Book review: A Victorian woman’s quest for love
By Philippa Tracy
In this novel, set in the mid-19th century with a cast of many characters the most interesting ones are the women. There is Clorinda Morrissey, who comes to Bath from Dublin to reinvent herself as a widow, because, at the time “widows survived far more cleverly in English society than spinsters.” She opens a tearoom where “humanity came gathering to her sheltering bosom.” Her story is interlinked with that of the main character, Jane Adeane. Jane is a surgeon’s daughter and a nurse, known for her healing powers; she is “The Angel of the Baths”.
The first time we meet Jane is in Clorinda’s tearoom rejecting a marriage proposal from Dr Valentine Ross, her father’s medical partner. Jane may pity men “for their childlike natures and their emotional cowardice” but she is not prepared to marry one at this point. She escapes to her aunt Emmeline, a lonely bohemian artist living in London, who once told Jane that we “must be unconventional in our joys and find them wherever we can.” Encouraged by Emmeline’s nurturing and support, Jane discovers the joys of lust and desire through an intensely erotic relationship with Emmeline’s friend Julietta Sims. And while Jane is busy discovering much that she did not know about herself, Emmeline paints her portrait, to try to capture the essence of who she really is. It is a triumph for a while.
When Jane considers her options in relation to having children, and what many might consider a fulfilled and happy life, she re-considers Ross’ proposal. As Emmeline reminds her “acceptable offers of marriage” don’t come along that often. And her love for Julietta is not only complicated, it is forbidden in Victorian society. Jane ponders what marriage to Ross would be like: an equal partnership in a medical practice or simply “Mrs Ross, the mother of his children.” Ross, who believes that marriage to Jane would honour her, has his own demons, which slowly reveal themselves in his aggressive sexual fantasies and the destructive forces that he unleashes when things do not go his way.
The action takes place primarily in Bath, London and Borneo. Many of the minor, less colourful characters, are men. Jane’s father, Sir William, is looking for love of his own. Valentine Ross decides to make his way to Borneo, to save his brother Edmund, a naturalist recovering from malaria. Edmund is the guest of the white rajah and British philanthropist Sir Ralf Savage and his Malay lover, Leon. While Sir Ralf, literally and metaphorically, tries and fails to build a road across his land, Leon has doomed schemes of his own. Clorinda Morrisey also has a brother who needs saving, back home in Ireland.
Everyone in this novel has their own dreams, the things they strive for, often barely realised. This is the nature of human endeavour. But the story of the men and the colonial struggle is less engaging than that of Jane Adeane and her quest for love and a free and authentic existence.