The Crimson Petal and the White

Rating:
Summary: "Watch your step."
Review: Michel Faber's sprawling "Crimson Petal and the White" is, well, what exactly? It's both an homage to the Victorian novels, but with a very postmodern outlook, as well as a critique of them. Does it re-create the Victorian era? Well, not exactly. Does it re-create the Victorian novel? Again, not exactly. Let's just say that while its setting is Victorian, its sensibility is very much 21st century. The author warns you on the first page that his vision of mid-Victorian London may not be what you were expecting, and that you do not belong here. "The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether."

In time, this becomes quite apparent. For example, Mr. Faber presents you with the classic "madwoman," but offers up a reason for her madness that Dickens, say, wouldn't have known about. And his prostitute's heart is far from golden. There's a Christmas scene, but it's far from heartwarming. So beware.

However: What "Crimson Petal" surely will do is continously surprise and delight readers who will allow themselves to be surprised and delighted, while those who resist will be bored. And it won't take very long for you to discover which sort of reader you are.

Clever, maybe too clever by half (although deliberately so), the author assumes the role of guide, as he shows his readers the contrast between the genteel life of a prosperous perfume maker with the ugly (and smelly) life of the lower orders, while he ironically follows the rise of the prostitute Sugar from her brothel to her digs as a kept woman, and eventually to governess in the house of the perfumer.

The author's style intrigues; he tells the tale of the past in the present tense, and he does it with nudges and winks, as he introduces you to the many characters he's populated the tale with. It's sometimes funny, at other times sad, but it's never sentimental.

The plot? Don't worry about it. What there exists of one is rudimentary and often rambling. It's not a progression; it's a complete circle--a ride on a carrousel. The book doesn't really conclude; it just comes to a stop.

Rating:
Summary: Slightly Flawed but Major Achievement
Review: Despite an awkward beginning, this novel soon blossoms (no pun intended) into an enthralling, mesmerizing tale that I love for its sensual detail and combination of frank sexuality vs. subtle character portrayal. The reader is never quite sure what is going to happen next, and the ending is a bit abrupt, but there is little doubt about where the two main characters are headed, at least in my mind. A great page turner, this is the kind of novel that will appeal to those of varying tastes. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Either excellent or frustrating, depending how you take it
Review: This is a book which you will either love, or find extremely frustrating, depending how you look at it.

On the superficial level, it is long and there is little that actually happens in this tale of a prostitute climbing her way out of the gutter. But you could say the story slowly changes and the character's relationships gradually evolve, much like in real life. Plot aside, the descriptions of Victorian England are brilliant, from the appalling slums to the genteel houses of the upper classes. The characters are well drawn. We care about them and grow to love them, despite being shown their unpleasant sides as well. And yes, they are cliched. Sugar is the "intelligent whore", who reads books in her spare time, and has a head for business. William Rackham, the head of a large perfume company is the self-conscious upper class Victorian, embarrased by his "trade roots" but self-absorbed and superior nevertheless. Acknowledge that you've probably seen them before in other books, and then move on - they're still absorbing.

The ending, as others have mentioned, is abrupt. If you care about the characters, you may be frustrated not knowing for sure what happens to them. On the other hand, if you put your mind to it, you can see by their personalities, and the way they have changed, what their likely course is. But not knowing for sure.....this was a let down for me, I'll admit.

There are a multitude of themes in this book which can be dissected if you have mind. Victorian attitudes towards the poor, mentally ill, women. The fickleness of infatuation (and it's long term consequences), the unachievable concept of domestic "bliss", the meaning of parental love. There are shades of Jane Eyre and Dickens, all here for the taking.

Forget the length, the inaction, the cliches and the ending. Just let this book slowly envelop you. You will be absorbed by what it has to offer, if only you look beneath the surface.

Rating:
Summary: Two Dewdrops on the Petal
Review: Nor stranger seem'd that hearts
So gentle, so employ'd, should close in love
Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake
To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down
And slip at once, all fragrant, into one.

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk
Nor winks the goldfin in the porphyry font
The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.


Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Princess" is the mock epic poem of a feminist university that comes under attack from men who feel threatened by it. When the women defeat them in open warfare, the men resort to seduction, pleading with the women to love and not abandon them. Michel Faber's bestseller, The Crimson Petal and the White (Harcourt, 2002), takes its title from the verse's seduction song and provides an ironic twist on Tennyson's theme.

The story centers on Sugar, a 19-year-old girl bred to prostitution in 1875 London. Intrigued by her description in a directory of city brothels, William Rackham - the heir to a perfume fortune - is drawn to, and quickly becomes obsessed with, Sugar. He purchases her from the brothel's madam, first ensconcing her in a London flat and later bringing her into his home under the guise of governess for his 6-year-old child. Within the Rackham household, Sugar becomes entangled with William's child-like, mentally unstable wife; his pious, insecure brother; and his needy, sorely-neglected daughter.

But don't be fooled by a plot that sounds simple. This isn't a Victorian regurgitation of hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold drivel like Pretty Woman (Touchstone Pictures, 1989) or its 1960's predecessor, Sweet Charity (Neil Simon, Dorothy Fields, and Cy Colmen, 1966). The novel's greatest strength is characterization. The story is peopled with stereotypical personas who, through Faber's unimpeachable attention to detail, become so human that it's difficult to put this novel down without feeling that each character has become a personal friend.

His storytelling takes a few risks which, even if they don't work perfectly, are commendable for the fact that they were difficult and, for the most part, work quite nicely. The story opens from the point of view of an unidentified second-person narrator whose role is to navigate the modern reader through the seediest streets of Victorian London. The narrator allows the story to unfold in a limited omniscient viewpoint without jostling the reader among different perspectives. In spite of the narrator's self-consciousness, it gives us a direct involvement in the story while keeping our awareness of our own 21st century paradigm. The narrator is humbling, reminding us in the face of temptation to judge the characters that we are merely interlopers in a world we don't fully understand. Within the first quarter of the book, the narrator fades out unobtrusively before the style has a chance to become grating.

In spite of Faber's narrative nod to the fact that he is a 21st century writer and not attempting to mimic Charles Dickens, he has incorporated some delightful echoes to Victorian literature. The interjections of the narrator directly to the reader, the book's length, its wordiness, and its unapologetic treatment of social issues are all reminiscent of the great 19th century novelists. While the language is modern, it's written in a lovely, melodic prose with the style of a tragic fairytale that can fool the reader into believing we're reading the heightened language of that era.

Faber himself holds a degree in Victorian literature and his research for the novel was phenomenal. Whatever criticism might be leveled against his work, you're unlikely to catch him in an historical error. If anything, the research is sometimes a bit heavy-handed, particularly in the first few chapters, which at times read more like an entertaining dissertation on England in the 1800s. Though unless a scholar of Victoriana, you'll thank him later when the minutiae, however awkwardly it may have been laid out in the beginning, allow you to slip into the story without subsequent confusion.

By the time we've acclimated ourselves to the story's setting, become emotionally invested in Sugar and the other characters, and become engrossed in the plot, the timeless and discomforting issues of the book become apparent. This is a story about the intersection of class and gender and the tragic ways it affects human relationships.

The seeming contrast between Sugar and William's wife, Agnes, narrows as the story progresses. Both women are trapped, by virtue of their sex, by a need to understand and appease men in order to appeal to them for their livelihood. As a result, both women are manipulative and rageful, albeit in different ways. Sugar manipulates with her sexuality while secretly penning gory fantasies of revenge against the men who have used her. Agnes manipulates with a docile girlishness while starving herself, fainting, overdosing on laudanum, and denying the existence of her daughter who poses a threat to Agnes' centrality as a needy child herself.

The apparent contrasts between Sugar and Agnes serve to underscore their basic similarities. Sugar's self-containment and independence versus Agnes' helpless weakness is deceptive. They're simply two different routes to the same goal. As the story unfolds, they subtly change places and like the Tennyson poem, "slip at once, all fragrant, into one".

Agnes and Sugar themselves are the titular crimson petal and the white. Agnes (a name that literally means "chaste") is a dainty and conventionally beautiful woman who is terrified of her body and its sexual function. The only way she can speak the truth is to act crazy. Sugar is coarse and bony and suffers from a disfiguring skin condition. As she climbs the ranks from whore to kept woman to governess, her understandable rage gives way to an almost canine ingratiating dependence. She waits for William's
attention like a dog for table scraps, massages his ego with practiced skill, and takes to spying longingly on his every move in an attempt to find the key to making herself indispensable to him. As William's fascination with her fades the more Sugar insinuates herself into his life, the more we're forced to examine the dichotomy that still exists between women men marry and those with whom they socialize and engage in mutually-satisfying friendships.

Faber's awareness of and attention to the female experience contrasts William's without ever vilifying William as a character. He is able to describe the ways women experience their own bodies, their sexuality, and their relationships with both men and other women with a level of detail that condemns William's inattentiveness (as well as its real-life counterparts) without demonizing William. If anything, William's obliviousness is pitiable only because we understand how common he really is. While he clearly loves both Sugar and Agnes, he comes no closer to truly understanding them than if they were a different species altogether - not because he is a callous person, but because his sex and its attendant social station never requires him to understand women nearly as well as they understand him.

It's in the relationships among the novel's women that class becomes particularly salient as well as emotionally-moving. When Sugar returns to the brothels of Church Street after weeks of the luxury of being a kept mistress, she visits with Caroline, a friend and fellow streetwalker. She is repulsed by the baseness of Caroline's environment and lifestyle and realizes that, despite holding the hands of dying prostitutes, she has never embraced another woman in friendship. And she can't now - she has begun to identify with the upper class and she sees that any charity she might bestow upon Caroline now would further alienate them. The competition for and identification with men have taken their toll on solidarity and class deals the final blow to what could have been unity in the face of an economic oppression that requires they remain desirable commodities, whether as wife, mistress, or whore. This "Uncle Tom Syndrome" has an uncomfortable timelessness. It remains an economic reality that many women's financial security rests on serving men, servicing them, or marrying them - all of which require more attention to a woman's desirability than to forging genuine connections with other women, who instead become an ever-present competition for male attention.

Faber's novel has been criticized for being unabashedly coarse in its crude language and unsentimental descriptions of sex acts. However, it misses the point to either focus overmuch on the role of sex in the story or to alternatively brush it aside in the quest for the book's deeper themes. Accepting sexuality is important to understanding the characters and their relationships. Yet it does a disservice to both to reduce the book to its sexual elements. The role of class is prominent here again. The lower class characters (Sugar, Caroline, etc.) exhibit a frankness about physicality and sexuality that is feared and avoided by the higher class characters (Agnes, William's brother, Henry, etc.). Faber's writing illustrates this with an enlightening reversal. The lower class characters show no more compunction about exposing themselves, relieving themselves, or douching (a Victorian method of birth control performed with caustic chemicals) than they would about wiping their noses. In contrast, the upper class characters fear this sexuality as though it were a tidal wave threatening to consume them, which Faber underscores with erotic descriptions of the most mundane elements of their lives. It's clearly not a matter just of
purity, but a fear of the connection and honesty that such sexuality implies and the alluring prose Faber uses to outline their lives leaves it nibbling disconcertingly at the edges of their existence, threatening them and challenging the reader to question our own comfort with bodies and sex as well as the source of our feelings about them.

At the heart of this contrast is the foil of Sugar and William's relationship in the relationship between Henry and the Widow Fox - a free-thinking, philanthropic Christian woman dedicated to rescuing girls from lives of prostitution. Henry and Emmeline Fox quietly pine for each other, fearing the runaway passion of consummating (or even admitting) their feelings for each other while Sugar and William's frequent sexual encounters serve only to alienate them further from one another.

These themes of temptations and cravings, of the way ordinary people are tossed about on the whims of social conventions which they fail to examine - leaves the reader wondering...who is the crimson petal and who is the white? It's not as obvious as the distinction between virtue and immorality implied by the title. Sugar is the whore who winds up in the unlikely position of acting as Agnes' guardian angel and more a mother to Agnes' child than Agnes herself. Agnes' fear of womanhood and all it implies devolves into a revulsion of eating, menstruating, and eventually becomes utter madness. Meanwhile, William unwittingly crushes them both like the metaphorical petals of the title.

As a written work, the novel is not without flaw. Various plot threads are confusing and left not only unresolved but sometimes annoyingly unaddressed. The reader doesn't always know which details are significant. At 838 pages, the length (and even the book's weight) are cumbersome. Middle sections of the story tend to drag, leaving the rapid-fire climaxes at the end feeling forced and melodramatic. The resolution (quite contrary to earlier Victorian echoes in style) is abrupt and potentially unsatisfying. However, a more resolved conclusion would have felt contrived no matter how Faber chose to end the tale. Throughout the novel, he is given to "life's not fair, baby" plot twists that are delightfully unexpected and the cliffhanger ending, while risky, leaves the reader wanting more and pondering the fate of the characters long after we've closed the book.

Rating:
Summary: The ending pissed me off!
Review: I did enjoy this book, and despite the slow pace, and the fact that i have two little kids so only get to read about 5 pages at a time, i remained engaged with the characters, i liked them and getting through 800 pages at 5 pages a day meant i spent a long time with them. But, really, it ended practically in mid sentence...i can take non traditional, i like it, i liked the author addressing me directly and usually that drives me crazy, but there were simply too many unresolved threads reamining un corralled and then in the last 10 pages, the author ripped about twenty new threads free and left them all dangling...is he planning a sequel? I was irritated to have invested so much time in the characters and the world created by the author to have left it like that. It feels like i left it on the bus.

Rating:
Summary: Not as good--or as racy--as promised
Review: "Crimson Petal and the White" suffers from two main shortcomings-neither the character nor the character's voice rings true. Sugar and her adventures are more the like the mildly [...] fantasies of a Dickens fan, without any of the master's wit, humanity or plotting genius. I'm not a Victorian prostitute, but I am a woman, and no woman thinks like Sugar, nor do her actions make any sense within the context of the time or place. Faber does have a gift for detail and the dirty bits are done well, but this book is a tough slog as the improbabilities and melodrama pile up. Do yourself a favor-go back to Dickens for the real thing and visit a porn site if you need something spicy.

Rating:
Summary: One for the book clubs
Review: I wish I had a book club, or at least knew someone else who had read this. I need to talk about it. The first seven-eighths are an intriguing what-happens-next story that you can read a few chapters of every night. The last bit I had to read all at once and couldn't put down. I was also completely blown away by the fact that this was written by a man-- it feels like something a woman would write. Very well done.