Fingersmith

Show Notes

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters is a Victorian crime novel centered around two young women: Susan Trinder, who grew up in a house of thieves, and Maud Lilly, a lady who is trapped by her uncle in a macabre house called Briar, and compelled to work for him as a secretary. When it was initially published in 2002, Fingersmith made waves for its central lesbian relationship, as well as its shocking twist in the second act. The book was critically lauded: shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, launching Sarah Waters into literary stardom. Through popular adaptations like 2005’s BBC miniseries directed by Aisling Walsh, and 2016’s The Handmaiden, directed by Park Chan Wook, the story of Fingersmith has found a broader audience, and is widely beloved to this day.

Books Referenced

Prisoner of My Desire by Johanna Lindsey

Stormfire by Christine Monson

The Flesh and the Devil by Teresa Denys

Emma by Jane Austen

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale

Wolf’s Lady by Mary Butler

Works Cited

‘My diabolical delight’ – Sarah Waters on her rip-roaring, salacious classic Fingersmith

Sarah Waters on writing: “‘If I waited for inspiration to strike, it would never happen!’”

Transcript

Chels

Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that would reluctantly put you in the madhouse. My name is Chels, I’m a book collector and the writer of the romance substack The Loose Cravat. Emma:

Emma

I’m Emma, a law librarian writing about justice and romance at the substack, Restorative Romance.

Beth

I’m Beth I’m a grad student and I write at the substack Ministrations.

Chels

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters is a Victorian crime novel centered around two young women: Susan Trinder, who grew up in a house of thieves, and Maud Lilly, a lady who is trapped by her uncle in a macabre house called Briar, and compelled to work for him as a secretary. When it was initially published in 2002, Fingersmith made waves for its central lesbian relationship, as well as its shocking twist in the second act. The book was critically lauded: shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, launching Sarah Waters into literary stardom.

Chels

In a 2006 interview with Michelle McGrane, Sarah Waters said that as a child “the stories and poems I wrote were usually dreadful gothic pastiches – so when I look at a novel like Fingersmith I see that nothing much has changed.” She turned to academic writing as a teen, and it wasn't until she was getting her PHD in lesbian and gay historical fiction that she became interested in crafting a novel of her own. She started in the Victorian era: 1998’s, Tipping the Velvet, 1999’s Affinity, and then finally 2002’s Fingersmith.

Chels

Following Fingersmith, Waters moved on to 20th century historical fiction with The Night Watch, The Little Stranger, and The Paying Guests. Though she has finally “scratched the Victorian itch” and moved on artistically, in the 20 year anniversary edition of Fingersmith, Waters said, “If I had to save a book of mine for posterity, this is probably the one I would choose.” Through popular adaptations like 2005’s BBC miniseries directed by Aisling (ASH-ling) Walsh, and 2016’s The Handmaiden, directed by Park Chan Wook, the story of Fingersmith has found a broader audience, and is widely beloved to this day.

Chels

Okay. Yes. I guess we all have a little bit different familiarity with Fingersmith. I'm guessing you all knew The Handmaiden before we read this book. Is that correct?

Beth

Yeah, I watched The Handmaiden first and then realized it was an adaptation. So that's my first interaction with Sarah Waters.

Emma

Yeah, I had both read the book and seen The Handmaiden before, but a long time ago. And I can't remember which one I did first. I thought I had seen The Handmaiden first, but I didn't realize how late it had come out. So I think I maybe read the novel first. I went to a women's college and was an English major. So this book was a big hit. In the early 2010s amongst English majors at women's colleges. And so it was definitely in the milieu of what people were reading, even if I had maybe read it later.

Beth

But rightly so, I'm still blown away. You listed off publishing dates for each of her books, and I read a little bit about her research process and how much she immerses herself in the world. She reads letters from the era. She's doing research. So it's just I'm blown away that she had those three books come out so closely together.

Chels

Yeah. She has this video I was watching her where she's going through her notes for Fingersmith. And she was looking through pages and pages and pages of Victorian slang that she had handwritten out, and she would just pick which ones felt right. And that's, I think, why this book reads so well is because she is very deliberate in what she chooses to take with her. She's not going to just throw everything that she's ever researched into this book. She's going to be very deliberate about it.

Beth

Yeah, I feel like you absorb the research and then distill down to what you need in the book. But I feel like what she did is so hard to recreate. You want to recreate the way people talk, but you still want it to be accessible, still land with a modern audience. I feel like people struggle with this.

Chels

I've been calling people pigeons since I've read this. I'm like, She's such a pigeon.

Emma

It definitely has Booker Prize. I know it was a for the Booker Prize. It has Booker Prize vibes to it, which I associate with- Oh, for sure. Very heavily researched historical novels. Mantel.

Chels

They're not always- A Hilary Mantel.

Emma

That, but The English patient, Mantell, AS Byatt's Possession, literary fiction fiction that is very in the history of England, because Booker Prize is an English prize. It just has that literary fiction. When people talk about literary fiction, which people use so broadly, people call Emily Henry literary fiction and not romance. It's like, What do we- Who's calling? Words have to have meanings. This has a literary feel to it that I associate with Booker Prize books, which I think you could use that in a derogatory way sometimes about Booker Prize books, where it's like they're high on their own supply. But this book, it works for, I think, really well.

Chels

Yeah. And so I also started with... I saw The Handmaiden before I had read any of Sarah Waters, but I didn't read Fingersmith first. I actually read Tipping the Velvet And the way that book makes me feel absolutely feral. Have you read Tipping the Velvet, or are you familiar?

Emma

I've not. That one is in the same milieu, but that one I never picked up.

Chels

You might like it, Emma, because the heroine is an oyster girl.

Emma

I love oysters.

Chels

And you love oysters.

Emma

Okay, now I'm on board.

Chels

Yeah. That book is just the central relationship felt very like the longing and the obsession of it was just like something that I don't think I had really read lesbian fiction at that time. And so it was such a game changer for me. I was really moved by it. And then, of course, I read Fingersmith.

Beth

Have you read those two?

Chels

Yeah, those are the only two I've read. Affinity is the other A Victorian, which I was reading the summary for it after I finished this reread of Fingersmith. And I'm like, I have to read this. It's a medium, I think. It was spiritual.

Emma

That is really up our alley.

Chels

Yeah, we love that.

Beth

I feel like Reformed Rakes is about to enter the Sarah Waters era. She was going to go through her whole backlist.

Chels

It was so good. Yeah. I feel like, I don't know, this year, too. I read Hillary Mantel this year. I read my first Mary Renaud this year, revisiting Sarah Waters. I'm just really loving this type of historical fiction. And all of them are really tuning each other's horns. They were all fans of each other. Well, I don't know if Mary Renaud might have been dead by the time. She's an older, older generation. Yeah, Yeah. So I think associating them... Mantel and Waters were very inspired by Renaud, so I could see that. Anyways, listeners, I think this is probably the only episode where I would say, if you haven't read the book yet or watched any of the adaptations, you might want to reconsider that. It doesn't matter which one you do, but I think that you should do one of them because you will enjoy it so much more than listening to the recap first.

Emma

Yeah, I endorse that. I think having at least one experience... I mean, you can only have one because the twist is similar in all the adaptations. But giving yourself the gift of the reveal, I think it would be worth it.

Chels

Yeah. So if that's you, maybe pause for now and then come back to us later. If that's not you, I'm going to walk you through a recap so that we can all be on the same page for the discussion.

Chels

“My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder. People called me Sue. I know the year I was born in, but for many years I did not know the date, and took my birthday at Christmas. I believe I am an orphan. My mother I know is dead. But I never saw her, she was nothing to me. I was Mrs Sucksby’s child, if I was anyone’s; and for father I had Mr Ibbs, who kept the locksmith’s shop, at Lant Street, in the Borough, near to the Thames.” The house on Lant Street is something much seedier than locksmith’s shop: Mr. Ibbs works as a fence, purchasing stolen goods from thieves, and Mrs. Sucksby is a baby farmer, a Victorian term for a sort of for-profit orphanage. Sue Trinder’s biological mother was a thief, dropping her baby off at Mrs. Sucksby’s while dreaming of a grand haul. Her last assignment was a botch job: resulting in Sue’s mother accidentally killing the man she tried to steal from, getting caught, then being sentenced to hang. Mrs. Sucksby, who watched babies for a living and wouldn’t see another dime out of Sue, took a shine to her. “She might have left me crying in a draughty crib.” Sue thought. “Instead she prized me so, she would not let me on the prig for fear a policeman should have got me. She let me sleep beside her, in her own bed. She shined my hair with vinegar. You treat jewels like that.” Along with Mr. Ibbs, Mrs. Sucksby, and an assortment of babies, Sue lives on Lant Street with John Vroom, a young boy who has a similar origin story as Sue but with less luck: Mrs. Sucksby did not love and care for him and gave him up to a parish, but he kept coming back to do odd-jobs. There’s also another resident named Dainty, a twenty-three year-old redhead who Sue says is “more or less a simpleton.” When Sue turns seventeen, a man named The Gentleman shows up to Lant Street. His real name is Richard Rivers – he was raised a gentleman but impoverished by his father’s gambling and then took to thieving and forgery. His ability to blend in with swells made conning them quite easy, and he has a new job that he wants Sue’s help with. The job goes like this: There’s an old man, a gentleman scholar, that lives in an out-of-the-way sort of house in an out-of-the-way sort of village. He has a library filled the brim with rare books, and those books are all he cares about. He’s working on a dictionary of all of his books, he wants help mounting the pictures in his books. He hires The Gentleman for this. There’s not much worth stealing in the house, but the old man has a very valuable niece. The young women, who is roundabout Sue’s age, is an heiress. She has a certain fortune that her uncle can’t touch, and she can only take hold of once she is married. The old man keeps her close: using her as a secretary. The Gentleman wants to surreptitiously marry the girl for her fortune, then discard her at a madhouse once he’s rich. The young woman – who has come of age alone in a musty house, is  of course, interested in The Gentleman. He’s giving her private lessons in painting, trying to get in her good graces, but eventually the young woman’s maid gets in the way: hovering too closely. The Gentleman plans to get rid of the maid and replace her with Sue. Sue will then coax the heiress into falling in love with The Gentleman, and once the deed is done, the Gentleman will give Sue a portion of the profits. Sue agrees to the scheme, thinking she’ll share in the profits with her found family at Lant Street. The Gentleman gives her more details: the book-obsessed old man is named Christopher Lilly, and his niece is named Maud. They live west of London in a house called Briar. Gentleman plans to send Sue to Briar alone while he finishes up his business in London. Maud’s former maid is ill and is returning to Ireland to stay with her family, so the Gentleman writes to Maud informing her that he has found a suitable replacement in Sue. The Gentleman helps the Lant Street residents prepare Sue for the con: they comb her hair and dress her up like a lady, and have her dress Dainty in a shimmy and corset to practice her future role. He tells her that she needs to call Maud Miss Lilly, Mr. Lilly must be called Sir. At Briar, the Gentleman goes by the name Richard Rivers, and Sue will be Susan Smith. Sue boards the train for Briar, but it ends up being very delayed. When she finally gets there, she meets Mrs. Stiles, a surly housekeeper who is visibly annoyed that Maud Lilly hired Sue, circumventing her authority. Sue is uncomfortable her first night at Briar: she misses Mrs Sucksby and Lant Street, and finds Briar unsettlingly quiet. She also struggles to get along with the other servants: her attempts at friendliness - like bringing her food tray downstairs to save the maid an extra trip - are interpreted as snobbish criticism. When Sue is introduced to Maud for the first time, she is unimpressed by her dainty, unobtrusive appearance and thinks that she’s “a pigeon that knew nothing.” Maud is enthusiastic about meeting Sue, and tries to bond over the fact that they’re both orphans before peppering Sue with questions about what London is like. Maud is incredibly naïve and isolated, and when she tells Sue about her uncle’s library, Sue sheepishly confesses that she doesn’t know how to read. One day Sue goes to the library to meet Maud, and Maud is at work with her uncle. It’s a strange scene: Mr. Lilly, the uncle, is wearing a velvet coat with a velvet cap, his tongue blackened from licking his ink-stained fingers in order to turn book pages. He is upset by Sue’s intrusion, asking Maud if she can make Sue be silent or sort, and Maud answers she can. When Sue moves toward Maud, Mr. Lilly yells “The finger girl, the finger!” Sue initially thinks that he is having a fit, but Maud shows her a brass hand with a pointing finger set into the floorboards. This is, essentially, a “Do Not Pass” sign for the servants: Mr. Lilly does not want them to spoil his books. Sue starts to like Maud: she thinks that she is an original, but does not think that she’s half-way simple, which is how Gentleman described her. Sue asks a parlormaid if Maud does nothing but read, and the maid responds by saying, “Her uncle won’t let her. That’s how much he prizes her. Won’t hardly let her out–fears she’ll break in two. It’s him, you know, that keeps her all the time in gloves.” Maud almost never takes her pristine white gloves off of her hands, something Sue thought was odd. Maud begins to have nightmares, and calls for Agnes, the name of her old maid. Sue arrives to soothe her and tell her she was only dreaming, and Maud begs Sue to stay with her overnight, and Sue agrees. They sleep together in the same bed, and Sue thinks “Her breath was sweet. Her hands and arms were warm. Her face was smooth as ivory or alabaster. In a few weeks time, I thought– if our plot worked– she would be lying in the bed of a madhouse. Who would be there to be kind to her, then?” Then Gentleman arrives. Maud is buzzing with excitement over Gentleman’s appearance at Briar, and the Gentleman restarts his painting lessons with her. Sue watches on, and trying to encourage Maud to reciprocate the Gentleman’s affections. At times Maud seems like she’s enraptured by Gentleman, and other times it seems like she’s afraid of him. Sue, who is growing overly fond of Maud, lapses in her role. The job is taking longer than expected - Gentleman continues to teach Maud painting and take her for strolls, but he is barely making headway with her. Finally the “fever breaks,” and Maud lets Gentleman kiss her. “I should have been glas to see him do it.” Sue thinks. “I thought of her smooth white fingers, her soft white nails. –I had cut them, that morning. I had dressed her and brushed her hair. I had been keeping her, neat and in her looks – all for the sake of this moment. All for him. Now, against the dark of his jacket and hair, she seemed so neat– so slight, so pale– I thought she might break. I thought he might swallow her up, or bruise her.” The Gentleman starts putting increased pressure on Maud – telling her that he can’t wait to haver her, that it will kill him. Sue does her job to coax Maud into complacency, but she’s getting more and more uncomfortable in her role. The Gentleman notices Sue’s reluctance and confronts her, and threatens to cut her out of the deal. Sue threatens to tell Maud the truth, but the Gentleman immediately pokes a hole in this plan. “Go ahead.” he says. “ANd why not tell her, while you are about it, that I have a tail with a point, and cloven hooves? So I would have, were I to act my crimes upon the stage. No-one expects to meet a man like me in life, however. She would choose not to believe you. She cannot afford to believe you! For she has come as far as we have, and must marry me now, or be more or less ruined. She must do as I say– or stay here, and do nothing, for the rest of her life. Do you think she’ll do that?” Sue agrees with this logic, and continues to coax Maud along into the plan to run off with, and marry, the Gentleman. One night, Maud asks Sue to help her prepare for marriage by showing her what happens after - she asks her to tell her what to expect in the marriage bed. Sue begins to explain, then she kisses her. It grows steadily more intimate, and Sue calls Maud a pearl. The next morning, Maud asks Sue about a sweet dream that she had, with Sue in it. Sue lies to her: she says she dreamed of Gentleman - Mr. Rivers. She knows she could confess her love, but then Maud would see her as a villain. Sue goes along with the plan instead. The getaway is successful, The Gentleman marries Maud, and they go to stay at an inn owned by a woman named Mrs. Cream. After her wedding night, Maud appears to deteriorate, which is great for The Gentleman’s plan. They bring in a doctor to examine Maud, and he interviews Sue about Maud’s madness. Thoroughly depressed, Maud gives Sue her silk gown, and tells her that she looks beautiful. Sue packs Maud’s belongings for the asylum, and she, Maud, and the Gentleman are greeted by the doctor in front of the building. He says “Mrs. Rivers,” and he holds his hand out - but not to Maud. He holds his hand out to Sue. Stunned, Sue does not realize what is happening until Maud adopts a new voice and says, “My own poor mistress. Oh! My heart is breaking.” Sue has been double-crossed. “You thought her a pigeon.” Sue thinks. “Pigeon, my arse. That bitch knew everything. She had been in on it from the start.” Part Two We cut to Maud’s point of view. “The start, I think I know too well. It is the first of my mistakes.” Maud remembers fantasizing about her mother’s death in the asylum. She can’t know what happened, because her mother died in childbirth, but she thinks about the blood running, the clocks slowing down, and how she would have weeped as a baby. Maud spent the first ten years of her life in that asylum, being raised by a bevy of nurses who took a shine to her. It was an unconventional upbringing but it was also when she was happiest – when she turned ten her uncle arrived to take her back to Briar. The staff at Briar is unbelievably cruel to a precocious young Maud - her uncle values silence and obedience, and Maud wants nothing more than to go back to her former life. Mrs Stiles, the housekeeper that Maud told Sue was a motherlike figure to her - is actually her main tormenter. She delights in punishing Maud physically. Maud’s uncle tells her that he’s brought her to Briar to make a secretary out of her, but the role is not an academic dictionary, as Sue was led to believe. Maud’s uncle collects erotic literature – along with the more straightforward yet tedious tasks, he has Maud read the books out loud to his scholarly friends when they visit. Maud - a formerly vivacious young girl - is now living in limbo. Her uncle carefully guards her every move, cutting her off from the outside world. “I am as worldly as the grossest rakes of fiction,” Maud thinks. “But have never, since I first came to my uncle’s house, been further than the walls of its park. I know everything. I know nothing.” One day, The Gentleman, who Maud only knows by the name of Richard Rivers, arrives. He’s young and handsome, but Maud is largely uninterested until he approaches her frankly. He tells her that he wanted to seduce her for her inheritance, but he could immediately tell that this plan wouldn’t work, so instead he has another idea. He tells her that she can become someone new: he will enlist a gullible girl as her maid for a con, and after they marry, that girl will become the new Mrs. Rivers, doomed to live out the rest of her days in an asylum, while Maud is a free, and rich woman. “You wish to make a villain of me too?” Maud asks. Richard nods, “I do, but then, I think you are half a villain already.” First, she has to get rid of her old maid, Agnes. Richard invades Agnes’s chambers at night, and the next day Agnes, with swollen lips, quits and leaves for Ireland. Richard goes to London and sends Sue, the “crooked girl” whose reputation will help bury her,  as the new maid. “You must understand, I have determined to despise her. For how otherwise, will I be able to do what I must do?” Maud thinks. But she grows to love Sue - a young woman who is direct, uncouth, and yet kind in a way she has never known.  She imagines that Sue is similarly struggling with her role as the harbinger of Maud’s downfall. She hopes that Sue will confess her love, that Sue will stop pushing her toward Mr. Rivers, but Sue never does. The long weeks at Briar, the delay toward the inevitable, is not caused by a reluctant Sue – its caused by a reluctant Maud. Maud contemplates confessing to Sue, and escaping with her. After they make love, after Sue calls Maud a pearl, she thinks they’ve hit a breakthrough. Sue disappoints her and pushes her toward Richard again - and Maud realizes that a confession will not bring Sue to her side, it’s more likely to send her back to Briar with Mr. Rivers, leaving Maud alone with her uncle once more. “And so you see it is love–not scorn, not malice; only love–that makes me harm her, in the end.” Maud escapes according to plan, marries Richard Rivers, and they drop Sue off at the asylum. What happens next is a shock: Richard Rivers does not take Maud to his house – he takes her to Mrs. Sucksby’s at Lant Street. Maud is confused and enraged by this deception – and she learns that her whole life has been a lie. Maud Lilly was not born at an asylum - the woman she believes to be her mother gave birth at Mrs. Sucksby’s baby farm. When her brother found out where she lived and threatened to bring her back to Briar, she coaxed Mrs. Sucksby to swap the babies: one of Mrs. Sucksby’s babies will live as a lady, and her baby will grow up without the burden of her family. She signs a document illuminating the scheme, outlining that both the baby farmed girl, and her true daughter, will inherit her fortune when they turn eighteen. Susan was this woman’s daughter, and Maud was the impoverished baby that Mrs. Sucksby used as a swap. Mrs. Sucksby and Richard Rivers, The Gentleman, had been working together this whole time to cut both girls out of the inheritance. They keep Maud trapped at Lant street, and her fate is even crueler than it was at Briar. She’s had a taste of freedom, but now she’s trapped in a smaller house, hating herself and missing Sue. She tries to escape but it goes awry, so she returns to Lant Street, where she’s constantly pried with gin, to live out the rest of her tedious days. Part Three. We return to Sue’s point of view in the asylum. Every attempt she makes to convince doctors that she is not Maud Lilly is thwarted: even her inability to write, which directly contradicts Maud Lilly’s role as secretary, is seen as a decline in her mental state. She’s subject to unbelievable cruelties from the nurses, who believe that she’s mocking them by pretending to be lower class. They’ve also learned, from the real Maud Lilly’s interview with Dr. Christie, that Sue is sexually attracted to women, and when they taunt her with this Sue has a breakdown. As time wears on, Sue gets disoriented in the asylum and loses her will to escape, until one day Charles, who was a knife-boy at Briar, comes to visit her. When he was at Briar, Charles took a shine to Gentleman, and he decided that he wanted to work for him. Coincidentally, Charles’ aunt is Mrs. Cream, the innkeeper that housed Sue, Maud, and Gentleman, and finds out that Maud is in the asylum. He hopes that Maud will tell him where Gentleman is, but instead he’s confronted with Sue, who coaxes him to help her escape, telling him that she will take him to London afterwards. Charles purchases a blank key and a file and brings it to Sue, and Sue uses the tools to unlock the doors of the asylum. She and Charles have a long, arduous journey to London. When they get there, Sue is surprised to see Maud Lilly through the window at Lant Street. Sue has Charles write and deliver a letter to Mrs. Sucksby telling her what happened, but Charles returns distraught, saying that Maud intercepted it. Maud sends Charles back with a playing card – the Two of Hearts, representing lovers. Sue thinks Maud is mocking  her, so she storms the house with a knife, confronting Maud, and the rest of the Lant Street residents, telling them of Maud’s deceit. Mrs. Sucksby pretends that she’s hearing it for the first time, and tries to calm Sue down, but Sue grows more agitated. Maud tries to warn her to leave before Gentleman gets back, but Sue doesn’t listen. “I came here to kill you,” Sue says. Maud replies with: “You came to Briar to do that” The Gentleman returns, and he’s surprised to find Sue there. He starts to tell her about Mrs. Sucksby’s deceit, but Maud stops him, thinking that this will devastate Sue, who thinks of Mrs. Sucksby as a mother. Suddenly, Sue releazies that she no longer has the knife - a scuffle has broken out between Mrs. Sucksby, Maud, and the Gentleman, and ends with Gentleman getting stabbed in the stomache. He bleeds out on the Lant Street floor, and when the cops arrive, Mrs. Sucksby confesses to stabbing Gentleman, and tells them that Maud and Sue are innocent. Richard Rivers was no gentleman. After his death, they discover he was actually the son of a draper. He becomes a sort of folk hero in the papers, and Mrs. Sucksby is sentenced to hang. After Mrs. Sucksby’s death, Sue collects her affects, which include a black gown. Inside the gown she finds the letter from Marianne Lilly explaining the baby switch, and Sue realizes that she was never Mrs. Sucksby’s beloved child, but Susan Lilly, a lady’s daughter and a pawn that Mrs. Sucksby planned to use to enrich herself one day. Sue is devastated, mostly because this means that she let Maud go. Desperately wanting to be with Maud, she makes her way to Briar, where she finds Maud mostly alone in the large house. Her uncle had died, and now Maud has taken on writing erotic literature for a publication called The Pearl. “What does it say” Sue asks. “It is filled with all the words for how I want you” Maud answers.

Chels

In the 20th anniversary edition of Fingersmith, Sarah Waters talks about drawing inspiration from the sensation novels of the 1860s, from authors like Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. She says, quote, What appealed to me about these worlds was the room they give to marginalized voices, the way they overturn our stereotypes of Victorian gentility. Mayhew’s interviewees include hawkers, vagrants, orphan children, Figures on the edges of mainstream culture, but with a complex culture of their own. The sensation novel teams with, quote, Ladies in Peril, vulnerable women and girls who are victims on a grand scale. But it's also full of female protagonists who are swindlers and schemers in their own right, women who are glorious transgressors of social norms. So I've been thinking a lot about how Fingersmith fits into my view of romance. It's not a genre of romance, obviously, but it is a love story story with a happily ever after.

Chels

And I find that I am getting something from Fingersmith that I don't typically get from historical romance. When Waters talks about the, quote, Stereotypes of Gentility, I think I get closer to figuring it out. There's a bite to her work. Like a meanness to it. When she says, Women who are glorious transgressors of social norms, she's talking about crime for crime's sake, not a precocious hoyden that refuses to ride sidesaddle. I find this so thrilling, and I love how I don't have neat feelings about the characters, even though I love both Maud and Sue. Anyways, what do you think about this quote and how Fingersmith works as a romantic story?

Beth

I'm often annoyed with how female characters are written in genre romance. They only engage in certain transgressions. I think the example you use, Chels, is a good one with this riding side saddle. And it's not surprising to me that often the social transgressions of female characters do is often to look more progressive to the modern reader or to look more impressive to the male characters instead of truly engaging with what's spurring that character to go against social norms. I'm not surprised. Waters likes Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Braddon's most famous work, Lady Audley's Secret, is about a woman who is a bigomist and leaves her child, like abandons her child. She attempts murder. Commonly, critics look at the story as a critique of Victorian domestic roles. You said you don't have neat feelings about Maud and Sue, which I think we'd both agree is intentional. How can you not have complex feelings when two characters both attempt to put the other in an asylum. To me, this entire situation, I think, ultimately magnifies their humanity. What would you do if you were trapped by your uncle with no hopes of controlling your own life? What would you do if you were trapped by poverty?

Beth

And I need to add here that they're both young. They're both 17, and to me, this is like first love on steroids. And I think in a genre romance, Sue would be a maid to mod, and they would gently fall in love. But Water's test their love. They both betrayed each other and they're still in love. They think their relationship is still worth saving. I'm swooning over this. I think this is fantastic.

Emma

I'm going to think about the social transgressions of a female character that's supposed to make her look more progressive? Because I do feel like that's something that maybe we've lost from older romances. Because I'm thinking about some of the books that I read for the Newgate episode with female characters who ended up in Newgate. There were some from the '80s. I'm thinking of one, I think it's called Wolf's Lady. I don't know if we even talked about it in the episode. I don't think I finished it in time for the episode, but the female character ends up in prison. It's for a crime that she didn't actually do, but she then gets it's criminogenic, then she starts engaging with crime. But there's no upside for it. She's not a feminist character because she's engaging in crime. She's engaging in crime because she's been put in prison and is engaging in crime because that's now her livelihood. That's something I I feel like that characterization, I do feel like we've lost a little bit from older romances. I'm going to be thinking about that now as I read more female characters. Are they doing it to seem impressive to me or are they doing it because it makes sense for the character?

Beth

Nothing drives me up the wall more than a female character wanting to dress in men's clothing just because. It's not gender identity exploration or they're trying to access some... Like a spy or something. That is the case sometimes, but sometimes it reads to me as just, Why I want to wear But why? Why do you want to wear pants?

Emma

There's the great fashion account on Twitter, Cora Harrington, Lingerie Addict. I love her. But she always talks about how when people do tight lacing in corsets in movies, it's like, this is so inaccurate because it's like a bra. You're just using it. It's like it would be supportive. People did not tight lace all the time. It just was like a thing that you did. It wasn't this cage of women. Whenever people talk about not wearing corsets in books and they talk about it, it's like a cage. Where We're conflating things here.

Chels

It's like, what is your alternative then? Is it just bra-less? Which, I mean, fair to do that.

Emma

You're wearing a dress with no seams, no zipper, you're probably going to want some support of something, like stays or a corset or a bra. They're all the same. Also, if your bra is hurting you, you're wearing the wrong bra size. So that's probably also true of corsets. Which is my platform from Oprah in the '90s. The thing that I liked about the quote from Waters and also her references to older works and this pulpy, Wilkie Collins era thing. The thing that I thought about was really these 20th century adaptations of the earlier Gothic novels. I was thinking about things like Gaslight from 1944. My name Is Julia Ross, is a great noir that does similar Gaslight themes, So Long at the Fair, Rebecca, even The Seventh Veil. These are all movies that are produced in the '40s and '50s, and they have a noir vibe or melodrama, and they're usually adaptations of older novels. At the center of these movies is a woman who's being manipulated by people around her, usually for some fortune by means of a promised romance, so very in line with Fingersmith. But these movies that are being produced in Hollywood because they're under the Hays Code, which is these amorphous rules of self-censorship implemented by Hollywood from 1934 to the late 1960s, all of these movies have to keep endings that keep them from being too tragic because one of the amorphous rules was that nobody could commit murder and get away with it.

Emma

So even if there was a sympathetic character who commits murder, it has to be very clearly in self-defense. Also, if someone actually hurt any of these women, we know that they would be brought to justice. And so when you're watching any of these movies, there's a certain restriction on the level of terror you can feel because you know how the ending is going to be. You know it's going to work out. And I love movies from this period, but obviously that restriction affects read a reception to the twist and plots available. I think the mandate of HEA also relates to this, not in a negative way. I feel like sometimes when I say this, people think that I'm coming for the HEA, but it does affect when you read a book, it's a narrowing of what you think is going to happen. Because Fingersmith is not a movie produced in Hollywood from 1934 to the 1960s and is also not a genre fiction romance, I think it frees itself from these restrictions. I think if this novel ended differently, we maybe wouldn't be doing it on the podcast because it wouldn't be a romance, technically.

Emma

But I don't think that that book would be surprising. I think I could have read this book and had Maud pass away or have Sue kill her. Anything could have happened when you're reading this book, and I would believe it. I would trust Waters to write that plot. I think that almost makes it more meaningful that we end up with an HEA and a romance at the end. This is the first book we've talked about on the podcast where I can imagine a world where this couple not only does not end up together, but maybe isn't even alive at the end of the book. Because they are alive at the end of the book and end up in a romance, it feels like that's more powerful because she's actually tapping into this gothic legacy that actually has actual danger and actual stakes involved, of life and death. Not to say that romance in and of itself doesn't have stakes, but between the two of them, life and death is higher stakes than Happily Ever After.

Chels

When I'm thinking about this book, I've been asked a few times for Bodice Ripper's where the cruel character is the heroine and not the hero. And even though I think you could argue that Prisoner of My Desire by Joanna Lindsay fits the bill for this. Usually, though, when people ask me for that, I tell them to read Sarah Waters, because Maud, in particular, reads the main character of a Bodice Ripper. I think of her cruelties to Agnes, where she pricks her with the sewing needle. And then again, when she conspires with Richard Rivers to dispose of Agnes via assault. A hero in the bodice ripper often has a very dramatic backstory. You think of like, Sean from Stormfire, whose village was violated, Felipe from the Flesh and the Devil, who was tormented during the Spanish Inquisition. And as a woman, like Maud's origins are like a quieter torment, like Mrs. Style's cruelties, and then her uncle's threats. But then Maud, like a Bodice Ripper hero, turns around and victimizes other people, like Agnes, who can't fight back. And then Sue, who she and Richard Rivers is going to be disposable to them. So I'm also not going to argue that Fingersmith is a genre romance, even though it has an HEA.

Chels

But I've been thinking about, similarly to you, Emma, about the structure of it. And when I think of it alongside of bodice rippers, I do think of a time where we had a little bit less rigidity via our structural requirements of what we call genre romance. Like, historical romance is a lot less long than it used to be, the books are. We get less side characters, since the world is tightened enough to fit into these 250, 300 pages instead of being the doorstoppers that they used to be, and the central love story requirement that the RWA, which has just filed for bankruptcy. So I wonder if we're going to still continue to use this argument about the central love story.

Emma

They shouldn't get to tell us anything.

Chels

Yeah, RWA, you suck. But the central love story requirement for genre romance is not something that old-school bodice rippers would have to adhere to to still be called a genre romance. If you like, Bertice Small, for example, has a lot of multiple love interests. Love's Tender Fury by Jennifer Wilde, I think, has at least three. And these are like tent poles of the genre. And I've also noticed that readers who don't read old school as much will pick up Laura Kinsale or Judith Ivory and say that they read more like historical fiction than historical romance.

Chels

And it's because some of these books were before we hammered down traditionally published historical romance into what it is now. For me, I like this a little bit less, but I know it comes down to taste. So there are probably people who disagree with me here.

Emma

I Can you push to people... Because this is probably the closest thing I have to a high horse when it comes to romance, is pushing against the idea that these things don't affect each other. That's the argument I'm always trying to make, is that I'm not... Books that don't have an H-E-A, books that don't have a central love story, I don't think you have to say that these things are welcome in the house of romance. But the idea that Sarah Waters, who is writing this lesbian romance in 2002, that was super popular, that every English major I knew read this book. The idea that it's not affecting romance, because that's the thing that annoys me the most, is when it's like we have to have these lines because when we're talking about romance, we have to talk about things that are genre romance that fit into this bucket. Okay, we don't have to say that Sarah Waters or Fingersmith is a genre fiction romance, but someone could read this book and think, I want to write a genre fiction romance that is inspired by this, or this is in my sandbox of things that I want to think about when I'm writing.

Emma

That seems so obvious to me. I think when you put the wall up, you cut off that conversation, and that, to me, is the most frustrating thing in the world. Even if you disagree with Chels and me and Beth, I think you should acknowledge that there could be connections happening here and that your consideration of romance will be more fruitful if you allow those connections to exist, even if you're putting them in two different genres. I think that's okay. Genres can be cross-contaminated. It's fine.

Beth

I don't feel like genre boundaries are as neat as people want them to be. I don't know. I feel like there's a little bit too much policing over what is genre romance. I don't know if this is controversial to say. I just don't care.

Emma

I think people worry that romance is going to be water watered down. It's like they want- I don't know.

Beth

I feel like this is how innovation happens, though. It's like you're blending genres. I don't know. I hear what you're saying. People don't want it to be watered down.

Emma

I mean, the same thing happened with the happily for now. People hated that, and they were like, How can it be a romance if it's happily for now? And it's like, I think if you... Most people would argue now that it's unfair to expect a marriage at the end of all these books. Who knows where things are going? And we got to ride the wave. Yeah.

Beth

Be flexible.

Chels

So the big twist comes at the end of part one, when you realize that Sue is not in control. She's actually being conned by Maud and Richard Rivers, who I like to call the gentleman more than Richard Rivers. I don't know why. We then walk back through a lot of the same events through Maud's point of view. And what's so wild to me is that I never felt like I was reading two people's take on the same scene. Like these events matched up, but the way that Waters writes Maud and Sue have them focus on different pieces of events. So it reads like a whole new story, even though you already know what's going to happen. I'd love to talk about this point of view structure and maybe what surprised you the most about Maud.

Emma

So I've definitely talked about this before. This is another one of the things that I'm always screaming about romance, but I wish more romance authors did this because we were so invested in the dual POV structure. To me, it makes sense that this could make for fruitful exploration of two people's views of the same scene. I like reviewing the same scenes as a reader, and I think it really does not feel repetitive. Sometimes authors will do it where the dialog matches up so exactly that they can't pull it off for very long because I think it would get boring. But I liked that combined with how long we are in each character's mind. I think that's one of the reasons why it works so well? Because we're not flipping back and forth, again, like a genre of romance you would expect, one chapter in one leads, one chapter is in another, or just very structured switches. I think, total, we only get two POV flips. Between each part, it flips a POV. I just love when you can tell an author is being intentional about who tells which pieces of information. Because I think in a multiple limited POV book, so we don't have any character who's omniscient, that has to be one of the hardest decisions when you're writing.

Emma

The author has to get the reader this information, but which of the characters knows that detail? And are we in their mind at the time? And will another character disclose it out loud to them? How do you get the reader to have that information if the character doesn't have it? That's the thing that blows my mind that when someone's writing a book and pulls it off well, I just think I'm so impressed when they do it. And then also what's happening in the reader's mind when they learn a detail now instead of later, especially in a book that has any tension with information. This has a major twist in it, but I think even books that don't have major twists in it, when things are being revealed slowly, why does the reader know it now instead of later? I think those questions, sometimes they feel like they're on the back burner, but That's the experience of reading a narrative that has any linear time progression. I just love that you can tell Waters is thinking about it. I think she pulls it off so well where, like Chels said, it doesn't feel like you're repeating the same scenes, even though we are going back in time to view Maud's perception.

Beth

I feel like you can see that with an experienced author. They feel confident in their ability to hold the reader's attention without immediately giving them the information that might hook them. They know that they can wait to reveal the information to that character because it serves the story more to have a later revelation rather than just be like, Here's everything you need to know up front. I really like this question. I guess it just When I think about it in real life, have you ever related a memory to someone and they don't remember the same details as you? Or maybe you reacted quite differently to a situation. So obviously it lives very differently in your memory. I agree that we get these two different... I agree two different takes on the same events we get to really know the characters because we're noticing what they notice. And I love this characterization. I know mysteries are often whodunits or in the mystery genre, but I feel like you can still apply this to outside of the genre, where you're doing this quieter character work, in the way that Emma by Jane Austen operates as a mystery.

Beth

You get clues for why a character is hiding information, and when you reread it, you can see the clues better. But it's not like a whodunit murder mystery. Emma is not that. I watched the adaptation first, so I've always known the twist. When I read Sue's part, you can see the clues that Water is laying out. That was actually really interesting. The scene where Maud asks Sue, they're in bed together and Maud's like, What is it a wife must do on her wedding night? Then from Sue's perspective, she thinks, Oh, this is a nervous and ignorant young woman. But from Maud's perspective, she thinks, And at first, it is easy. After all, this is how it is done in my uncle's books. Two girls, one wise and one unknowing.

Emma

It's so good. She's hitting on you. Oh my god.

Beth

I was like, 'Ding, ' Maud.

Emma

Maud is like, she's got the rizz.

Chels

Yeah. The way that Maud is written is just so powerful. I had seen The Handmaiden before, so I also did not... I knew the twist. I knew what was going to happen, but I still screamed. And I love... Their personalities come through really well in seeing the same events through each other's eyes. Sue thinking that she's making eyes at the gentleman being like, Oh, we're getting one over on her. And then Maud is also making eyes at the gentleman doing the same thing. I think it also helps, too, that a lot of Maud's perspective is something that Sue never finds out until the very end. A lot of what we think about, learn from Maud is what her uncle is really doing and her upbringing, and then also Maud's obsession with not being good. She thinks about it all the time. And this is also something that she loves to sue for is she says she thinks I'm good. She's one of the only people who have ever thought that I was good. And I think that's really interesting because it Maybe also because it's like Maud is coming from this really tempestuous... Or Maud is in this really quietly tempestuous household where she has to behave in a very specific way in order I think they threaten to kill her?

Chels

Oh, yeah. He does threaten. He threaten that they're going to ignore her until she starves to death or something like that. If she doesn't behave that she's just going to have this lonely life alone in a room, like bad girls do. I don't know. I think it's just both things, who knows what. It makes it more riveting. Also, you get each other's points of you on each other, seeing them fall in love with each other in almost the same scenes. Yes. The perspective of when Sue sees Maud kissing the gentleman, like Sue is having this big emotional appeal about it. But then when you get to Maud's point of view, Maud is super angry at the gentleman, and they just had that big fight. And this is also an extremely tense and emotional scene from Maud's point of view.

Beth

I agree. Excellent point.

Emma

I did have this other part about the... It's not really POV, but I was thinking about this with the past tense and the narrative distance, because I was thinking about other single POV. Because it's dual POV, but it's also single POV because we're not flipping back and forth as much. But it has this Victorian quality to it. When you start with Sue, it really reminded me of great expectations because it's somewhat an adult telling you about their childhood to get you up to speed. But I I think with the Jane Eyre and Great Expectations with Pip, the narrator, that Victorian mode is generally that... It's more like Gaywyck, which is a single POV Gothic that we read, where it's someone looking back on their life. And it's like we have this idea that there's an adult telling us a story. I feel like I didn't get that with Sue and Maud. But what Waters does instead is that she has Maud and Sue be really good storytellers. And so the distance comes from their wit and their observational skills. I just thought it was interesting that she... Even though there's so many things in that first part, that first chapter that remind me of great expectations that Waters didn't go with this knowledge, looking back, first-person victorian narrator.

Emma

I think it worked so well, but I would be interested But that would be one of the questions I would ask her is, you're calling up this certain narrative style and choosing not to do it completely. And so what does she add? What does she feel adds to it? Because I think it works so well, but I'm not sure why. But it's just interesting that it's distinct from the mode that she's referencing.

Chels

I wonder, too, if it's in service of the twist and grabbing your attention, maybe that could be it. But even without the twist, I think that it just works so well. Both Maud and Sue are incredibly clever. Maud's point of view illuminates this very deft calculating mind, but she's also learned to restraint. Similarly, Sue grew up surrounded by themes, but she was also coddled, so her big escape from the asylum is not something that she has done from experience. What I really love, though, is what they're both bad at. When Sue arrives at Briars, she immediately alienizes emanates the other servants, and Maud feels so ruthless and clever in her point of view until Richard Rivers brings her to London. She doesn't have any of those practical skills necessary to survive on her own at this point, and that's when she gives up and returns to Lance thinking that she'll spend the rest of her days there. I feel like this is very deft characterization on Waters part, and I'd love your take on this.

Beth

I do like that you brought up that Maud feels so clever until she gets to London, and she's like, Oh, wow, I don't know anything. I have no money. It is really hard for her. And I feel like if you're going to have characters do terrible things to each other, putting the character and the other's perspective shows it might help them get to a place where they forgive the other person. So it's interesting to me that Maad grew up in an asylum until I think she was about 10. So I feel like they switched places in a sense. They are living the other person's life. Not that Maad was subject to the cruelty of an asylum, the way that Sue is after she's been committed, but she's at least observed it. So, yeah, I don't know. I just thought that was so interesting. And they have these parallel experiences, I guess.

Emma

Yeah, I was thinking about it, their skills that they're bad at and how it relates to their perspective positions. So even in the first chapter, we see how Mrs. Sucksby is so doting on Sue, which makes her betrayal so much worse. But it's like something about Sue as a child is different than the other children who come in and out of the Sucksby house. So Sue is special. She's blonde as a child, and that's important to Mrs. Sucksby. She's going to be protected. Mrs. Sucksby gets mad people put Sue in danger. Ultimately, this is for more sinister reasons. We're first reading it through affection, and then it's revealed like, Mrs. Sucksby needs Sue to be alive. But despite Sue's more humble beginning, Sue is treated much more respectively than Maud is in her own home. Maud has been abused and tormented, and treated less like a servant in her aristocratic home. The servants are cruel to her as well. But Sue, with all the doting, has never had to move through social politics with people of her own class. She's been in this privileged position amongst the people who are stealing for a living in Mrs. Sucksby's home.

Emma

So when she gets to the briar and she's like, I don't know how to talk to people. I don't know how to get people to like me. Everyone's so weird, and there are all these rules, and I don't know what to follow. She's never had to do that before. And of course, Sue just got along fine at Mrs. Sucksby's house because she was protected. Maud, despite being put upon and abused, has none of the skills could actually help her make her way in the world. And so, yeah, that's just like total reversal and flip It works so well, especially as you watch Sue go through it, and then you have to watch Maud go through it in the reverse order in the second part.

Chels

Yeah, I love that, too. That servant structure at Briar is so completely impenetrable to Sue. And it seems like... But there's a point where it seems like in her point of view, she's getting the hang of being a lady's maid. Meanwhile, Maud is thinking about how much she sucks at it. I remember this quote, Her notion of intimacy is not not like Agnes's, not like Barbara's, not like any lady's maid's. She's too frank, too loose, too free. She yawns, she leans, she rubs at spots and grazes. She will sit picking over some old dry cut upon her knuckle while I sew. Then, Got a pin, miss? ' She will ask me. And when I give her a needle from my case, she will spend 10 minutes probing the skin of her hand with that. Then she will give the needle back to me. So this is like something that Maud is actually finding this very endearing, when she's talking about how she's not actually a lady's maid. And then she goes on to say that Sue's gentleness with her is when she started to fall in love.

Beth

I think even her first curtsy that she does, Maud clocks it.

Emma

But Sue is like, I did well, right?

Emma

I nailed it.

Beth

She's obviously buying this.

Chels

What a pigeon. Yeah, I loved that so much. And I would say Maud is the sharper of the two, out of Maud and Sue. But Maud is so out of her element. In London, she has no experience whatsoever in this world. So even though she's smart, she's able to escape Lance Street. She can't really wriggle her way out of the realities of being a penniless woman on the street of London. In her escape attempt, she goes to the shop of a man who used to visit her uncle at Briar. This man had previously told Maud she would be a welcome visitor, like when he was at Briar and she was a lady. But when she arrives bedraggled with bleeding feet, she is not the cool and in control woman that the shop owner was gently propositioning. So she offers to work for him, something that she can do with her experience with erotic literature and as a secretary. But she's more desperate than she is clever in that moment, and she ends up alienating this man and botching her escape attempt. It's very human.

Emma

Yeah, like the that feeling of when you've messed up or you're in a situation where you don't know what to do, and you keep making mistakes and you're like, If I just had a minute and a meal, I could figure this out.

Emma

But you don't have either of those things, and so you're just under pressure. That feeling of cumulative mistakes. I'm thinking about this because I took the wrong Amtrak home last night, and I was like, It was a nightmare. I was like, Oh. But it was very relatable to Maud. Oh, if I just thought about this for five more minutes and had had dinner already. I could figure this out. But Maud is in a pickle and doesn't have access to materials that would smooth her way in this situation. So very relatable to Maud, who I think is the least relatable of the two, at least for me in most of the moments. But this works.

Beth

I do like it shows the limits of her cleverness or just how insidious poverty is. You're never going to outrun not having eaten. Wasn't she walking all night at that point? You would be exhausted. No matter how smart you are in those kinds of instances, and you're not at your best.

Chels

She was also in a very conspicuous gown. She was dirty. She was uncomfortable. She didn't know anyone except for this one person. I was thinking, too, another way that this parallels with Sue is that Sue is also able to escape. Sue is able to escape the asylum, but Sue doesn't know what the fuck she's going to do when she gets there. Her plan is to write Mrs. Sucksby, but it gets botched, so she just shows up with a knife. She's good at it.

Beth

She's good at the escape attempt part. She knows who to rob and she figures out how to get to London. But yeah, the end game, she's like, I don't know. A knife?

Chels

I'll show up with a knife and I'll tell everybody what happened. And I'm just like, Oh, Sue, honey.

Emma

And even that's where she's like, What am I going to do with the knife? And then the knife gets her... I mean, it doesn't get her in trouble, but it's like, The knife... Don't bring a knife to a fight. If other people don't have knives, why are you elevating the fight to a knife-level fight?

Chels

She's not thinking. So in that vein, it feels like the scene with Sue in the asylum and Maud in prison at Lance Street are parallel experiences. There's a hopelessness to them both, a sense of extreme wrongness that is really tough to read, given that they both thought they were sending each other to the asylum, and in a way, they both succeeded. I would love your thoughts on these parts of their lives.

Emma

Yeah, this is one of those terrifying thought exercises to think about what you would do in this experience, the idea of being in an asylum where you know your identity, but the reason you're in an asylum is because other people think that you're someone else. How do you get out of that? That's one of those things. There's so many pieces of literature that explore this because what is the solution? I do love in this moment where Sue is able to escape. It's almost like Jason Bourne is what I felt like, where she has a very special set of skills that allows her to escape in this moment. Her ability to do a key. It's just like, Oh, this union of her skills that would have not helped her as a lady's maid now helps her get out of the asylum. So I do enjoy that aspect of it. But thinking about asylum scenes, this one and then Jervaulx from flowers of the Storm by Laura Kinsale, I think they, with this idea of communication in an asylum, work in historical romance because they're like a miscommunication turned up to the nth degree. And I want to be careful how I'm talking about this because there's miscommunication because disability that is happening structurally in the novel, and then there's also miscommunication that's happening to real people who have disabilities.

Emma

I think there is some conflation happening with the Jervaulx, but I think Kinsale pulls it off well. I want to try and match that level of it working because Obviously, miscommunication for a disability is not just a structural thing that happens in novels. But with Jervaulx and Sue, both of them are speaking words that they think have one meaning and are being used against them by people who are interpreting them differently. I think that also speaks to people who have trouble with communication for whatever disability. But it's very easy for other people to manipulate them and take control of their lives because they are assuming that they know less than they do. They're assuming that they're incapable of skills that maybe they have access to, that they just can't communicate their skill set to. But the captors in both books are significantly less sympathetic than a miscommunicating partner. But I think when you have a miscommunication in an asylum, you're able to extrapolate that framework to sympathy for miscommunication in general. But that's because the sinister form of miscommunication sheds lights on questions and applies to all the communication. How do you put into words abstract thought and trust another person that will understand what you're saying when they're bringing a lifetime of their own notions to each conversation?

Emma

I think that's a theme of Fowers from the Storm, where Jervaulx continues to struggle to communicate with Maddie, who's coming from such a different place than he did, just as he struggled to communicate in the asylum when he had fewer words available to I think when Sue is saying, I am Sue, I'm not Maud Lily, she's talking to people who don't believe her. And then it's like, How did I ever have a conversation with Maud? We came from two different places. How can I ever trust Maud again when we're communicating past each other? So I think it works really well, especially with authors who are interested in pulling it off. Well, it can also become very hacky and disrespectful to people in asylums very easily. But I think your flowers from the storm and Fingersmith, I think, don't shy away from the terror and the distinction, but it makes for fruitful conversation between the two situations.

Beth

Yeah, I agree with that. I also really like that Waters leaned into the hopelessness that you must feel if you're ever in that situation and how insidious the label of badness would be. As you were talking, Emma, I was like, I wonder because Sue, right when she first gets there, she's like, Obviously, this is a mistake. I will just tell them my identity will to solve this. I wonder if Maud had been the one who'd gotten committed, would have known to... You can't rationalize your way out of an asylum, would have known to play into what they were wanting and then maybe try and escape that way. I don't know if that would have been that would have happened.

Chels

I think so, because Maud has experience being tamped down in this way that Sue does not have experience with. I think Maud's experience at Briar- She knows how to restrain herself and like, okay, you want me to perform?

Beth

So, yeah, again, I just like this same parallel thing happening where it's like, they just needed each other because they each had skill set so it helped the other.

Chels

That's the correct moment. If you need to stop putting each other in asylums, start working together. Which makes it so sad as they both have this thought, too. Before they both think, before the moment happens They're waiting for something. Sue decides to go through with the plan because Sue is like, I don't want Maud to realize that I'm a villain. And then Maud goes through with it because she thinks that Sue doesn't love her, and because Sue tried to downplay their sexual liaison and push her towards Richard Rivers again. So Maud is thinking, Oh, well, if I confess to this plan, Sue and Richard Rivers are just going to go back to briar, and I'm going to be alone again, so I have to do this. So it's very frustrating to watch them in each of their point of view get so close, so close, so close to telling them that they don't do it for very believable reasons. Right.

Emma

This is not like a just have a conversation. Yeah. A conversation would have solved their problems, but it's also very believable why they don't for so many reasons. They're literally committing fraud.

Chels

It could have caused really bad problems. Right. If Sue misread the situation and was like, So I was going to put you in an asylum.

Beth

But I don't want to do that anymore.

Chels

But I'm in love with you. I changed my mind, so no hard feelings. But yeah, I love that point that you all had earlier about there's like, when you were in an asylum, the fact that you were in an asylum is proof that you should be in an asylum.

Beth

It's like a catch-22. It's horrific.

Chels

That's exactly... It's just there's nothing that you can do. And so when I was thinking about other scenes, I was also thinking of Flowers from the Storm. I was thinking of this moment where Maddie asked Jervaulx a question as proof that she understands him. I think it's something like the doctor's set up and she asks him a question, and then he answers in the affirmative, he nods. But then the doctors change the rules. They're like, Oh, you said it in a tone of voice that indicates that he should nod. So ask him something absurd, and he's going to nod again. And Maddie's like, This is a mean trick. I'm not going to do But it's that thing where it's like, no matter-

Beth

no matter what he does.

Chels

He wins one way. Yeah. Yeah. And this is another one I read, The Madness of Miss Gray by Julia Bennett. Helen Gray, the heroine of that story, she was trapped in asylum by her father. She's her father's illegitimate daughter that he just wanted to get pushed to the side. So he puts her in asylum. And she's really bored and lonely there, but she's also very, very clever.

Chels

And in that book The book is very good, but it's very hard to read because almost everything that Helen says is used against her to prove that she's a nymphomaniac. She can't wiggle her way out of it. She can't explain her way out of it. There's no route that she could go down that would... It's a hopeless situation so long as she's there. And so for her, the HEA is, yeah, a romance, but also I have to get the fuck out of here. So I was thinking about Helen a lot when I was reading about Sue's scenes because Sue keeps thinking that she has a smoking gun. Like, I can't read. When they see that I can't read, they're going to know that I'm not Maud Lily, the secretary. But then they take that as evidence that she's having more of a mental breakdown. Like, she's dissociated from her former self more. There's nothing that Sue can do. Sue saying that she's Sue is evidence of Maud being out of her mind and thinking that she's a servant. It's not evidence that Sue is a human being.

Emma

I did think... I reread this chapter this morning. They ask her, so she spells her name, and she's like, This is the only word I can write and not that well. And he's like, Well, you wrote Susan. That's not your name. It's like, Okay, she thinks it's her name. But then the word we ask her to spell, because she's like, You can spell the word. The word is speckle? That is such a weird word to pick. Why that word? And I was trying to think of why Waters picked to that word, but I was like, Maybe Maybe it was just to disarm me because that's what happens every time I read that chapter is like, speckle? Also a hard word to spell, I think. It could be E-L or L-E. I don't know. But that's just one of those moments that's very... It feels like a very Waters moment where it's just these little details that make the world building. But I read that this morning and I was like, What? What's going on there?

Beth

Maybe because it feels like such an innocuous word, but in this situation, it's like, I don't know. When you watch the adaptation and they're like, Okay, Right. I don't know. Maybe it's just Sally Hawkins' performance. And I'm like, well, this is... I don't know. You just really feel the weight of it. It's scary. Yeah.

Chels

So Found Family is a pitch for a lot of queer books nowadays. And the reasons for it, the appeal of Found Family, do make total sense. It's a very common experience to be queer and then be ostracized from your blood relatives. So then you have to form your own community, your own family. What I kept thinking about when I was reading Fingersmith this time around is the Found Family unit, the residence of Lance Street, break apart. Mrs. Sucksby is enormously important to sue her mother figure, but Mrs. Sucksby's love was false. Mr. Ibs immediately runs away after a gentleman's death, Richard Rivers. Dainty is the only one that still has a relationship with Sue, towards the end. She gives Sue her last coin so that Sue can travel to briar to go be United with Mod. This book has been called Lesbian Dicken's. Lance Street is... Lance Street is reminiscent of Fagin's Den of Thiefs and Oliver Twist. I've been thinking about this inspiration and also the deconstruction of the Found Family Unit, which is associated with uplifting queer stories. Do you have any related thoughts?

Beth

My first was a question, which feels like I'm about to contradict what you say, but I don't mean it like this. But it feels like they break They break apart... One reason they break apart, because I feel like it's not really Sue's found family. It's maybe more of Mrs. Sucksby's found family. Sue didn't choose them. She was just adopted by Mrs. Sucksby. But yeah, I like what you... They all do break apart, but I feel like it's because the relationships are formed more on what each member can contribute financially rather than a deeper emotional bond.

Emma

Yeah, I was thinking about the Dickensian connection because Waters makes the Dickensian connection clear really early because Sue goes to see a theater production of Oliver Twist, and I was texting you all about this, and I was like, I wish people referenced Dickens more because he was so popular. This is exactly what people in the 19th century would have been doing. But Sue, as a child, sees Oliver Twist, and she's deeply upset by the murder of Nancy by Bill Sykes in the production. She comes home. Mrs. Sucksby assures her that Nancy is just fine, that Nancy has thrown Bill Sykes out. And she's talking to Sue as if Nancy is a real person because Sue thinks Nancy is a real person that she just witnessed be murdered. So Sue is too young at this point to understand that it's a play. So we get this false reality that Mrs. Sucksby is engaging with. I think that was one of those hints that Mrs. Sucksby is maybe not telling the truth. It's framed both as sweet. It's protecting Sue, but also it's like maybe she's keeping her from things that could help her understand the world better.

Emma

When Sue is older, she sees the play again, and this is when she realizes that Nancy was murdered. Does she now understands the distinction between fact and fiction. The way that she frames it in the story, when she's telling us about it, she doesn't make the distinction. But as an adult, you know that she knows that no woman was actually murdered. The way she says it is, I understood, of course, Nancy got murdered after all. Sue doesn't linger on the distinction that Nancy is a fictional character. I think in part because she's surrounded by could-be Nancy's. The next beat of Sue's retelling is she explains how Flora, who took her to the play, who was in the Mrs. Sucksby's home, she was a fingersmith in in the den, gets transported for stealing. So this other older girl in this world is getting punished and removed and met with violence. But I think that playing with fact and fiction and Sue's remembering of it and that experience of thinking that you've seen someone be murdered and then realize it didn't actually happen, but also I'm living in that reality. It's both fictional for Nancy, but also it's real for Sue.

Emma

So it's not really fictional for Sue.

Chels

Yeah, I think both of your points clarified this for me a little bit. So Sue is getting upset by that play, how Bill Sykes disposes of Nancy, is also maybe hinting at Sue's relationship with Mrs. Sucksby and why it's important for Ma to shield her from that reality. Sue being so devastated over this fictional relationship ending horrifically when her own mother has been plotting her in that meant for her entire life. I think you're a great point with that, Beth. And also maybe Maud is the real found family and not the Lance Street residence, because Sue actually seeks Maud out at the end.

Beth

Yeah, I had that thought, too. I was like, I feel like they're the real family. But also I think that's true of life. You do go through multiple sets of, are these my people? Have I found my people? And I think it can take a couple of goes at a relationship or forming a group before you find your people.

Emma

Yeah. It also goes with Oliver Twist, that Oliver is an orphan who gets adopted by Fagin, and Oliver thinks, This is so much better than the orphanage. I'm having fun with the Artful Dodger, and there are all these boys here. But it's the reveal of the novel is that Fagin has been using him and is going to try and ransom him for this family's money. And then Oliver finds the literal family, but also becomes effectively a found family because his mother is dead. It's like he's adopted by, I think it's his grandfather, but he finds his actual family. It's like, Oh, it's the found family that is using you for things that has conditions on its relationship with you. Dickens is not thinking about the found family trope for queer stories, but there's this idea of found family. Especially for a child, I think it's hard to be vetted. And also, Found Family, if it's a real family, it won't be conditional. And Fagin's Love is conditional, Mrs. Sucksby's Love is conditional. And just because it's better than the orphanage doesn't mean that it's real and true and helpful to the main characters.

Beth

I did like what you were talking about in your discussion prompt, Chels, where Found Family is associated with uplifting queer stories. I was just picturing an Instagram post where it's the book cover and then the little arrows with all the points and just like, Found family.

Chels

Fingersmith, found family.

Emma

That's indicative of how sometimes the Instagram post or maybe undersell it or If we put everything into a trope, we are underselling how they're working.

Beth

We're flapping the story, if we're doing it like this.

Emma

Maybe a little bit. Sue has a found family in her really Fingersmith community, and you're like, Oh, that technically is what's happening.

Chels

Someone throws a book out the window once they get to the Lance Street scene. They're like, I didn't want it like this.

Beth

I just want someone to pitch Fingersmith is like, It's gay. What else do I need to say?

Chels

That's always the... You can only We do that with romance. And people do it with romance. Well, do people do it with romance and fantasy? And it frustrates me because I'm like, Please say all their things. We don't do this with heterosexual books. We're not like, It's a man and a woman. What else do you want? I'm like, what I would...

Emma

We can start pitching historical romances that way. Like, there's a guy. He's here.

Chels

There's a guy. He's here. He's got an estate. What more do you want?

Beth

He's a Duke. What more do you want?

Chels

Oh, that's another conversation. Okay, so I guess keeping on the family track. So I'm fascinated by the way that mother-daughter relationships play out in this book. You have Maud, initially thinking that her mother died in childbirth, and she frames this to Sue as something that she's distraught over. But in Maud's point of view, she says, quote, I wish, as I have wished many times, that my mother were alive, so I might kill her again. I say to Sue, Do you know how it was she who died? It was my birth that did it, and it is an effort to keep the note of triumph from my voice.

Emma

That is so funny.

Chels

I know. I'm just like, every time there is maybe two or three times where she's just like, I'm happy she's dead. And it's just the complete opposite of how you're used to thinking of these characters that have this loss in their life, the mother who died in childbirth or the mother that you never got to know. But Maud is instead looking at this picture of Mary-Ann Lily and getting angry over it and wanting to hurt her. And I was... So this is part of what my question is about this relationship, because this is something that I have been trying to... I've been trying to explain how Maud feels about Mary-Ann Lily, who she believes to be her mother, to myself. And I don't really... I don't think I've really fully gotten there. So I guess my question is maybe to separate out Maryanne Lily and Mrs. Sucksby, who's another question. Thinking about Maude's relationship with Maryanne Lily, do you have any thoughts about why she was feeling this way?

Emma

Emma

It's whether it's externalized or internalized, maybe, is the distinction. I don't think Sue thinks of her mother fondly. She thinks about how her mother's death affects her and takes that as a point of pride more than... I think Mrs. Sucksby tries to give her a memory of her mother at the beginning, but I don't I think that maybe is the distinction. It's like, what is it? The quote about anger and depression, anger turns outward. Anger turns inward in its depression. I feel like that's what Maud doing. She's taking her anger and she's turning it inward and it just becomes this hate while Sue gets to use it for social clout.

Beth

She's so this lost. She doesn't know what to do with it, so she's externalizing it. I feel like that's what you're saying.

Emma

Because it just it seems that it seems to be the distinction because they both have lost the same woman, but Sue doesn't have that anger in her about her mother. And it's like, Why does Maud feel it? And so the two things that are different is the peer it be a relationship with her other children and Mrs. Sucksby's presence.

Beth

Yeah, I agree with that.

Chels

And Maud has to tamp down her emotions in her everyday life in a way that Sue doesn't at Lance Street. And I'm thinking of particularly of Maud looking at the picture and getting so upset over it. And then also part two begins with Maud's false memory of her mother dying in childbirth, which is something that she I couldn't remember anyway. It was more of a fantasy. It's this really bloody, gory, upsetting scene. But yeah, it's so much more heightened than any feeling or emotion that you're getting from Maud and her interactions with Mrs. Stiles or with Christopher Lilley, her uncle. I think the closest you get to it is maybe her cruelty to Agnes.

Emma

I think maybe that Maud scene of thinking about the... She has the false memory of the birth. I think, again, we see so many things with Maud where she's had no feedback for her behavior or her thoughts. I think it's like she must logically know that she doesn't actually have a memory of her childbirth, but she's dwelled on it so much and has received no other context about her mother or been able to externalize that thought to anyone. It's become an actual memory for her, and she pick at the scab whenever she wants to get angry all over again. And it doesn't mean... Just because she doesn't actually remember it, it doesn't mean it doesn't function like a memory for her. But I think she's able to do that because she doesn't receive any feedback. Again, like Sue gets from Mrs. Sucksby.

Chels

And then I guess to the last... To talk about Mrs. Sucksby, I guess one thing is, when you were reading it, do you think Mrs. Sucksby regreted her actions? And But also, why did she still conceal her lies from Sue?

Emma

If we extend Mrs. Sucksby to be the Fagin character, and I think about the scene, I read this pretty recently when we did our Newgate episode, which was in the last year, of Fagin's scenes in Newgate. When Oliver is looking at him and is thinking about what Fagin is thinking about, it's like Fagin is as regretful as Fagin can be. It's like Fagin has a limit. I think that's what Mrs. Sucksby is. It's like she's never going to have a reaction that feels whole in her regrets. But I imagine that she's probably as regretful as the person who would do this could be. And that's the Dickensian. There are people who have limits to their redemption, but they can achieve their full... They can go to the extreme for themselves. And it's like that feels like a very Dickensian thing that's inherited here. But also I feel very optimistic about Mrs. Sucksby's chances for redemption. That it's like she's trying her best, even though she's very evil.

Beth

I don't feel like a series is evil. I just feel it's more desperate. I don't know. But maybe more calculating desperate.

Chels

I think, well, the way Because she interacts with Maud is very sad. She clearly has some deep feeling for Maud. And so that humanizes her in a way in the text. I think when you're at that point, you already know what she's done to Sue. But then her feelings about Maud are like, Oh, you care about something. It's weird. It's expressed weirdly.

Emma

And we have these two main characters who are both willing to be put each other in asylum, but then are given the opportunity through betrayal by other people to pull back from the scheme. There's this legal concept in conspiracy where you were able to get away a conspiracy charge if you pull away at the last minute. If there's any directional move, you could have evidence that you were trying to get out of the conspiracy that could help your case. It's one of the only crimes that works that way. I feel like that's what Maud and Sue both benefit from with readers, is that we know that they both try to pull back from their scheme and really regret doing it because we're in their heads. So that combination, it's like, yeah, if we're not going to condemn Maud and Sue completely, because of their involvement in the scheme, which was self-serving and also very cruel. It's like, Mrs. Sucksby, who we don't have POV chapters of, I think you have to be like, it's complicated. I think you have to land on something that's a little sympathetic towards her. The gentleman is harder to extend anything to.

Emma

But we also see less of him in any context that explains his behavior.

Chels

I felt so bad when he died. I was like, Where is this coming Okay, so I guess moving on. So Mr. Lilly collects pornographic literature, and the reason he is holding Maud hostage at Briar is because he wants her to be his secretary. It's a very predatory situation. Maud's gloves, her voice, they're all part of this performance he has her enact for the men who visit and listen to her read these stories out loud. All of the texts that are mentioned in Fingersmith are real, actual Victorian pornographic works, and The Pearl, the magazine that Maud writes for after her uncle's death, is also real. Let's talk about erotic literature in the story and how something that used to entrap Maud ends up being her livelihood and how she expresses her love for Sue.

Emma

Okay, so I did not make this connection until I read this question. I don't know why I didn't think about the fact that his last name is Lilly. And it may be a total coincidence, but there I have two things going on here that I think relate to each other. Even if it's not just a coincidence, I think it's still relevant. Mr. Lilly's collection really reminded me of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, which is best known for its research in human sexuality. Alfred Kinsey? Albert? Now, I don't know what his name is, but they made the show about it. Kinsey 6, that guy. His institute is at IU, so it has this human research or human sexuality research. But also there's huge archives there of art and literature related to sex, including pornography. One of my jobs in law school was sorting some of the porn there. I have lots of affection for the Kinsey Institute because I worked with some of their collections. I think it's a really important institution. But also at IU is the Lilly Library, which is one of the premier rare books libraries in the world. It includes a lot of Victorian popular fiction and pulse novels and Victorian...

Emma

I don't know if we would call it porn, but Victorian erotica. I thought it was weird that they had these two IU. Connections and the Lily name being connected with what would now be considered rare books. But one of my favorite things about this book is that erotic literature itself is ultimately portrayed as neutral. I think a lesser author or a less interesting author could have easily made the erotica the source of the rot in Mr. Lily. But the problem is the context and Maud's lack of autonomy about his work and her role in it, that he's making a child do this, and it's that he and his friends are clearly deriving pleasure from Maud's identity as a female child and a young woman interacting with these materials. But the problem is not the materials themselves, and we see that in the way that it helps Maude embrace her queerness, and she becomes an author of erotic material, and that these things are more neutral or can be more neutral later when they're not connected to someone who's trying to use them for someone else's detriment. I think Wateres is also referencing the plot of Middlemarch here with Dorothea Brooke, and Mr. Casaubon.

Emma

Dorothea is the heroine, and she marries this man, Casaubon, who's much older than her, thinking that she's going to be able to aid him in this great philosophical project, which he calls his key to all mythologies. The reveal in that book is that Casaubon's project is incredibly outdated because he can't read German. So Dorothea slowly realizes that his genius is less than she initially thought, and that actually she's actually bringing more to the table than just secretarial work. I think Maud's role of becoming a creator of this project that she first engaged with in such an abusive manner feels like this restoration to her. I'm just so glad that Waters lands on that more new... I mean, Waters, I don't think would demonize erotic literature, knowing what I know about her. But also, I would enjoy this book a lot less if what we landed on was erotica is and causes people to abuse each other. It's not that book. It just makes it, I think, more interesting when it's the literature is just literature and it's how you use it and what you're using it for that makes it good or bad or productive or destructive.

Beth

I like that you brought up the point that erotic literature itself is ultimately neutral because I was thinking about that as well. I think you recommended, I don't even know how long ago was the book Revolting Prostitutes by Juno Mac and Molly Smith to me. I think that point of making something neutral is very strong in that book. It's a non-fiction book about sex workers. And it's just like, they aren't trying to say it's bad. They're not trying to say it's good. They just want to call it work and move it to the neutral category. I think there's a lot of power in something like that, just like that this thing is not good or bad. It's just it's neutral.

Emma

It's just it is, and then we can talk about it. We can talk about-

Beth

It is a thing. Yeah. And I feel like you can be exploited for any work. I think it's interesting that's what her uncle was collecting. But I'm not surprised that this person got exploited for labor. That's such a common and prevalent thing to happen. But I did from Chels's prompt where Maud talks about how erotic literature is eventually something that is how she expresses love to Sue. And at the very end of the book, because Sue can't read and they're together. And then Sue says, they're looking at a book and Sue says, what does it say? And then Maud responds, it is filled with all the words for how I want you. Look. I was just like, I don't know.

Emma

I just love it. It's so crazy. FERAL FERAL

Chels

it's so good. And then also, two, Maud is writing for the Pearl. The Pearl is what Sue calls Maud.

Emma

And Maud is like, Oh, if she called me the Pearl, I thought that was going to be our moment.

Chels

Yeah. It's just like, both times when that happened in both point of view chapters, every time when Sue called her, she It's repetitive. You Pearl, you Pearl, you Pearl. And then Maud hears it, and it's repetitive for Maud, too. And it's just like, oh, the emotion in that is so good. I love this. I love this so much. In her uncle's days, she's reading other people's words for their own entertainment. But in Maud's happy ending, she's writing her own as an expression of her love for Sue. And she's also writing For the Pearl, she's Sue's Pearl. I love it.

Emma

Also, a great name for an erotic magazine. They nailed it. Oh, it's so good.

Chels

It's so good. Yeah. Also writing Lesbian Erotica? Yes.

Emma

For the Pearl. Yes. They crushed it.

Chels

Like, genius. Sarah Waters, The Woman You are. I know the Pearl is real. Yes. But Sarah Waters.

Emma

I just read the Mary Balogh book, The Secret Pearl, right after I read this. And they also use pearl as a term of endearment there. I liked that book a lot.

Emma

It hits not as hard with non-lesbians, I will say.

Chels

Yeah. Win for the gays.

Chels

I feel like I would go to war for Maud. I like them both. But Maud, I feel like... Maud has my heart. Yeah, I don't know. Maud has my heart. Maybe because Maud is the bodice ripper villain in my mind, that I feel that way. Okay, well, I guess we've spent a while talking about this. This is very fun. Maybe we can do some more historical fiction in the future. Thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you enjoy the podcast, you can find bonus episodes, recommendations, and more on our Patreon at patreon. Com/reformedrakes. Please rate and review us on Apple and Spotify. It helps a lot. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram for show updates. The username for both is at Reformed Rakes. Thank you again, and we'll see you next time.