Fingersmith

The resonances between Maud and Sue continue to reverberate. Though the two have been reared in very different circumstances, to say the least, they are both treated as if they are property. Sue is akin to the poke that the thieves amass, while Maud is, at first, like a tabby cat, “a thing to pet and dress with ribbons” by the nurses at the psychiatric hospital (166). Later, once she is in the hands of her uncle, she is nothing more than chattel, farmed out to the nurses to be raised, then taken by her uncle to the slaughter: “Some men have farmers raise them veal-calves. My mother’s brother has had the house of nurses raise him me. Now he means to take me home and make me ready for the roast” (168). This also echoes Sue’s fears—which come to fruition—when facing the pig’s head feast before leaving for Briar. Both women are sacrificial lambs, ready for the butcher, to be divvied up among the more powerful and more devious.

Maud also realizes that, as much as she grows to love Sue, she is only an object of potential fortune to her. Sue calls Maud good, which melts Maud’s heart until she reflects upon it:

She must believe it, for the working of our plot. I must be good, and kind, and simple. Isn’t gold said to be good? I am like gold to her, after all. She has come to ruin me; but, not yet. For now she must guard me, keep me sound and safe as a hoard of coins she means, at last, to squander (231).

Thus, both Maud and Sue are objectified, valued only for what their obedient, or coerced, behavior can bring to others, like Gentleman and Mrs. Sucksby. The tragedy rests in the misunderstanding. Sue does consider Maud to be good as gold—or, at least, beautiful as a pearl—but, caught in the web of the scheme, dishonesty or enforced discretion, keeps them equally ignorant of the other’s depth of true feeling.

They continue to be rendered doppelgangers throughout Maud’s narrative, just as they were in Sue’s. When Sue first comes to Briar, she listens at the hidden door to Maud’s room to see if she can hear her breathing. So, too, does Maud “put [her] ear to the panels,” curious to gain some knowledge of the innocent girl come down from London, “but hear[s] nothing” (223). Maud understands that the scheme’s success depends on Sue’s transformation into a mistress like her so that the keepers of the psychiatric hospital will believe her to be Gentleman’s wife. Maud imagines Sue caught in the middle of a web that spiders, meaning her and Mr. Rivers, weave: “She will not know it until, too late, she will look and see how it [the web] has clothed and changed her, made her like me” (228). Their coupling contains a sentimental element, as well; they are alike, too, in that they are falling in love (with each other, with themselves). They dance together in Maud’s room, and Maud notes, “where she presses against me, [I feel] the quickening beat of her heart—I feel it pass from her to me and become mine” (235). As one, their hearts beat together in a physical manifestation of the psychological trope—but they are also interchangeable, interdependent as manipulable objects in the larger conspiracy that sullies their connection.

Aside from love, Maud desires liberty above all else. However, like love, liberty is an elusive notion for both Sue and Maud. As women, they are bound by the conventions of the time; without men, women have little recourse for freedom of movement, of choice. In addition, they are women bound together through the sinister machinations of men: Mr. Lilly is interested in maintaining a servant, while Mr. Rivers/Gentleman is interested in securing a fortune. Still, Mr. Rivers offers Maud an unconventional marriage in the bargain:

‘I am offering you something very great and strange. Not the commonplace subjection of a wife to her husband—that servitude, to lawful ravishment and theft, that the world terms wedlock. I shan’t ask you for that, that is not what I mean. I am speaking, rather, of liberty’ (209).

This revelation of the reality of marriage—it justifies rape and robbery—illustrates just how limited is the world in which Maud lives. Describing marital union as wedlock surely symbolizes the prison under which married women live. Nevertheless, Maud recognizes Mr. Rivers’s offer for what it is; it is not untainted freedom but rather “rare and sinister liberty” (210). Liberty is even “gaugeless, fearful, inevitable as death” (213). Maud must trade her very soul to gain it, perhaps only trading one prison, the awful house at Briar, for another, her unappeased conscience.

Briar itself looms large in Maud’s life. Certainly, it is nothing better than a prison, and Mr. Lilly is nothing more than a sadistic jailor. It is also personified as a living, breathing entity, full of imminent threat and potential promise: “The house has opened its mouth, and is breathing” (204), Maud thinks after Mr. Rivers has posed his offer. She sees him outside the house that evening, looking up at the light coming from the windows, attempting to figure out which room was hers—the implication being that he could ruin her through rape if she does not agree to his plot: “Again my lamp flares, and the window-glass bulges. This time, however, the house seems to be holding its breath” (205). The struggle for possession of Maud continues between Mr. Rivers and the house itself: “But Briar crept on me. Briar absorbed me. Now I feel the simple weight of the woolen cloak with which I have covered myself and think, I shall never escape! I am not mean to escape! Briar will never let me!” (214). The Gothic house stands in for Mr. Lilly as a sinister presence and constant jailor. When Mr. Rivers walks through the house, humming and tapping his fingers along the staircase railings, Maud thrills to the sounds in the ever-quiet house: “I imagine the house walls cracking—gaping—collapsing in the concussion of his presence. I am only afraid they will do so before I have had my chance to escape” (216). The house is destabilized by the scheme that Mr. Rivers represents, and Maud must capitalize on that disruption before it is too late.