Obliged to Submit: Wives and Mistresses of Colonial Governors

Martha Hayes always remembered the eleventh of September 1803, for on that day she became the first white woman to set foot on Van Diemen's Land. This respectable title is usually mentioned when the name Martha Hayes arises; that she was the commandant's sixteen-year-old mistress, and pregnant, does not.

So begins this lively and absorbing history in which Alison Alexander brings to life the influential wives and mistresses of Van Diemen's Land, from the early days of physical hardship and uncertain status through to the respectable Victorian era and the thwarted ambition of the gifted. and imperious Lady Jane Franklin.

In an indignant letter to her sister, Lady Franklin wrote "I have the reputation (and a woeful reputation it is) to be very clever ... suspected of writing a book!"

Society in this southernmost colony could be a brutal and anarchic affair but, as Alexander documents, women as well as men had the chance to better their position if they had the ability and stamina to carry them through.