antagonist of The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels. He is tall with silver hair, though his hair used to be red. Morvath is the illegitimate son of Miss Jemima Darlington and likely the pirate/rogue Jacobsen, though for most of the novel he believes his father to be the late writer Branwell Brontë, which informs his dreams of being a renowned poet and writer. However, his writing is terrible and unpublishable. Miss Darlington also tells him during the lead up to the final battle that his father could be the scientist Charles Darwin, which horrifies Morvath, as he regards science and math with disdain.
Miss Darlington put Morvath up for adoption when he was a baby, and his adoptive parents raised him lovingly until they mysteriously died, though it’s implied Morvath killed them. Morvath fathered Cecilia with Cilla Bassingthwaite, who either ran away from her oppressive mother and grandmother to be with him or was kidnapped by him against her will. Morvath murdered Cilla because he was enraged by her involvement with the Wisteria Society and resented her for leaving him.
As the antagonist, Morvath’s goal is to overthrow Queen Victoria and the Wisteria Society, restoring patriarchy to England with himself as ruler. He blames the Wisteria Society both for “stealing” Cilla from him and for “refusing [him] entry into [their] society” (222). Instead of taking accountability and responsibility for the outcome of his actions, like his poor writing and his obsessive tendencies driving Cilla away, he lays all the blame at the feet of the Wisteria Society and women in general. His misogyny stems from his insecurities and his anger—two things he fails to overcome, just as he fails to overtake England.
