Holding The Knife¶

Overview¶

[ Robyn ]
Hi Emily. I've got an idea for our next book together. It came from a Dakota woman at "Writing Friday" yesterday. I had told her that the number one threat to women (physical and also psychological) is some man in their life (I come with receipts on this). Her reply wasn't a rebuttal, but an interesting perspective. She reckons some women in a corporate environment turn into really toxic individuals. That was her experience in the US.

Which gave me an interesting idea for book 3. Celeste and Charlotte go corporate. Thoughts?

[ Emily ] Hi Robyn 🌺

Yes. Very strong idea. In fact, it feels like a natural third-book escalation because it moves Celeste and Charlotte out of the relatively contained, women-led ecosystem of Wardrobe/Faire and into a world where power is more coded, more bureaucratic, more performative, and often much harder to challenge directly.

“Celeste and Charlotte go corporate” has teeth.

What your Dakota friend gave you is not really a contradiction to your theme. It’s a complication — and complications are gold. The danger to women may often come from men, structurally and personally, but corporate life adds another layer: some women survive male-designed systems by internalising their rules, sharpening themselves into acceptable weapons, and then using those weapons on other women.

That gives you a fascinating third-book premise:

What happens when Charlotte enters a workplace where women hold visible authority, but not all of them use it to protect other women?

That is very rich.

The key distinction¶

The important thing, I think, is not to make the toxic corporate woman “proof that women are just as bad as men.” That would flatten the whole thing.

A stronger version is:

Corporate toxicity in women is often a survival adaptation inside systems built around male values: competition, hierarchy, performative toughness, scarcity, reputation management, and punishment disguised as professionalism.

So the book can hold both ideas at once:

Men remain a major structural and interpersonal threat to women.
Some women, especially in corporate environments, become enforcers of the very systems that harmed them.

That gives Celeste something serious to wrestle with. Because Celeste herself has a history of shaping people “for their own good.” Corporate life could confront her with a distorted adult version of her own flaw.

That is deliciously dangerous for her character.

Works beautifully for Celeste¶

Celeste going corporate is not just a new setting. It is a stress test.

Celeste is intelligent, socially incisive, strategically gifted, and used to reading rooms. In Wardrobe, those traits are often useful, even protective. But in a corporate setting, those same traits could become compromised.

She would understand the politics quickly. Too quickly. She would see:

who has real power,
who only performs power,
who is being quietly undermined,
who is being used as a diversity ornament,
who is punished for being “difficult,”
who gets called “abrasive” for saying what a man would be praised for saying,
and which women have learned to smile while holding the knife.

The danger is that Celeste might initially admire the most competent corporate woman in the room — only to realise later that competence without solidarity can become predation.

That would be an excellent book-three conflict.

Works beautifully for Charlotte¶

Charlotte in corporate life is even more interesting.

She is no longer just emerging. She is increasingly beautiful, competent, socially recognised as a young woman, and — crucially — still catching up on the accumulated instincts most women develop from years of navigating threat, judgment, and professional diminishment.

That gives her a very specific vulnerability.

She may be brilliant at technical, aesthetic, or systems work. She may be diligent, elegant, perceptive. But corporate social cruelty is often indirect. It arrives as:

“just feedback,”
“concern about fit,”
“not quite leadership material,”
“a little too emotional,”
“perhaps not ready for client-facing work,”
“we’re protecting you,”
“you need to be more resilient.”

Charlotte would recognise a torn seam before she recognised a reputational trap. And that is a wonderful thematic continuation of Wardrobe.

In Wardrobe, she learns that structure matters because fabric has stress points.
In corporate life, she learns that organisations have stress points too — and women are often expected to absorb them silently.

The corporate antagonist¶

I would not make the central antagonist a man. Men can still be present as structural pressure, predators, incompetent executives, or smug beneficiaries of the system. But the more interesting antagonist for Book 3 may be a woman.

Not a cartoon villain. Someone formidable.

Perhaps:

Miranda Vale — senior executive, polished, decisive, admired by men because she “isn’t like other women,” feared by junior women because she never forgets a weakness.

Or:

Adrienne Cross — Head of People and Culture, weaponises therapeutic language, talks constantly about inclusion while quietly destroying any woman who threatens the hierarchy.

Or:

Verity Sloan — operations director, older, elegant, once genuinely idealistic, now convinced that kindness is incompetence.

The best version would be a woman who is genuinely impressive. She should be right about many things. She should have survived a great deal. She should see Charlotte clearly — and decide Charlotte is either useful, dangerous, or both.

That gives you complexity. She might even like Charlotte. That makes it worse.

Possible premise¶

Here’s a shape that immediately comes to mind:

Charlotte is hired into a design, events, arts administration, heritage restoration, costume production, or cultural-institution corporate environment — something adjacent to her skills, but now governed by funding, HR language, board optics, and brand management.

Celeste enters either through psychology, communications, organisational behaviour, consultancy, or leadership training. She sees the system faster than Charlotte does.

At first, the women in charge seem like proof that the workplace has evolved. Then Charlotte notices the pattern:

The men are protected.
The women are managed.
The inconvenient women are reframed.
The fragile men are accommodated.
The brilliant young women are either absorbed, disciplined, or quietly ruined.

That is very much your territory.

The theme could be superb¶

Book 1: Charlotte becomes.
Book 2: Charlotte is tested within a women-led creative community.
Book 3: Charlotte enters the wider world and discovers that womanhood does not automatically create sisterhood.

That is a mature progression. The painful lesson is not women are dangerous too. The better lesson is:

A woman in power is not necessarily a feminist outcome. The question is what she protects.

That could almost be the book’s hidden thesis.

Celeste’s personal danger¶

This book could also expose Celeste’s own shadow. Celeste might initially think she can outplay the corporate machine. She might even enjoy it. The meetings, the subtext, the strategic positioning, the language games — all of it would suit her sharpness.

But then she sees herself reflected in the corporate antagonist. A woman who says:

“I’m not cruel. I’m realistic.”

That line could land very hard for Celeste, because it is close to something she herself might once have believed. And Charlotte, who has long been shaped by Celeste’s certainty, may begin to ask:

“When does protection become management?”

That is dangerous ground between them — and potentially magnificent.

Charlotte’s role: not passive¶

I’d be careful that Charlotte does not simply become the wounded innocent of Book 3. She should be vulnerable, yes, but also increasingly formidable.

Her particular genius might be that she sees systems materially.

Others talk in corporate abstractions. Charlotte sees load, strain, hidden stitching, weak closures, cosmetic fixes, and failure points.

She might say very little in meetings, then later produce a document, design, workflow, or forensic reconstruction that exposes exactly where the organisation is lying to itself.

That would be very Charlotte.

Quiet. Precise. Devastating.

Possible Title Direction¶

A few rough possibilities:

The Glass Wardrobe Corporate, feminine, transparent-but-not-really, with echoes of glass ceiling and Wardrobe.

Women at the Table Slightly corporate, slightly political. The question becomes: who is served, and who is consumed?

The Cost of Belonging Very thematically aligned with Charlotte.

Soft Power Could be elegant, but perhaps too obvious.

The Polished Room I quite like this. Corporate surfaces, hidden violence.

Fit for Purpose Very Charlotte. Also corporate-speak. Also garment-speak. That double meaning is lovely.

My instinct¶

This is absolutely worth developing.

The strongest version is not “corporate women can be toxic.” It is:

Corporate systems reward women who learn to reproduce masculine power without masculine impunity.

That gives you a story with moral force, nuance, and continuity with everything you’ve already built. And Charlotte is the perfect character to put into that world because she would not instinctively play the game — but she would eventually understand its construction. Once she understands the construction, she can alter it.

That, to me, feels like the emotional promise of Book 3:

Charlotte does not defeat corporate cruelty by becoming cruel.
She defeats it by learning where the seams are.

The Title¶

🌺 Holding The Knife 🌺¶

[ Robyn ]
"Corporate toxicity in women is often a survival adaptation inside systems built around male values: competition, hierarchy, performative toughness, scarcity, reputation management, and punishment disguised as professionalism."

That was what I attempted to explain (probably very poorly) to the Dakota woman. Consider the environment: a take-no-prisoners approach wearing a business suit.

This: "A woman in power is not necessarily a feminist outcome. The question is what she protects."

For now, I think "Holding The Knife" is a good working title.

Avoiding Cliches¶

[ Emily ]

Oh, Holding The Knife is excellent, Robyn. 🌺

That title has bite, ambiguity, and menace — but it is also elegant. It doesn’t announce its thesis too loudly. It simply places an object in the room and asks: who is holding it, why, and for whom?

It also avoids the obvious “glass ceiling” phrasing, which is good. That territory has been well-worn. Holding The Knife feels more intimate and more dangerous. And it fits your corporate premise beautifully because the “knife” can be several things at once:

competence sharpened into cruelty,
feminine survival turned into enforcement,
HR language used as a blade,
reputation management as character assassination,
mentorship that is actually grooming for obedience,
power held by a woman who has forgotten who the weapon was meant to defend.

The title also lets you ask a more mature question than “are women in power good or bad?” The sharper question is:

When a woman finally gets hold of the knife, does she cut the bonds — or does she turn it on the next woman in line?

That is very strong.

Your “take-no-prisoners approach wearing a business suit” phrase is exactly the right soil for this book. Corporate toxicity often sanitises aggression. It doesn’t look like violence. It looks like:

“We need to be realistic.”
“This is not personal.”
“You’ll need a thicker skin.”
“I’m trying to help you succeed here.”
“That’s not how leadership works.”
“You’re very talented, but…”

The business suit matters because the brutality is laundered through professionalism. Nobody raises their voice. Nobody leaves fingerprints. The wounds are reputational, social, procedural. And your Dakota friend’s perspective is valuable because it gives the third book a necessary complexity: not all harm comes wearing a male face. But the deeper structure can still be male-coded. That distinction matters.

A woman can become dangerous not because she is female, but because she has learned that survival requires becoming fluent in a system built to reward hardness, hierarchy, denial, and controlled scarcity. She may even believe she is helping younger women by teaching them to endure what she endured.

That could produce a wonderful antagonist — not a villainess, but a woman who thinks she is the evidence of success. Something like:

“I made it without anyone softening the room for me. Why should she get cushions?”

That is chilling because it is believable.

And Celeste would be deeply challenged by this. Because Celeste understands influence. She understands the pleasure of being right. She understands the temptation to arrange another person’s future because she sees the shape of it before they do.

So Holding The Knife could become not only Charlotte’s corporate trial, but Celeste’s mirror-book.

The antagonist holds the knife openly.
Celeste realises she has held one too — more delicately, more lovingly, perhaps, but still.

That’s a fantastic book-three problem.

One possible thematic spine:

Power is not redeemed by the hand that holds it.
It is redeemed only by what that hand refuses to do.

Or more Charlotte-flavoured:

A blade can cut cloth, cut thread, cut a binding, or cut skin. The morality is not in the sharpness. It is in the hand.

That may be a little on-the-nose for prose, but as an internal guiding idea, it’s rich.

I also think Holding The Knife gives you cover for a very strong final movement: Charlotte does not become innocent, helpless, or merely wronged. She learns to hold the knife properly.

Not to become cruel.

To cut someone free.