phanero ([personal profile] phanero) wrote2022-03-10 09:39 pm
Entry tags:

Review: Sarah Waters - The Fingersmith (2002)

Wow, an awesome book. I'd watched the Handmaiden before. The plots are quite similar until about the 2/3 mark, after which the story diverges. But even where the stories are the same, I found myself enjoying the book in a different way compared to the movie, both good.

As for this story, I really enjoyed how it combined romance, espionage, and a historical backdrop. It was a really engrossing story. Would recommend!

Spoilers!!!! And sorry for the sloppy writing, I wrote this while multi-tasking!!!



Story

As I was reading this book, I was a little surprised that the Handmaiden had followed the plot of this book so closely, from Maud being forced to read and organize pornography, to the tooth-smoothing scene between Maud and Sue. It was all very similar to me, but I love how the book gave us a different feel to the story, one that was expressed in words instead of visuals.

The characters of Maud and Sue were slightly different from Hideko and Sookhee, but I'll talk about them below.

Maud and Sue unexpectedly fell in love with each other while trying to trick each other. How did this happen? My interpretation is as follows. Both Maud and Sue grew up hardening their hearts to the world. Maud had learned to act submissive, but only because it was her way of survival. Sue grew up a thief and so she ahd to be hard to the cruelty of the world. In the process of trying to trick each other, they had to soften themselves a little. They both acted more innocent and kind, so that the other would trust them more. Maud needed Sue to trust her and feel comfortable around her so that she wouldn't see the con coming, and Sue needed Maud to trust her because she was going to convince her to marry Gentleman. In the process of acting innocent, they also let some of their true tenderness leak. Each had subtle habits that the other found endearing and vice versa. So I think both Maud and Sue fell in love with an innocence that was half-true.

One major difference between the Fingersmith and the Handmaiden was that there was no grand confession between Sue and Maud prior to Sue being committed to the asylum. In the Handmaiden, Hideko had attempted suicide, at which point Sookhee stopped her and revealed her con. Afterwards, they were pretty affectionate and close with one another. However, there was no such confession in the Fingersmith, so the romantic and sexual tension between Sue and Maud built up even further. When Sue realized that Maud had betrayed her, her anger was compounded due to the love she felt for Maud, which she never had any opportunity to express.

The movie cut out the entire portion of the story about Maud and Sue being switched at birth. Understandably, the movie would not have had enough time to cover this extra topic, and I felt that Park Chanwook did a good job with creating a complete story only out of the swindling aspect. Regardless, I did think this part of the story was interesting, but maybe a bit underutilized.

The reveal was that Sue and Maud were switched at birth, and what Mrs. Sucksby hoped to gain from this switch was not only half of Marianne Lilly's fortune, but also that her daughter grow up a lady. I thought the switched identities was a cool sub-theme that was used with regards to exploring fates and such. But I do have some qualms with how this was handled.

When the truth was revealed to Maud, Mrs. Sucksby looked to be an evil mastermind; that was definitely how she looked to Maud. Mrs. Sucksby was imprisoning her, so that she could have her money. But I also felt that Mrs. Sucksby saw her as a fashionable accessory, to have a learned lady so attached to her. This was before we found out that Maud was actually Mrs. Sucksby's own daughter, so at that point, Mrs. Sucksby looked so super evil to me.

I felt that Gentleman's murder was a little clumsily handled. He'd gotten stabbed in the commotion of Sue raising a ruckus at the house. Charles had run out onto the street and shouted murder, and the police came super quickly, at which point, Mrs. Sucksby confessed to the murder because apparently she felt bad for having put the two girls through so much pain. This did not match up with my impression of Mrs. Sucksby, because, as mentioned, I'd seen her as an evil villain. I guess this could have worked better if Mrs. Sucksby had truly thought that Maud would have been happy to have been reunited with her birth mother, that Maud would have liked to hang out with them in their den. But even then, Mrs. Sucksby had knowingly committed Sue, a girl who saw Mrs. Sucksby as a mother, to an asylum for life for her money. Even when Sue had gone to the house all up in arms, Mrs. Sucksby had pretended not to know anything. Her change of heart in taking the blame for the murder came out of left field and did not match my perception of her.

Not to mention how Gentleman being stabbed in the commotion also feels a bit wishy-washy. Gentleman was as responsible for all of this mess as Mrs. Sucksby was, and for his death to be chalked up to confusion didn't feel very satisfying for me. If I was one of the girls, I would have wanted to stab him myself for toying with my life like that. Mrs. Sucksby took the blame for it, but we don't actually know who stabbed him.

As for the final ending, I felt that it was apt for the story. It had a different feel from the movie, where Sookhee and Hideko had gone on a ship and escaped their past lives. On the contrary, Sue and Maud returned to Briar, where it all began, but this time alone and with no one to toy with their lives.

If I had read this book before watching the Handmaiden, I know I would have been a lot more impressed lol. I was definitely very surprised by the identity switch, so if I hadn't known about the reverse-con, I think I would have been even more impressed. That being said, I was still very entertained even with the plot twists that I knew would happen.

So overall, I thought this story was terrific. I had some small gripes about how the conflict was resolved, but it doesn't overshadow how creative and well-written the story is.

Writing

One thing I really liked about this story was how it was able to maintain the historical atmosphere while maintaining a very immersive romantic thriller. When it comes to romances, I'm always wary about writers modernizing the stories so that the romance is more recognizable to contemporary readers. Though I'm not familiar with Victorian-era England at all, I felt that the historical backdrop was very believable. The ways that Maud and Sue expressed their love seemed appropriate, hidden behind the affection that one might expect between lady and servant, but so obvious to our two protagonists.

One obvious thing I noticed was that the Handmaiden definitely had more of a male gaze compared to the Handmaiden. Sarah Waters is lesbian, so it makes complete sense that her books would heavily feature lesbian themes, but I also just really appreciate her approach to romance and sexual tension. Not a lot of published fiction approach romance this way, and I really appreciate Sarah Waters for this reason.

Characters

Susan Trinder/Susan Lilly

When I first started the book, I found Sue a little haughty. Though she was a thief, she acted a little like a princess. She was under the impression that Mrs. Sucksby loved her and put her on a pedestal, which was a little true, but it's not until later on that I found out why Mrs. Sucksby's treatment of her felt a little off.

In reality, Mrs. Sucksby was just trying really hard to keep Sue alive, because she wanted to cash in on the fortune. Sue had mistaken that for love, which is not her fault at all, she was a child.

Anyway, Sue was convinced to help Gentleman with the con. As I mentioned above, Sue fell in love with her perceived innocence of Maud. She definitely found Maud innocent and ladylike, as she knew nothing of the cruel world of London outside. That was because she didn't know about what kind of books Maud was working on.

Since there was no confession between Sue and Maud, the betrayal of being committed to the asylum hit Sue like a truck. All of the love and regret that she felt for committing to the con converted into anger when she realized that she'd been duped by both Maud and Gentleman.

I'm going to try to put this into words but bear with me lol. If Sue had confessed her love to Maud, she would have fallen completely for Maud's trap, and so her being admitted into the asylum would have been part of the plan. But since Sue didn't confess her love and was still put into the asylum, the love that she developed for Maud felt like collateral damage. So not only did Sue lose her freedom, she lost her love as well. If she'd confessed, she could have convinced herself that falling for Maud was part of the plan to get her into the asylum, so she'd only fallen into one trap. But it was never Maud nor Gentleman's intention for Sue to fall in love with Maud, so Sue fell into the trap of the asylum, but also in this trap that no one had set for her. So I can see why Sue was so mad, she'd been taken for a fool.

I thought the period of the time in the asylum was interesting, but it wasn't explored too much, as understandably, Sue wanted to run away. Admittedly, when she escaped, we saw her go back to her old ways as a thief, and it reminded me that Sue was always this trickster. She stole from that poor family in the countryside, and she tricked Charles into helping her by telling him that she'd take him to Mr. Rivers, and also by keeping his coat hostage. I guess I wanted to romanticize Sue by thinking that she was an honourable thief, but this book reminded me that she was still a thief through and through, but that did not negate her feelings of love, of regret, of anger, of sadness.

I really pitied Sue after she returned to London and was desperate to return to Mrs. Sucksby. She thought that Maud had usurped her place as her mother's favourite. And when Sue burst into the house and tried to tell Mrs. Sucksby what had happened, Mrs. Sucksby played along instead of sympathizing with Sue's frenzied state.

After the commotion of Gentleman's death, Sue visited Mrs. Sucksby often, and still I pitied Sue because I knew the truth and she didn't. When Mrs. Sucksby showed her affection, I felt like Mrs. Sucksby was making a mockery of love. She'd apparently loved her daughter Maud, and look at what she'd done to her. She'd appeared to love Sue, but was using her all along. And now that she was about to die, she was still using Sue for comfort, because Sue had mistaken her protecting her asset for love. And that was why I pitied Sue.

After Sue found out about the truth from the letter, she understood that Maud had been tricked. Though I was glad that she finally knew, I also felt it curious that she didn't say that much about Mrs. Sucksby. Why wouldn't she have wondered why they'd been switched at birth? One possibility is that since Mrs. Sucksby was dead already, there was no point in dwelling on the past. But my skeptical mind saw it as another way to not question Mrs. Sucksby's evil master plan and to absolve her as the story seemed to want to absolve her.

Sue returned to Briar as Maud was the only person left in the world that she felt anything for. There, Maud told her about what she'd been forced to do for her uncle, and how she was now writing pornography to make a living.

This was the first time that they spoke to each other without a mask, and it was honestly quite pure. Behind the tough mask, Sue is just a simple girl looking for love. Before, it was love from her mother, and now, it was love from a companion. And now that everything was out in the open, she just seemed a lot lighter. Good for her (y)

Maud Lilly/Maud Sucksby

Maud was the lady of Briar. Sue thought that she was playing a con on Maud, but Maud was in turn playing a con on her. While I was reading the book, I kept thinking that Maud was a more expressive person than Hideko was in the Handmaiden.

Maybe it was just described in greater detail in the book, but I felt that Sue noticed more things about her, how she spoke, her facial expressions, etc. And perhaps it was because Sue was paying attention to her all the time, and that it was written out in words, that I found her more expressive. In the days leading up to the elopement, Sue could tell that Maud was not in a good mood. She was afraid of Gentleman. Sue could see that very clearly.

When we dove into her backstory from her point of view, we saw that her life was extremely eventful. She grew up in an asylum and was taken in by her uncle when she was a little older. At Briar, she had to be "broken in," and was beaten into submission by both her uncle and Mrs. Stiles. We even saw that Maud was a bit of a brat to Mrs. Stiles, her own way of getting back at her.

On the other hand, I found Hideko to be more of an ice princess. Whereas Maud tricked Sue with more acting, Hideko tricked Sue by not acting much, and staying relatively emotionless. I think the latter approach probably worked better for a visual medium as well. If all of the things Sue noticed were portrayed on screen, we as the audience would have thought them too obvious.

Anyway, I liked Maud. I thought her backstory was really interesting. On the outside, she seemed docile, but she hadn't broken on the inside. Funnily, I felt that Maud had a harder heart than Sue, and that was why she went ahead with the con despite her growing feelings for Sue.

Like Sue, Maud also found Sue lovely and innocent. She noticed her small quirks and like Sue, she fell in love with this half-innocent girl. However, Maud had no experience with love. Sue grew up believing that she was loved, so she at least knew what caring for someone involved. But Maud never had anything or anyone to fight for. When she was faced with the prospect of having someone to fight for, she didn't really know what to do, and she just kept moving forward with the con so that she could be free of her prison.

Unfortunately, not being savvy out in the real world, Maud was led right into Gentleman and Mrs. Sucksby's trap. By the time she realized she shouldn't be there, she was trapped, with all of the others in the den against her. In those early days, she still dreamed of leaving. She played docile to appease Mrs. Sucksby, just as she appeased Mr. Lilly. But somewhere along pretending to be a lady, to be Ms. Lilly, she actually became a lady, and couldn't become accustomed to the way of the thieves.

Anyway, the part of the book when Maud tried to escape and find Mr. Hawtrey were so terrifying to me. Maud had nothing, no one, and she was in a big city where it was every person for themselves. That one man who'd asked her if she was alright had seemed kind but soon after, Maud realized that he was after something, and so she shook loose of him. Even with Mr. Hawtrey, she realized that he would not ever help her. And I was honestly so shocked and heartbroken when, after all that waiting for an opportunity to escape, Maud returned to the den.

By the time Sue made her way back to London, Maud had already been broken. With the way Sue described Maud, it seemed like Maud was a doll, something pretty that Mrs. Sucksby wanted to play with. Maud showed no signs of life, except when she told Sue to go, though of course Sue refused, thinking that Maud had tricked her. By that time, I really feared that Maud had been broken. Before, at Briar, I felt that Maud hadn't been broken yet, because she felt that her true home was the madhouse, with the nurses that she grew up with. She knew that Briar wasn't her true home. But having found out that she was Mrs. Sucksby's daughter, she realized that she was home, that this was her place, and she had no right to escape.

In the ruckus of the murder, Maud had been let go, probably because she was recognized as Christopher Lilly's niece. Apparently she'd returned to Briar, and had tended to her uncle who was ill and eventually died. I thought it was kind of convenient that he died, but more on that later. Anyway, after she inherited Briar, she made a living writing porn and erotica, finding herself quite good at it. However, the difference was that her words were of yearning for her love, which was what made her writing different from normal erotica, I suppose.

When Sue had come to find her, Maud seemed to accept that Sue might kill her. But as we see, their reunion is amicable. Sue reveals that she knows everything. Plus, Maud reveals the truth to Sue, that she was handling pornography all this time. Maud needed to tell Sue this to clear things up between the two of them. Sue accepted this very easily, probably because it was the truth.

So overall, I quite liked Maud. She was complex. A proud lady, but also a frightened girl.

Gentleman/Frederick Bunt

Up until the reveal of the switched identities, Gentleman was still the major villain. Gentleman definitely felt more villainous in the book compared to the movie. In the movie, Fujiwara just felt like a normal conman.

In the Fingersmith, Maud noted that he often said too much, and that's true. He always overacts in order to try to really sell the illusion. He would always speak too much at Christopher Lilly's parties in order to make himself seem like a part of the gang, while Maud worried that he might say the wrong thing and give himself away. When he was hanging out with Maud and Sue, he would often give Sue knowing looks while Maud was looking away, as a wink-wink-nudge-nudge, which was very risky, but as Sue started to care for Maud, she started to hate Gentleman too, and so those looks became very annoying.

Anyway, I thought it was a little bullshit that Gentleman eventually became only a soldier for Mrs. Sucksby's master plan. Obviously he was in it for the money, but I kind of wish that we would see him act in his own interests more. While Mrs. Sucksby wanted money, she also wanted her daughter Maud. How did that contrast with Gentleman who only wanted money?

As we know, Gentleman died in a scuffle, which I also thought was a little bullshit. Even if Mrs. Sucksby took the blame, I wish we'd known who'd stabbed him. If it was either Sue or Maud, I felt like it could be taken as a triumph for either of them, even if they didn't know yet that that would be their liberation. But perhaps not knowing was meant to be realistic, as Maud and Sue were both excitable at the time of the scuffle.

It was revealed after his death that Gentleman was not indeed a nobleman, but I could have told you that. He definitely fancied himself a gentleman, and perhaps most other people mistook his charming behaviour for what is accepted among the noble classes, or they simply didn't care, as I'm sure Mr. Ibbs or Mrs. Sucksby did not.

Grace Sucksby

I didn't really know what to make out of Mrs. Sucksby at first, so I was just kind of neutral about her. As I mentioned, I felt that Mrs. Sucksby's love for Sue was a little off. She had no trouble selling babies all the time, what made Sue so special, if Sue wasn't her own child? If Sue was just the child of a murderess, why did Mrs. Sucksby care so much? Anyway, I didn't think too much about this because she was out of the picture when Sue left for Briar.

Mrs. Sucksby was what kept Sue going. She didn't really express this until later on, when she really missed Sucksby, but Sue really saw Mrs. Sucksby as her mother, even if she didn't call her mom.

But as we later came to find out, Mrs. Sucksby had only ever treated Sue as an asset. She never let Sue get hurt, because she needed her asset to be in pristine condition, when she would trade Sue for her own daughter back.

When Mrs. Sucksby revealed her grand plan to Maud, I was truly quite horrified. It was horrifying to Maud, because she was apparently in on this con that she had never known about. Mrs. Sucksby was really excited about her daughter being raised a lady, but Maud had never known that she was not a lady. In addition, Mrs. Sucksby had laughed off Sue being locked up at the asylum, saying that Sue was just being returned to where she belonged as a lady; as her mother was locked up, so should Sue.

I felt that Mrs. Sucksby saw Maud as something of an accessory. She thought it would be so fashionable to have such a learned daughter, not considering the fact that her daughter might not have wanted to be with her just because she was her daughter by blood. It was only because Maud was beaten down by the cruelty of the city that she stayed, but we saw that she enjoyed none of it. She was not allowed to go anywhere, only to sit and be a toy for her mother.

When Sue returned, Mrs. Sucksby played along, acting surprised at what had happened. Maud was trying to tell Sue to leave, as she knew that Mrs. Sucksby saw her not as a daughter to be loved, but as a tool to be used.

So I hope you can understand why I did not buy it at all when Mrs. Sucksby suddenly proclaimed that Sue and Maud were innocent and that she was to take the blame.

In the days leading to her hanging, Sue was the only person who went to see her, and Mrs. Sucksby was very loving and affectionate with Sue. But I saw those actions as hollow. Even if she realized that she loved Sue, she'd hurt her immensely. Apparently the explanation for why she didn't tell Sue about the truth was so that she wouldn't hurt her further, but again, I felt like this was a clumsy attempt at absolving Mrs. Sucksby of her wrongs.

In the end, Mrs. Sucksby died a murderess, hung in a place that was visible from the window in the house.

Christopher Lilly

Our final villain. In both the Handmaiden and the Fingersmith, the uncle was cruel, training their nieces to read pornography from a young age. However, they do exhibit some differences.

For Uncle Kouzuki in the Handmaiden, I saw him more as a pervert who objectified women. When he captured Fujiwara, he was more interested in how he'd taken Hideko's virginity than anything. Even Fujiwara found him despicable for feeling this way about his own niece, though it's to be expected. Kouzuki only ever saw Hideko as a tool, an object.

As for Mr. Lilly, he showed hatred towards Maud specifically. It really felt like Mr. Lilly specifically made Maud's childhood terrible because he hated Maud. And I guess this stems from his disdain for his sister. During Maud's childhood, Mr. Lilly made sure to put her down, to make her life as unenjoyable as possible. Even when Maud had dutifully carried out her "secretary" work for Mr. Lilly, he always made sure to remind her that she was nothing.

After Maud escaped from Briar, the first we heard from Mr. Lilly was through a letter. He'd had some words for Mr. Rivers, but he ended the letter saying that Mr. Rivers would know how to treat a whore. Though Maud knew that her uncle cared not for her, hearing him call her that still hurt her quite a bit.

And yet, after the debacle of the stabbing, Maud returned to Briar and took care of her uncle as he fell ill and eventually died. Again, another unsatisfying ending for our villain here. He did nothing but make Maud's life a hell, and yet she returned there because she had nowhere to go. Briar was not her home, and yet it was.

Other

I thought that the other characters from the thieves' den would have had a bigger role: Mr. Ibbs, John Vroom, Dainty Warren, etc. But that was because in the Handmaiden, it was Sookhee's friends who'd saved her from the asylum. No such thing happened here, where it was everybody for themselves here, and they were not so attached to Sue to care what had happened to her, whether she had realy made off with the money as Gentleman had claimed she had.

In addition, I really thought that Mr. Ibbs' sister would somehow become important, since she kept getting mentioned, but that never came to be. I thought that Maud would somehow find a way to escape through her.

There were a lot of servants at Briar, including Mrs. Stiles, Mr. Way, Charles, Margaret, Cakesbread, etc. But ultimately, the only important figures were probably Mrs. Stiles, Mr. Way, and Charles.

I also thought that the nurses at the asylum would have more of an impact, that Sue would swindle them somehow in order to escape, or that something would have come out of her friendship with Ms. Wilson.

Perhaps this is Sarah Waters' style, to introduce a lot of characters so that we feel immersed in the atmosphere. But ultimately, a lot of these characters were simply background characters to the bigger story.

Themes

Fingers

Sue is the literal fingersmith here, being the thief, but there's a lot of imagery and visual themes relating to hands in this book.

The parallel to Sue would be the fact that Maud always wears gloves, apparently for her delicate hands. I don't remember if it was ever explained, but I would guess that the gloves were also so that she didn't ruin the books. Or maybe it was a way for Maud to protect herself from the books, so that she wouldn't have to touch them directly.

Otherwise, I did always find myself paying more attention to how Waters would describe hands, what they were doing, how the characters felt when they thought of or felt other people's hands, etc. When words cannot be said, so many emotions can be expressed in hands.

Mixed identities

Sue and Maud were quite literally switched at birth, but I thought their switched identities were explored in a very interesting way in this book.

The first encounter of switched identities could be the fact that Maud and Sue were swindling each other. Maud had swindled the swindler. Sue had become the lady she was supposed to swindle when she was committed to the asylum.

When Mrs. Sucksby revealed her master plan to Maud, she indicated that Sue was a lady and was simply following her fate, to be locked up at the asylum like her mother. And Maud was back at Mrs. Sucksby's side, with her mother.

When Sue was in the asylum, her memories began to feel like dreams, and it made me think that her experiences and memories could be considered a dream, because she was never meant to live that life.

Sue grew up believing that her mother was a murderess who was hung in the square visible from the window of her room. And yet, when the woman she'd considered her mother was hanged at that very spot, she could not bear to look, and I found that kind fitting. She was not Mrs. Sucksby's daughter, and so she was not meant to fulfill that fate.

As for Maud, I mentioned that she'd seem to become resigned by her fate. And perhaps that was because she realized that her true home was there with the thieves, whether she liked it or not.

There's definitely a lot that I'm missing here, but I thought the way that Sarah Waters explored their switched fates was extremely fascinating.

Overall

What a terrific book, very well crafted. The concept behind it was absolutely amazing. As I mentioned, if I hadn't watched the movie, I would have been even more wowed, but unfortunately, I can't be as objective as I might have hoped as I didn't get the full impact of the shock.

I also just really appreciated Waters' approach to romance. It seemed very fitting for a historical setting, and I liked that it wasn't modernized so much so as to seem recognizable to the contemporary reader. I very much appreciated that the romance remained true to its time period.