Harsh, depressing, morbid, yet oddly uplifting. Simply put, this is a story about a prostitute, a doctor, body-snatching, and cholera in 1831. It's a stark retelling of the vast differences between the lower and upper classes of England, and the fears that each had about the other. It's a story about survival, death, hope, and resignation. And it's confusing as hell.
Gustine, our heroine, is a fifteen-year-old prostitute with a baby. She works in a pottery factory by day, and by night, she wears an elaborate blue gown (rented from her landlord) and roams Sunderland for hopefully higher-class men who will pay her well. She's a strange person, because she doesn't seem to really care that she sells her body, as long as she has a place to live, and can provide everything her child needs. Gustine seems to have no idea of love beyond the feelings she has for her child, even when it looks like she might be developing a crush on a young doctor. It turns out that she simply wants to use him, and Gustine sinks down in my regard for her.
The doctor is a completely different case. He is trying to escape his past; a past haunted by the knowledge that he and his teacher were unknowingly involved in one of the worst murder cases in Edinburgh. They purchased the bodies of murdered bodies, killed by two men, Burke and Hare, who killed anyone they wanted because they knew they could sell the bodies of those they murdered. It was the doctor, Henry Chiver, and his teacher who purchased these bodies, and encouraged the criminals to continue on their spree. Henry left town, to end up in Sunderland, where he tried to become a teacher as well, but was too terrified to produce a body with which to give his students practical knowledge. He was deeply afraid that his past would come back and destroy whatever life he had made for himself. He was only too right.
All through Gustine's and Henry's personal tribulations, the Cholera Morbus is threatening the lives of everyone in Europe. This is where the struggles between rich and poor take center stage. The rich (educated, wealthy, arrogant) believe the disease is real and deadly, and are willing to take whatever measures are necessary to prevent its spread. The poor (uneducated, striving to survive, and underprivileged) believe that the disease is something either made up or created by the rich to kill the poor. Characters like Whilkey Robinson, Gustine's landlord and pimp, are convinced that Cholera Morbus is nothing to fear, and refuse to submit to any sanitary precautions the Health Board set forth or suggest. By the time the story is over, most of Robinson's lodgers are dead from the disease, and many from the rest of the town as well.
This feels like a story about the educated vs. the uneducated, science vs. belief, morality vs. immorality. The classic struggles that face cultures around the world are what drive the plot. What makes this difficult to read is the setup. There are breaks in the novel where the narrative voice changes completely, and it's never quite clear who is speaking. Time jumps around as well in places, and it would take me a few pages to figure out what had happened. Still, it was a very engaging novel, and full of little historical tidbits (such as Napoleon's death, and the global spread of this strain of cholera). It was painful to read about such a debilitating disease, but I learned about the way the study of medicine was perceived, in contrast to how most people see it today.
The Dress Lodger was an adventure in the past, consisting of body-snatching, a deadly illness, and the ways of life in a seaside city. The ending had a weird ray of hope tossed in, that came from a thread that was woven since the beginning, and made a depressing plot seem not so terrible. Given enough time to recover from the terror of an epidemic, which I've never had to experience, I would probably read this again. It was a great find from the library, and kudos to Sheri Holman for a great read.
0 comments:
Post a Comment