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chaotic_wholesome's review
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
arirang's review
4.0
Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught gives a (fictional) voice to four historic women, each, at some point in her life, constrained by (male) doctors for supposed mental disorder.
The author gives more detail on the true stories behind these women here:
https://annavaughtwrites.com/the-women-of-saving-lucia/
They are:
- Lady Violet Gibson (1876-1956) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Gibson who in 1926, aged 50, attempted to assassinate the fascist leader Mussolini, wounding him with a gun shot. She was deported to the UK and there, for what might have been otherwise viewed as a heroic act, committed to a mental institution, St Andrew's Hospital ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andrew%27s_Hospital) where she spent the remaining 30 years of her life despite her petitions to Winston Churchill (a family friend) amongst others that she should be released;
- Lucia Joyce (1907-1982), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_Joyce daughter of the author James, who was diagnosed as schizophrenic in the mid 30s and largely institutionalised from that point. From 1951 to her death in 1982 she was also in St Andrew's Hospital;
- ‘Blanche’ Wittman (1859-1913), known as "The Queen of the Hysterics" as the most famous patient exhibited by Jean-Marie Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital;
- Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Pappenheim). Under the pseudonym Anna O (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_O) she was a patient of Josef Breuer and his writings on her treatment with Freud are regarded as the beginning of psychoanalysis, particularly Bertha's own idea of free association in their sessions (she called it 'chimney sweeping'). Her identity as Bertha Pappenheim was only revealed years later. She was also a social pioneer, notably founding the Neu-Isenburg orphanage for Jewish girls (which was later closed by the Gestapo in 1942, the residents deported to concentration camps)
In practice their stories have often been told by others, typically male authors, both at the time and in literature since.
Bertha’s own life story was rather subordinated to Freud and Breuer’s account of ‘Anna’. And perhaps most notably The Story of Blanche and Marie by Per Olov Enquist, where the author's use of source material lead many to treat his invented narrative (e.g. that Blanche worked for Marie Curie) as entirely fact rather than part fiction (https://severinelit.com/2020/04/22/on-blanche/). See e.g. this New Scientist article https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19225732-100-the-story-of-blanche-and-marie-by-per-olov-enquist/ or this from the Independent which has since been quoted on the internet as a 'source' for 'facts' about Blanche's life: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-story-of-blanche-and-marie-by-per-olov-enquist-trs-tiina-nunnally-6230962.html. To his credit the article in the same paper from the chair of the 2003 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, which the novel won, did recognise the flights of fictive fancy involved:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-story-of-blanche-and-marie-by-per-olov-enquist-trans-tiina-nunnally-421694.html
The Lucia in this novel also complains early on:
I’ve had it up to here with all the Joyce family analysis and their pity about Beckett, I must say. You know, I’m poor this and poor that. Daddy’s dead, Mother never visited me anywhere, Giorgio was frosty, Sam jilted me for his Frenchwoman and only had me because he was Daddy’s acolyte. And on and on. I’ll jabber it before you do!
Saving Lucia posits that, given their overlapping times in the institution, Lucia and Lady Gibson became close friends, Violet encouraging the younger woman to tell her own story and telling hers in turn.
Lucia, dear girl, dear silly girl, let us talk about you. I have heard whispers from the walls. I am not supposed to know. It’s said that you have been rubbed out. Your letters gone; records destroyed, gone to dust. Burnings. Everyone has forgotten, you poor thing. You had no gun. It is not right. I want to give something to you.
I wonder what. Who loves me really? I think she’s come to the same pass.
And then Violet says, Ah, but we will fly: I have a plan. A sort of trip for mad women like us. I want to save you.
Save you.
Saving Lucia. I like the sound of that.
Violet also introduces Lucia to the story of Bertha and Blanche and indeed, through her imagination and crossing barriers of time and space the four women meet, and set out to re-write not just their own stories but histories.
Violet had read and thought about other women, penned up and mistranslated, or just forgetten for what they might really have been. She saw them, she said, in her dreams, too, and at all times, heard their voices and mouthed them aloud; answered back, saving it all in her imagination which had grown expansive, luxuriant, in confinement.
Woven through the text are literally allusions to Beckett and Joyce (particularly Finnegans Wake) and much more besides, for example a recurrent bird motif featured in this excellent review: https://storgy.com/2020/03/12/saving-lucia-by-anna-vaught/
My own account barely sketches the surface of a wonderfully written and deep novel – one I hope to see featuring in literary prize lists.
Recommended – 4.5 stars
The author gives more detail on the true stories behind these women here:
https://annavaughtwrites.com/the-women-of-saving-lucia/
It is important to me that we think carefully about the women in the book. Three were committed for life and one was periodically cared for in a sanatorium and under psychiatric supervision and also an important case study. But they were all from different walks of life and one is on a postage stamp (again, read on). So I thought, to avoid any notion of lumping these four women together, I would give you some biographies below. The book is, of course, not only about psychiatry, psychology and mental illness; it is about friendship, history, the possibility of a different history, families, happiness and the potency of the imagination.
They are:
- Lady Violet Gibson (1876-1956) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Gibson who in 1926, aged 50, attempted to assassinate the fascist leader Mussolini, wounding him with a gun shot. She was deported to the UK and there, for what might have been otherwise viewed as a heroic act, committed to a mental institution, St Andrew's Hospital ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andrew%27s_Hospital) where she spent the remaining 30 years of her life despite her petitions to Winston Churchill (a family friend) amongst others that she should be released;
- Lucia Joyce (1907-1982), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_Joyce daughter of the author James, who was diagnosed as schizophrenic in the mid 30s and largely institutionalised from that point. From 1951 to her death in 1982 she was also in St Andrew's Hospital;
- ‘Blanche’ Wittman (1859-1913), known as "The Queen of the Hysterics" as the most famous patient exhibited by Jean-Marie Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital;
- Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Pappenheim). Under the pseudonym Anna O (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_O) she was a patient of Josef Breuer and his writings on her treatment with Freud are regarded as the beginning of psychoanalysis, particularly Bertha's own idea of free association in their sessions (she called it 'chimney sweeping'). Her identity as Bertha Pappenheim was only revealed years later. She was also a social pioneer, notably founding the Neu-Isenburg orphanage for Jewish girls (which was later closed by the Gestapo in 1942, the residents deported to concentration camps)
In practice their stories have often been told by others, typically male authors, both at the time and in literature since.
Bertha’s own life story was rather subordinated to Freud and Breuer’s account of ‘Anna’. And perhaps most notably The Story of Blanche and Marie by Per Olov Enquist, where the author's use of source material lead many to treat his invented narrative (e.g. that Blanche worked for Marie Curie) as entirely fact rather than part fiction (https://severinelit.com/2020/04/22/on-blanche/). See e.g. this New Scientist article https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19225732-100-the-story-of-blanche-and-marie-by-per-olov-enquist/ or this from the Independent which has since been quoted on the internet as a 'source' for 'facts' about Blanche's life: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-story-of-blanche-and-marie-by-per-olov-enquist-trs-tiina-nunnally-6230962.html. To his credit the article in the same paper from the chair of the 2003 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, which the novel won, did recognise the flights of fictive fancy involved:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-story-of-blanche-and-marie-by-per-olov-enquist-trans-tiina-nunnally-421694.html
The Lucia in this novel also complains early on:
I’ve had it up to here with all the Joyce family analysis and their pity about Beckett, I must say. You know, I’m poor this and poor that. Daddy’s dead, Mother never visited me anywhere, Giorgio was frosty, Sam jilted me for his Frenchwoman and only had me because he was Daddy’s acolyte. And on and on. I’ll jabber it before you do!
Saving Lucia posits that, given their overlapping times in the institution, Lucia and Lady Gibson became close friends, Violet encouraging the younger woman to tell her own story and telling hers in turn.
Lucia, dear girl, dear silly girl, let us talk about you. I have heard whispers from the walls. I am not supposed to know. It’s said that you have been rubbed out. Your letters gone; records destroyed, gone to dust. Burnings. Everyone has forgotten, you poor thing. You had no gun. It is not right. I want to give something to you.
I wonder what. Who loves me really? I think she’s come to the same pass.
And then Violet says, Ah, but we will fly: I have a plan. A sort of trip for mad women like us. I want to save you.
Save you.
Saving Lucia. I like the sound of that.
Violet also introduces Lucia to the story of Bertha and Blanche and indeed, through her imagination and crossing barriers of time and space the four women meet, and set out to re-write not just their own stories but histories.
Violet had read and thought about other women, penned up and mistranslated, or just forgetten for what they might really have been. She saw them, she said, in her dreams, too, and at all times, heard their voices and mouthed them aloud; answered back, saving it all in her imagination which had grown expansive, luxuriant, in confinement.
Woven through the text are literally allusions to Beckett and Joyce (particularly Finnegans Wake) and much more besides, for example a recurrent bird motif featured in this excellent review: https://storgy.com/2020/03/12/saving-lucia-by-anna-vaught/
My own account barely sketches the surface of a wonderfully written and deep novel – one I hope to see featuring in literary prize lists.
Recommended – 4.5 stars
jackielaw's review
5.0
“Don’t let me be remembered only as a madwoman, as a case.”
Saving Lucia, by Anna Vaught, is a fictionalised retelling of the lives of four women who, in their lifetimes, were regarded as mentally impaired. They were incarcerated and given treatments thought fitting at the time, often by renowned pioneers whose names readers may recognise. In looking at the women’s lives and the people they met and mixed with, the question is posited: how are they deemed mad and others sane?
The Lucia of the title is the daughter of James Joyce, the Irish writer best known for his wordy and challenging novels. Born in 1907, she was diagnosed as schizophrenic in the mid-1930s and institutionalized at the Burghölzli psychiatric clinic in Zurich. In 1951, she was transferred to St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton. She died there in 1982.
“St Andrew’s is quite a select place if you have the money, because you get a well-appointed room of your own to be mad in.”
During Lucia’s first few years at St Andrew’s – according to this tale – she befriends another inmate, the Honourable Violet Gibson. In 1926, Violet shot Mussolini as he walked amongst a crowd in Rome. She wishes her story to be told and asks Lucia to be her scribe. As they share their stories, those of two other women also rise.
Marie ‘Blanche’ Wittman was a prominent patient of esteemed neurologist, Professor Jean-Martin Charcot. He would exhibit her in his clinical lessons at La Salpêtrière in Paris. Under hypnosis, this beautiful woman would be presented as a model example of hysteria. One such lesson was captured in a painting by André Brouillet. Charcot was a showman, Blanche his commodity. Under the guise of teaching he offered her up for men to ogle – a curiosity without agency.
“Neurology: such detail – and he swam in its glory and down its pathways; he thought hysteria had a logic of the body.
Hmmm.
I don’t recall that he studied it in men”
The fourth woman in this imagined friendship group (who lived in different times and places) is Anna O. She was a patient of Josef Breuer who published her case study in his book Studies on Hysteria, written in collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Her treatment is regarded as marking the beginning of psychoanalysis. Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim, an Austrian Jew and the founder of the League of Jewish Women.
What these four women have in common, as well as their purported mental conditions, is the power others had over them and how this was was misused.
“women of her time could find no outlet in ‘a cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere’ to satisfy their passion and intellect. They were not supposed to have ‘any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted'”
The book’s brilliantly written opening chapter pulls the reader in. From there the narrator’s voice is established – a somewhat frantic and illusory remembrance of various events from each of the character’s histories. Gradually the reasons for their incarcerations are revealed along with the direction their lives subsequently took. In giving them a voice, the author also asks what they would have done instead if given the choice.
Lucia Joyce’s letters, papers and medical records were destroyed at the behest of her surviving family – an attempt to expunge her existence. Violet Gibson was moved to a shared ward when her family wished to save themselves money towards the end of her life. Marie Wittman was taken on by Marie Curie as an assistant to work in the Paris laboratory where, in 1898, radium was discovered – she suffered debilitating health issues as a result of this work. Bertha Pappenheim recovered over time and led a productive life – the West German government issued a postage stamp in honour of her contributions to the field of social work.
These stories of vital, intelligent women whose lasting history is remembered largely through what they were to famous men make for fascinating reading. Mental health is still widely regarded as an embarrassing condition best kept hidden away – the author has given voice to those who, for fear of consequences, were forced to submit silently and kept in captivity. Readers are reminded that captivity does not always require rooms and keys.
There is much to consider in this poignant and impressive story. Although certain threads are not always the easiest to follow due to the fragmented structure, it is worth pursuing for all that comes together at the end. This leaves a powerful and lasting impression as well as a new lens to look through at some of the supposed titans of science. A layered, affecting and recommended read.
Saving Lucia, by Anna Vaught, is a fictionalised retelling of the lives of four women who, in their lifetimes, were regarded as mentally impaired. They were incarcerated and given treatments thought fitting at the time, often by renowned pioneers whose names readers may recognise. In looking at the women’s lives and the people they met and mixed with, the question is posited: how are they deemed mad and others sane?
The Lucia of the title is the daughter of James Joyce, the Irish writer best known for his wordy and challenging novels. Born in 1907, she was diagnosed as schizophrenic in the mid-1930s and institutionalized at the Burghölzli psychiatric clinic in Zurich. In 1951, she was transferred to St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton. She died there in 1982.
“St Andrew’s is quite a select place if you have the money, because you get a well-appointed room of your own to be mad in.”
During Lucia’s first few years at St Andrew’s – according to this tale – she befriends another inmate, the Honourable Violet Gibson. In 1926, Violet shot Mussolini as he walked amongst a crowd in Rome. She wishes her story to be told and asks Lucia to be her scribe. As they share their stories, those of two other women also rise.
Marie ‘Blanche’ Wittman was a prominent patient of esteemed neurologist, Professor Jean-Martin Charcot. He would exhibit her in his clinical lessons at La Salpêtrière in Paris. Under hypnosis, this beautiful woman would be presented as a model example of hysteria. One such lesson was captured in a painting by André Brouillet. Charcot was a showman, Blanche his commodity. Under the guise of teaching he offered her up for men to ogle – a curiosity without agency.
“Neurology: such detail – and he swam in its glory and down its pathways; he thought hysteria had a logic of the body.
Hmmm.
I don’t recall that he studied it in men”
The fourth woman in this imagined friendship group (who lived in different times and places) is Anna O. She was a patient of Josef Breuer who published her case study in his book Studies on Hysteria, written in collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Her treatment is regarded as marking the beginning of psychoanalysis. Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim, an Austrian Jew and the founder of the League of Jewish Women.
What these four women have in common, as well as their purported mental conditions, is the power others had over them and how this was was misused.
“women of her time could find no outlet in ‘a cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere’ to satisfy their passion and intellect. They were not supposed to have ‘any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted'”
The book’s brilliantly written opening chapter pulls the reader in. From there the narrator’s voice is established – a somewhat frantic and illusory remembrance of various events from each of the character’s histories. Gradually the reasons for their incarcerations are revealed along with the direction their lives subsequently took. In giving them a voice, the author also asks what they would have done instead if given the choice.
Lucia Joyce’s letters, papers and medical records were destroyed at the behest of her surviving family – an attempt to expunge her existence. Violet Gibson was moved to a shared ward when her family wished to save themselves money towards the end of her life. Marie Wittman was taken on by Marie Curie as an assistant to work in the Paris laboratory where, in 1898, radium was discovered – she suffered debilitating health issues as a result of this work. Bertha Pappenheim recovered over time and led a productive life – the West German government issued a postage stamp in honour of her contributions to the field of social work.
These stories of vital, intelligent women whose lasting history is remembered largely through what they were to famous men make for fascinating reading. Mental health is still widely regarded as an embarrassing condition best kept hidden away – the author has given voice to those who, for fear of consequences, were forced to submit silently and kept in captivity. Readers are reminded that captivity does not always require rooms and keys.
There is much to consider in this poignant and impressive story. Although certain threads are not always the easiest to follow due to the fragmented structure, it is worth pursuing for all that comes together at the end. This leaves a powerful and lasting impression as well as a new lens to look through at some of the supposed titans of science. A layered, affecting and recommended read.
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