Title: The Sealed Letter
Author: Emma Donoghue
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 2009
Pages: 416
Rating: 5 out of 10
In Victorian London, Emily "Fido" Faithfull randomly runs into Helen
Codrington on the street one day. Years before, the two were inseparable
best friends, but their close relationship faded away when Helen's
military husband was deployed overseas, and Fido's letters were met with
no answer. Now, Fido has grown up into a respected female publisher,
and Helen is still the same married woman. After their chance encounter,
the two begin their friendship where it left off, which had Helen
unhappily married and Fido caught in the middle of the distressed
couple.
Things turn out not to have changed much, because soon
enough Helen reveals that she has a lover and is still unhappy with her
husband. When Helen begins drawing Fido into the affair, Fido struggles
between being a good friend and with doing the right thing. Eventually,
things culminate into a messy, very public divorce proceeding, which
Fido is also unwillingly drawn into when Helen reveals a devastating
secret.
A snippet review I found online said that this book was
about "British Law in the 1800's." For some reason, I thought that that
sounded fascinating. I pictured musty courtrooms and piles of papers
piled on desks, about to fall over. It made me think of meticulous
detail and political maneuvering.
However, this book was much more lightly written than I anticipated, and while it isn't chick-lit, it can get 'fluffy' at times.
Within
the first few pages, I was struck by the immaturity of the characters.
Two grown women meet on the street after years of separation, and Fido
snottily asks Helen who has "taken her place" as a best friend. This
feeling continued through-out the book. I cannot recall exactly how old
the characters were, but I know that it was closer to 25 than 15. That didn't stop them from behaving like silly little girls. Helen was
supposed to act this way, as that is the way she was written, but Fido
seemed juvenile to me as well. She is portrayed as the more sensible,
mature of the two, which for the most part she is. But she sometimes
broke out of character to do something silly, which ruined any chance of
her becoming believable.
As this book is about early divorces,
and women's legal rights in court, I was expecting a strong book about strong women. But rather than a book with brave female characters making their way through a man's world of both
publishing and law, I got more a feeling of two silly girls running
about bashing men.
Fido runs a printing press that publishes material
aimed toward women, a revolutionary thing in her day and age. Fido runs her business with an iron hand, and the author seems to want
us to think of her as a 19th Century businesswoman. I thought it
suspicious that the few male employees Fido had were all either stupid
and useless, or conniving and evil.
One thing I did like about the
book was Helen. I wouldn't call her well written, but she was
entertaining reading material. I rolled my eyes at her swooning over
Anderson - it is pointedly obvious that all he wants from her is sex,
but she is too naive to realize it. Helen is extremely selfish, and in
the few scenes where we see her interacting with her two daughters, she
seems to concern herself only vaguely with them, and in turn the two
little girls treat their mother with an offhanded dismissal that Mommy
is too "distracted" or "stupid" to bother with.
Helen's abuse of
Fido's friendship was appalling. She comes by her friend's house and
then says that she has invited Anderson over (without asking). At Fido's
horrified objections, Helen makes up a lie that she is planning to
break up with him. Reluctantly, Fido agrees, but then she hears the two
of them having sex in her parlor. When she furiously confronts Helen
about it later, Helen leads Fido to believe that she was forced. Later,
when things escalate and she is found out, Helen blames Fido, saying
that if she had only let her keep meeting Anderson in her parlor
(snicker), her husband would never have found out. You have to admit,
Helen hasn't many scruples, and it admittedly does make for entertaining
reading.
I was truly shocked at how low Helen sinks in her lies to
Fido during the trial. She truly would have said anything and hurt
anyone - even her best friend - in order to get what she wanted.
*Mild
spoilers - you can just skip to the next paragraph* I was annoyed at
the revelation toward the end of the book that Helen and Fido had had a
sexual relationship in the past. It was utterly pointless to the story,
and to me it just seemed like a gratuitous, exaggerated furthering the not-quite-right feminist leanings this book had. Already written
man-hating, hearty women who always seem to outsmart every male in the
book? Looking to go further? Why not randomly throw in the fact that
these women are also lesbian at the end! Sigh.
Feminism isn't about being lesbian or how stupid men are.
I like when
characters refer to period books that they are reading, and here, Emily
and Fido discuss their reads together. It was a fun, tiny little piece
of their conversation, but I was annoyed at a small bit of inaccuracy.
Helen says that her favorite scene in Lady Audley's Secret was when a
woman pushes her husband down a well. However, there is certainly no
such scene. I know this and I read the very same book only a few months
ago.
On the other hand, besides the tiny mistake, it gave me a good
feeling to hear Victorian Londoners talking about reading the same books
that I read today, and the characters mentioned a book that I hadn't
heard of called East Lynne. I thought that it sounded very good, and
was pleased to find it was a real book when I looked it up. If nothing
else, I'll have gained some new Victorian reading material.
In short, though, this book never impressed me. It
was alright, I suppose, and the legal proceedings that took up the
second half of the book were intriguing and not such light page turning
as hearing about Helen's reckless secret meetings with her flippant
lover. Average, I suppose.
No comments:
Post a Comment