Chapter 2 discusses representations of kept mistress characters, and examines the strategies used by their authors to elicit reader empathy. This grouping includes Nancy in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Esther in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, and Ruth in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth. Dickens and Gaskell offer a number of strategies to render their characters sympathetic in the eyes of their readers: the women are morally good, explicitly wronged by their men, and keeping itself looks very much like marriage. While acknowledging these innovations to the domestic novel and trope of the “harlot’s progress,” such readings cast these women as characters who choose out of love only, and with no mind to other factors. In revisiting Nancy, Esther, and Ruth, readers can access a fuller understanding of their decisions by taking into account their socioeconomic realities. Readers can appreciate the landscapes of their pasts, present moments, and potential futures, and thus consider them as women with agency, making survival decisions. While Gaskell maneuvers to separate her kept women from sex workers, such distinctions are not necessary for readers today, and the more compassionate reading would be to read them together. These women characters initiate Victorian readers into reading kept women as good people, and readers today into reading kept women as making informed decisions when their own survival is at stake, as well as how to actively be a reader who cares for the narrative of these women.