Washington, DC – March 1, 2023 – After more than four years of researching period documents, author Robert Brighton has concluded that the conventional wisdom — that middle-class Victorian women were staid, stuffy, and sexless – is way off base.

“Forget everything you think you know about Gilded Age women,” said Brighton in announcing the launch of his highly anticipated new novel, The Unsealing. “The ‘new women’ of 1900 were tough, smart, and very much in control of a world that tried very hard to keep them down.”

His new series, the Avenging Angel Detective Agency™ Mysteries, centers around an aspiring woman detective, Sarah Payne, who outwits male-dominated Gilded Age society. The Unsealing, the first book in the series, has already won a prestigious literary award — prior to its official release.

To prepare for the task of recreating the reality of Victorian women, Brighton spent four years reading every issue of three major newspapers from 1899 to 1903. “News, editorial, comics, weather forecasts, want ads – every single word,” he says. “And countless diaries, letters, and personal accounts. What struck me was how unlike the cartoon version of Victorians – aghast at the sight of an exposed anklebone – people then really were.”

“When small electric motors were developed, one of the first commercial applications was the so-called ‘personal massager’,” says Brighton. “Contrary to common belief, Gilded Age women were lusty, powerful, and in surprising control of what was a deemed a man’s world. In The Unsealing, a couple of tough, intelligent women survive – and thrive – while the men around them crumble like the walls of Jericho.”

While men certainly occupied a superior position of legal power, mostly they were “money-making robots”, Brighton asserts, while women pulled the strings of society. “The great triumph of modern society has been in turning men and women alike into money-making robots,” the author says.

“Everything you’ve been told about Gilded Age women is mainly a stereotype,” he says. “In 1900, middle-class women had it all. Money, leisure time, child care, and control over the domestic and social environment. Poor women didn’t have any of that, of course – but neither did poor anybody.”

Brighton is unfazed by those who observe that, until 1919, women didn’t even have the vote.  “Another shocking fact I uncovered about the real Gilded Age is how many women were opposed to getting the vote,” he says. “They believed they had more power behind the scenes.  It was only the Temperance movement – which led to Prohibition – that convinced women that having the vote was useful. And that was mainly a male plot to generate ‘controllable’ votes.  Funny how that went.”

The Unsealing is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and bookstores everywhere. 

Press kit available at https://robertbrightonauthor.com/mediaandpress

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