I've picked out two of the books I read this month which look, in their different ways, at issues around women's agency in a patriarchal society. First is The Invader , a novel by Hilda Vaughan. It's followed by John Sutherland's biography of Mrs Mary Ward.  The Invader, Hilda Vaughan (William Heinemann, 1928) The Invader is Welsh author Hilda Vaughan’s ( 1892–1985) third novel. Daniel Evans is a sheep farmer whose Welsh hill farm is centred around the eighteenth-century house, Plas Newydd. The farm belongs to an absent English landlord who has no interest in it apart from receiving the rents. Daniel passionately loves his house and his land and has been saving up for years to buy the property. He is one lambing season short of raising the capital. Disaster strikes when the owner dies and the property is inherited by English woman Miss Webster, who teaches in an agricultural college. Miss Webster decides to farm the land herself, and Daniel is ousted and rele