The Ruin of Evangeline Jones
Show Notes
The rakes discuss The Ruin of Evangeline Jones by Julia Bennet, a Victorian romance between the Duke of Harcastle and a medium. The Duke, Alex, occupies himself by exposing mediums. His latest target, Evie, challenges his reasons for doing so and, they fall for each other. The rakes talk about mediums in Victorian England, the choices characters have to make when there really isn’t a choice, the history of photography, and garbage fathers.
Books Referenced
Proof by Seduction by Courtney Milan
The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley
The Darkened Room : Women, Power, and Spiritualism in late Victorian England by Alex Owen
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
The Final Problem by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods by Lesley and Roy Adkins
References
Why did so many Victorians try to speak with the dead? by Casey Cep
Transcript
Beth: Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that can speak to the spirits. My name is Beth and I’m on BookTok under the name Bethhaymondreads.
Emma: I’m Emma. I’m a law librarian writing about justice and romance on the substack, Restorative Romance and I’m also on BookTok under the name emmkick.
Chels: My name is Chels, I’m the writer of The Loose Cravat, which is a romance newsletter on Substack, a book collector, and a BookToker under the name chels_ebooks.
Beth: Today we're diving into the ruin of Evangeline Jones by Julia Bennet published in 2020. The Ruin of Evangeline Jones is a Victorian romance between Evangeline, a fraudulent medium, and the Duke of Harcastle, who's made it his mission to unmask her. What starts as a typical game of cat and mouse quickly spirals into something much more complicated, and compelling. The Duke's obsession with unmasking Evangeline or Evie is really just an obsession with Evie herself, a firmly entrenched longing that puts them both in jeopardy.
Evie's occupation has her pretending to speak to the past, to the spirits of those that left us behind. But it's a figure in Alex's real life past that haunts the relationship.
When I first read Evangeline Jones, I was struck by a few unconventional choices that Bennet makes in the narrative, which were actually very cathartic to read. The book explores wealth and power, and the often messy moral calculus people have to perform to survive without.
“It begins, as so many stories do nowadays, with a duke.” Bennet's opening line addresses publishing's obsession with dukes. Yet her treatment of the Duke of Harcastle shows a thoughtful exploration of class, and how that title can weigh on a person.
His title provides a genuine hurdle. He and Evie will have to clear in order to be together. Alex and Evie never did exactly what we expected them to do in reaction to each other. But Bennet manages to write a believable love story, because all of Alex and Evie’s actions are backed up by in-depth character work.
So as always, Chels put us on to this book that we all love.
[LAUGHTER]
Emma: Yeah, I very recently read it for the first time. This may be the quickest reread I've ever done, because I think I read it this year, maybe in January for the first time. And I was, I think I read it in one sitting the first time I read it.
Chels: Yeah, I think I read it 2021 was my first time. I picked it up because I love a medium story. And what was really cool about this book is that it shifts so quickly. So you think you're reading one thing, but you're really reading something else.
Beth: Yeah, when I did a review of this book on TikTok, I was sure to clarify that. Yes, it is about debunking this medium, but it is so much more than that, and I was in reaction to some reviews I had read where people were like. “Oh, I wanted it to be like more about the debunking the medium,” and I thought like that's not even…it gets interesting. But if you just stay in that setup, it's not as interesting as like what Alex and Evie end up doing because you don’t know what is going to happen next.
Chels: Yeah, and that's just a weird criticism, too, because you get a lot of like really meaty medium scenes in this book.
Beth: I KNOW!
Chels: So thorough!
Beth: Maybe it's because the curtain gets pulled, or it's…there's never is a curtain you're kind of in in on it already. Anyway. we shouldn't talk about the plot too much. People will have no idea what we’re talking about. On that note, Chels will give a quick plot summary first and then we'll talk more about mediums, spiritualism in Victorian times, photography, terrible dads, and a lot more.
Chels: Alex, the Duke of Harcastle, is seated at a table in a dirty establishment waiting for the appearance of famed spiritualist and medium, Evangeline Jones. Alex has a makeshift vocation of unmasking fraudulent mediums, and he’s showed up to see Evangeline in action - to gather evidence that will later reveal her to be duplicitous. He’s accompanied by The Lennoxes, who he describes as “fervent believers.” They’re convinced that Evie is the real deal.
But Alex has a special interest in Evie. He has two photographs of her - one as the formidable medium she has now fashioned herself as, and the other is of a more salacious nature. The latter picture is of Evie’s former identity, a young woman named Sally Hansen, posing astride a wooden chair. It’s an alluring picture, a young woman with her breasts bared, smiling invitingly - so divorced from the other image of the starchy and impenetrable medium. Since he discovered the titillating picture, Alex has been carrying the photograph on his person.
When the seance begins, the Lennoxes ask Evie to summon their lost relative, Bertie. Evangeline answers that Bertie cannot come, because he is now with God. Alex is surprised by this--surely a medium would want to keep his clients on the hook! If she tells them they’ve crossed over, she cuts off a source of income.
Mrs. Lennox then suggests that Evie see what the spirits have to say to Alex. After he agrees to try it, Evangeline startles everyone by answering as his father, the former duke, in a deep, cold voice. Alex is enraged, but he doesn’t leave the room. Evangeline then communicates with spirits through slate writing, and the note “Boy, stop wasting time” appears. Alex runs out of the room--nauseated and enraged at what is another jab at his relationship with his father. He vows to get revenge on Evangeline.
After Alex leaves, we learn that Evie is working under a mysterious figure that she calls The Captain. Evangeline is concerned by Alex’s interest in her, and convinced that he’s going to take her down. The Captain won’t listen to her concerns, instead saying that they should capitalize off of her success with the duke instead of going into hiding.
When we next meet Alex, he’s speaking with his cousin Ellis about the burden of inheriting the dukedom. Alex’s father, the former duke, left him deeply in debt, and Alex will have to marry an heiress in order to course-correct. After his conversation with Ellis, Alex has an epiphany about how Evangeline executed the slate trick to imitate his father. He leaves to confront her, and finds out that the room below the seance was occupied by an actress named Margaret Carmichael. He sets out to find Margaret, hoping that will lead him to Evie.
When he arrives at Margaret’s lodgings, he finds Evie instead--she’s Margeret’s roommate. She’s surprised and disconcerted to find him in her rooms, and he takes advantage of her brief loss of poise to confront her. He tells her what she already knew--that he intends to expose her. Then he surprises her by telling her that wants to spend a week in her company. If he cannot unmask her during that time, he’ll leave her be. If he can, he’ll pay her 500 pounds to compensate for her loss of income, with the expectation that she’ll retire forever. Evangeline agrees to his terms.
Soon after, Alex picks Evie up in his coach so they can begin their bargain. Evie takes him to a place called Eastman’s Dry Plates, where The Captain, going by the name Nightingale, takes their pictures to see if spirits will show up in the images. Alex notes that spirit photography is an astute choice on Evie’s part, as they won’t get the results until later, mitigating the risk that Alex will detect fraud.
After they’re leaving, the fumes from the photography session cause Evie to go into a coughing fit. Alex offers her a drink from his hip flask, and she’s surprised to discover that it contains water. Alex is sober because he finds alcohol addictive. He doesn’t admit that to Evie, although he knows she’s probably picked up on his teetotalism.
The process of removing the flask from his pocket dislodged the partially nude photograph of Evie that Alex had been carrying around with him, much to his horror. Evie is angry to see it, thinking that Alex was going to use it to publicly shame her. Mortified, Alex admits to Evie that he was carrying it around because he likes it.
Evie forces Alex to admit that he likes the way she looks, and then she makes him confess that he touches himself while looking at it, fantasizing about her. In an act of both retribution and desire, Evie demands that he reenact the performance in front of her, right there in the carriage. It’s a brief, hot moment that leaves Evie feeling powerful, and Alex finally realizing just how overmatched he is by Evie. Before she leaves the carriage, they agree to meet the next day at a seance.
Before the seance, Evie confronts The Captain about the picture from her past life. He was angry when he discovered she took it at the time and allegedly destroyed all copies of it. She knows he’s involved in getting the picture in front of Alex but she doesn’t know how or why.
At the seance of Lord and Lady Stein, Evie is continuously encroached upon by the lecherous Lord Stein. To punish him, she calls forth the spirit of his mother, who proceeds to chastise him for being an unfaithful husband. Stein is grief-stricken, bursting into tears. This performance solidifies to Alex how capable Evie is, and how he got off quite easy in her early performance of his father.
Their next meet-up is at a theater party in Soho. Evie performs again - this time manifesting a glowing green spirit from her hands that the crowd calls ectoplasm. Alex recognizes it as oil of phosphorus, a dangerously flammable substance. Enraged at her careless behavior, he confronts her after the show and forcibly removes it from her hands all while lecturing her. As they leave the theater, they kiss and start to go in for more. Alex wants Evie to say that she wants him, that she wants this, but Evie is unable to do it. Alex retreats and calls a cab. Later, he offers her the role of his mistress, and Evie declines, thinking that he’ll tire of her.
The next day, Evie confronts The Captain again, asking why he would risk exposure from Alex when he has so much to lose. The Captain confesses that he’s expecting a big payout from Alex, and Evie deduces that the Captain’s reasoning is personal, that it’s not entirely driven by logic. She’s come to care for Alex and she’s worried about him, so she goes to warn him and end the wager. She tells him that The Captain is fixated on him and wants to hurt him.
Alex is annoyed that The Captain has seemingly ruined any chance that he had with Evie, as now he feels responsible for her safety and can’t make moves on her while she’s under his protection. He takes her to his apartments to hide out, and they come up with a plan to end the charade. They’ll stage a seance with The Captain and other witnesses present, where Alex will elaborately expose it as a fraud. To do this they enlist Alex’s half-sister Helen, who’s from a theatrical background. She’ll take the form of a spirit rising from the floor, and Alex will break with custom and pull the curtain on Evie’s machinations, exposing that she’s controlling the scene.
When Helen starts the performance, they’re all shocked by The Captain’s reaction upon seeing her. He becomes enraged and tries to grab her, before yelling at the Duke and Evie that he’ll destroy them. After Helen is ushered to safety by her husband, Alex and Evie try to piece together what caused The Captain’s outsized reaction. Evie remembers that he was in love with an actress in the past, a redheaded beauty who looked remarkably like Helen. This woman was Helen’s mother, the mistress of the former duke, who is also Alex’s deceased father. Turns out The Captain has more than just held a candle for Helen’s mother all these years: he felt entitled to her, and even after she died, he carried a deep-seated rage toward the duke, a man she wasted her affections on. The former duke is dead, and so now Alex, his son, must pay.
Evie and Alex decide that Evie must disappear so she can be safe from the Captain, while Alex figures out how to take care of the problem. They sleep together, and they’re both overwhelmed with their feelings for each other. It seems like an impossible situation: Alex is going to be the duke, and to keep the dukedom surviving he will need to marry an heiress. Evie is not opposed to being Alex’s mistress, but she can’t stomach the prospect of seeing him with his future wife.
Hoping to avoid painful goodbyes, Evie decides to leave in the middle of the night during a storm, and a thoroughly distraught Alex chases after her. While attempting to follow Evie’s path on the cliffs, he’s confronted by the Captain, who initiates a brawl, ending with Alex tumbling over the side of the cliff.
Later, Evie learns from the newspapers that Alex has fallen to his death. She’s overcome with grief, filled with remorse that she never told him that she loved him and how strong her feelings were.
Later, she’s accosted by a man, surprised to find that it’s a clean-shaven Alex. After his brawl with the captain, who mysteriously disappeared, Alex staged his own death with the help of his half-sister, Helen. It’s the perfect solution: Alex no longer has to be troubled by the dukedom, his death brings insurance money to the estate, and he is now free to create a new life with Evie. He tells Evie that if anyone can help him disappear, it’s her. Evie tells Alex her real name, Hannah, and together they depart on their new, unburdened life.
Emma: So let's talk about the first science scene where Alex meets Evangeline for the first time. So Alex has been carrying Evie's picture around for a time, so the fascination/obsession has already started when they first meet. But let's talk about the actual first meeting, the seance with the Lennoxes.
Alex is trying to reconcile the parts of Evie that he knows: the partially nude photograph of her that he finds so alluring and the staid foreboding medium that is manipulating people out of their money.
Evie shocks him in 2 different ways. First, she refuses to let the Lennox to speak with their relative Bertie, and keep them on the hook for future sessions. Second, she scares and taunts Alex, by pretending to call forth the spirit of his abuse of father. The first is a kindness; the second is most definitely an act of cruelty.
Why do you think Evie made these decisions?
Beth: So yes, she's unkind to Alex at the same time, though he is a threat to her livelihood, I'd say she's using restrained tactics to scare him off. I'm glad this stays a sore spot between them. While I think Evie was justified, it still hurts Alex, and I see why it's still hard for him.
We'll talk later about Alex's garbage father, but Evie's pretty consistent here on how she approaches people. Lord Stein, another person we’ll talk about, harasses her during a seance, and Alex notices she dials it, dials up the scare tactics for Lord Stein even more, because he's genuinely a piece of trash. And it's not only about Evie because Lady Stein hugs Evie afterwards and thanks her.
Emma: Yeah, I definitely think a theme of this book is how interpersonal harm intersects with systemic harm and weighing how to react on a personal basis to these scales
By all measures Alex is more powerful than Evie, but from the jump we can see that she can still hurt him. What does she owe him in terms of restoration from this harm that he takes so personally, and what does he owe her as a duke and this direct threat to her livelihood?
Chels: It's kind of funny after she calls forth his father, and he storms out thinking like, “oh, I'm really gonna get her now,” and I'm kinda like, “Well, weren't you gonna get her before?”
Beth: Right! What has changed?
Emma: Now this personal harm is personal!
[LAUGHTER]
Chels: It’s worse now! But yeah, I do kind of want to mention the Lennoxes. So something that Alex knows, and he actually gets angry about it in the moment when he sees that she's doing this because he makes it feel like he's more complicit in the seance is when she says that Bertie, their relative, is with God, and so she refused to like, do a voice, or call him forward. Which would kind of keep them on the hook and bring them back for more and more seances. I'm kind of interested. Do you have any thoughts on why this made Alex so mad?
Beth: I think he wants to see her as like a truly terrible person like a charlatan is taking people's money, and this demonstrates she's thoughtful, and how she approaches people's grief, because obviously they're very sad. You know someone has died, and she's not gonna just take them for every penny that they have. You learn later in the book that she and Captain argue about this, that she won't just like keep calling for someone's dead relative, because that's what he wants to do. So it shows a thoughtfulness on Evie’s part that she's like…she doesn't want more than she needs.
Emma: Yeah, and I think Alex maybe is also having a reaction to the Lennoxes’ grief that has this like tidy ending that they're so sad about Bertie. And once someone's able to tell them he's at peace. They are able to also move on, Alex. There's no there's no tiny solution to Alex's grief. It's like he has grief for his father, but he also has grief for his life with his father.
So there, even if someone, a medium, was willing to lie to Alex about his father being at peace. that would not have the same reaction to Alex. So I think, as a grieving son and a grieving son of an abusive father. I think he also has jealousy of the Lennoxes neatness that Evie can afford them.
Chels: That's a really great point. The reason the Alex gives for getting into spiritualism is because, was initially, I think, to fill the hole that alcohol had left in his life, and so which is also kind of so closely tied to his feelings with his father, because he has memories of his father mocking him for his drinking. He got into spiritualism looking for that, and instead he kind of was able to see through the curtain. He was able to see that. “Oh, this isn't a real, this isn't something that's going to help me.”
And so his new mission became debunking mediums. He just had to have something to fill that, and I think that he probably on some level, is as kind of seems like what you were alluding to Emma like, he felt a little bit jealous that the Lennoxes get this like kind of like neat, tidy story, and this like comfortable grief that he doesn't necessarily get.
Emma: I think He also mentions that to Ev when he is like. I initially started debunking them because I thought I could find a real one. And he's like been since disavowed of that. That he he's initially seeking them because he wants to sort of like he's interested in spiritualism and solace, and but by the time he's with Evie he's convinced that they're all charlatans..
Beth: Right?.
Chels: And I think it also bothers him that he's like he wants to be able to categorize her, and he can't do it. It's the whole book.
Beth: Stay in this box, please!
[LAUGHTER]
Chels: Moving on to our next point. I'm going to give a little bit of a backstory of mediums in Victorian England. So spiritualism was incredibly popular in Victorian England, there was a proliferation of mediums, a rising number of women who weren't from the highest social classes who could adopt this authoritative voice and insert themselves into the public sphere.
I think a very surface level reading of this phenomena would paint it as feminist, a sort of Victorian girl bossary, where women pulled notice by force.
According to Alex Owen in the book, The Darkened Room, Women Power and Spiritualism in the Late Victorian England, mediumship, at least in theory, was stripped of all associations with mysticism and of an elite cast. It was firmly held that any individual, male or female, rich or poor, could become the conduit for a dialogue with the spirits.
Women flourished beneath this overarching rubric. But Owen acknowledges that while spiritualism can circumvent rigid nineteenth century gender norms, it “did so without mounting a direct attack on the status quo. Women could achieve notoriety and influence through spiritualism, but the spectacle could often be reduced to the salacious.
In a New Yorker article, “Why did so many Victorians try to speak with the dead?” Casey Sepp recounts an incident with Nina Crandon, a well known medium, whose work was infamously debunked by Houdini, where she “produced” ectoplasm from her mouth and from between her legs, often while naked.
Evangeline produces ectoplasm from her hands in front of the audience, and while the event itself is less obscene to Victorian sensibilities than what Crandon did, Evangeline’s avoidance of the more salacious elements of spectacle doesn't stop her from being sexualized in her role
When she is performing the seance at Lord and Lady Stein's house, Lord Stein openly, sexually harasses her by touching her leg and making lewd gestures. Let's talk about the seance at Lord and Lady Stein's house, and the way that Evie diffuses this situation. What stood out to you?
Emma: So in the context of mediums, I think, throughout the Victorian period there's this question of what is art, and what is magic, and what is science? Similar to the skepticism about photography as an art that we're going to talk about later. I wonder if Bennet directly alluding to how Sherlock Holmes dies in The Final Problem by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with the way that Alex falls to his death off a cliff with his enemy. Conan Doyle was one of these Victorian men of letters who was so fascinated by mediums and psychics, and seemed to have this earnest desire to prove something was supernatural, taking a good faith approach to debunking that led to his falling out with Harry Houdini, who insisted that all spiritualists were frauds.
Alex, in the book, seems at first to be taking a more Houdini approach to Evie's performance, particularly at the Steins. So this is lying, and this is wrong. But then, at the Steins’ house party, he sort of sees more of Evie's motivation. Why she's doing it, and what power she gains from her seances .
At the party. Evie is not giving solace in the way that Alex finds hurtful like the couple in the first seance. She's using it as a weapon against Lord Stein’s lechery harming of women. And this seems to be something that Alex understands more directly.
Beth: I like the reference to Holmes, and I also picked up on that when I was reading it. There is an element of mystery here, even though we're in on the debunking the medium part of the story. Bennett sets up questions for Alex to answer, because he's unsure how Evie does things.
But then the real mystery shows up, and it's why is the Captain targeting Alex?
Chels: So this kinda gets me to another point, which is that I think it's fascinating. That debunking a fraudulent medium storyline crops up again and again in historic romance. The Wicked Deeds of Daniel MacKenzie, by Jennifer Ashley, and Proof by Seduction by Courtney Milan to name a few.
Exposing mediums was a past-time for a lot of prominent men during the Victorian period. In Cep’s New Yorker article she cites Ann Braude’s “Radical Spirits,” which framed mediumship as laying the groundwork for feminist political activism - namely that having more women speaking in public would lead them being seen as equal. Cep says that “such a framing helps explain why Spiritualism became so ridiculed, and why its opponents sought to discredit its female leaders most vigorously.”
Heterosexual historical romances often explore gender politics and power imbalances, because there are certain signifiers that we associate with historical romance that make power discrepancies obvious: think of a young woman’s ruined reputation as being a consequence for engaging in a fraction of the bad behavior that a rake could get away with, unscathed. The “aristocrat exposes the medium” is such an interesting way to explore that dynamic while grounding the story in a specific time and place. While the heroes of these books have less malicious motives for revealing the heroines’ fraud than some of their real-life counterparts, the consequences for the women, on an individual level – their loss of income and lifestyle, would be dire. They don’t have an easy way to claw their way back from that level of notoriety, but how would a silver-spooned aristocrat intuitively know that?
And this gets us into Evie’s “choice” to be a medium. There’s this great scene where Alex is taking Evie to task for being a medium, which is an occupation that definitely has ethical problems when you’re an acknowledged fraud. Alex’s interest in debunking mediums didn’t start that way - he was initially turning to Spiritualism to try to fill his life with meaning and find peace that was denied him by his father and his tumultuous upbringing. When he realized the mediums that he was seeking out were most certainly charlatans, he became incensed, and then put all his energy into destroying their occupations. It’s definitely personal for him, but he can’t quite wrap his brain around how Evie, someone he is truly coming to like and respect, can bring herself to do this for a living. He says that she should be able to find another line of work that’s more respectable.
Evie lets him have it: What would a duke know about how regular people scrape by, day-to-day? The reality is that even the people with “respectable” jobs, your seamstress, your factory worker, are a hairsbreadth away from destitution. Sex work is supplementary income for a lot of these people, and Evie points this out as value-neutral. Her best friend, the actress Margaret, is a sex worker, but this is no doubt an occupation that Alex would see as being as far from respectable as humanly possible. Who cares about finding a respectable occupation, when you need to eat?
Beth: 10,000 points to Evie for this conversation. You’re basically cheering as she lays out her limited employment opportunities. Another thing I wanted to touch on is that she mentions women may rely on the men in their community, who have better access to opportunities, but what do women do when they don’t have that? While some women had fathers, brothers, uncles, those men might not go to bat for them or support them. Like no wonder she became a medium and tried to mitigate falsehoods when she could. It’s a job that gives her enough money and it’s not hard labor where you’re working for a meager amount of money and it’s unlikely you’re going to advance far employment-wise.
Emma: Yeah. And Alex definitely has this fantasy about “just going to get a job.” Like he sees. I presume, he sees women in sort of like a service industry. I think he mentions like working in a shop as like a viable thing for a woman who is not relying on independently wealthy men in her life to do. But how is Evie going to get that job without a reference? He has no idea of, like the mechanics of sort of this growing middle class that's coming out of the Victorian period. It's still very reliant on network and connections, which is kind of ironic, because the network and connections and sort of the the credit that he has with his creditors as Duke, is a big source of anxiety for him. He's worried about selling parts of the the dukedom off and his assets, because it's going to make the creditors anxious. And so he's also relying on this network of trust that people place into him that he doesn't seem to understand that that network scales down to the middle class as well, and the working class.
And he doesn't conceptualize that Evie doesn't have that network because of her relationship with the Captain and sort of where she comes from.
Chels: There's that great scene where Alex confronts the captain, and he has this thought like “I can act really intense, because how often do people meet at Duke?” And so we can kind of see that one way, or see that his being is so unique. But he doesn't quite really get what it's like for other people like he doesn't get that he's in such a such a unique position, like truly unimaginable wealth and power, even as a broke duke. Funny thing to say, “broke Duke.” He he doesn't quite get that. He can only see it one way. He can only see it one way.
Beth: And I love how frequently Bennett will reference him, in his own mind, acknowledging, like “I'm a duke. They've never met a duke before.” You know what I mean, like, he trades on that. He knows that he has power. So I yeah, I love that part of the book every time he acknowledged it. I'm like. Yes, this is an unusual thing happening that this innkeeper is now meeting a duke like there’s only what, how many?
Chels: And that's so funny, too, with knowing Alex's personality, because he doesn't read is foreboding to me. But he's like “I’m scaring everybody just by being in the room.”
Beth: Maybe that's why he doesn't have to be foreboding. He just knows this title is going to do the work for him.
Chels: Exactly.
Emma: And because he hated his dad so much like he does not respect the dukedom like he does not respect being a duke. So some dukes in historical romance like, wield it like a weapon, because they were like I'm never gonna live up to my father, the Duke. But Alex is like “I hated that guy. Why would I want to be like him?: So yeah.
Chels: Let's talk about the picture of Evangeline that Alex has been carrying around because it comes back into the narrative at different points, first to show just how far gone Alex is from the get go, and then later we see it was deliberately planted. What do you see is the significance of the picture?
Emma: I think we all love the photograph--Alex carrying it before he even meets Evie is so hot and just sets up their dynamics from the jump. He’s smitten and doesn’t have words for it! She’s confused by his devotion to the image, but takes control of it with aplomb.
Photography is this technology that does not always come up in historical romance. The invention of it came in the 1820s, but popular access to photographs like the ones that Alex carries of Evie really came in the second half of the century, with the invention of dry plates by George Eastman in 1884. So firmly outside the time frame of Regency romance and a lot of Victorian ones as well. This book is set in 1888. Evie also uses photography as her medium scheme, with the Captain posing as spirit photographer Nightingale, but I do mainly want to talk about the almost nude photograph of Evie as an art object.
Photography in its first century was often relegated almost to a documentary science (like the way it is used in The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan!) In these dismissals, there is as sense that there is no mark making as a union between the artist’s eye, brain and hand. This is an over simplistic understanding of the variety of ways that photographs are staged, but literary theorist Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida suggests that something about this lack of total authorial intent in the final image creates, rather than detracts from, an artistic value.
Barthes calls the elements within a photograph that have a system of meaning for photographer and viewer the “studium.” This exists in any referential work of art. But in photography, there is another element: the punctum. The punctum is, in Barthes’ translated words is: “this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it, like an arrow, and pierces me.” The word comes from the Latin word meaning “to prick.” The punctum has to be accidental, unknown until the image is produced and it has to be personal to the viewer, not the photographer or the subject.
In the context of the photograph of Evie that Alex finds so so compelling, I thought Evie’s nonplussed description of the experience of the sitting was so interesting. “The money he’d offered her to pose had been more than she’d ever earned before from a single afternoon’s work, and she’d been tempted by the prospect of earnings of her own.” Evie thinks about ii in terms of her economics--the sitting is not really an artistic enterprise for her at all.
Alex, when describing the photo to himself, acknowledges the artifice designed by the photographer, he understands the system of reference of Evie’s undone hair and astride a chair pose: intending to signal to the viewer “she’d recently engaged in frenetic amorous activity.” But the thing that captures Alex’s attention is Evie’s gaze--something that the photographer can’t control and even Evie doesn’t seem to understand her power as related to Alex. It is a feature of the image without referent: there’s no meaning inherent in it, except its power over *this* viewer.
Part of the power of the punctum is this is relationship between viewer and art without a intermediary, or medium. I think this is fascinating in the context of Alex and Evie’s relationship, where she is first literally a medium to the other worlds and then they are holding each other at a distance for the book.
Chels: There's also another party to the photograph: the Captain. So he plants the photo for Alex to discover which eventually leads to Alex’s obsession with Evie. The Captain's motivations were to put Evie on Alex's radar, so that he can begin his revenge plot. But there is no guarantee that Alex will see anything noteworthy with the photograph, he could easily find it titillating, but still use it, as Evie feared, to immediately discredit her.
The Captain originally punished Evie for taking the photo, because, having that image of her didn't serve him, he needed her to appear otherworldly and not earthy, in order to make money as a medium.
Beth: I feel like I should comment on…just Emma's explanation was just so succinct. I'm ike, yeah, that's really good point. Yeah, that's kind of what I think I'm like. I have nothing to add to that except it thumbs up. That's what I bring into the podcast. Good.
Emma: Thank you for letting me talk about semiotics. Again.
Beth: Can you do this for every episode?
Chels: When are we going to talk about Black Silk?
Beth: I know, right?
[LAUGHTER]
Chels: So the photography scene in Black Silk…
Beth: Yeah, this photo. And then there's another photo. Doesn't the Captain like when they do the spirit photography. Doesn't he send the photo to Alex afterwards?
Chels: Yeah, he slips in a photo of Evie into them, and Alex is like “you, motherfucker.” Because by that point the Captain had caught on that Alex is like gone.
Emma: But it also tips the Captain's hand, because Alex is thinking like “Is Evie sending sent me this photo?” and “he's like actually, I think it was probably Nightingale. So it's like who is Nightingale to Evie? So far, Alex had not connected to Captain and Nightingale, as like the people that hold power over Evie. So slipping the photo of Evie is very like I think, indicative of the Captain’s like…he always thinks he has the upper hand, but he always never does, because he's so like like hyper fixated on Alex, like we think Alex is obsessed with Evie. But actually the Captain is even more obsessed with Alex, and like this revenge plot.
Chels: I just really want to know something that you kind of never find out in the book unless I’m wrong. But I don't think you do. Is what exactly the captain was planning on doing?
Beth: I feel like he's just doing a lot of different things. And then, like whatever worked out, he would just kind of go off that. So that's why I feel like the plan doesn't feel like much of a plan. Does that make sense? It's just a man who's very angry, which I kinda like actually like.
I kind of like sometimes. Like the villain will be like “How did you make this happen? How would you know this person would react like this?” and then you could enact the next part of your plan.
Chels: Right because he doesn't know, like initially. We get the benefit of seeing how intensely Alex is. Oh, my gosh! He really likes Evie, and there's like, I think it's like the third chapter. He's like doing something, and he has her picture propped up, and he's talking to her picture. He calls her a “saucy minx.”
Emma: And he thinks about “I'm gonna have the photograph like done as a painting,” so like I’ll look at her instead of my dead dad who I hate, and he's like, “maybe that's too much?”
Chels: Oh, my God, I love Alex so much! And Evie, like she really doesn't have it like she knows like what she sees the picture she's like, oh, okay, but like, but like she doesn't really know.
Beth: No, no.
Chels: But yeah, as far as kind of like, not knowing what exactly the Captain is going to do with with revenge. Yeah, you're you're totally right, like I, he he's kind of like he's just kind of like going off vibes like Alex really likes Evie. Plan B. So I do think he's like a very clever man, and he is also very angry. But, like I, I Also, I think there's something that he was gonna do. I just don't know what it is. It might have just been a push out Alex off a cliff?
Beth: Seriously. Yeah, it was like, I think, Evie references that scripture is it from Numbers? where it's like you visit the sins of the father on the children. So that's like what tips her off like, hey? This might be be his plan. He had me memorized this Scripture.
Emma: A little on the nose!
Chels: Very subtle!
So one character that looms large over the story, but it's not actually present within. It is Alex's father, the former Duke of Harcastle. So Alex's father had already died before the book starts, but he still takes up a lot of space, and Alex's more dismal thoughts.
He's a pretty evil man. He had incarcerated Alex's half sister, Helen, in an asylum for a decade, and tormented Alex through insults and emotional abuse during his childhood, Dismissing his beloved nanny without character, and locking him in a closet for a full day.
Alex tells Evie that he feels as though he shouldn't have a right to complain about his father's treatment of him, that so many people had it much worse. After all, his father never hit him, and Alex, who grew up in a life of extreme privilege and wealth.
I always think of The Outsiders in situations like this, when Cherry tells Ponyboy that “Things are rough all over.” An initial reading of this line feels a bit patronizing: how can she compare the lives of the Greasers, who have to cut it on the streets, to that of the silver-spoon Socs? But even though it’s a fraught and messy comparison, there’s an element of truth to it – suffering isn’t finite, anyone can experience it. Evie’s life is demonstrably harder than Alex’s, she’s had to endure things that, as an aristocrat, he wouldn’t be able to comprehend, and yet that doesn’t mean that Alex, with all the trappings of wealth, was fully shielded from trauma. He’s surprised when Evie protects him from The Captain, noting that nobody had ever thought he needed that before. In a way, Alex’s wealth and station worked to further isolate him.
Emma: There’s also Tolstoy’s opener to Anna Karinina: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Where is this more true than romance novels! I think with a cross class romance, it would be easy enough for Alex’s anguish to come from his attraction to Evie--even his divestment from the ducal role could be a big romantic gesture so that they can be together, realistically.
But he really is not suited for the role of the duke! Not just because of his personality or his love of Evie, but because the dukedom is imbibed with all these feelings about his father and his abuse, that Ellis, his cousin, just sort of gets to skip.
Beth: Right, shout out to Ellis and can’t wait for your book. Chels has laid out what a bad man Alex’s father was and I love how Bennet goes headlong into that. Alex mentions at the beginning of the book that he had shown some interest in the dukedom, knowing one day he’d be running things. His father takes this as Alex eagerly awaiting his death. His father makes it so unbearable for Alex that he stops trying. Alex doesn’t remember when he stopped caring and there’s this quote from the book: “And, if he were honest, didn’t he feel contempt for both to this day?” Now he has to save the estate, not having really learned how to care for it. It’s interesting to me though is he doesn’t want to be the one who drops the ball? Like in the line of all the dukes, that weight of his title and responsibility still guides his actions.
So I think that segues into Alex giving up the dukedom?
Chels: Yeah, it does pretty neatly! The book ends in a way that a lot of “eat the rich” historicals fall short of, with Alex actually giving up the aristocracy so he can forge a new life with Evie. This makes a lot of sense for his character, as both Beth and Emma have mentioned, because he not only got no pleasure out of being a duke, but he saw it as a familial burden. In the middle of the book he tells Evie, “You see, the actual duke himself is nothing. Each one, each generation, is merely a link in the chain. None of this is truly mine. I’m its guardian, and so I must marry a suitable and suitably rich woman and make a little lord who will grow up and become another link in the chain.” Alex leaving the dukedom behind so he can live with Evie is him breaking the chain, saying “No, it actually doesn’t make sense for me to live like this any longer.”
Beth: Yes, I agree. I think it makes a lot more sense that Alex gives up his dukedom because a duke is so high socially. I don’t know what we have to do to loosen publishers’ chokehold on publishing dukes, but it’s often a pretty wide gulf between the duke character and their intended romantic partner. Julia Bennet makes it work here where it’s an actual impediment to their future. It makes way more sense for Alex to fake his death and for them to start over somewhere new. And Bennet does lay the groundwork for Alex to be dead in the law’s eyes.
I know we do and do not care about historical accuracy at the same time. I’m approaching it as, here’s something to explore in fiction more. Because the ramifications of marrying outside of your class were pretty great. I remember reading this a little a while ago, but there’s this diarist Nelly Weeton, she lived from 1776 to 1849, wrote in her journal about one such match. In 1810, she wrote to her friend about how her wealthy employer had married his dairymaid, and that the dairymaid’s new family despised her. She comments being like, “oh, it's kind of it's terrible when people marry up.” actually.
Chels: Yeah, because I bet that was like a huge source of strife for the dairy maid, and not necessarily like the new family. After four weeks of learning to love her personality came around.
Beth: I'm sure that never happened, so I don't I don't want to make it seem like. I'm not fine with stories where someone like marries up to the Duke’s level like ike I said, historical accuracy is fine, I don’t need it in my fiction.
But I think it would be more interesting authors would explore that more often, or try and solve it in in different ways.
Emma: I guess. Yeah. They generally assume that marrying up is the impediment that the the hero's family won't take in, like the Duke's family won't take in the heroine. And sometimes the heroine or the whoever is the lower class, will sort of protest a little bit, and say, like i'm not made for your world! But a big enough grand gesture will solve that problem like we will forge ourselves in in the aristocracy together.
Beth: Love conquers all!
Emma: But with the dairy maid it's like, yeah, like maybe maybe she likes her life, and like the industry that she has in, like the middle class. it seems like all these dukes don't like being dukes. Why would anyone want to be a duchess?
Beth: That's so true?
Chels: I think I've mentioned this before, but there's something that I kind of look for in historicals that have class difference romance, because it-it has echoes and like queer relationships where you are queer, you enter into a relationship, and then you have to deal with like both parties families. Like in a way that heterosexual couples don’t necessarily need to as often. So there's there is this, that point where it's like, okay, I'm choosing to be in this relationship. And therefore I’m choosing to let my family go. And there's a lot of historicals, the heterosexual historicals that kind of skirt making that choice.
And I would like to see that dealt with more often. I'm not saying that it has to be dealt with every time like this always has to be the conflict. I know that sometimes it's just really fun to read about a governess and a duke, and I do love those stories, but I like something…I would like something different, and I would like it more often, especially with regard to families, and like sort of messy family dynamics.
So which…kind of reminds me a bit of the Blackshear series by Cecilia Grant, which we just talked about the other week, which are another sort of “You can't have your cake and eat it too” type of historicals. So in the Blackshears making a bad marriage like Will does when he marries. Lydia, who's a courtesan, has real social consequences.
There was never really a choice for Will. He was always going to pick Lydia, but once he does, he has a new reality. He's not welcome into the places that he used to be, and members of his family aren’t speaking with him. So he had that, like actual sacrifice, in order to be with Lydia, and even though that wasn't neatly wrapped up by the end of their book. It's still a happily ever after.
Emma: Yeah, and I think also connected to the Blackshear how these characters are pushed to bad acts. So Martha Russell, one of the Blackshear sisters at attempts fraud. Will and Lydia do card counting, and Evie here in this book, with the medium practice. These are all lies to some extent, and if we have to be black and white about it, bad things to do.
But none of these novels outright expect the reader to condemn any of these characters, even if people are harmed by these bad acts. But the bigger badder act really is the system that Alex isn’t sure how to remove himself from. And sometimes romance deals with that by making the system a backdrop, and focusing on the personal, or making the system more receptive to progress than we know it. The Blackshears as non-aristocrats can weather the storm if they stick together. But Alex is a Duke. So Bennet has to go with it.
Beth: I would just like to create a Bingo sheet for all the times we will mention Cecilia Grant in each of our episodes.
Emma: There is a reason we started with her.
Beth: We need to be able to reference and people to know what we're referencing. Not to derail the conversation. System=Bad.
Chels: That’s how we should end every…We were kind of talking about this little bit, but the conflict in a lot of historical romance novels is often around the potential social consequences for a disadvantageous match. Oftentimes those social consequences don't come to fruition. Why do you think that is?
Emma: Yeah, I was thinking about this. Maybe on like the other side of things i'm thinking about. So it's it. We have the aristocracy on one side. Another sort of common theme is like heroine takes up with crime lord! And it's like those are some social consequences that I feel like are not necessarily played out every time, mostly because it's exciting when the heroine sort of leaves society.
But I think that, I guess I think am thinking about One Night is Never Enough by Anne Mallory. That’s one where a very starchy woman goes off with someone who is a crime lord. But her family is so terrible to her that we e were rooting for her to leave. So you sort of have to push something to the extreme, whether it's the consequences or the not caring about consequences. And I love that book. But I think maybe threading the needle of dealing with consequences, and also like taking the big leap, is harder. I I think that all the examples I’m thinking of where they don't deal with consequences. It's because so you were rooting for someone to say like, oh, I don't care.
I guess Alex has to do that, too. He's basically saying, like I don't care, but he doesn't totally sever his relationship with his sister. He's severing his relationship with like the title. I hope that made sense.
Beth: But no, it does. I feel like I don't know if this is exactly what you're meaning, but it's like you can still approach a situation and be like, okay, I'm okay, with the consequences that are going to happen, like I know and I don't care, but they're still going to happen, and it's still hard, even if you've logically thought thought it through like, I think emotionally, especially with like Alex, he's severing his ties with the Dukedom. But still pretending to be dead! Like that, still has to be tricky to manage in the future like, how is he gonna maintain a relationship with Helen? And there's like people he cares about?
Chels: That he will literally never see!
Emma: I’m excited to see how is Ellis going to deal with this like, I think, to pull off the fraud, Ellis has to be kept in the dark like. Is he gonna continue to be kept in the dark for his whole book? Or is there going to be a reveal like? Are we ever going to see Evie and Alex again? Now Evie’s now Hannah, so I don't know.
Chels: I love that Ellis is like barely in this book, and yet everyone is like we need more.
Beth: I love this setup.
Emma: I mean his wife is in the book even less. It's like she's a Bohemian
Chels: She just mentioned! Yeah, she's like, yeah, she's she's artsy, and he's like can't be bothered.
Emma: She’s artsy and they’re estranged and I’m like I’m obsessed.
Beth: I have some marriage of comedians. Yeah, she's artsy. He's uptight. I'm like this is the perfect set up for me. This is like a Beth book to the T.
Chels: so it has to be like it has to be like a second chance romance, right?
Beth: Like I love you know I love it. It's the best! Give me all of those.
Chels: It could be so good.
Beth: Just want him to be like obsessed with her and him being so restrained, like people restraining their emotions. I love it.
Chels: It's yeah, I'm really looking forward to it.
Emma: I wonder… I guess now he's Duke…he needs a wife like he needs to like.
Beth: Yes, that's what I think. The setup is going to be like: You have a duchess now, so you have to tell her like. By the way, you're a duchess, by the way,
Emma: and like we kind of give up your art, for children.
Chels: She has to learn to Duchess, and then has to do her. What did they call it? When you have to have sex for the family? They’re like, it’s like your something responsibility?
Beth: Consummation?
Chels: Yeah, you have to have. You have to have an heir, or else you'll break the chain. But it's like they don't know the chain was broken and soldered together! They don't know that in secret Alex just like removing his link and then piecing the two back together.
Beth: I think this is a good point to end, because we're talking about her next book and how excited we are to read it. Everyone should read The Ruin of Evangeline Jones, it will ruin you. I'm so sorry. To Julia Bennett, if this gets to you: obviously, we're very excited for Ellis’ book.
Thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find bonus content on our patreon@patreon.com/ReformedRakes. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram for show updates. The username for both is @ReformedRakes.
