This morning I read an article about a rape case, despite videotaped evidence, being dismissed based on an argument that boiled down to the victim’s being in no state of mind to consent, and therefore being incapable of not consenting. Such pronouncements are a reminder that women’s perceived sanity or validity of mind is so often something decided by men. The article bore chilling parallels with Wendy Wallace’s debut The Painted Bridge, set in an asylum for women in Victorian-era England.
It’s little wonder that the term “asylum” has given way to other names, as it’s certainly a misnomer, and no more so than the Lake House institution described in the book. There’s something so utterly chilling about this rambling mansion, so utterly removed from the unfettered clamour of Bedlam, that makes it seem as though incarceration here could be worse than anywhere else. It’s the juxtaposition of the pleasant, genteel life suggested by the fanciful grounds and elegant building with the horrors that go on within: madness, after all, in these times was linked with moral depravity, and the more popular cures seemed to involve violent exorcisms via blood letting, leeching, and purging. Indeed, the horrors wrought upon the residents within the institution are so perverse that one can’t help wonder whether its owners and employees aren’t well on the path to sociopathic insanity themselves. But Lake House is a private institution clinging on in a context of nationalised psychological care, and it must justify–and pay for–its continued existence.
These contrasts and more are explored when Anna Palmer arrives at Lake House, enrolled there due to her husband’s claims that she is mentally unstable, claims that appear to stem from the fact that Anna has a fierce independent and philanthropist streak that does not fit with her husband’s idea of what being a pastor’s wife should entail. The book follows Anna’s attempts to prove her sanity and rationality and her desperate need to escape Lake House and the oppressive, patriarchal shackles that it represents, in doing so exploring notions of sanity itself, and the application of entirely different social norms to females and males–not to mention the ease with which these can be applied by a dominant gender. There’s also the arbitrariness of judging what is sane and insane, a point that is underscored in numerous and chilling ways, perhaps most movingly when one of the Lake House researchers finds that a diagnostic approach he has long been convinced of is not only influenced by the patient, but also by the diagnostician. If one comes to the diagnostic table with prejudices and certain less than above-board motivations, then how is it possible for the outcome be one that’s impartial and accurate?
The Painted Bridge is not an easy book to read, and I suspect that it’s one that readers will appreciate more than they enjoy. Wallace’s writing is elegant and subtle, requiring the reader to work with a series of hints and allusions in order to pull together the wider picture of what is going on, and the way in which she examines the many facets of sanity and insanity against the lenses of class, gender and family is darkly fascinating. The daughter of the owner of Lake House, for example, though exhibiting symptoms far more questionable than Anna’s, simply cannot be insane purely because it’s not allowable given her position. A woman who has fallen in love with a man of non-white descent is clearly morally corrupt, and is sent to the asylum as a form of excommunication. Anna’s treatment, too, is an extended form of punishment by a husband who wishes to keep her in her place, and its results create an outward appearance of madness to those around her, thus perpetuating the assumptions that had committed in the first place.
Though I did find that the book flagged towards the end, and that certain plot elements, such as Anna’s flight to freedom with the asylum owner’s daughter, felt a little contrived, The Painted Bridge certainly offers food for thought regarding both sanity and the continued careful subjugation of women at the hands of their male counterparts–and there is a good deal here that does, worryingly, resonate our experiences today.
When walking home from dinner one night, my husband and I were hounded by a group of drunk youths who bellowed at my husband to go back to where he came from. This was only two years ago. I also remember as a teen in the late nineties being accosted by a drunk man while waiting for my train. He shouted at me, calling me a bloody wog.
Australia is a country of migrants, an ethnic melting pot of all sorts of backgrounds and cultures and languages and lifestyles. We’re also a country famous for our racism, and despite how often the phrase “tolerance”, a loaded term in itself, is bandied about, there’s a seething undercurrent of paranoia and suspicion that’s scarcely covered by a blanket of civility. It’s telling that in both the situations mentioned above alcohol was involved–alcohol is, after all, a truth serum.
Diane Armstrong’s fourth novel Empire Day takes us back to 1940s Bondi, a time rife with racial and cultural conflict. Large number of migrants have arrived from Europe, bringing with them unfamiliar customs and languages that rankle the locals, who fear their way of life being set awash amongst a wave of foreignness. With the memory of WWII still fresh, fear and suspicion are palpable, and these “New Australians” bring with them an unknown factor that immediately sets the locals on edge. Without knowing who they are and what they’re saying, they argue, how are we supposed to know whether they’re with us or against us?
Armstrong narrows her focus to the residents of Wattle Street, who fall into the groups of the white Australians, or their new migrant neighbours. Within these groups, of course, is a diversity of experiences rather than the homogeneity they may seem to comprise at face value. The white Australians represent different classes and religions, and these come into play as a way of signalling the divisions that have long marked this country. The migrant groups, too, are separated by language, religion, and war-time experience–and when Armstrong extends her focus beyond the street, we can see a further division between those migrants who have experienced the war in Europe, and those who experienced it within an Australian context.
The migrant experience is one that’s necessarily complex, and for every individual there’s an individual story. Armstrong creates a careful, thoughtful picture of these experiences from both the perspectives of those new to the country and those who aren’t. The book is rife with miscommunications, misunderstandings, and differences of approach and belief, but there are also those who seek a common ground, or who choose to reach out even when there is no evidence of that common ground. The novel is many-threaded, with the plethora of point of view characters used to provide both the depth and breadth needed to navigate these stories in a balanced manner, and although some characters do become lost in the dense fabric of the book, Armstrong largely manages to keep things intertwined enough that it’s easy to keep on track.
Probably the key plot-line is that of journalist cadet Ted, whose role on a local rag affords him the opportunity to be able to explore the migrant context, and the discrimination levelled towards migrants, in a meaningful way, and whose stilted love affair with a young Latvian girl highlights the cultural negotiation involved in bridging two very different life experiences. There’s also Sala, whose wartime experiences and resulting Stockholm syndrome continue to haunt her, and who is also wrestling with how to begin her studies in this new country. There’s the taciturn, reclusive Mr Emil, who lives in a sort of self-imposed exile from a guilty conscience over his war-time choices; and there’s Hania’s mother, whose own forced decision-making during this time continues to torment her. And there’s single mother and bartender Kath, and the angry and seemingly vindictive spinster Ms McNulty, both of whom have been outcast in their own way throughout their lives.
It’s a lot to keep track of, but these various narratives are cleverly interwound–sometimes, admittedly, too much so. Armstrong manages to make sympathetic all of these characters, no matter how diverse their backgrounds and personalities. Yes, there’s an amount of romanticism here, and as the book progresses some of the subplots take on a soap operaesque tone, but character is king, and this is something at which Armstrong excels.
Perhaps what is most keenly felt here is the fact that everyone within this book–and in Australia–is an outcast in some way, and that those dividing lines can be drawn so arbitrarily. Whether it’s due to language, culture, red colour, religion, occupation or disability, it’s easy for a society to become one where everyone is maligned for their differences–but the flip side of the coin could be just as easily embraced instead.
Although I felt that Empire Day ended a little too abruptly and tidily given its breadth of scope and the time put into building its characters and setting, it’s a rich, enjoyable read filled with relatable characters and insights into post-WWII Australia, and one I’d recommend. (less)
It is 1839, a year in which the lives of two notable Englishmen slowly begin to overlap and intertwine, despite being a distance of several continents...moreIt is 1839, a year in which the lives of two notable Englishmen slowly begin to overlap and intertwine, despite being a distance of several continents apart. Sir John Franklin, explorer and Governor of the then Van Diemen’s Land, adopts with his wife a young Indigenous girl called Mathinna in an effort to mould her in the ways of the middle-class English. But vibrant, lucid Mathinna fails to thrive under the stern, scientific hand of her adoptive parents, and soon becomes utterly lost to them, frustrating their soi-disant altruistic efforts at social conditioning. The thread of the second key individual in the narrative, although present in 1839, only begins to fully assert itself some years later: Lady Franklin, distraught at a manner of accusations levelled at her now missing explorer husband, approaches author Charles Dickens with a request that he help clear her husband’s name. Dickens, slipping slowly into madness after the death of his daughter, takes up the topic with a gusto that borders on obsession, and gradually becomes consumed by the story and the various exigencies to which it leads–the most important of which, to Dickens, is a young woman who begins slowly to take over his every thought.
My thoughts
Given its rather unsubtle title, it’s not difficult to pick up the major themes running through Wanting: through the various point of view characters who flight in and out of this novel, Flanagan addresses the binary of desire and control, explicating the universality of these concepts and the influence they have over those from different classes, societies, and cultures. The notorious frigidity of middle- and upper-class British culture is not only addressed, but is veritably (albeit tragically) parodied, with near enough to every scene containing a painful internal battle between the control and propriety demanded by social norms, and the Hyde-ian desire to act out against these. Lady Franklin’s adoption of Mathinna, for example, is carefully orchestrated under the banner of a scientific experiment–the Franklins deign to determine whether Mathinna can be brought up to pass appropriately in British society–but is underpinned by Lady Franklin’s desire to have a child of her own. These conflicting desires, of course, wreak havoc upon Mathinna herself, who is subjected to a confused and prolonged induction into this world. Similar notions are seen in Dickens’s desire to take up with his new lover, who represents a life anew, and in his all-consuming obsession with Lady Franklin’s story, something which is vastly at odds with his usual equating of work with money. Indeed, Dickens’s fervour is such that he begins to find his every waking hour devoted to the story such that he begins to become it, and he spends a good part of his day wandering the streets of London in search of elucidation. This wandering brings to mind Poe’s chilling The Man of the Crowd, highlighting Dicken’s obsessive desire and the fruitlessness of his efforts.
Wanting also brings to mind Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves, with its parallel narratives, use of sybils and precognition, and its terse teasing out of societal norms. Like A Fringe of Leaves, Wanting involves a good deal of moral ambiguity, with characters deceiving themselves about the felicity and the value of their actions. The most obvious of these, of course, is the case of Mathinna: the Franklins tell themselves that their efforts with Mathinna are a noble experiment that will further understanding of Indigenous people, and pride themselves on their ability to overcome the challenges they face as a result. However, there is an almost chilling ambiguity here: the Franklins’ efforts to inure Mathinna into white, middle-class society typically degenerate into emotional and physical abuse, until Mathinna is unable to withstand the onslaught. At this point, the Franklins begin to turn their awful self-deception in another direction, telling themselves that such an experiment could never have worked in the first place, with the final outcome being proof of this fact. This same self-deception is seen in the actions of the “protector” of the Tasmanian Indigenous people, George Robinson, who kills Mathinna’s father and presents his head to the Franklins in the name of science. The whole book is heavy with the conflict between the uprightness of learned English society and the shameful wrongdoing committed in the name of furthering this society.
Indeed, this conflict is evident in its effect upon some of the main characters: Mathinna, again, being the most obvious example. Singled out by the Franklins for her joyful, light-hearted ways, she is carefully moulded to meet the demands of English middle-class life, but soon finds that she is unable to pass in either culture. Her desire to remain barefooted is a constant reminder of this: by casting off her shoes she refuses wholesale integration into the world of the Franklins, but similarly her capitulation to other aspects of Franklin-esque life mark her as an outsider in her own community. Mathinna loses her ability to speak to the land, but never becomes more than a curiosity in the world of the Franklins. Mathinna, then, exists at the fringes of both societies, lost and purposeless, with an identity that flits between her two worlds, but never truly straddles them. This conflict of identity is seen too in the character of Lady Jane, who is representative more widely of the English middle class, and whose desires see her torn in several ways, and whose need to act within societal norms see her subjugating certain essential desires to those that seem more appropriate, but which are just as, if not more, damaging than the first type. Similarly, Dickens struggles to maintain his identity as a father, a husband, and a writer, slowly losing himself as he does within an inappropriate passion for his work and the circumstances that surround it.
From the above, it’s no doubt clear that Wanting is a thematically fascinating novel, if a little brazen in the way that it, like a mugger in some London backstreet, delights in beating the reader over the head with its moral beliefs. The writing, too, is exquisite, with Flanagan delighting in his thoughtful, beauteous prose and allowing it to break free of editorial restrains in order to stampede across the page in a barrage of long and winding sentences and smoky metaphors. For me, however, the major shortcoming of Wanting is to do with its characters: other than some brief moments of sympathy or empathy, I found myself struggling to relate to them in any meaningful way. The characters remain little more than interesting historical figures, and never really feel like people. This is perhaps the result of Flanagan’s tug-of-war between denial and indulgence, with his painfully restrained, objective way of working with his characters no doubt a further effort to emphasise the results of the two. Still, this biographical, removed way of writing makes it difficult to truly connect with the book, which is a shame, because it is a strong work on many other levels. Perhaps my final gripe is the tenuous way in which the stories of the Franklins and Dickens are eventually linked. The author admits himself that the link between the two is slight, and one can’t help but wonder whether subordinating historical accuracy in the name of narrative might have been a better approach.
Conclusions
Wanting is exquisite on many levels, and offers a fascinating thematic counterpoint that problematises colonial life and norms against the wider backdrop of 19th century social norms, with repression, desire, and indulgence, and the consequences of succumbing to, or failing to succumb to, these notions key to the unfolding of events in the book. In his critique of this society, Flanagan provides a narrative of contrasts, although perhaps rather too blatantly on occasion, and offers a good deal of food for thought in terms of the “civilised” vs “uncivilised” dichotomy. For me, though, Wanting feels a little cold and removed, with Flanagan’s almost pathologically detached approach to his characters resulting in some tough work on the part of the reader.(less)
My family is one that’s full of strange rifts and cracks: a grandmother who’s sealed h...moreThis review originally appeared at www.readinasinglesitting.com.
My family is one that’s full of strange rifts and cracks: a grandmother who’s sealed herself off from both her own family and her husband’s after being slighted as a young woman; an uncle who will drive three hours to put in an appearance at a family event and then hightail it after he’s finished his first beer; cousins at war over perceived parental preference during their childhood years–a series of events culminating in a massive blow-up at a recent wedding; and perhaps worst of all, a frosty, distant toleration of each other.
The old saw of blood being thicker than water has nothing to do with standing by people because they’re your family and you’re as a result connected by some lovely deep bond. It’s about being stuck with your kin no matter how awfully you treat each other. (After all, you might need a blood transfusion one day, and guess who’s most likely to be a good match?) And all those iniquities, abuses of trust, and brutal comments resonate down through the generations, slowly poisoning whole family trees until their leaves curl up and their branches slump.
Needless to say, Courtney Sullivan’s Maine is readily identifiable for most anyone who has wallowed in the rueful depths of the familial trough. Told from the perspective of four women from the Kellerher clan, it’s a painful look at the myriad ways in which our families influence the types of lives we lead, but also at how our own perspectives can be so very coloured by our own experiences–or at least the stories that we tell ourselves about that experience.
The family matriarch is eighty-something Alice, a stern and unforgiving woman who feels simultaneously abandoned and exploited by her family, whom she rarely sees save during the summer. Her daughter Kathleen treads warily around her, having been the subject of Alice’s acid tongue after having leaving her marriage and admitting to her alcoholism. Daughter-in-law Anne Marie is the golden child interloper, a Stepford Wife-style homemaker who can do no wrong in Alice’s eyes, but who has a rough past longing to rear its bogan head. Maggie, Kathleen’s daughter, is a writer who appears to the others to have it all–a successful career in New York–but who has found out that she’s pregnant to her deadbeat boyfriend. And as it’s summer, all of them are about to converge upon Alice’s beach house in Maine.
The Maine of the title is less about the physical place than it is an idea: the notion of “returning home” and reuniting with one’s clan. And as such it’s probably fitting that the majority of the narrative takes place in the lead-up to this pilgrimage rather than in Maine itself: it’s in the preparation that we can see the hesitation and ambivalence each character feels about not only returning to Maine, but also their place in the family itself. This is a novel that’s largely driven by internal narratives rather than a strong external plot, and generally it’s a skilled work, with Sullivan cleverly teasing out various “grass is greener” ideas and dashing them quite violently with the next point of view switch.
Initially I enjoyed the author’s deft contrasting of different characters’ perceptions of their relatives’ lives and the truth behind their own actions, but after a while the approach does begin to feel a little contrived and repetitive. We know that if Alice is wounded by her family’s treatment of her she’s probably done something nasty to deserve it; if Kathleen is proud of her daughter Maggie’s independence, Maggie probably thinks it’s not all cracked up to be; if Maggie is longing for domestic servitude a la Anne Marie, then Anne Marie is probably about ready to hurl some crockery across the room and so on.
The reliance on dark pasts and prior hurt also begins to feel a little melodramatic, and perhaps that’s why I was most taken by Anne Marie’s character. Unlike the others, who are well and truly in touch with their individual narratives of woe, Anne Marie is doing her best to put on a brave smile and forge ahead. As such, she seems as though she has the most to lose; not to mention that her position in the family is fairly precarious given that she’s only a part of it through marriage.
Unfortunately, while there’s some lovely, witty writing and some fascinating characterisation on display, the novel is quite bloated and unwieldy, and undermines itself by delving back into the past to try to shed some more light on its point of view characters–even though the reader can glean quite a lot just from what is and isn’t said by the characters themselves. The ending, too, is unsatisfying, lacking the punch that we might have expected based on all of the ills and complaints stirred up here. I can’t help but feel that this would have been a stronger book if it had been pruned back and its narration kept to the present day. That said, if your family is as dysfunctional as mine, you’ll find it all a bit cathartic: life could be worse.(less)
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