The vanishing act of Esme Lennox and the plight of Edwardian women - Essay Example

"The vanishing act of Esme Lennox” and the plight of Edwardian women Introduction The book "The vanishing act of Esme Lennox" by Maggie OFarrell gives us an insight into the terrible plight of women during the early twentieth century Edwardian UK. A story that portrays the nature of social oppression on women of that period is a tale of prejudice, injustice, betrayal and redemption. Esme Lennox, the namesake and also the chief protagonist of this book, is a young woman in 1930s Edinburgh (Scotland), who is incarcerated into a mental asylum by her parents, for the simple reason that Esme did not wish to conform to the society rules of her era. This book which is a sort of mystery story that unfolds at a much later era (when Esme meets her granddaughter Iris, after being released from the institution), explores the real meaning of sanity, and as it tries to measure the mental trauma and the sense of rejection that Esme and many of her contemporaries went through during these times. My article will explore this book by Maggie OFarrell, to find answers to such questions as to why Esme was institutionalized for 60 years and never sent home; and why was it such a common practice during those Edwardian times to lock women up for very simple, and sometimes even for outrageous reasons.  Discussion Why was Esme institutionalized for 60 years and never sent home? The story Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox takes us away from theVictorian social set up and brings us directly to the 1930s (Edwardian setting) and the recent times, at the turn of the twentieth century. This book centres on the parallel and convergent lives of Esme Lennox and her granddaughter Iris Lockhardt, and runs on a similar line to that The Secret Garden written by Frances Burnett (1911), and almost seems to be an emendation of the life of Mary Lennox. Mary, considered to be a difficult child, was disliked by her mother, finds new life and enlightenment after she returns to England. In OFarrell’s novel we find just the opposite, where Esme loses her independence after coming back to Scotland; and in this story we find a female protagonist is being granted happiness in life by her antecedent. When Esme was merely 16 years old she was locked up in a mental asylum by parents, who were eager to remove a child that was rebellious by nature, and bringing a bad name to their family. She is released after 60 years, only when the asylum is to be shut down, and is sent to be kept under Iris’s care, as the latter happens to be the only living relative. Her other surviving relative, Kitty, Esme’s elder sister is away in another home, since she was suffering from Alzheimer’s syndrome. Iris, who was not aware of the existence of any such person, at first refuses to take in this Esme, “I have no idea who you people are or what you want, but Ive never heard of Euphemia Lennox" (O’ Farrell, 2006, 31), however decides to go, out of sheer curiosity. Here we find that, in this novel the madwoman, as also we see in The crimson petal and the white, have been created by the oppressive social norms pertaining to gender bias and stereotyping of the sex that was so prevalent during the Victorian and the Edwardian times. However, unlike other fictitious characters like Agnes (in Faber’s), Esme, we find is sound, as regards to both mental and physical faculties. The family’s antagonistic behaviour towards Esme is first perceived when her little brother Hugo and their Indian maid die of typhoid, and Esme is found hugging the body of her beloved brother. Her parents hold her responsible for the boy’s death, and they go back to Scotland, where Esme finds it exceedingly difficult to adjust to the social rules that were being forced on to her. She is labelled as abnormal when she forgets to wear her hat or gloves while going out; and Esme, who was never much interested in fashion or having boyfriends, expresses surprise at Kitty wearing a grey beret while going out for shopping, and asks ‘where did she get the grey beret and how did she know how to wear it?”(94). Even such questions were taken to be abnormal, coming from a girl of Esme’s age, since Edwardian social rules dictated that these things should already be known by her. Such rigid were the then social norms, that it was even considered improper and girl could be looked upon at askance, if during a dance she was found to be “sitting in an armchair” (104) or even if she was found “rattling away on the piano” (139). These rules that the Edwardian society was forcing on Esme “looked like her blazer, it said it was blazer but it wasn’t” (150); meaning that her mind being far too progressive for her times, found these norms to be constraining and small, “one in which she could barely move, barely breathe” (150). In fact it was here in this context, that, when Esme who did not fit into her school blazer and insisted that the blazer was not hers (her school friends having switched it) she was instantly termed as ‘mad’. Her rebellious streak, makes her mother determined to break it, and when James Dalziel, a young man of equal social footing shows an interest in Esme, she finds him to be the perfect person who would be able to break her daughter’s spirit, and hopes that “a few months as James Dalziel’s wife would be enough to break [Esme’s] spirit (185). When Esme is dressed and sent forcibly (like a lamb to be slaughtered), to a ball in Denziel’s house, she is raped by James. Mrs. Denziel hides her son’s misbehaviour and saves the family’s respectability, by telling Esme’s mother that “Esme had had a wee bit too much to drink” (192). Esme unable to express her shock and trauma at that horrifying incident, could merely go on screaming, it was then that her parents decided that their younger daughter was not fit to live within a ‘normal’ society amidst ‘normal’ people. She was put into the confines of a mental home, where Esme a victim of rape, was supposed to “learn to behave” (196). Thus, a perfectly normal person and a rape victim, is branded as a hysterical woman and a lunatic. However her travails didn’t end here, and when Esme gave birth to a son, it was taken away by her sister Kitty who had remained childless. So we find that Esme was betrayed by the narrow minded, intolerant society of the 1930s, her parents, and even by her sister. Kitty, her elder sister, who could not conceive, took away Esme’s child, so that she could compensate for her childlessness (what the Edwardian society considered as her shortcoming); and by exploiting a woman banned by the society, Kitty salvages he own position and accordance, in the eyes of that very society. F Farrell in this novel thus portrays a woman whose voice had been silenced by the society and the medical norms of her era, and labelled as a ‘mad woman’. Esme’s behaviour, like, “[she] insists on keeping her hair long...Parents report finding her dancing before a mirror, dressed in her mothers clothes” (ibid, 59), that would have been found to be perfectly normal in the context of the modern era, had been termed as psychotic behaviour. In the various medical files of other inmates of the asylum that Esme was confined in, had records of “of refusals to speak, of unironed clothes, of arguments with neighbors, of hysteria, of unwashed dishes and unswept floors, of never wanting marital relations or wanting them too much or not enough or not in the right way or seeking them elsewhere. Of husbands at the ends of their tethers, of parents unable to understand the women their daughters have become, or fathers who insist, over and over again, that she used to be such a lovely little thing"(ibid, 58). Such records show that perfectly normal behaviour had been termed as psychotic, and the patient diagnosed with mental problem, was put away, from the society. As one reads, he almost gets the feeling, that the medical standards and the ethics followed by the practitioners, and supported by the erstwhile Edwardian society, was more psychotic, than some of the confined patients’ themselves appeared to be. Thus, when parents saw ‘irreverence’ and apathy by their daughter towards the prevalent social customs of that era, or too much fondness for reading books, and reluctance to take part in the various social customs suitable of their family standing, they were termed as abnormal. So it is of little wonder that Esme was referred by her parents to as "The Oddbod” (140) and they looked upon her with askance and despair, as Esme did not get along with the "nervous men with over-combed hair, scrubbed hands and pressed shirts" (145) who came to visit her and Kitty for tea; or felt that Esme did not belong to them when she showed hypersensitivity towards certain fabrics on chairs, and could not sleep comfortably in the bed. The Victorian society at that time was extremely stringent and rigid, and particularly intolerant of those who did not abide by the rules fixed by it. During the early nineteenth century, women were seen as mere objects, to be possessed; and parents of young girls treated them as entities, that could be married off into rich families, so that their own status within the society could be elevated. Women were taught to conform and to blend into the society instead of standing out, they were trained to remain meek and subservient, and to be busy with certain acquired skills like needlework, cooking, and various domestic work. These skills were preferred, since it was believed that they helped the girls to catch good husbands from well to do families. Girls, above all, were taught to believe that their ultimate happiness lay in becoming a good wife and a dutiful mother, and they should dedicate their entire lives in taking care of their families. Esme Lennox was nothing of this type. She had all the opposite attributes, and was generally outspoken and unconventional, and her parents felt that she was especially going out of her way to publicly humiliate them. She was not interested in courting young men of her station, and instead wished to go on staying at the school, longer than it was deemed necessary, to complete her higher education. In the 1930s it was almost unthinkable that a woman would wish to continue with higher studies and later pursue a career and thus create a situation where she could live independently. Her parents did not take kindly to this, and feeling that Esme was becoming a danger to their good name, decided to take drastic steps, and at the age of sixteen sent her off to a mental institute where she could be kept hidden and thus could bring no further shame to the family. When Esme came into the new world she was indeed surprised that, when women try to break out of the domesticity, they are no longer considered as ‘mad women’ or hysterical. Here the author draws similarity between the two characters Iris and Esme, and shows how two similar women have two different lives, owing to the fact that they are born in two different eras. Like Esme, Iris too hates marriage, and “hated endless speeches given by men for their women” (21). In fact, as a reader we feel that Iris with her non-conforming life style would also have been deemed as mentally unstable, and sent off to a mental institute, if she had happened to live during the 1930s. However at the end, though Farrell draws distinction between the treatments of two similar women of two different eras, she does not hide the fact that women are still bound by certain taboos that are peculiar to the social norms of this modern era. Iris, who has defied social norms and fell in love with Alex, her stepbrother; however finds that he prefers to remain married to another woman. Her boyfriend Luke, a married man, who promises to leave everything for Iris, is actually lying, which is evident when we hear that his wife is pregnant. So, even at this modern age we find that non-conforming women remain lonely and unhappy; while men prefer living in traditional marriages. Thus times have changed, and though women are no longer considered as mad if they don’t follow the social norms; yet they remain disconsolate fighting a lonely battle. Why was it such a common practice to lock women up for outrageous reasons? As outrageous as it may seem it was not uncommon during the early twentieth century to lock up young women for standing up for their rights and speaking out their own minds. Parents locked up their daughters if the latter refused to listen to them or to conform to the societal rules; husbands locked away their wives if the latter tried to exert their rights too hard. In an interview to The Guardian Maggie OFarrell speaks of her research into this subject, where she describes women “who had been put away in their youth for reasons of immorality. They had shown too much interest in boys, or not enough; they had had an affair or even got themselves pregnant. Sometimes they had been put away for almost no reason at all. A friend told me about his grandmother’s cousin who had just died, a month away from being discharged from an institution in the Midlands. She had been committed in the 1920s, at the age of 19, for planning to elope with a legal clerk. I spoke to someone whose aunt had been incarcerated in Colney Hatch, north London, for “taking long walks” (Farrell, The Vanished, 2006). Thus women during this era were treated with abject disrespect, and were seen as mere objects to be wedded into a rich family, where she could showcase her ‘good’ upbringing by becoming a dutiful wife and a good mother. Any girl, who did not conform to these rules, was deemed unsuitable and was considered to be ‘mentally unhinged’. Most of the times, their families felt that it was better to remove such girls who were bringing shame to them, and ‘dumped’ such girls into mental institutes, while completely wiping off their names from the family history, thus bringing an end to a shameful chapter. It is now easier to understand as to why in Jane Eyre, Bertha (the so called ‘mad first wife’) spend her entire life trapped in Mr. Rochester’s attic, and we can also comprehend as to who lies trapped crying for help, behind the ‘yellow wallpaper’. Conclusion The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie OFarrell is thus not only a mystery novel that unfolds as we move back with Iris into her family history; this book also serves as a harsh critique of the times not far removed, when a perfectly sane, intelligent woman, who refused to conform to the stringent and rigid social norms, could be locked away forever into the confines of a mental home. Though a fiction, this book is a grim reminder of the past, when women were not considered as human beings, but seen as mere objects, to be bartered and sold, for the family’s social elevation. This novel also expresses the fact that Esme and Iris, two different women of two different eras having the same independent spirit, yet both fall prey to the social edicts of their times. Works Cited Farrell, M. The Vanished. 2nd October 2006. Web. 28th November 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/oct/02/socialcare.genderissues Farrell, M. The Vanishing act of Esme Lennox. London: Headline Review, 2006. Print. Read More