13. Affinity

By Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters’ first three novels explored the lives of lesbians in the criminal underworld during the Victorian era.  Two I’ve already read some time ago, and finally, Affinity when I spotted this used hardcopy at the People’s Coop Bookstore in Vancouver this summer.

Fingersmith remains my favourite, with Affinity a close second and Tipping the Velvet dead last.  Affinity (1999) shared many similarities with Fingersmith (2002).  It's my belief that after Affinity's success, Waters sharpened her writing skills even further to create the masterpiece that was Fingersmith.
 
Both novels featured a long, deliberate con game involving two women who have passionate feelings for each other and a terrible betrayal.  I admit I fell for the deceptive twist in Affinity (thus launching into major spoiler territory), mainly because Waters did such an excellent job deliberately misleading and/or withholding information from the reader.  

While Fingersmith ended with a hopeful future for our anti-heroines Sue and Maud, Affinity ended tragically with an utterly devastated Margaret Prior, with no hope for forgiveness or redemption.  Poor, poor Margaret!  Even though I didn't much like her as a character due to her failings and weaknesses, yet Waters managed to make her a sympathetic figure somehow.

Of the three Prior siblings (Stephen, Margaret, Priscilla), Margaret was closest to her father.  We learned via brief “flashbacks” that Margaret lead a fulfilling, intellectual life assisting her father’s scholarly studies.  It was accompanying her father to a lecture where she met the brilliant Helen, who was soon employed by Mr Prior as a second assistant.  Margaret and Helen fell in love, and under the guise of a close friendship, were able to carry on a secret affair.  It was also possible that Mr. Prior encouraged their relationship.  In fact, the trio were planning a trip to Italy to further their scholarly pursuits when Mr Prior became ill and died.  Helen lost the courage to continue her relationship with Margaret and at some point, accepted Stephen’s proposal of marriage, breaking Margaret’s heart even further, as she was still mourning the loss of her father. Soon after, Margaret tried to kill herself by overdosing in chloral.

Affinity began Margaret’s storyline about a year after her suicide attempt.  Margaret had been granted permission to visit Millbank, a rather bleak, Dickensian prison for women.  Since suicide was punishable by law (if one was unlucky enough to survive), Margaret was spared the penitentiary as she belonged to the upper-class.  Margaret’s motive for becoming a 'lady visitor' of Millbank was never clear; she could’ve been looking for a purpose after recovering from her self-poisoning, and an excuse to get away from her over-bearing mother and self-centred sister, Priscilla.  There could’ve been guilt and curiosity mixed in there too, and it’s possible she also wanted to see how miserable the prisoners were to make herself feel better (as Selina so bluntly pointed out to her later).

Margaret was also dealing with unresolved feelings for her ex-lover.  Helen was an example of a closet lesbian who could adapt by passing as straight and thus, find some measure of happiness within the confines of patriarchal Victorian society.  Her marriage to Stephen was a way of staying close to Margaret, not realizing how painful it would be for Margaret to interact with her ex-lover as a sister-in-law. Helen later admitted to Margaret how cowardly it was of her to leave her.  In contrast, Margaret was more of a romantic idealist; quiet yet full of passion beneath her meek exterior.  She was incapable of faking it by role-playing an upper class normie.  Since Margaret failed at taking her own life, she remained trapped in her situation.  This essay explains Margaret's predicament perfectly:

At this stage, Margaret is not yet, technically speaking, a spinster. She becomes so only when her younger sister Priscilla marries a dreamlike suitor, only one day after the official two years of mourning for her father. This marriage was doubly painful for Margaret, firstly because the couple chose Italy for their honeymoon and secondly because, as Margaret reflects, while her social status did not change after her brother married Helen, Priscilla’s wedding completely changed her position within the familial and social structure, transforming her from her ‘mother’s burden’ to ‘her consolation’ (Waters 199), that is, from still marriageable woman past her prime to spinster.

As a spinster, Margaret was doomed to live alone as a closeted lesbian with her disappointed and domineering mother, watching from the sidelines as Priscilla, Stephen and Helen get on with their conventional lives in Victorian society.  However, Margaret was not completely dependent, as she learned from Stephen that their father left her a sizable fortune that would allow her to live out the rest of her life comfortably—as long as she doesn’t marry.  Even Selina and Ruth were not able to swindle Margaret’s entire fortune.  But what was wealth, really, when you’ve been utterly betrayed, broken-hearted, and emotionally bereft with suicidal tendencies?

What made Margaret somewhat pathetic was how she made the perfect victim for Selina and Ruth's endgame.  Selina quickly deduced what her target most longed for and exploited that to her advantage. So much so that Margaret (and Mrs Jelf) became convinced that Selina could make miracles happen, if only she could believe!  The part where Margaret was crying out to Selina from her window at night was rather heart-wrenching.   

Now that I think about it, there was usually a rational explanation for all the supposedly supernatural things that occurred around Selina.  Like the little violet that Selina was holding when Margeret first saw her. We can assume that Selina already had Mrs Jelf under her influence, and Mrs Jelf was already relaying messages from Ruth to Selina, so Ruth must have gave the violet to Selina via Mrs J as a little gift to keep her spirits up.  It was a lucky coincidence that Margaret happened to see Selina with it – a coincidence that savvy Selina was able to exploit to her advantage.

I did go back some chapters to check the timing of events.  Soon after the Margaret’s initial meeting with the prisoner, Selina Dawes, Selina must have passed a message on to Ruth to look into Margaret to see if she’d make a worthy target.  Ruth promptly found out where Margaret lived (and that she was obvs wealthy) and bribed the maid Boyd to give her notice to the Prior family.  Before leaving, Boyd mentioned a ‘friend’ named Vigers who was willing to take up the post. Vigers only condition was to be given a small room of her own (to be near her ‘friend’ who lived near the river – a very tiny clue!).  Vigers was soon hired into the household and all the author had to do was to never mention the first name of the new maid!

That was exactly how Selina was able to “sense” the source of Margret's sadness, as Vigers had been regularly passing intel to Selina via Mrs Jelf!  Even if Selina did not possess ANY abilities as a spiritualist-medium, she was cunning and keenly observant (like keying in on the notebook that was peeking out of Margaret’s pocket).  She was also a talented method actress – convincingly spooking her prison inmates by mimicking the voices of ghosts.  Waters seemed to support the argument that spiritualists are mere tricksters and con artists!

Another factor that made the twist so successful (for me, at least) was using Selina Dawes as an unreliable narrator, which helped to deliberately mislead the reader.  Selina’s journal entries alternated with the chapters containing Margaret’s POV.  It was not until the final chapter that we learn how Selina’s accounting of events leading up to that fateful night had been completely falsified.  When they were back in Mrs Brinks house, Ruth asked Selina what she was writing, and Selina only responded, rather mysteriously, that she’s writing for her “Guardian’s eyes”. ‘Him’, Ruth said.

That was the only clue given.  And I have a few theories:  Selina may believe in a higher power and/or she has a modicum of conscience, and writing her journal was a way of justifying her deception.  However, it was mostly likely that Selina was thinking ahead in terms of the law.  If she was ever caught, her journal entries could be used as proof of her ‘innocence’, as she truly believed in her abilities as a spiritualist.

The only thing I wasn’t sure about was how Selina could've deceived Mrs Brinks when they were alone inside her room each night. It was clear Ruth had access to Mrs Brinks' personal items and could feed intel to Selina.  Perhaps Mrs Brinks longed so much to see her departed mother it didn't much for Selina to convince Mrs Brinks that she could summon the spirit of her mother.  It was also possible that Ruth drugged Mrs Brinks’ tea so she’d have mild hallucinations. When Margaret came under the spell of Selina, her imagination was heightened by her nightly doses of chloral hydrate and later, laudanum (pushed by her own mother).

As this reviewer wrote:  Waters’ captured some of the same Gothic tone of dread and unreality [associated] with Wilkie Collins. As I read it, I had almost as hard a time as the protagonist did figuring out what was real, what was supernatural, and what was skillful con.

Some further insight on the ending:

The big one: Ruth was Peter Quick.  I didn’t get this the first time, but re-reading it, it was so obvious.  Disguised as Peter Quick, Ruth could flirt with the ladies, sidle up close and touch them while Selina was tied up.  When the attendants of the seance were helping Selina recover, Ruth would take off her costume and dress in her maid's uniform again.  Mrs. Brink never attended the large seances so when she walked in on one and saw Ruth dressed up as Peter, she went into shock, unable to say anything to out Selina as a charlatan before dying of a heart attack.

Margaret’s ending was even more subtle but we decided from the end of her narrative that she had decided to commit suicide.  The line is “Selina…[y]our twisting is done- you have the last thread of my heart.  I wonder; when the thread grows slack, will you feel it?” (351).  We took the thread going slack as Margaret no longer being alive to hold it up.

And finally, from Lesbian Invisibility and the Politics of Representation of the Lady and the Humble Servant in Sarah Waters’s Affinity

Miss Prior’s incapacity to break out of the immaterial prison house of familial and social conventions while Selina and Ruth initiate a new life of freedom, sexual fulfilment, and social ascent, points to class as the decisive blocking element in Margaret’s quest for individuation. However, although her impending suicide provides a chilling picture of the physical and psychical traumas affecting upper-class lesbian women in the Victorian period, it should not be forgotten that Selina is the only convict who manages to break out of Millbank, a tenebrous Gothic prison, designed after Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon so as to keep all inmates potentially under constant surveillance by an unseen official.28 This awe-inspiring picture of the disciplinary mechanisms reserved for poor women in the Victorian era provides the counterpoint to the portrait of the Lady Visitor’s tragic fate. When both pictures are set against each other, it becomes evident that the difference in the punitive and disciplinary treatment of transgressive working-class and upper-class Victorian women was more apparent than real, a simple difference in the materiality or immateriality of the cell they were respectively condemned to inhabit. In the last reading, therefore, Ruth’s double invisibility as a humble lady’s maid and as an apparitional lesbian may be seen as representative of the general condition of late nineteenth-century working-class women forced to fend for themselves in a thoroughly hostile and pitiless patriarchal word. It is against this oppressive background that the ethicality of Selina and Ruth’s self-humbling tactics as a means to accomplish their picaresque quest for freedom and social ascent should be measured.

All in all, it was a very satisfying, if rather depressing, read.  And it more than made up for the dissatisfaction with Little Women, which I found even more depressing.

Book 20 – Fingersmith

By Sarah Waters 

  "Fancies, Mrs. Rivers. If you might only hear yourself! Terrible plots? Laughing villains? Stolen fortunes and girls made out to be mad? The stuff of lurid fiction! We have a name for your disease. We call it a hyper-aesthetic one. You have been encouraged to over-indulge yourself in literature; and have inflamed your organs of fancy." 

  Sarah Waters first came on the scene with her critically acclaimed “lesbo Victorian romps” such as Tipping the Velvet and Affinity, which isn’t exactly fair, as Waters is a gifted writer of amazing range who has since expanded her repertoire to include gothic ghost stories and WWII fiction. My first introduction was a later work, The Night Watch , which I thought was beautifully written but had a rather disappointingly lackluster storyline. I’m glad I gave her early work a chance since Fingersmith is so far the best book I’ve read this year. I highly recommend it for both male and female readers! As the quote suggests, it has everything you could hope for in a Victorian period novel: an intricate plot, cunning thieves, unexpected villains, hapless yet intrepid heroines, and hot lesbian sex! And Waters’ wonderful writing elevates Fingersmith from being mere “lurid fiction”. 

 The novel begins in the London Borough in 1862. Sue Trinder grew up in a house of thieves run by Mrs Sucksby, who sells orphaned babies, and Mr. Ibbs, who deals with “the passage of poke”. Even though Sue was one of many dozens of orphaned infants that passed through the house on Lant Street, for whatever reason, Mrs Sucksy kept Sue to raise as her own. Like her adopted household, Sue became a fingersmith, which is basically Borough code for thief. One night, a man known only as Gentleman visits Mrs Suckby with a scheme of a lifetime. Before I go on, check out Waters’ introduction of this key character and how she captures his whole life history in just a handful of sentences via Sue’s narration: 

  We called him Gentleman, because he really was a gent—had been, he said, to a real gent’s school, and had a father and mother and a sister—all swells—whose heart he had just about broke. He had had money once, and lost it all gambling; his pa said he should never have another cent of the family fortune; and so he was obliged to get money the old-fashioned way, by thievery and dodging. He took to the life so well, however, we all said there must have been bad blood way back in that family, that had all come out in him… Mostly, however, he worked as a confidence-man, and as a sharper at the grand casinos—for of course, he could mix with Society, and seem honest as the rest. The ladies especially would go quite wild for him. He had three times been nearly married to some rich heiress, but every time the father in the case had grown suspicious and the deal had fallen through. He had ruined many people by selling them stock from counterfeit banks. He was handsome as a plum, and Mrs. Sucksby fairly doted on him. He came to Lant Street about once a year, bringing poke to Mr Ibbs, and picking up bad coin, cautions, and tips. 

 Not surprisingly, Gentleman has discovered another heiress to pounce on, but this one’s different. Maud Lilly was raised by kindly nurses in the insane asylum where her mother was committed. When she was left orphaned at 11 years old, her uncle claimed and brought her to live at Briar Estate. Unfortunately, her uncle is a miserly and obsessive book collector, bent only on molding Maud as his personal assistant for the sole purpose of cataloging his vast library of rare books. Confined to Briar Mansion and its grounds, Maud is granted barely any freedom. Through contacts of his own, Gentleman finds out that Maud has a sweet inheritance which she can only access if she gets married. And of course, Uncle Lilly would never let his niece marry, not when she is destined to be his personal slave! But clever Gentleman is able to wrangle a temporary position helping Mr Lilly in the framing of his illustrations. Clearly, Maud is the perfect target for the perfect con – an heiress who is not only a simple naïf, but desperate to escape her situation. The only catch is that Gentleman must watch himself when interacting with Maud because of her maid, Agnes. This is where Sue comes in. If Gentleman can get rid of Agnes, he can recommend Sue to become Maud’s maid, and then Sue can aid Gentleman in making Maud fall in love with him and accept his inevitable marriage proposal. And of course, Sue will get a nice cut of the inheritance money. Though Sue dreams of one day landing her fortune, she isn’t completely a cold-hearted Borough thief either. When she first meets Maud, Sue is not quite sure what to make of her mistress, but soon feels rather sorry for her:

  She was certainly, then, what you would call original. But was she mad, or even half-way simple, as Gentleman said at Lant Street? I did not think so, then. I thought her only pretty lonely, and pretty bookish and bored—as who wouldn’t be, in a house like that? 

 And the more Sue spends time with Maud as her maid, the more she begins to develop feelings for her. Ooh, dearie me! This premise in itself would make an interesting plot-line, but Waters’ really goes all out and takes this premise to the next level and then the next. Before you know it, you’re sucked into this almost 600-page page-turner and when it’s all over, you just can't believe it and try to read about it on the internets and discover there is also a BBC production, and so you acquire it and immediately watch it and then feel incomplete and dissatisfied because the adaptation barely captures the nuances and complexities of Waters’ brilliant novel. Take for example when Sue infiltrates the Briar household as Maud’s maid how she quickly observes that the servants are no better than her fellow Borough thieves: 

  That’s like a servant. A servant says, ‘All for my master,’ and means, ‘All for myself’. It’s the two-facedness of it that I can’t bear. At Briar, they were all on the dodge in one way or another, but all over sneaking little matters that would have put a real thief to the blush—such as, holding off the fat from Mr Lilly’s gravy to sell on the quiet to the butcher’s boy; which is what Mrs Cakebread did. Or, pulling the pearl buttons from Maud’s chemises, and keeping them, and saying they were lost; which is what Margaret did. I had them all worked out, after three days’ watching. I might have been Mrs Suckby’s own daughter after all. Mr Way, now: he had a mark on the side of his nose—in the Borough we should have called it a ginbud. And how do you think he got that, in a place like his? He had the key to Mr Lilly’s cellar, on a chain. You never saw such a shine as that key had on it! 

 Here’s a review that perfectly summarizes what makes Fingersmith such a great read: 

  In Fingersmith, the approach to the truth is so convoluted that appearances in one case have pointed one way while the truth lay all the while unsuspected in another direction. On top of the entangled fate of the two orphaned women, Waters surrounds their lives with characters who are unforgettable—neither wholly good nor evil. Whether it is Mr. Ibbs’ dealing with pickpockets for the stolen goods, Mrs. Sucksby’s unlicensed nursing of orphaned infants, Sue’s being part of the scam to make her fortune, the intention is to amount some good. Their actions often display a mix of self-interest and surprising altruism. Good to the last page. 

 Indeed, there is hardly a dull or insincere moment in this novel. Can’t recommend this book highly enough.