Invisible Woman, The

Nelly, a happily-married mother and schoolteacher, is haunted by her past. Her memories, provoked by remorse and guilt, take her back in time to her relationship with Charles Dickens, with whom she discovered an exciting but fragile complicity. Dickens, famous, controlling and emotionally isolated within his success, falls for Nelly, who comes from a family of actors. The theatre is a vital arena for Dickens, a brilliant amateur actor and a man more emotionally coherent on page or stage than in real life. As Nelly becomes the focus of Dickens’ passion, as well as his muse, secrecy is the price for both of them, and, for Nelly, a life of “invisibility.”