The Life and Death of Harriett Frean (1922) by May Sinclair is a stark, concise novel. The story of the heroine exemplifies the dreadful consequences that a certain kind of upbringing can have on a daughter who is so desperate to comply with her parents’ wishes that she always behaves as she is expected to behave, puts on an act, and shows to the world a false self (D. Winnicott) lacking spontaneity and authenticity. But the heroine is not an individual case; her behaviour mirrors the examples set in edifying novels extolling the misleading myth of the angel in the house to create inauthentic women and prop up Victorian patriarchal society. In such a context the plain style of this novel could well be the ethical answer May Sinclair came up with to undermine the omnipresence of falsity in Victorian society–a style which being purged of the characteristic marks of literature is as little false as possible, announces “the white writing” defined by R. Barthes and suggests the modernity of Sinclair.