Neo-Victorian Voices: Frog Music, Emma Donoghue (2014)

I’m back with a review of yet another novel written in the twenty-first century, but set in the nineteenth, as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices blog series. This time we’re in 1876 San Francisco for Frog Music by Emma Donoghue, whose 2016 novel, The Wonder, I reviewed back in 2018.

Frog Music really drives home the idea that truth can be stranger than fiction when it comes to writing historical novels. I had no idea how well-researched the book was and how deeply Donoghue had engaged with the historical record until I read her concluding author’s note. 

Not only is it true that SF was suffering a sweltering summer, along with a smallpox epidemic, in 1876, but the murder the book opens with was a real crime. Jenny Bonnet was a cross-dressing, unicycle-pedaling frog catcher, who had frequent run-ins with the city police. But the question is: who shot her dead?

In Donoghue’s novel, Blanche Beunon, the dancer and sex worker who was with Bonnet when she died, is the character who sets out to uncover the truth. But Blanche has problems of her own to deal with—an angry erstwhile lover, disagreements with the madam at her brothel, and (most heart wrenchingly) trying to locate her missing baby. We alternate between sections focused on Blanche’s investigations and earlier scenes depicting the meeting and relationship between Blanche and Jenny, as Donoghue skillfully unravels what happened and, crucially, why.

If you’re a fan of trigger warnings for fiction, please note that this novel would require many. Donoghue’s brand of historical fiction is gritty, peopled by characters who are of their time when it comes to their illnesses, hygiene, and more. Frog Music details child neglect and animal cruelty, and the novel also contains sex scenes that walk the line between consensual and non-consensual.

But that isn’t to say that the novel is entirely dark. Music, as you might imagine from the title, is a powerful through line in the book and the snippets of nineteenth-century lyrics that pepper Jenny and Blanche’s interactions paint a vibrant picture of 1870s West Coast culture. My favorite thing was how transported I felt to nineteenth-century San Francisco, where different immigrant groups were meeting and forming a new, composite culture.

Overall, I’d recommend Frog Music to readers who a) won’t get queasy at realistic depictions of nineteenth-century life, b) have an interest in queer relationships in the period, and c) love SF. 

Let me know what novel you’d like to see me review next as part of the Neo-Victorian Voices series. You can always contact me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. And don’t forget to sign up to my monthly email newsletter.

Neo-Victorian Voices: The Dressmaker’s Dowry, Meredith Jaeger (2017)

Meredith Jaeger’s debut novel, The Dressmaker’s Dowry, has a lot going for it — an unusual setting (1870s San Francisco), a well-paced plot and the perfect mix of intrigue, violence and romance.

Yet, getting to the end, I couldn’t help but feel the novel, which alternates between the stories of Sarah, a modern-day MFA student whose past holds a dark secret, and Hanna, a nineteenth-century dressmaker investigating the disappearance of her friend, could have done with better editing.

Reading the novel is a revealing experience for an aspiring novelist, as its cracks expose some of the challenges of writing successful historical fiction:

Dialogue

Jaeger has clearly studied her setting, immersed herself in stories of San Francisco’s poverty and crime and pored over contemporary maps. She weaves facts about the setting into her historical storyline well, bringing the world Hanna lives in to life through sensorial details.

But it’s in her nineteenth-century characters’ dialogue that the illusion slips. Their speech reads as very stiff and lacking in humanity, with old-fashioned phrases (‘lucky wench’, ‘I fret for them’, ‘feminine ailments’) peppered in the midst of twenty-first century sentences.


Building a Connection Between Past and Present

Adopting a dual POV is a common technique among writers of historical fiction today. It allows for more exposition and explanation of the past than a novel entirely set in another time period and gives readers a character to identify with, who ‘could be them’.

Jaeger though makes two fatal errors in how she uses this technique to build a connection between past and present.

First, she not only makes her present day character, Sara, a mouthpiece for expressing opinions about the 1870s (forgivable since this is a character whose actively researching the period), but also uses her to over-emphasize the parallels she wants to draw between the divided society of nineteenth-century SF and the city we see today. Sara drifts into Mary Sue territory, making her own story less emotionally impactful and leading the novel to feel, in parts, like a lecture, where little trust is placed in the reader.

Second, the tie between Sara and Hanna is fraught with coincidence, setting the very premise for the novel on shaky ground, and there hardly seems to be enough contrast between the women — here we are, over one hundred years later, and women are still being ‘saved’ by rich men from one particular, privileged family.


Good and Evil

Finally, Jaeger struggles to keep her novel from slipping into cliché, especially when it comes to depicting her characters. They are all very clearly good or bad, with no reversals in our expectations. Take this description of Robert Havensworth:

'Though he had a handsome face, his green eyes sent a chill down to her bones. His long fingers, adorned with gold rings, wrapped around the head of his cane, radiated power — and the darkness beneath it.'

I mean, would you trust this man?!

Sarah and Hanna are infallible judges of character, and thus so are Jaeger’s readers, making what should be a thrilling race to uncover the ending all too predictable.

Meredith Jaeger

What twenty-first century novel about the nineteenth century would you like to see the Secret Victorianist review next? Let me know — here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Art Review: Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed, SFMOMA, San Francisco

The Secret Victorianist found herself in San Francisco last week and took the opportunity to see a second exhibition dedicated to the work of Edvard Munch (1863-1944), Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed at the SFMOMA.

'Between the Clock and the Bed' (1940-1943)

The New York City Neue Galerie’s Munch and Expressionism, which I reviewed back in February 2016, had looked at the relationship between the Norwegian painter and his expressionist peers and featured his most enduringly famous painting — ‘The Scream’ (1893). But this SF exhibit was focused on the artist himself, highlighting the synergies between works produced by Munch at very different points in his career and life in its thematic arrangement.

Munch’s numerous self-portraits make up the centrepiece of the show, which takes its title from the 1940-1943 painting ‘Between the Clock and the Bed’, in which the artist stands, his face blurred, apparently waiting for death.

'Self-Portrait with Hand Under Cheek' (1911)

Munch stares out at visitors from every side of the room, thoughtful in pastels (‘Self-Portrait with Hand Under Cheek’, 1911), despairing with a bottle of wine (‘Self-Portrait with Wine’, 1906) and even burning in Hell (‘Self-Portrait in Hell’, 1903), underlying his interest in rendering the psychological in paint.

'Self-Portrait with Wine’ (1906)

With similar artworks side by side, Munch’s obsession with specific scenes and images, sometimes across decades, becomes clear.

‘Self-Portrait in Hell’ (1903)

There’s the death of his fourteen-year-old sister, Johanne Sophie, which he dubs ‘The Sick Child’ and plays with, using various paint techniques.

'The Sick Child' (1907)

‘The Scream’ is recognisable in the dissolving faces of ‘The Kiss’ (1897) and the backdrop to ‘Sick Mood at Sunset: Despair’ (1892).

‘The Kiss’ (1897)

Loneliness pervades the exhibition as the only way to form a relationship with others seems to be to lose something of yourself.

‘Sick Mood at Sunset: Despair’ (1892)

The last work I viewed before exiting the gallery was ‘Eye in Eye’ (1894), a painting where skeletal male and female figures reminiscent of Adam and Eve stare at each other in a contentious, more than romantic, scene. That is the tension, the question Munch brings to life — what is the price of joining your personal psychological drama and pain with another’s?

‘Eye in Eye’ (1894)

Do you know of any NYC exhibitions you’d like the Secret Victorianist to review next? Let me know — here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Art Review: Monet: The Early Years, Legion of Honor, San Francisco

A couple of weeks ago the Secret Victorianist was in San Francisco, where I took the opportunity to see the first major US exhibition dedicated to Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) early years as an artist.

The Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide (1865)

Covering the period 1858 to 1872, the exhibition includes Monet’s early exhibits at the Salon, such as The Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide (exhibited in 1865), works rejected by the Salon, including innovative snowscape The Magpie (1868-9), and paintings that show his debt to other artists, like Luncheon on the Grass (1863), an homage to Edouard Manet’s 1863 painting of the same name.

The Magpie (1868-9)

What emerges is a picture of Monet as a rule-breaker — something hard for us to imagine given his prominent place in the art history canon today. The term Impressionism wasn’t coined until the 1870s, taking its name from Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (1872), and the exhibition does a good job of outlining why many of Monet’s experiments were rejected by the Parisian art world.

Luncheon on the Grass (1863)

But the exhibition also gives us a glimpse of Monet as a young man, struggling to survive with a young family. His 1878 The Red Kerchief, for instance, is a portrait of his first wife, Camille Doncieux, who died only a year later, Jean Monet Sleeping (1868) shows the artist’s oldest child at only a year old and Adolphe Monet Reading in the Garden (1866) captures a serene day in Monet’s often difficult relationship with his father.

The Red Kerchief (1878)

There are also paintings that conjure up different locations, which may be surprising to those who are most familiar with Monet’s Water Lilies series, painted at Giverny (where he first rented a house in May 1883). In 1871 he travelled to the Netherlands, painting landscapes and studies of the Dutch buildings, such as Houses on the Zaan River at Zaandam. This exhibition features many works from this trip as well as his journey to London, where he captured the bleak British weather in paintings such as Hyde Park (1871), using the same techniques we often associate with his skill in depicting brilliant sunlight.

Houses on the Zaan River at Zaandam (1871)

Monet: The Late Years is slated for 2019 and will no doubt contain even more of the artist’s most famous and loved paintings. But this exhibition, on display in San Francisco until May 29, brings you into the life and mind of a talented young artist, with the vision to create and encapsulate a movement.

Hyde Park (1871)

Do you know of any NYC exhibitions you think the Secret Victorianist would like? Let me know — here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Adolphe Monet Reading in the Garden (1866)

Review: Turner, Peter Ackroyd (2002)

Inspired by an exhibition I saw last July in San Francisco—J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free—and by a recent spate of interest in the personality of one of Britain’s most well-loved painters following the release of 2014 bio-pic Mr Turner, I picked up Peter Ackroyd’s concise introduction to the artist, part of his Brief Lives series.

Born in 1775 to a barber and his wife in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, Joseph Mallord William Turner became one of the most high-profile artists of the nineteenth century, known for his incredible use of light, his dramatic sea- and sky-scapes and his embodiment of the Romantic spirit on canvas.

Self-portrait, J.M.W. Turner (c.1799)

Ackroyd’s biography, while slight, gives us some insight into Turner’s (somewhat difficult) personality. What stood out most to me was the intensity of his relationship with his creations—many of which he couldn’t bear to part with, in spite of the high prices his works could command at the height of his career, but kept in his personal gallery, referring to them as his ‘family’.

Turner in some ways fits many of the stereotypes of the lone male genius—in his personal relationships (he remained unmarried), in his mode of speaking (his lectures for the Royal Academy were widely regarded as un-followable) and in his behaviours (often eccentric). But it is also seems that this was a persona he actively sought to cultivate.

Turner wasn’t such a lone ranger. He was supported emotionally and practically through most of his life by his father and assistant (his mother died in a mental institution relatively early in her son’s career). He also had at least two children with a widow, Sarah Danby, and lived as ‘Mr Booth’ with another widow, Sophia Caroline Booth, in the final years of his life, unbeknownst to many of his acquaintances.

Ackroyd is at pains to point out that, despite his mad professor demeanour, Turner was consistently lax in his execution of his duties as Professor of Perspective at the Academy. And, always attracted to myth, Turner was prone to exaggeration about his life. It is unlikely for instance that he really was tied to the mast of a ship to observe the storm that would be immortalised in Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth (1842).

What does hold water though is the picture we’re given of Turner as a man ahead of his time, recommending ‘corrections’ to other artists’ paintings at a glance, making dramatic changes to his works on Varnishing Days, and paving the way for the Impressionists later in the century.

While the biography doesn’t suffer from its brevity, I couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t up to Ackroyd’s usually high standards of execution. The prose is a little sloppy, there are unnecessary repetitions and facts are referenced for a second or third time, without any reference to their earlier inclusion.

With only one small colour insert too, I sometimes couldn’t help but feel that half the story was missing. You’d do well to sit with your laptop to hand to refer to the works described, but not included, in the biography.

As with his life of Wilkie Collins, Ackroyd’s Turner is a great introduction to one of the nineteenth century’s premiere figures, written by a biographer with a good sense of the period. This isn’t one for the art history buffs but provides great context for the casual gallery-goer.

What would you like to see the Secret Victorianist read next? And are there any exhibitions currently in New York you think she’d like to visit? Let me know—here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist!

Art Review: J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free, De Young Museum, San Francisco

This week, the Secret Victorianist was in San Francisco and took the opportunity to see J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free, the first major survey of nineteenth-century painter Turner’s late works (1835-1850), which is currently on view at the De Young museum in the city. The exhibition was originally on show at the Tate Britain in London and was at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles earlier in the year.

Mercury and Argus (pre-1836)

Known for his unrivalled and extraordinary use of light and colour, Turner (1771-1851) was a leading, and controversial, artist in his day. His late works demonstrate his continued inventiveness, as he takes mythical and biblical incidents as subjects for artistic experimentation.

Regulus (reworked 1837)

Take his Mercury and Argus (pre-1836). Rather than as a hundred-eyed guard, Argus is represented as a small indistinct figure and Mercury has few of his usual visual signifiers. Meanwhile, only the small bell around Io’s neck sets her apart from her fellow cattle. For Turner, the idealised pastoral landscape is of greater interest than the mythic plot, although this scene’s bloody aftermath, if recalled, creates a keen point of imaginative contrast. The placement of the beam of light is also more than an excuse to experiment with the play of light. The sun suggests Zeus – the original reason for Io’s transformation. In Regulus (reworked 1837), it is unclear which of the figures is the doomed Roman general preparing to return to Carthage. Yet the blinding sun directly references the fate that will meet him there. 

The Departure of the Fleet (1850)

Similarly, in The Departure of the Fleet (one of the four scenes from Virgil’s Aeneid Turner displayed at his final Royal Academy exhibition in 1850), the figures representing Dido and Aeneas are unimportant – the focus is on the setting sun marking the end of their relationship and how it touches the city the Trojans are leaving behind, soon to be illuminated likewise by its queen’s pyre.

Fire at the Grand Storehouse of the Tower of London (1841)

The exhibition also draws attention to Turner’s unusual working habits – his hasty watercolours Fire at the Grand Storehouse of the Tower of London, painted in 1841 as the fire raged, the significant changes he made to works during ‘Varnishing Days’ at the Royal Academy when other artists were only making the minutest of alterations to their paintings. There is no greater apocryphal story demonstrating Turner’s commitment to his work than that attached to Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth (1841). Turner, then 67, claimed he was tied to the mast of the boat better to understand and capture the essence of a nocturnal storm.

Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth (1841)

The scale and quality of the exhibition is incredible and leaving Turner’s world behind can be a little stepping back outside into a light of a disappointing and less brilliant sun.

Peace - Burial at Sea (1842)

J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free is on display at the De Young Museum in San Francisco until September 20^th - tickets for adults cost $20. Do you know any art exhibitions back in New York you think the Secret Victorianist might enjoy? Let me know – here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.