Deborah Noyes–CAPTIVITY

May 29th, 2010 by Mary

“Dear Friends, you must proclaim these truths to the world. This is the dawning of a new era; you must not try to conceal it any longer. When you do your duty, God will protect you and good Spirits will watch over you….It is a new spiritual telegraph…that will change the world, letter by letter. Word by word.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Todd Lincoln, Edvard Munch, and even, reportedly, Mae West were only a few of the famous adherents of Spiritualism, a movement which swept the country from around 1850 through the 1920s. At its height at the turn of the century, over cover captivity eight million people in the United States and Europe believed that under the guidance of talented mediums, they could make contact and communicate with the dead. In CAPTIVITY, author Deborah Noyes recreates the story of this movement from its inauspicious founding by two children—Margaret “Maggie” Fox, age fourteen, and her younger sister “Kate,” age eleven. These children, just by appearing in the small houses in their neighborhood near Rochester, New York, could inspire rappings by “other-worldly presences” on the walls, tables, and ceilings. Even scientists were baffled.

Pursuing the themes of love and loss, life and death, and the real and the spiritual which were the focus of her 2005 novel ANGEL AND APOSTLE (a continuation of the story of Pearl, daughter of Hester Prynne in THE SCARLET LETTER), Noyes focuses here on the childhood and youth of Maggie and Kate Fox, beginning in 1848. Cleverly manipulated and controlled by their older sister Leah, who foresaw enormous financial potential in their careers as mediums, the Fox girls supported their family, traveled all over the country, and, for the first time in their lives were able to wear pretty clothes, meet famous people, and have fun. As the title suggests, however, they were also captives of their celebrity.

Alternating with the stor Noyes_Author_photo-2 y of the Fox children is a parallel narrative beginning in London in 1835. Clara Gill, a shy nineteen-year-old painter of animals, falls for an assistant zookeeper who is way below her “station.” Will Cross, the zookeeper, is equally smitten, and as elegant parties are held to raise funds to keep various private zoos open, and Will, in his position, is called upon to attend, Clara begins to hope that they might have a future. From the opening chapter, which begins in 1848, in Rochester, New York, however, the reader recognizes that Clara’s presence in Rochester, thirteen years later, indicates that something dire has happened. She is living as a recluse, and she and Will are not together. She is not even in England any longer. What happened and why, and what motivates her, eventually, to become intrigued with Spiritualism are a mystery. The narrative switches from 1848 in Rochester, with its concentration on the Foxes, back and forth to 1835 in London with the emphasis on Clara, as the story unfolds, then settles on Clara and the Foxes together in 1848 in Rochester.

By 1848 Clara has hired the not-yet-famous Maggie Fox as a maid in her house in Rochester, and it is at this time that Clara begins to respond, protectively, to young Maggie and to be somewhat less reclusive herself. As the narrative progresses, Noyes does a yeoman’s job of trying to connect these two disparate and unlikely plot lines, with limited success. As ten years elapse during the growth of Spiritualism, and the maturation and eventual maggie kate love stories of the Fox girls, Clara remains a virtual recluse, not dealing with her pain, not growing in her tragedy, and not learning from her life–a captive of love. Hopelessly private and self-centered, she cannot escape her own misery, making her difficult to like, much less identify with.

Noyes has a wonderful eye for detail, and her ability to translate her observations into vibrant description is stellar. Long, well-described passages set the tone and mood and establish a mysterious atmosphere, though the tendency to use two adjectives where one would do occasionally becomes a stylistic annoyance. The novel also succeeds in recreating the circumstances which made Spiritualism such an attractive alternative to the traditional beliefs of the day, and the characters’ actions give life to these alternative points of view.

fox cottage The structure of the novel lacks a strong connection between the two separate plot lines, however, and ultimately, it feels forced. Clara’s weakness as a character with whom the reader feels empathy limits one’s ability to identify with her. The Fox sisters themselves are not fully developed, however fascinating they may be as Spiritualism’s founders, and the reader cannot escape the constant feeling that they are perpetrating some fraud that has not been identified. Well described and full of atmosphere, the novel is a carefully researched and fast-paced study of an unusual religious and sociological movement in the US, and readers interested in the Spiritualist movement may find that Noyes’s lively history supersedes the limitations of the novel’s structure.