Virginia Feito turns Gothic literature on its head with Victorian Psycho, an outrageously bonkers novel about revenge.
The central character of the novel is a governess, a familiar figure in Victorian literature. Sometimes they’re the heroine (in the mode of Jane Eyre) and sometimes the villain (think Becky Sharpe in Vanity Fair). Virginia Feito’s governess Winifred Notty is off the scale when it comes to villainy.
The Victorians harboured deep anxieties about governesses. They wanted them as a signal of the family’s social status but they were nervous about having single, educated women living so close to their families. These poor women were frequently suspected of trying to seduce the master or marry one of the sons. All mild transgressions compared to Winifred Notty’s behaviour once she crosses the threshold of Ensor House, the remote manor house occupied by the the Pound family.
She appears the model of decorum when she first arrives, ready and wiling to impart a modicum of knowledge into her obnoxious charges Drusilla and Andrew.
But Winifred is nothing like the meek and mild figure the Pound family had expected. Ever since her childhood she’s experienced a darkness in her soul leading her to violent visions and impulses. Her clergyman father repeatedly attempted to cleanse her through exorcism but to no avail. Now and again “the darkness” would come upon her and she’d end up killing someone.
Her bedtime stories are a little strange — two girls joined in lust and dead babies is how one tale begins. Her night time habits prove equally odd — she loves to roam the gardens dressed only in her undergarments or roam the house standing over the sleeping inhabitants. But then the family she serves is also strange.
As the weeks move on however, the “darkness” takes increasing hold of her mind, pushing her into an escalation of violence. On Christmas morning the dam breaks, leaving a body count that would rival even Titus Andronicus for blood and violence.
This is definitely not a book for readers who are squeamish.
Look beyond the disgusting actions though and you’ll find a daring narrative. Feito pushes at the boundaries of the Gothic genre with more mists, tunnels, gloomy portraits of ancestors than you can ever have imagined possible. It’s so over the top that you wonder whether Notty really is guilty of all these heinous acts or whether they’re a product of a mind that’s tipped over into acute psychosis.
Victorian Psycho has apparently been optioned for a film adaptation. I suspect that the directors will go overboard on the horror and fail to recognise the nuances of Feito’s novel.
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