I shall!
So you think that William, intentionally or not, mis-identified the body in the morgue? What makes you think that? Did I miss something?
Well, I’m not twickster, but I thought I’d give my idea on it…
I don’t think he purposely misidentified the body. After all, the body had been in the water for quite some time, and was undoubtadly bloated, etc. He was very grieved, and obviously didn’t want to study the body long and hard. IIRC, he didn’t have a picture of her either, to compare with. Subconciously, he may have wanted it to be her, just for closure.
twickster, please do give your take!
It was so totally obvious to me it wasn’t her body – but I’ll have to think about why that was. Wishful thinking is certainly one possibility.
I’m at work, and don’t really have time to be reading the Dope today, let alone posting – I’ll be back this evening with an actual answer.
Okey doke, here I am.
When William goes to the morgue, IIRC (I’ve returned the book to the library already, so can’t check it) there’s a description of the body – the face is basically gone, the extremities are gone? or just the rings from her fingers? – that makes it clear that looking at any of the usual spots you’d look at to ID a corpse are gone, so he looks at her crotch and identifies her from that. I don’t want to be crude here, but it is not my understanding that their sex life would have involved any activities during which he would have spent a lot of time looking at her crotch – so, other than her pubic hair being blonde, what would he have to ID her by?
So it was my interpretation that there was nothing to go by, really, one way or the other, on the body, and William just decided (not necessarily in any kind of calculating or even conscious sort of way) that it would be easier to just declare Agnes to be dead – so he did. At the time, as I said earlier, I just automatically interpreted it as “it wasn’t really her” – now I’m thinking Faber deliberately left it ambiguous as to whether it was Agnes or not. Someone who’s got a copy, could you check please? He doesn’t really say it was her – but he also doesn’t really say it wasn’t her.
So, yeah, as I said in my post from the other day – I think it was another loose end, what happened to her – and I do like to think that she escaped to some kind of situation where she would be cared for.
It was definitely ambiguous. (How’s that for an oxymoron?)
The body may or may not have been Agnes. I don’t think it was. I’m with you; I don’t think Henry saw her naked often enough to make an identification.
Her doctor, on the other hand – he might have been able to. The perv. (I remember him as a perv, maybe he wasn’t.)
Oh yeah, he was a perv – but what exactly was he doing? It’s clear he was poking around in her private parts – but I’m not sure he was looking at them – wasn’t this kind of taking place underneath the sheets?
Also – I’m not sure it would have occurred to them to ask the doctor – whether he was examinining her visually or not, the assumption would have been that he wasn’t.
It was so weird that he was Mrs. Fox’s father…
twickster, I was wondering just what the doc was doing also. I recall her thinking something like “I’ll make him work for it this time,” or something similar.
Anyone know the answer to this?
I strogly suspect that he was giving her “orgasm therapy.” In the Victorian era, manual stimulation and vibrators were employed to rid the patient of her “hysteria.” Simply put, it was thought that an orgasm would help clear up sexual tensions which could be the cause of the patient’s mental illness. There’s a book on the subject called “The Technology of Orgasm.”
:eek:
Whoa! I totally missed that!
I really enjoyed this book. I had ordered it from Amazon a while back but just got around to reading it a few weeks ago. It was one of those “can’t put down” books for me. At first I was very frustrated at the ending, but after reflecting on it, liked the ambiguity about it.
I would have liked to have read more about Sugar’s life before meeting William, particularly more about her childhood.
IIRC (and I only finished the book a few days ago), Sugar did indeed have a recommendation, it was merely a matter of whether or not she took it with her when she fled. I also think that while said recommendation mentioned that Sugar had become pregnant, I don’t remember it saying when, or how long she continued to work for the Rackhams afterward; she could very well pass off Sophie as her own daughter and find a relatively respectable job.
As much as I’d like to see poor Sugar and Sophie fall from whatever grace they’ve had, I don’t see it happening–Sugar has been pressing down her Castaway side for too long and too furiously for that too happen, especially if she does indeed have her funds and recommendation.
I also think that Agnes is dead, and that it’s likely that she died before hitting the water. However, I have absolutely no basis for this opinion. I’m actually curious about Sugar’s later, frantic “Agnes is alive” burst of thought. Could it be a premonition, or pure self-convincing?
Forgive me, also, for reviving this thread if it was more appropriate to start a new one.
No, buckleberry, I’m glad you honored your promise to come back after reading it!
IIRC, the recommendation didn’t come right out and say in so many words that Sugar had gotten pregnant – damn, does anyone have a copy of the book handy so they could check the wording of it? My recollection is that it was phrased in a kind of “damning with faint praise” sort of way – nothing negative was actually said, but it was clear that it wasn’t very enthusiastic. Because even if she were able to pass Sophie off as her own daughter… well, I guess she could claim to be a widow.
Also, BF, I’m curious about your conviciton that Agnes was the dead woman fished from the Thames. As I mentioned above, I read it completely opposite – please, if you could come up with something – is it just that you feel the story works better that way? I was so utterly unconvinced by William’s identification of the body.
Sugar wouldn’t be able to use the recommendation anyway, because it would connect her to William. She’ll have to start using a fake name in order not to be caught.
I think the incident with the coachman at the end of the book is a sign that Sugar will return to prostistution, and Sophie will follow in her footsteps. As much as Sugar would like the respectable life, she doesn’t have the education or manners to be a governess.
Twickster, I have the book and can check – do you recall whereabouts in the book the recommendation was mentioned? Toward the end, maybe? I’m not remembering that part at all, but I’d be glad to look. (Long weekend :))
Yes, it’s towards the end. Right before she takes off with Sophie.
Unfortunately, I think she will return to a life of prostitution, but I don’t think she would let that happen to Sophie. As others have mentioned, she tries awfully hard to repress the Mrs. Castaway side of her.
Any word on if there will be a sequal?
I’d guess it’s about 100 pages from the end… I’d start there, anyway, then go towards the end. Thanks, AuntiePam.
Y’all are really backing me into a corner of revealing the extent to which I’m a hopeless romantic – but I like to think Sugar won’t return to prostitution. The thing with the coachman was just a means to an end, not necessarily a foreshadowing of what would come next. You’re right, though, Lissa – I hadn’t thought through the need to totally suppress any connection with William. (I was thinking, well, written recommendation, it’s not like they’d necessarily check her references.) OTOH, she might be able to get a job as governess with a family not so high up the social scale. Or maybe she could set up as a shopkeeper or something?
I happened to check the recommendation note last night, and while I can’t recall the exact wording, it is said that “Miss Elizabeth Sugar” is leaving due to a family member’s illness. It gives the exact dates of her employment and I don’t believe it tells Sophie’s age, but it can be assumed that because Sugar was her governess and only for a few months, that Sophie is relatively young.
With that in mind, I think Sugar could pass Sophie as her own child and put the recommendation letter to good use–had she taken it along. I believe she either did not take it or lost it when she lost her novel. Without it, I think she still could have been employed by a less suspecting, lower class family. I wonder, too, if she’ll be joining up with Mrs. Fox’s rescue society at all–as a member or perhaps taking advantage of their generosity.
As for Agnes, I feel that I might be grasping for straws to prove her death, but I do feel that William identified her correctly. If he did not, I think it was inadvertant and due to shock rather than any real purpose. He sees her “ghost” at the end of the novel, after Sugar and Sophie walk by, so I believe, myself, that he truly thought it was Agnes in the morgue. I don’t have the text in front of me, but I do recall that William and Agnes clearly had very few intimate encounters, which would make details of his surreptitious peek under her nightgown rather clear. Therefore, I feel that his method of identification was, in his case, a valid one.
However, I do admit that it is far more likely that William had too few details to make an accurate identification–the body was in no shape for identification, her wedding band was gone, William was quite obviously in shock. I don’t think he made any conscious effort to misidentify, though I think subconsciously, he felt that merely pronouncing Agnes dead would be easier all around.
So I could see it either way, really, but due to the abrupt ending of the novel, I choose to accept that Agnes truly is dead. I’m fascinated by either side, however, and am very intrigued by whatever cases can be made.
Does anyone have any guesses as to the significance of Sugar’s novel? She put too much effort into it, in my opinion, to let it flutter away that afternoon.
Re: Was it Agnes’s body fished from the Thames? Looks like William thought so, but you were right, he identified her from “the triangle of pubic hair and the mount of Venus from which it sprouts, a small haven of peachy flesh and delicate fleece which has escaped miraculously undamaged. He closes his eyes tight, and conjures forth the vision of Agnes on her wedding night, the only other occasion on which she lay exposed to his gaze in quite this pose.”
He commences to collapse in grief. It looks like he was sure, even if we might find room for doubt.
In the recommendation letter he wrote after the doctor told him Sugar was pregnant, he introduces her as his daughter’s governess, says she was competent, sensitive and enthusiastic, and that she was leaving because of a sick relative. I scanned the rest of the book but didn’t see mention of whether or not she took the letter with her. We can assume it was with the other envelopes, filled with money she hadn’t spent.
I think (1) Agnes is really for sure dead, (2) Sugar will use the $$ to set herself up in business (not prostitution, the interlude with Cheesman was for Sophie’s sake), (3) she will pass Sophie off as her daughter, and not need to use the recommendation, and (4) the bits and pieces of Sugar’s novel that William was reading at the end will find their way to his two friends who were just getting into some kind of publishing venture. They’ll make a lot of money from them, and they’ll be part of porn history.
Yikes. I read the two sentences you quote and say"obviously, he has no freakin’ idea whose crotch he’s looking at." We’ve got some skin and some pubic hair, and a portion of anatomy that he looked at once, by his own account, some ten (?) years earlier.
Obviously insufficient proof that it’s Agnes.