These involvements are discouraged by her mistress who's negative about the married state (she tells Lily that women abrogate all rights) but perhaps selfishly wants to keep a good servant who makes her comfortable. And we see her cautiously developing relationships with a series of men, beginning with a new footman, Timothy. Lily befriends Minnie Robinson, the housekeeper and Elizabeth Barrett's previous lady's maid, Crow, who left to marry and is now content with her husband and a new baby.
Lily, along with the reader, wonders why Elizabeth Barrett is always ill - it seems to be some weakness of the lungs, combined with ongoing depression that began after the death of a beloved brother. Barrett visits his favorite daughter every day on his return from the city, often bearing a small gift. The household is dominated by Elizabeth's father. Lily can barely persuade her charge (who can walk but does so rarely) to allow herself to be taken out for air in a wheelchair. When Lily, referred to as Wilson by her mistress, begins to care for Elizabeth Barrett and her spoiled little dog Flush, the poet is a reclusive invalid, whom her family tiptoes around. We see Elizabeth Barrett's life - and her relationship with poet Robert Browning - from Lily's point of view, in an absorbing story that I found in many ways reminiscent of the popular TV series Upstairs, Downstairs.
Lily writes home regularly to her mother (who has second sight), reporting on events.
The Lady's Maid of the title is Lily Wilson, who travels from the north to London, urged on by her mother, to become lady's maid to the fragile poet, Elizabeth Barrett (then in her late thirties), a role that comes to dominate her life thereafter.
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