Gothic poem

Diane Fahey’s The Mystery of Rosa Morland (Clouds of Magellan, $24.95 pb, 143 pp) is a tour de force, a brooding, postmodern Gothic poem cum novella that provides a happy ending of sorts for characters who deserve one. The poetry, capturing individual voices, is at once accomplished, sensuous and serviceable. On one level, the work echoes classic mystery tales (Bluebeard, for instance) and writers such as Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. Violence and psychological torment pervade modern crime fiction, especially in studies of the psychically damaged detective. What Fahey accomplishes here, however, is a re-conception of the Gothic, which makes The Mystery of Rosa Morland more a tale about emancipation and future redemption rather than one about revenge and punishment. Here, the mystery is human character, the mystery we are to ourselves until, if we are lucky, something or someone helps to clear our vision. The action takes place on New Year’s Eve, 1900. A train leaves London – home of empire and finance – heading for Edinburgh. Diverse characters journey towards or away from something. The ostensible mystery is whether a baron has been killed, committed suicide or staged his disappearance. The other passengers are of lower rank; all suffer from frustrated potential. We meet a lady’s companion; a wife and daughter fleeing domestic violence; a retired clockmaker; a doctor–photographer; a former actress entering a new career as a psychic, assisted by Delores, a scarlet macaw exiled from the Amazon. Most importantly, there are Detective Wells and Elinor aka Rosa aka Lady Maldonbury, who has enlisted Wells to help change her destiny. These characters have been forced to play roles. The notion of pretence, of wearing masks, underpins the novella and, to highlight this, Fahey exploits the metaphorical possibilities of the masked ball. Interspersed with the verse monologues are prose extracts from the works of Rosa Morland, Elinor’s nom de plume. What’s in a name? In a stratified society, labels like ‘governess’ or ‘lady’s companion’ subsume an insignificant proper name. What a person does is what she is. A new name can signal a new personality, as it does for Elinor. Trapped in a destructive marriage, it offers the escape of fantasy as well as agency. Rosa’s specialty is the Gothic tale, with women taking central roles. This demonstrates why the Gothic is a key to the politics of Fahey’s book. Historically, Gothic fiction attracted not only female readers but female writers. In one sense, women characters might be victimised, but at least temporarily they might experience a kind of freedom within the confines of the narrative’s architecture denied to women in society at large. The genre’s gardens, mansions or castles provided pathways to adventure with its vicarious thrills, sexual included. In Rosa’s prose, women reconfigure their own destinies or help others to do so. But her fiction performs multiple functions. It fills gaps in Rosa–Elinor’s ‘real-life’ story; it allows her to defend herself, in case she is accused of a crime; it provides a creative outlet; it becomes a professional and lucrative identity; and it allows Fahey to stretch her literary muscles by imitating the Gothic’s salient features. Fahey offers readers the Bluebeard clone of a husband, the Baron Maldonbury, and raises the question: will his clever albeit fragile asthmatic wife be able to outwit him? Her plight is an extreme case, yet symptomatic of that of Victorian women in general, demonstrated by the other female passengers. The crises that occur on, or because of, this trip facilitate liberation and this includes some of the male characters, too, who find themselves able to move beyond the limitations of their upbringings or occupations. Ironically, it is Ireland and Scotland, ‘the provinces’ compared with London, that offer refuge. Equally ironically, it is the women who rescue the men as much as vice versa, through such amenities as companionship or sexual and culinary delights. We learn about these fulfilments through the Biographies, the last (but not concluding) major structural block in Fahey’s verse novella, where characters on the train, as well as a few who are only mentioned, are followed until death or well into the twentieth century. These biographies function as epilogues, filling in gaps in the narrative and extending it. As a whole, thus, The Mystery of Rosa Morland offers a feminist critique of late Victorian society as well as of the Gothic and detective genres. Appreciating the book’s scope and postmodern play intellectually is not the same, however, as appreciating it simply as a reader. I admit I felt somewhat disappointed. Except for a few hiccups in voice (the child’s, the bird’s), the poetry worked so well; the adept monologues kept the narrative flowing. The interspersed prose provided effective structural support for the themes and the pleasure of well-done pastiche. The third section, the Biographies, however, is problematic. As I read I kept asking: what is really important in all this detail, and why this order? I have no quibbles with Fahey not tying up the mystery’s ends. This novella is about breaking out of convention, not being enslaved by it. Fahey’s strengths – the balanced verse narrative modulated by the engaging fictions – demand more space. That said, the concluding Rosa extract, ‘The Masked Ball’, satisfied, neatly integrating images, characters and motifs previously introduced. Ingenuously, Fahey leaves us with a fictional creation to the third degree – Rosa’s surrogate Sarah, also a writer – happily incorporating her ‘life’ into her tales. The Mystery of Rosa Morland, overall, is a substantial achievement by a writer who demonstrates her mastery of complex themes and the styles necessary to embody them.

Jeri Kroll

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