Sister Fiction - The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman
with a wander into history and breast cancer
Featured on this fun list from The Washington Post of top mystery books of 2023, The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies introduces twin sisters August (Gus) and Julia Colebrook, two far from average Regency romance heroines. The twins are over forty, on the shelf, and believe themselves long past worrying about affairs of the heart. Instead, Gus and Julia concern themselves with the darker world of female reality in the Regency period. They embark on three rescue missions: the first to Thornecrest (and yes, reader, I’m sure its named similarly to Thornfield quite deliberately) to rescue an imprisoned wife; then to a brothel to free a young girl from prostitution, and lastly to a women’s asylum, where Goodman pulls no punches in her description of the filthy and degrading conditions women had to endure.
But how could the pair manage these feats? Well, as Gus says:
“…there would be few men in this world who would believe that two women could even conceive of such a daring plan, let alone two women past their prime. To be constantly underestimated sometimes worked in one’s favor.”
I loved that line! Underestimated Gus describes herself as ‘the steady sister’, but Julia might beg to differ. It’s Julia who sees the peril in Gus’ attachment to Lord Evan (yes, there is a romance element, and a fun one at that). And when Gus reports that “Julia did not often put her foot down in such a way.” - we know that she has done so before. Their disagreements, though, are certainly minimal. Julia dislikes the way Gus wrinkles her nose, or that her sister is sometimes a step or two ahead of her when it comes to making plans, but any moments of disunity quickly ‘mellow into our usual companionable quiet.’
A particularly charming aspect of this sister pairing is their ability to read each other’s thoughts without words - what their late father called their ‘langue de twin’. Consider this exchange when the sisters are asked to help rescue a woman whose life is in danger:
I looked across at Julia: We must say no; it is impossible.
She lifted her brows: But the poor girl in that house - can we really refuse?
I frowned: It is quite illegal. Besides, your health.
She tilted her chin: I am well enough. Could we live with ourselves if Caroline ends up dead?
I ducked my head: Of course not. It would be too awful.
Julia nodded. I think we must try.
I released a long breath: I suppose so.
“Mrs Defray, my sister and I will help you,” I said.
But what’s this about Julia’s health? Well it turns out, and I don’t think this spoils the story for anyone reading this and thinking about reading the novel, that Julia has breast cancer. It’s an interesting choice on Goodman’s part and offers her the opportunity to bring a real historical breast cancer sufferer into her tale - Fanny Burney.
Now it just so happens that I have a copy of Frances Burney, Journals and Letters in the house. (Why? Because she would be a fantastic subject for a historical novel - novelist, playwright, breast cancer survivor.) After some meandering about trying to find the book, I was able to sit down and read Burney’s letter describing her 1811 anaesthetic-free mastectomy in full. For you normal people not hoarding books for future and possibly never to be written novels, you can read it here.
Yes. It is a bit gruesome: the cutting, the scraping, the pain as she lay with a cambric handkerchief over her face and her eyes screwed shut. But it’s also hugely human. The past is not a foreign country here. Burney describes her initial reluctance to get the painful swelling in her breast checked out. She recounts the slow growth of concern, when, for example, the second doctor she saw,
“uttered so many charges to me to be tranquil, and to suffer no uneasiness, that I could not but suspect there was room for terrible inquietude”1
Her reluctance to have surgery, the agony she feels waiting to hear her doctors’ recommendations, her concern for her husband and son, her agonizing three week wait for the operation that takes place with only two hours notice, the sight of the bed and the bandages: all these things are no different, in terms of human experience, than they are to sufferers today. The operation, thankfully, is the piece that has been transformed. For Fanny Burney, a mastectomy was 20 minutes of agony, 20 minutes with no anesthetic, but the journal entry, so painful to write it took her months to do it, speaks across the centuries so clearly of the struggle of her whole cancer journey.
And who does she write this difficult account to? To one of her sisters. Burney had several. Esther, born in 1749 is addressed here, and was the eldest, followed by Fanny, born in 1752. Another sister, Susanna, was born in 1755, then Charlotte in 1761, and finally a half-sister, Sarah (also a novelist), born in 1772, and so twenty years Fanny’s junior. It’s to her sisters that Fanny Burney describes her mind turning in the final moments before her operation took place: ‘how did I long - long for my Esther - my Charlotte!’ she writes.2 And just in case anyone is wondering why Susanna and Sarah don’t get a mention, like the good sister she surely was, Burney returns to her sisters right at the end of this letter/journal entry:
“I ought to have mentioned Sarah when I regretted and sighed for my Sisters, for I am sure she would gladly and affectionately have nursed me had she been at hand: but at that critical moment I only thought of those who had already - and so often - had opportunity as well as Soul to demonstrate their tenderness. - and She who is gone is ever, and on all occasions, still present to me.”
Susannah had died in 1800.
To end on a happier note, I’ll add that Fanny Burney lived for 29 years after her surgery, and my new fictional friend, Julia Colebrook, while her health is still a worry, should be set to appear in future outings with her twin sister Gus.
I’m here for it.
ed. Peter Sabor, Frances Burney Journals and Letters, Penguin, 193 - Journal letter to Esther Burney, 22 March-June 1812.
ibid