A White Room

Summary (from the publisher): At the close of the Victorian Era, society still expected middle-class women to be “the angels of the house,” even as a select few strived to become something more. In this time of change, Emeline Evans dreamed of becoming a nurse. But when her father dies unexpectedly, Emeline sacrifices her ambitions and rescues her family from destitution by marrying John Dorr, a reserved lawyer who can provide for her family.

John moves Emeline to the remote Missouri town of Labellum and into an unusual house where her sorrow and uneasiness edge toward madness. Furniture twists and turns before her eyes, people stare out at her from empty rooms, and the house itself conspires against her. The doctor diagnoses hysteria, but the treatment merely reinforces the house’s grip on her mind.

Emeline only finds solace after pursuing an opportunity to serve the poor as an unlicensed nurse. Yet in order to bring comfort to the needy she must secretly defy her husband, whose employer viciously hunts down and prosecutes unlicensed practitioners. Although women are no longer burned at the stake in 1900, disobedience is a symptom of psychological defect, and hysterical women must be controlled.

A novel of madness and secrets, A White Room presents a fantastical glimpse into the forgotten cult of domesticity, where one’s own home could become a prison and a woman has to be willing to risk everything to be free.

Review: I received a copy of this book from Net Galley.

A White Room is told from the perspective of Emeline, a young woman who comes of age at the turn of the century. Despite Emeline's desires to pursue a career in nursing, she is forced into a marriage of convenience to John Dorr, a young lawyer, when her father unexpectedly dies. Life as a newly married woman is unhappy for Emeline, as she is moved to a distant town away from her family and must live in a house she hates and begins to envision evil presences in the house. Only when she secretly defies her husband and society and begins treating the poor as a nurse does Emeline find her reason for living and become more stable.

Although the tension between Emeline's desires and society's demands appealed to me, I began to lose interest in this book when Emeline began hallucinating in the house. "All the furniture in the parlor was moving, dancing. The winding appendages of the bizarre tables and chairs were actually twisting and twirling. [...] I screamed and grabbed at the snaking extremities. I took hold of the leg of a chair and snapped it off." This is the behavior of an insane person, and it was little wonder that Emeline was diagnosed with "hysteria," a common explanation for any and all female complaints at the time. Emeline is understandably distraught by this, since many women were put into an asylum if they did not show sufficient improvement. Emeline's apparent belief that she saw and heard things that were not real made me question her reliability as a narrator.

The only thing that saves Emeline from the torments of her own mind is her burgeoning interest in providing rudimentary medical care to the poor in her town who cannot afford it. However, only licensed doctors are allowed to practice any type of medicine, so Emeline is once again putting herself in considerable risk should her social deviance be discovered. When she is finally caught, she is imprisoned and threatened again with an insane asylum and a lobotomy; "'They take a knife and slice out a chunk of your brain.' He drove an imaginary scalpel toward my head, gritted his teeth, and ripped the nonexistent blade back up."

Although Emeline's story does have a happy ending, numerous plot points were pretty unbelievable. First, I couldn't imagine that most residents of a town could be so cruel and vindictive. Additionally, I couldn't imagine that Emeline could have gone behind her husband's back practicing medicine for so long. And the image of a well-born and wealthy married woman of the time performing a rudimentary abortion on her maid seemed far-fetched. Additionally, the change in her husband from a cold and indifferent man to a passionate and morally upright one was difficult for me to believe.  

Yet despite my concerns with the plot choices, I did enjoy this novel fairly well and in particular, the plight of a woman who is unable to pursue her dreams because of the society and time in which she lives.  Emeline as a character was compelling, and my desire to see where her life took her was the only reason I read this to the conclusion.

Stars: 2