The Sealed Letter

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Till I reached the end and read the author’s note, I wasn’t aware “The Sealed Letter’ is based on some actual individuals Emma Donoghue dug out from 19th century. Unlike in her “Astray” where real incidents were converted to short stories, this time she has spreads it to a full novel. I feel like the best part of this book is the fact that Emily "Fido" Faithfull is a big dumb gay puppy. It's both incredibly endearing and almost unbearable to read, for example:

Frankly, I was bored. Nothing about this sparkled enough to get over the fact that I just was not interested in that central relationship. Been there, done that. What elevates The Sealed Letter above mediocrity is the three-dimensional way it portrays the people involved in this high-profile divorce. It is easy to set a divorce case in Victorian England in which the woman is the sympathetic character at the mercy of an uncaring husband. I found it hard to sympathize with Helen, who is both adulterous and manipulative, with sensibilities that radically change with her mood. Nevertheless, I understood her desire to remain a mother to her children (even if she was never very maternal) and repair the tear in her marriage that she—belatedly—realizes is her fault. If the reader expects a fast paced, tell all court case then they will be sorely disappointed. However, the expertise with which Donoghue weaves fact with fiction creates a novel of intrigue, duplicity and scandal based on a true divorce case that took London by storm in the mid 1860’s. The characters are described so well the reader feels they are in their confidence as they enrich the case with their thoughts, fears and beliefs owing to the social mores of the day. I enjoyed the story to the end. But when reading the facts related to the characters in author’s note, I felt Fido is depicted too naive for her actual self. Despite of her radical ideas, it is understandable her reluctance to come forward to get involved in Helen’s case. The social norms of women’s’ virtue in Victorian era hangs over her too heavily. Yet getting deceived by Helen too easily over and over in a woman of her sensibility and readability is doubtful. If the reason is her love affair with Helen, then Fido’s objections to Helen’s conduct should be based on jealousy rather than on her conscience of right and wrong.LED colour options include cool white, warm white, red, green, yellow, orange, blue and RGB (colour-changing). The uniquely sealed letters are suitable for interior and exterior applications and are supplied individually or mounted onto signage manufactured by Applelec.

When long lost friends Emily Faithfull (Fido) and Helen meet after years apart, Fido is at first delighted by their reunion, until she finds herself an unwitting accomplice in Helen’s affair. When Harry suspects Helen’s betrayal, he files for divorce. The trial brings up all kinds of salacious accusations on both sides, including attempted rape, neglect, cruelty, hints of lesbianism, and the mysterious sealed letter; the Victorian press and public had a field day! Donoghue uses the scant historical source materials (court documents, newspaper reports and a handful of personal letters) to good effect and weaves them into a very human and thought provoking tale. There's no right and wrong or winners and losers in this, but lots of shades and shadows. Lies and hypocrisy abound especially during the trial. It certainly made me very grateful that I live in a time and a country of 'no fault' divorce and that our Family Law Court is there ostensibly to look after the welfare of the children involved. At the same time, Helen puts to shame Fido's Cause. She is a "fallen woman," an unfortunate counterexample to the claims of Fido's Reform Firm that women can be every bit as sensible and intelligent as men. As a result, Fido is torn between loyalty to her Cause and loyalty to her friend. She vacillates between an absolute adherence to one or the other as she tries to parse Helen's manipulation and deceit. There were times when Fido's changeable loyalties frustrated me, but I waited patiently for her to discover how unreliable Helen is.

Virtual unwrapping can provide an answer, he says, but its methods always have to be fully described and transparent, as they were in this case, so that others can follow the process step by step. "They told you in their paper what a letter says inside without ever opening it. You have to have some kind of trust in that. Because the artifact itself will never be opened," Seales points out. It is a historical fiction piece based in 1860's London revolving around two women - Mrs. Helen Codrington and Miss Emily "Fido" Faithfull. Their acquaintance had broken off when the Codringtons moved to Malta. The book begins with the former friends literally running into one another again years later at the Smithfield market in London. The reader begins to discover the history between the two women and the current status of their lives since last they saw one another. If Miss Faithfull is an interesting early example of the New Woman, and her printing firm a prototype for the employment bureau staffed by Rhoda Nunn in Gissing's The Odd Women (1893), then her older friend is merely a symbol of the world that Fido and her high-minded chums on the English Woman's Journal are trying to change: a duplicitous flibbertigibbet, bored with her nautical husband, and occupying her time both in Malta, from which the admiral has just returned on furlough, and London with admirers. The latest of these gentlemen friends, a Colonel Anderson, hangs on her arm in Farringdon Street; and Miss F is greatly distressed, a chapter or two later, when she hears them noisily committing adultery on her drawing room sofa. I'm not sure what attracted me to The Sealed Letter. It's a book that exists in that intersection among historical fiction, fiction "based on a true story," and relationship drama fuelled by larger issues of gender and individualism, the sort of book that can appeal to so many people yet go unnoticed because it looks "too historical" or "too much non-fiction" or "too romantic." When I started reading The Sealed Letter, I hoped for something good but didn't expect anything great. I was pleasantly surprised. An example of an intricately folded letter. This practice was common hundreds of years ago to prevent tampering. Scientists have figured out how to virtually unfold and read some of these letters without damaging them. They've used their noninvasive technique to read undelivered letters that have been stored unopened in a postmaster's trunk for over 300 years. YouTube

The last theme echoes over and over again throughout the book. There's one quotation, which I can't locate at the moment, that aptly describes this idea. As she watches the divorce proceeding, Helen wonders if all this was an inevitable outcome of her dalliances with Mildmay and Anderson. She likens herself to a little boy pushing his toy soldier closer and closer to the edge just to see what would happen. I really enjoyed this underlying idea that we humans are prone to pushing ever so slightly too hard and bringing disaster upon ourselves. Applelec’s Rimless letters combine sophisticated construction techniques with an elegant finish.They are constructed using a built up metal letter that is combined with an acrylic iluminated face. The acrylic covers the entire face of the letter providing a robust and evenly lit surface that runs cool to touch. However, I hated Helen with a passion. I found it hard to route for her at all, which is conflicting with this promoting feminism. None of the characters was particularly likable, so it was very hard to relate to anyone. Helen was a very spoiled, manipulative woman given to histrionics, Harry was a controlling, rigid man of his times, and Emily "Fido" was a very independent woman who was too naive for her own good. There are other characters, too numerous to mention, all unlikeable in their own ways. It was quite the disappointment, after Donoghue’s critical coup with Room, to turn to this novel, written a few years before but reissued to capitalize on her success. This fictional account of a real-life divorce scandal should have been a brilliant, realistic, gripping Victorian mystery along the lines of Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith or Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White. Instead it was a tedious slog. Yet I can’t quite put my finger on why. The dialogue is well imagined and the setting authentically described, but still something is missing.Fido’s involvement in women’s reform movements is used to give a clear picture on deprived situation of women in the era, yet it is not a story where good women unreasonably suffer under evil men who take advantage of their privileges. Author has brought the subject close to reality by portraying real world women who are as faulty as men. Her mind is leaping into the future. Why not? Women do live together, sometimes, if they have the means and are free from other obligations. It’s eccentric, but not improper. She’s known several examples in the Reform movement: Miss Power Cobbe and her “partner” Miss Lloyd, for instance. It can be done. It would be a change of life for Helen – but hasn’t her life been utterly changed, without her consent, already? Can’t the caterpillar shrug off its cramped case and emerge with tremulous wings? Firstly, let me start by saying that I think Emma Donoghue is a great writer. She can certainly spin a yarn and I kept reading right to the end, as I wanted to know what happened! However, there were a few minor issues that kept me from rating this higher.

Many, many unopened letters await further study, including hundreds in the Prize Papers, a collection of mail and other materials confiscated from enemy ships by Britain from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Her mind is leaping into the future. Why not? Women do live together, sometimes, if they have the means and are free from other obligations. It's eccentric, but not improper. She's known several examples in the Reform movement: Miss Power Cobbe and her "partner" Miss Lloyd, for instance. It can be done. It would be a change of life for Helen - but hasn't her life been utterly changed, without her consent, already? Can't the caterpillar shrug off its cramped case and emerge with tremulous wings? Yes, the impeachment trial and apparently this divorce trial were both scandals, and they were ostensibly about sex, but if you dig deeper into both, you'll find that the sexual accusations were just an excuse for one person, or political party, to get rid of another person they didn't like.

The trouble is, the ink markings look all jumbled up, because many layers of folded paper are pressed close together and words appear to overlap. Some reviewers have said they were disappointed by the ending but I loved it. There are two nice twists in the tail which I felt added much to the story and a lot of meaning to the undercurrent stuff. The author had some good points to make and it made me consider the old 'double standard' from an entirely new perspective, even amoung women and feminists. The early feminists had much to learn about what real equality meant, as arguably we still do today. Which is not to say that all women are weak. No, what I mean is that Fido is right in claiming she was too weak-willed to refuse to sign the affidavit, too weak-willed to stand up to the illogical Helen Codrington. It's a character flaw—of the individual, not of the gender—that manifests over and over again, each time sending Fido down a darker, dimmer road as she tries to find some sense of equilibrium. Even as she contrasts two very distinct Victorian era women and their attitudes toward men and society, Donoghue reminds us that gender is only a part of who we are. I have a big issue with how the book is presented in the blurb and in the author's note. In both places they make mention of how the courtroom drama rivals "the Clinton affair." Seriously? One thing has nothing to do with the other. The Clintons never divorced; an impeachment is not a divorce; and the "stained dress" in the book played a very minor role in the divorce and was brought forward by an unreliable witness. But what of the eponymous letter?! What's so special, so scandalous, that it remains sealed until the final chapter? Without going into too much detail, let me just say that this is more a MacGuffin than anything. It serves a minor purpose, but the book would have worked even with the letter removed, so don't spend too much time stressing over it as you read, OK?