The Essex Serpent is a delicate blending of that which is familiar and that which is new. I came to this novel expecting a tromp through the 21st century's conception of the Victorian period, all white frilly lace and moralistic prejudices, but instead found a much more nuanced and complex portrayal of the late nineteenth century.
The novel is ostensibly about Cora, a wealthy widow who dabbles in academia and aspires to find one of Mary Anning's sea dragon creatures, and her friendship with an Essex parson and his wife. A whole host of characters grace the main plot, some forming sub plots within the novel, from Dr Garrett the surgeon and his friend Spencer, to Cora's companion Martha and Reverend Ransome's children. Recently widowed, Cora is introduced via mutual friends to the reverend and his wife, Stella, and goes to visit them in their Essex village of Aldwinter. Here, the reader learns about the infamous Essex Serpent, a mythological beast who had been terrorising the village and inspiring fear within the minds of the inhabitants. Depicted as some type of sea monster, the Serpent appears to have the ability to communicate telepathically with select people, and induces a type of hysteria within the village's teenage population.
On the surface, what the reader is experiencing is a fairly typical period novel centred around a potentially supernatural mystery which will undoubtedly be destroyed by the explanations of rationalism and science. However, what is interesting about this novel is that it fails to deliver this stereotypical portrait of Victorian rational thought blasting through supernatural belief. Instead, Perry portrays a subtle weaving together of faith, rationalism, thought, love, obsession and sympathetic magic, through a beautifully written narrative. The beach of Aldwinter, so evocatively described, becomes so vividly real through Perry's descriptions that the reader can almost smell the oysters in the air and feel the crunch of seaweed between their fingers. The fire that is literally consuming Stella Ransome burns so brightly in her blue eyes, surrounded as she is by her blue treasures, that we feel as though we are making that journey with her as she travels in spirit from this world to the next. We tussle with questions of faith and science alongside Cora and Will as they spar against each other time and again, each daring the other to look beyond the cliché of who they appear to be. And this is the real power of this novel; it challenges us to look beyond the clichés of what we are expecting. Cora expects to find the cliché of a country parson in Will and instead she finds a complex and charming man. He expects her to be the caricature of an ageing widow dabbling in science to pass the time; he is challenged to instead find an attractive, intelligent and fierce woman. We as readers might expect this to be a novel of Victorian prudishness and rationalism triumphing against peasant beliefs and superstitions. Instead, we are confronted with a narrative that creates at times enough unease to make the hairs at the back of your neck stand on end, as we contemplate certain events from the point of view of a rational person who cannot explain what is happening. We find modern ideas of hypnosis and surgery, housing reform for the poor, set against the spectre of the Serpent lurking underneath the waves. This is a novel that refuses to be categorised, being more interested in examining the people within it and their interweaved lives, lying as it does on the cusp of the new modern world. And yet, the primordial monster of the Essex Serpent reminds us all that some things are beyond the scientific explanations of rational men and women in the drawing rooms of the upper classes. Even if rational explanations are found, can they ever be fully trusted or believed?
Comments
Post a Comment