The Mad Women’s Ball, Victoria Mas (translated by Frank Wynne)

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‘The Salpêtrière is a dumping ground for women who disturb the peace. An asylum for those whose sensitivities do not tally with what is expected of them. A prison for women guilty of possessing an opinion.’

Nineteenth century Paris, and the inmates of the infamous Salpêtrière asylum are eagerly preparing for the Lenten Ball, a highlight of Paris’ social calendar. Wealthy citizens covet tickets to this event, a chance to enter the asylum and see the ‘madwomen’, each hoping to see them have a fit, to require treatment. For the women it is a chance to dress up, to mix with the elite, to dream of a life outside the walls of the asylum. Outside of the preparations for the ball we see how the women are treated day to day. Dr. Charcot has allegedly made conditions better for them, but they are still wheeled out in front of roomfuls of men to demonstrate their hysteria and his treatments, sometimes with quite ghastly outcomes. A particular favourite is Louise, locked up after having been raped by a man who was meant to be caring for her, she is pretty and compliant. She looks forward to the ball, believing her love will release her from her confinement.  Eugénie is the asylum’s newest resident, locked up by her brother and father for having admitted to her grandmother that she can see and hear ghosts. Intelligent and stubborn, the staff comment that she does not demonstrate signs of madness, but once admitted it is hard to ever escape. Geneviève is a long-standing member of staff, there to look after the women. Eugénie’s arrival blows up her carefully created life, with consequences that will impact the rest of her life.

Throughout we are reminded that it is men who hold the power. In the vast majority of cases it is male relatives who bring the patients in, often simply because the women have become  inconvenient. It soon becomes clear that it is the men who have behaved badly and the women who suffer doubly as a result. There are chilling scenes where characters see their loved ones turn on them, the coldness in their gaze demonstrating that they will never see them as a full human again, all affection drained. The ease with which they will condemn them to a life of imprisonment and experimentation is truly disturbing, and more so as this fiction is rooted in fact. The women are always in a vulnerable position. They live their lives with the threat of committal hanging over them if they step out of line. Once committed they are treated as spectacles to be enjoyed. Men watch dispassionately as they are triggered into hysteria, are hypnotised, as their bodies are abused in the name of science. The reader feels the powerlessness. This is further emphasised by the fact some of the women prefer to stay, feeling safer inside than in the cruel world outside the gates, not that they are likely to ever have the choice to leave.

None of their stories are happy ones. Geneviève has created a stable life for herself but she is wracked by grief at the loss of her sister, who she continues to write letters to long after her passing. She rarely sees her father, and although she has a vaguely kind relationship with the women, she is in a position of power over them. She advocates for them and tries to keep them safe but she is the one who delivers them to Charcot and the other doctors. Louise’s story is tragic. She retains some youthful optimism and dreams of a different life, yet the world repeatedly punishes her for this. There are devastating scenes where her complete vulnerability is abused, and you are furious at the men who have wronged her throughout her young life. Eugénie’s story is one of betrayal. She is curious and strong-willed, hoping to join a group looking in to spiritualism before she is incarcerated. The asylum attempts to break her will - she arrives strong and angry but soon fades. Her ‘gift’ of speaking to the dead is not one she ever asked for but she tries to use the knowledge it gives her for good. The world does not want to allow it. 

This is an interesting book which inspires further research into the grisly history of the Salpêtrière. It will both make you sad for the women who lived under such a regime, but also consider the state of gender politics today. Some of the techniques may have moved on, but the power imbalance and attempts at control are all too familiar. Mixing fact with fiction, Mas shines a light on a dark aspect of history. She explores the position of women in nineteenth century France, medicine on the cusp of the invention of psychology, and the sense of sisterhood among those living within the asylum. Family dynamics and obligation are vital, with a distinct lack of care shown to many of these young women. Atmospheric, upsetting, and endlessly intriguing.

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Summer in the Shadow of Byron, Andrew McConnell Stott

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The Villa Diodati, on the shore of Lake Geneva, is famous for its role in the creation of one of literature’s most famous novels, Frankenstein. The stormy summer of 1816 where Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Claire Clairmont came together has been romanticised and held up as a moment of intense creativity and inspiration. But what really happened at the villa that summer, what brought them there, and where did they go from there? McConnell Stott delves into their histories, examining the tumultuous relationships, the ambitions, and the destructive draw of Lord Byron. 

The book actually doesn’t feel all that much about the months they spent at the Villa Diodati, more so the events that led up to it, and the fates of those involved. As a group their love lives were intense and complex. Emotions were high with many threats of suicide bandied about when things didn’t go to plan. Percy had left his wife, Claire and Mary had run away from home leaving the Godwins desperate to find them and have them safely back. Byron was feeling the pressure of fame, the consequences of his own failed marriage, and wanted to escape the attention. Polidori was there in the role of doctor, always slightly on the outside but desperate to be in Byron’s inner circle. Byron repeatedly mocked John and teased him for his attempts at writing.

A solid chunk of the book gives us enough back story to understand the positions of the main players, and describes the arduous journey across Europe to reach Switzerland. A relatively short section then deals with the time at the Villa Diodati, dispelling some myths by showing that the women stayed in a separate building, and that other friends and acquaintances visited. It highlights the way in which people were sidelined and that the group was never far from intense emotion.

Polidori seems to have had a particularly hard time of it, ending up walking hundreds of miles in a short time period to find his next place of abode when things soured with Byron to an unbearable degree. He was plagued by mental health troubles and his acquaintance with Byron did him more harm than good. Once back in England he suffered a nasty injury in an accident which almost killed him. He then struggled to gain recognition for his work, The Vampyre, published with credit given to Byron. This leads to an interesting discussion of the state of copyright law at the time, and the difficulty for authors to claim ownership if a publisher had already registered a work.

Claire’s tale is also a sad one. She begins with an obsession with Byron. Female fanatics were not uncommon, and she tried every trick she could think of to stand out and gain an audience with him. Eventually, she bears him a child and it is to be one of the great heartbreaks of her life as Byron separates them, not particularly interested in playing the role of father, instead sending her to be educated in a convent, but denying Claire access. Rumours of Claire’s residence in a mental asylum prove to be inaccurate, but certainly she suffered greatly from her time with Byron, and her story is not a happy one. 

This is an engaging read which brings to life some of literary history’s most infamous characters and stories, but shining a light on the less well-known players. Byron’s circle feels like a dangerous place to be, with constant fallings out, heartbreak, and jealousy. Few come out looking admirable, but almost all elicit sympathy at times. A complex web of deceit, ambition, and desire, a brilliant read for fans of any of these authors.

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Born of No Woman, Franck Bouysse, translated by Lara Vergnaud

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This post is part of the blog tour for the book. Thank you to Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Random Things Tours for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Trigger warning: This novel contains scenes of sexual and emotional abuse, and includes descriptions of violent deaths.

Bouysse’s searing novel brings nineteenth century France to life in chilling detail. The narrative voice shifts throughout, but it is Gabriel, the village priest, who bookends the novel. It opens with a mysterious confession requesting he remove a series of diaries from the body of a woman at the asylum, the contents of the which will haunt him for the rest of his days. It soon becomes clear why, as a bitter tale of abuse, intrigue, and deception unfolds.

Fourteen year old Rose is sold to a blacksmith by her father, desperately trying to save the family farm. The castle in which the blacksmith lives with his mother is cold and unwelcoming, reflecting the souls of its inhabitants. Rose quickly realises that no matter how well she performs her tasks the old woman will always find something to complain about. She accepts her new position with quiet resolve, but the true evil of her owners will soon reveal itself, making her life unbearable. There is some slight relief in the presence of Edmond, a kindly employee who warns her off staying, but without giving full reason why. Her affection for him is soon tainted with the disappointment that he didn’t do more to protect her.

There is one more inhabitant - the wife of the blacksmith, confined to her bedroom due to ill health, and never seen outside it. The doctor visits regularly, and Rose becomes curious about what’s wrong with her. The wife locked away is not an uncommon presence in either nineteenth century novels or modern books set during the period. The visits by the doctor will make those familiar with such novels as The Crimson Petal and the White distinctly uncomfortable, but the truth, when it is revealed, is far darker than anything I had imagined. 

The various threads of the story are constructed to devastating effect. At times we see the same events through different eyes with heartbreaking results. Rose, having been sold without her knowledge or consent, can only imagine the thought process of her family, completely blind to the consequences caused by the foolish actions of a desperate man. At many moments you wish the truth could be communicated between the unhappy inhabitants, but the despicable villains ensure this is never possible.

The blacksmith and his mother are truly abhorrent, their cruelty seemingly knowing no bounds. Often incredibly difficult to read, the sections revealing their unforgivable actions will have you boiling with anger. They are carefully realised villains that inspire no sympathy. They manipulate and abuse, and the image of Rose trapped with them in a forbidding castle where no-one will hear her screams is truly bone chilling.

The writing is confident and lyrical, creating a vivid, believable world that will take hold of your heart and not let go. The clever little details littered throughout drop hints of the full picture, which will only become clear after a series of twists and revelations that subvert many assumptions made from the off. Bouysse successfully draws you in to a dark and dangerous world with characters that will inspire strong emotions. At many times a difficult read, it is nonetheless almost impossible to put down.

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Victorian Sensation, Michael Diamond

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In the mid-nineteenth century a number of factors came together that made the spread of scandal much easier. Newspapers became cheaper with the removal of taxes, meaning that a much wider readership were able to afford them. The opening of the Divorce Court in 1858 also offered a new source of scandal - court proceedings included personal details that newspapers would not have been able to print. Diamond, in an attempt to show that the Victorians were not all that different to us, walks us through some of the popular scandals of the time. 

There are some famous occurrences that modern readers will be familiar with, such as the Jack the Ripper murders, but Diamond doesn’t dwell too long on these and there’s a wealth of other sensations that the common reader will likely not have come across before. The Tichborne Case, for example, captured the public imagination. Roger Tichborne, heir to title and fortune, was presumed dead after being involved in a shipwreck in 1854. His mother believed there was a chance he was still alive and advertised widely, offering a reward for information. An Australian butcher saw the advert and made his way to England to claim his position as the lost son. Some were happy to accept him whereas others were more sceptical. The court case that ensued was the longest on record. It became a huge rallying point for the public who remained firmly on the side of the Claimant, despite evidence suggesting he was not the Tichborne heir. 

Diamond sets each scandal within its social and political context and reveals patterns in some of the deeds and defences. He also reminds us that Britain was less revolutionary than its continental neighbours, and that events considered sensational would not have been elsewhere. He discusses the role of celebrity, both in the context of crime, and entertainment. Oscar Wilde had very deliberately created a public persona for himself, but this made his fall from grace that much more severe, and his every move was tracked. Diamond closes with a discussion of P.T. Barnum, the great showman, and his focus on creating spectacle and sensation. He seemed to believe in the oft-repeated phrase ‘all publicity is good publicity’, and had huge success despite causing outrage in some circles. ‘Barnum, an impressario not a performer, had become a star in his own right, and gives a lesson in how to create sensations through size, planning, advertising, and razzmatazz. … Barnum had led the way into the twentieth century.’

This is an accessible book that helps to break down the commonly held view of Victorians as prim and proper with very rigid morals. The popularity of sensation novels and dramas show the huge appetite for such tales. He guides us through the real life events that inspired fiction and the response to these forms of entertainment. He writes also of the role of women’s writing and strong female characters that dominated the genre. The book offers a glimpse into the subjects that titillated and shocked, and the laws that made them possible. There was a fascination with poison as a means of murder, and we learn that arsenic could be freely sold without a licence, whereas items such as tea and coffee, which we consider every day essentials, could not. This is a great read for those who want to dive into the world of Victorian reporting and entertainment, offering summaries and context for a broad range of events. Diamond sets them firmly in their time while allowing us to see that the subjects that capture public interest haven’t changed all that much in the intervening years.

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The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell

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Gaskell’s infamous biography of Charlotte Brontë may contain some glaring omissions, but can tell us much about the time in which she was writing. Jane Eyre, although popular, had led to attacks on Charlotte’s morality. Gaskell’s moralistic portrait shows Brontë to be a devoted daughter, sister, and, briefly, wife, who put duty above her own desires. A female writer herself, Gaskell was all too aware of the unique criticisms levelled against women writers and attempted to portray her subject in an acceptable light to allow her work to be appreciated on its own merit. 

In Winifred Gérin’s introduction to the Folio edition we are given an insight into the practical difficulties that impacted on the final book. The biography was required with haste, meaning Gaskell was at times sloppy in dealing with the wealth of letters provided for inclusion. Brontë’s friend Ellen Nussey was the main contributor and carefully curated her contribution, keen also to have her friend remembered as pious and demure. Mary Taylor, a friend who Charlotte spent much time debating politics, philosophy, and religion, had moved to New Zealand, meaning her recollections did not arrive in time for inclusion in the first edition. She also, regrettably, destroyed many of her letters.

One of the most notable absences for the modern reader is Charlotte’s unrequited love for M. Heger, her tutor in Brussels. His wife refused to speak to Gaskell, and although Heger himself did share some of their correspondence, all references to her passion for him are excluded. This made things difficult as Charlotte expressed her misery in letters to friends. Gaskell brought forward tales of Branwell’s demise to this time in order to justify her distress. Both brother and father receive some harsh treatment throughout which coloured popular opinion of them for many years. In attempting to sanitise Charlotte’s life, Gaskell condemned others. The book was popular and quickly ran to a second edition but it wasn’t long before libel cases and requests for revisions began pouring in, resulting in the much amended third edition. My copy included both the sections omitted in the third edition, and the additions, providing a sense of what a different book it became. 

Armed with this knowledge I embarked on the biography with some sympathy for Gaskell and a better understanding of where its biases came from. It opens with a short history of Haworth and the family that she was born into. Haworth is described as isolated and wild, the family reserved but willing to help those in need. Charlotte is often portrayed as unhappy, anxious, and full of self-doubt bordering on hatred. We see her repeatedly disappointed when plans to see friends fall through and are reminded that beyond the legend she was just a normal young adult who needed companionship and dreamt of seeing new places, London holding a particular fascination.

Her special connection with her sisters is, naturally, examined, as well as her need to express herself creatively, her compulsion to write, and the upbringing that allowed room for nurturing imagination. A heartbreakingly detailed account of her final journey with Anne, to Scarborough, is provided by the friend who accompanied them. Gaskell does not shy away from the depression that overtook Charlotte on the loss of her sisters, the sad life she lived once those who truly understood her were gone. In her retelling of these tragic events she perhaps began the public fascination with their lives. 

Gaskell states that when Charlotte can tell her own story through her letters and writings, that no other should take her place. The result is a book overflowing with extracts that sometimes reveal a side of her that doesn’t get much airtime today. This style allows us an opportunity to see the life she lived beyond the public persona she was so anxious of, albeit one strictly edited to convey the desired effect by her biographer. The letters are sometimes mislabelled however, multiple letters run into each other, and it’s not always clear who the recipient was.

I read this out of curiosity for this much maligned book more than to discover the facts of Charlotte’s life which are readily available, but was pleasantly surprised by the ease of writing and material I’d either not come across before, or that had slipped my mind. This saccharine portrait may be at odds with the passionate, radical life we accept today, but it may have helped save her from Victorian censorship, allowing us to continue to enjoy Charlotte’s work today.

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Murder by the Book: A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime, Claire Harman

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On 6^th May 1840, Lord William Russell is found dead in his bed in a quiet Mayfair street, his throat cut so deeply it is almost severed. The house is in disarray, the result of a seeming faked burglary designed to throw the police off the scent. It soon becomes apparent that it was an inside job and all the in-house staff fall under intense investigation.

The culprit is discovered about half way through the book, but their arrest is far from the end of the story as they release multiple, contradictory confessions, in one blaming William Harrison Ainsworth’s novel Jack Sheppard, in which the notorious criminal is the hero, for giving them the idea. This leads to a discussion of the popularity of ‘Newgate novels’ and the impact they had on criminal behaviour. Books were becoming increasingly affordable and, at a time before intellectual property law, cheap knock-offs and plays proliferated, making these gruesome tales accessible to most members of society. A number of criminals were said to have been influenced by these novels, and division in the literary world emerged.

Dickens’ Oliver Twist could easily have been classified as a Newgate novel, something he was keen to avoid. Ainsworth on the other hand embraced the trend, and although initially it brought him fame and fortune, the specific mention of his novel by the condemned caused an abrupt change in its popularity. He continued writing throughout his life but never regained the status he’d originally garnered from Jack Sheppard.

A book examining the link between fiction and true crime is an interesting concept, but the connection is not as important in this particular tale as perhaps the blurb suggests. It is however, an interesting book that places Lord Russell’s murder in the wider social context of the time. An era where criminal celebrities were emerging and public executions were still a public spectacle that attracted tens of thousands, yet on the cusp of moving toward less barbaric, more private, punishments.

A slightly slow start is worth persevering with as you’re led into the dark underworld of Victorian respectability. Harman closes with comments on some of the unresolved mysteries of the case, suggesting possible answers, but ultimately leaving you wondering what really happened that fateful night.

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Victorian Villains, University of Oxford, 9th February 2019

On a bright winter morning a group of Victorian enthusiasts gathered for a thought-provoking study day on the most notorious villains in Victorian literature.

First was an examination of the enigma that is Heathcliff by Dr Sandie Byrne. She spoke of the way modern adaptations of Wuthering Heights underplay his villainy, instead focusing on his victimization, and a skewed version of his love for Cathy. Wrong-footing us slightly, rather than dissecting his character in the tradition of villainy, instead we looked at the different tropes of hero figures and whether or not he could fit into these. The Brontës having been fans of the Romantics we looked to the Romantic hero to which he loosely fits due to his extremes of emotion and fixation on one thing. There were also comparisons to the trend ignited by Henry MacKenzie’s The Man of Feeling which allowed men to be as emotional as women until its popularity waned with a backlash accusing such men as being effeminate, an accusation unlikely to be leveled at Heathcliff, he does nonetheless have a great sensitivity to certain stimuli.

One other possible link to the hero type is being the moral centre of the novel. Heathcliff’s morality is not one that’s held up as being admirable, but Byrne argues he could be seen as the only character in the book that stays true to themselves. Catherine betrays not just Heathcliff but her own true nature by entering the world of the Lintons. His behaviour toward the other characters could be seen as testing them. They repeatedly fail and as a result he sees them as weak. Yet, Heathcliff is full of contradiction. He is hellbent on revenge and yet before it is fully realised he stops, claiming in the famous line ‘I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.’ Why is this? Has seeing Hareton and Cathy defy his attempts to force a repeat of his own history softened him? Was he merely worn out? Is his desire to be reunited with Catherine in death greater than his desire for revenge? Why does he seem to regret some of his actions yet refuse to reconcile with Catherine on her deathbed? (I don’t hold Heathcliff to account for this, she continued to torment him to the end).

What are we to make of his nature? We see Hindley tormenting him in his youth and Catherine’s desertion of him wounds his very soul. Yet as Byrne points out, these actions skew traditional morality – he has done nothing wrong at this point, it is not punishment. There is much we don’t know of his history however, was it the actions of the Earnshaws that led him to becoming bitter and vengeful, had something in his past that we aren’t privy to affected him so deeply? Or, perhaps, Emily is expressing in him her belief that people should act according to their nature, like animals, and be held to no account? Heathcliff could therefore be seen as simply having a violent and fierce nature and living out his inevitability. A strange stance you may think from the daughter of a priest, and yet some have gone as far as to claim she was not a woman of faith at all. Fundamentally, it is this unknown surrounding Heathcliff that has made generations of readers fascinated, dissecting his character, pitying or reviling him.

Dr Charlotte Jones then led a discussion of the villains in Dickens’ Hard Times. In this we questioned what it meant to be a villain during the Industrial Revolution. Jones took us through a whirlwind history of the term, explaining how words that once denoted social rank became moral terms during the sixteenth century. The drastic changes brought about during the Victorian period raised questions once again of how we measure morality and it is this that Dickens bases his villains on in this novel. Thomas Gradgrind is the first character we meet and he is introduced to us as a villain, obsessed with utilitarianism, losing sight of what makes us human in his obsession with facts and figures. The fact he has fundamentally misunderstood Bentham’s philosophy make his character almost comically distressing, and somewhat sympathetic. He does not set out to make people miserable and yet his actions do, raising questions of what makes a villain.

On the other end of the spectrum is Bounderby who has created his life on a fantasy, lying about his past to fit into the ideal of the self-made man. Samuel Smiles’ Self Help was hugely popular at the time and emphasized the perceived difference between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, intended to stimulate action as it frames the gentleman as a moral status rather than an economic one. In pretending to have come from a life of poverty and abuse to create financial success for himself Bounderby is abusing his position and making a moral judgment on those less fortunate than himself. In having these two opposing villains Dickens broadens the definition of a villain.

Jones argues however, that labour is in fact the main villain in the novel. Dickens was writing for a specific audience – literate and wealthy enough to buy journals. In writing about a world alien to them he was attempting to open their eyes to the problems of factory work. It is widely acknowledged that working conditions at the time were dangerous and grueling and yet he seems to be suggesting that the most pervasive problem was the repetitious inevitability of life. The monotony wears the workers down and makes them miserable. In his description of Coketown everything looks the same, from school to hospital to gaol, the workers leave home at the exact same time every day, and in the descriptions you begin to feel how claustrophobic and tedious this is, the writing begins to reflect the repetitive monotony of life in industrial towns at the time.

Next, Barrie Bullen led us through the complex world of villains and Greek gods in Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The two main villains are Alec D’Urberville and Angel Clare. Alec claims to be a villain and yet Bullen believes he is merely ventriloquizing bourgeoisie values. There’s no doubt he doesn’t treat Tess well, regardless of what you believe happened the night he impregnated her. Yet, Bullen claims it is Angel’s rejection and desertion of her that is the far crueler villainy enacted on her.

He believes they are symbolic of something much more significant than mere stage villains. Likening them to Dionysus (Alec) and Apollo (Angel) he points out that even Tess and Angel’s courtship mirrors the solar year, beginning in Spring, attaining its passionate climax in summer and then the abandonment by winter. The scene at Stonehenge and discussion of sacrifice to the sun is appropriate as one in which Angel plays a part. In fact, this scene and the earlier scene in the Chase with Alec are carefully mirrored. Bullen pulls out the similarities in the ancient settings, the darkness, dominance of the man, and ultimately, of Tess’s sacrifice. It is in the final lines of the novel that Bullen argues reveals the true villain – the President of the Immortals.

In all of the novels so far it has been shown that their villains are not as straightforward as one might originally have thought, and indeed it is often not the characters that prove to be the most villainous but the environment in which the action takes place or the gods who kill humans for sport. In the final lecture of the day, delivered by Dr David Grylls, we perhaps see the most traditional antagonist in Count Fosco from Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White. Yet, his character is not all that simple, Collins himself described him as both ‘a brand-new villain’ and ‘the quintessence of a hecatomb of villains’. He meets many of the traits of a classic villain; he is intelligent, subtle, foreign, fallible, and attractive, and yet Collins created a character that he enjoyed writing and that readers often come to admire.

His intelligence is genuine, although disturbing for being devoid of morality. He plays against expectations, when providing Marian with medication the reader is led to assume he is poisoning her when he is not; he is aware of the suspicion he might encounter due to his nationality and he plays up to it, constantly keeping one step ahead of the rest of the characters. Collins can be seen to be mocking parochial xenophobia as it is the least intelligent characters that believe the stereotypes. Percival Glyde, who sat happily in the role of villain in the first volume of the novel, before Count Fosco appears, is soon shown to be clumsy and crude in comparison. As in Hard Times and a number of other Dickens novels, Collins uses opposing villains that complement each other in their disparity.

Similarly, as we saw with Heathcliff, Fosco is full of contradictions. He is physically large yet light on his feet. Once a radical, he abandons his beliefs for social pretension, a fact which ultimately leads to his downfall. His fondness for pets and in particular his mice, is a childlike image yet in every other way he appears cultured and sophisticated, possessing not just the fruits of study but also emotional intelligence. We saw throughout the day that a villain can take many forms, are often strengthened by a counterpart, and need some relatable qualities to make them believable and interesting.