Fingersmith

Before Maud leaves Briar, she metaphorically shreds her past, destroying the first book from which her uncle makes her read:

It is hard—it is terribly hard, I almost cannot do it—to put the metal for the first time to the neat and naked paper. I am almost afraid the book will shriek, and so discover me. But it does not shriek. Rather, it sighs, as if in longing for its own laceration (269).

Like the malevolent house, Maud also personifies the obscene book. Earlier, imagining herself as one of her uncle’s books, an inert part of his deviant collection, also symbolically represents her self-mutilation or destruction of the past—the past that has robbed her of her innocence. Throughout the novel, literature and literacy are dangerous pursuits. When Sue is taken away by the doctors, one asks if she is too much prone to reading, implying this negatively affects mental health or worse: “‘But the overexposure of girls to literature—The founding of women’s colleges—’ His brow is sleek with sweat” (279). The result of too much education in women is enough to render the man speechless.

In addition, when Mr. Rivers suggests that part of his “wife’s” illness has manifested itself in sexual perversion, the liaison—the love—between Sue and Maud is rendered as “sickness,” or a mental health condition. When he characterizes the act as Sue forcing herself upon Maud, Maud begins to cry, remembering the tenderness and how Sue called her “pearl” (280). Mr. Rivers uses the tears to misrepresent Maud’s feelings: “Surely these tears speak for themselves? Do we need to name the unhappy passion? Must we oblige Miss Smith [Maud] to rehearse the words, the artful poses—the caresses—to which my distracted wife has made her subject?” (280). Not only does Mr. Rivers rob Maud of her agency—he speaks to the doctors on her unconsenting behalf—but he also robs her of the legitimacy of her love.

However, no amount of treachery can take away the fact that these two women—Maud and Sue—are inextricably linked, bound by fate, brought together through love, and tormented by their separation. Switched not long after birth, they have literally lived each other’s lives, for good or for ill. While Sue has lived in want of money and manners, Maud has lived in bondage to (male) desires. Sue’s mother, who Maud has continually cursed as her own, knew what awful fate awaited the daughter brought up by the Lilly family: “Why not let some other motherless girl have that, in her place—poor thing, she shall have the grief of it, too!” (309). Both women have lived as objects, the locus around which Mrs. Sucksby’s ill-gotten fortune gathers. This is why Sue believes herself to be treasured by Mrs. Sucksby. She literally is a treasure, just as Maud is, though doubly so: Not only has Maud been made a lady—Mrs. Sucksby’s “perfect jewel” (320)—but she is also Mrs. Sucksby’s lost daughter—whom everyone believes to be dead. The letter that Sue’s mother wrote to Mrs. Sucksby, confirming the inheritance and the arrangement—that both girls were to receive equal halves of her fortune—has been treasured by Mrs. Sucksby as well: “‘Kept this close,’ she says, as she brings it to me [Maud], ‘all these years. Kept this closer than gold!’” (314). The letter represents the restoration of her true daughter to her and the reclamation of what she believes is her rightful fortune. As Mrs. Sucksby has it, “It was a puzzle to her [Miss Lillly], she said, how things might turn out now; but she took her consolation from the thought of my honesty. Poor girl!’ She seems almost sorry. ‘—That was her slip” (314). Mrs. Sucksby has no honesty in her, just as the bouquet of the flowers, ironically called “honesty,” at Maud’s wedding reveals the lack of it in all involved at that sham ceremony.

Maud herself is deceived, just as Sue is deceived. Both think they are integral to the plot, while they are merely pawns. Maud becomes actual prey in a London that is all chaos and confusion to her:

I have always supposed London a place, like a house in a park, with walls: I’ve imagined it rising, straight and clean and solid. I have not supposed it would sprawl so brokenly, through villages and suburbs. [...] [N]ow come half-built houses, and half-build churches, with glassless windows and slateless roofs and jutting spars of wood, naked as bones (286).

Where Briar was a living, breathing prison, London is a sprawling, overwhelming place of chaos. Both are reflections of Maud’s inner state. One of the worst things about London, in Maud’s eyes, is the profusion of words: “Words, everywhere. Words, six-feet high. Words, shrieking and bellowing: LEATHER AND GRINDERY.—SHOP TO LET.—BROUGHAMS & NEAT CARRIAGES.—PAPER-STAINERS.—SUPPORTED ENTIRELY” (286). She has escaped the profane words of her uncle’s library only to be assaulted by the cheap advertisements of London.

Later, when she is lost in London, she is accosted by men who pledge to help her but only want to harm her. Like Sue, Maud is sacrificed to the scheme, her innocence ravaged by her uncle’s work and her trust betrayed by all those around her—which, in turn, reverberates tragically in Sue’s and Maud’s mutual respect betrayal. Concerning Sue, as Mrs. Sucksby admits, “[T]hink how deep I puzzled it over—knowing I must use her at the last, but never quite knowing how” (315). Mrs. Sucksby keeps Susan safe, only to sacrifice her for the sake of Maud—and, most importantly, for money. Maud herself is also rendered as “poke,” the spoils of thievery, in the house of Mrs. Sucksby: “There are no books, here. There is only life in its awful chaos. And the only purpose the things are made to serve, is the making of money. And the greatest money-making thing of all, is me” (335). Even though Sue is essentially forgotten—“What’s Sue, to them?” (337)—she is key to the plot, still, stuck away in the psychiatric hospital, a martyr to the cause of making money. Maud, too, is rendered a martyr on her return to what turns out to be her mother’s home: “My fingers are marked by dirt. My feet have begun, again, to bleed” (363). Stigmatized by her wanderings in the desert of London, Maud is Judas and Jesus at once.