I read a couple of Fforde's early novels and thought they were hilarious, but I'm really not conversant with Victorian novels, and I think one needs to be, to appreciate his work. [Weird for an English major. I was happiest with pre-Norman homilists and poets. So sue me. ]

To stay on topic, obviously his protagonist is a woman, and from what I remember from my limited POV and after a very long time, it did seem to me that perhaps he gives agency to minor characters, many of them female, who may have lacked any in the original novels.