LMA Book Group - 'Fingersmith' by Sarah Waters

June 2024 - 'Fingersmith' by Sarah Waters

During 2024, we have read a couple of books that have offered an insight into Victorian life in London, as a complement to our exhibition 'Lost Victorian City: a London disappeared'. The first was Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, which while set during the French Revolution directly speaks to Victorian concerns about democracy and the second was Mollie Hughes’s diary, published in the twentieth century, which offered us a perspective of the life of a Victorian child.

For June’s read, we looked at a modern novel which uses the setting and style of a Victorian novel – Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters. This is a novel which is hard to discuss without spoilers.

What readers thought...

The majority of the group loved the book, indeed, many had positive memories of reading it before. Initial responses were that the novel was immediate, immersive and multi-layered, filled with references to other books and with a powerful sense of place.

Key to the novel’s success was the strong characterisation of the central characters Maud and Sue who have distinctive inner voices. The novel borrows techniques from Victorian sensation novels (such as 'The Moonstone' by Wilkie Collins) and so it is carefully plotted. The complex plot includes several switchbacks that shocked readers. Those that had read the novel before found the plot still created surprise on a re-read. However, the plot did confuse in places and many of us had questions about the ambivalence of the novel’s close which can be seen as an anti-climax. There were a few readers that found Wise’s prose too purple - ornate, and the plot lines preposterous – Book Group would be very boring if we all agreed!

London in the novel

London is central to many of the novel’s key moments. The Borough in Southwark is home to Sue and her richly drawn 'family' of thieves including the manipulative Mrs Sucksby and the unnerving Mr Rivers. It is also where Maud tries to escape her fate, fleeing through the City and finding a hostile place that is dangerous for women – it is notable that Sue and Maud seek a new start at the novel’s end at Briar, despite the house’s association with the repugnant uncle Christopher.

Disturbing themes

This is a novel that explores dark and disturbing themes – insanity, pornography, deception, and baby-farming among others. We questioned what kept us reading despite the difficulty of the content. We agreed that Waters compels us to keep reading because she makes us care about Sue and Maud and we are invested in their fate.

Other versions

Several readers had seen the BBC adaptation of the novel in 2005, which intriguingly begins at the novel’s end (it is available to access through online streaming services). It was also the inspiration for a South Korean film called 'The Handmaiden' which was set in 1930s colonial Korea and released in 2016.

Collections at LMA

As part of a display of archive material from the collections at LMA we looked at material relating to Lant Street, Southwark, where Mrs Sucksby lives. We explored records relating to nineteenth-century asylums particularly those relating to private asylums and the treatment of women within them.

For example, we looked at an admission and discharge register from St Luke's Hospital (H64/B/01/017) from the 1850s which noted the condition and causes of the admission of the patients. This revealed the vague nature of mental health diagnoses during the nineteenth century - such as 'melancholia' or 'mania'. The admission of the patient to the hospital, in this case all women, were by the husband. 

You can explore these collections further by following the 'Search the LMA Collections Catalogue' link.