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Prima Donna
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The
Reading Guide
Discussion
Questions for Reading Groups 1. The
opening quotes by Oscar Wilde and Emily Dickinson speak to the issue of
truth–Wilde says it’s not pure or simple, and Dickinson notes that one must
“tell all the truth, but tell it slant, lest every man be blind.” What do you
think the authors mean by those words? How do they apply to The
Spiritualist? 2. Do
you think that Evelyn was truly speaking to spirits? If so, why? If not, why
not? 3. Michel
Jourdain is spoken of often as being a charlatan and a manipulator. Do you
believe he manipulated Evelyn? How so? 4. To
Evelyn, Benjamin Rampling says, “Oh the ways we delude ourselves!” In what
ways do the characters in the book delude themselves? 5. Evelyn tells Michel that she was taught that immorality and
sin were indications of a weak will. Do you believe that is true? Why or why
not? How do the characters in the book either support or contradict her
statement? 6. When Michel tells Evelyn that women’s intellect is God given,
and therefore meant to be developed, he is contradicting common 19th
century thought, which believed that women were ruled by their reproductive
systems, and therefore any creative or intellectual pursuit might result in
illness, deformity or degenerate offspring. Do you think this statement
influenced Evelyn to make the decisions she makes? Why or why not? Do you
believe this prejudice against women’s intellectualism exists in the world
today? 7. Characters in the book refer often to the idea of the
seen/unseen world. Evelyn says that to make one’s peace with partial truths
is the only possibility for happiness, because we are not meant to understand
the whole. Michel says to not understand the whole is to not understand the
truth. The believers in the spirit circle believe that instinct and intuition
are as valid–perhaps even more valid–than empirical experience. How does
Evelyn come to terms with these philosophies? Which of them do you believe is
most true? 8. How do Evelyn’s beliefs and upbringing contribute to her
partnership with Michel? Michel says to her, “I’d feel sorry for you, chére,
if your situation weren’t so much your own doing. All that ambition and
faculty, and no idea what to do.” Do you agree with him? Disagree? In what
ways do you feel that Evelyn is the architect of her own situation? 9. Do you think Ben truly felt sympathy and affection for
Evelyn? Or was he simply manipulating her? Why or why not? 10. Michel says that calling something lunacy is a only a way to
explain the things we don’t understand. How is that still true today? What
else might be a “fact of nature not yet discovered.” Science played a big
part in defining cultural beliefs in the 19th century. Do you
think it does so today? In what ways? 11. Do you feel Michel is right when he speaks of immorality
being an artificial construct used by society to control its members? Do you
feel he was immoral in his relationship with Adele? With Dorothy? With
Evelyn? In what ways were the other characters in the book immoral? Are there
degrees of immorality? If so, how did Evelyn and Dorothy’s immorality measure
up to Michel’s? How did Benjamin’s? Peter’s? Adele’s? The Atherton
family? 12. Do you feel Dorothy was an equal in her relationship with
Michel? With Evelyn? In what ways was she as much a manipulator as Michel
was? In what ways was Evelyn?? 13. The willingness to believe, and people’s blindness to their
own natures, play a big part in the denouement of the story. Do you think
this willingness to believe is an asset or a flaw in human nature? Why or why
not? 14. In the 19th century, sodomy was often punishable
by law. The idea of homosexuality as something other than a degenerate and
immoral sexual urge was unknown. Had Peter been exposed, he would have been
destroyed socially. Given this, do you believe Peter Atherton was justified
in his actions? Michel tells Evelyn that Peter resented her and even hated
her, and that his will was meant to cause her trouble as a form of
punishment. Do you believe this is true? What do you
believe were Peter’s motivations in leaving such a will, and how do you think
he truly felt about Evelyn? 15.
What do you think of the ending? Do you think Evelyn made the right decision
in casting her lot with Michel? Do you think they have a future together?
What kind of future do you think it will be? Author
Interview Why did you write The Spiritualist? One
cannot do research on the 19th Century without coming across the
mention of séances or Spiritualism, and I’d read many references to those
things while researching other projects. It had always intrigued me, and as I
read deeper into the subject, I discovered that Spiritualism was not just a
fashionable entertainment, though there certainly was that aspect to it. It
was also a deeply layered philosophy that embraced women’s rights and
equality, marriages between those of like minds—soul connections, rather than
financial or social ones—and issues such as women’s health, birth control and
dress reform. It was a philosophy that spoke profoundly to women, who had few
rights or property of their own, and virtually no say in their own lives.
Spiritualism not only embraced women as its main representatives and
speakers, it gave women a power and a voice that was non-threatening to the
status quo—in her passive and non-direct state as a channel for spirits to
speak through, a woman was free to speak her mind. Spiritualism had female
leaders as well as male ones, and the movement expected and respected great
power in women. As such, it was hugely popular
among women—many women’s rights leaders were Spiritualists. Not only was
Spiritualism a precursor to the New Age philosophies of today, it played a
crucial role in women’s history. The more I read, the more I wanted to pursue
this idea: what would happen if a powerless woman buffeted by fate and
society found in spiritualism a way to gain power over those who would
oppress her? And what would happen if pursuing that revealed hidden and not
entirely welcome aspects of herself? That was the seed of The
Spiritualist. You say that Spiritualism was the precursor to many present-day
philosophies. How so? Spiritualism as a philosophy had its inception in science. At
this time, science had great influence in cultural thought, and, many
believed it even made religion irrelevant. Science discovered new things
every day. What had been thought of as “miracles” before was proved through
empirical evidence to be simply facts of nature. The age of the earth, for
example, which had been based on biblical teachings, was proved to be many
thousands of years older than religious interpretations had it. So religion
was taking a hit. While people had grown tired of Calvinism and evangelism,
they were still looking for some sort of spirituality, and some way to deal
with grief, especially after the Civil War. Spiritualism was a philosophy
that managed to blend the need for belief with the empiricism of science, and
it did so in a liberal theology that accommodated all kinds of belief systems
and almost any paradox. It was a unifying philosophy that not only connected
people, but also made them feel they had some power in influencing it. Anyone
had the capacity to speak to spirits, and in a philosophy where spirits had
the ability to change the known world, it was possible that whoever spoke to
them could change the world as well.
It also centered the religious experience in the home rather than in
the church, which many felt had too much power. Spiritualism was, in fact, a
kind of religious revival. It strengthened the already present Universalists,
Unitarians and Quakers, and led to new philosophies like Theosophy, Christian
Scientist, and New Thought. It was also one of the modern philosophies that
espoused the theory that quantum physics espouses today–the idea that the
past, present and future are all one, and that different universes (called
“spheres” in spiritualism) could exist simultaneously. What kind of resources did you consult in researching The
Spiritualist? The 19th Century is a treasure trove for researchers.
It was a time of great change both philosophically and scientifically, and
people were not only aware of that change, they were determined to chronicle
it. People wrote of their experiences, self-published them, and gave these
books to friends and relatives as gifts. There are many journals of women who
decided to pursue spiritualism and mediumship, and essays and books written
by people such as Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a fervent believer, and Harry Houdini, who was not. In
1857, the Boston Courier offered a reward of $500 to any medium who
could prove the existence of spirit communications, and kept records of the
demonstrations (none of which they felt proved the case). The American
Society for Psychical Research, which was formed in 1884, did many
investigations into psychic phenomena and kept records of those, and mediums
such as Emma Hardinge and Daniel Douglas Home wrote books about their
experiences. A quick search of ‘Spiritualism” in either the historical New
York Times, or The Making of America
site (a joint project between Cornell University and the University of
Michigan that has scanned 19th century documents into a searchable
database available online) lists many references. In short, there is no
dearth of information about the movement. Some of the best general overviews
on the subject are Talking to the Dead by Barbara Weisberg, which
deals with the birth of spiritualism through New York’s Fox sisters, and The
Darkened Room by Alex Owen, which focuses on the female experience of the
philosophy. The character of Michel Jourdain is clearly a very clever
charlatan who understands human nature and reads it very well. What was the
inception of the character? The
character of Michel Jourdain was based on the famous medium Daniel Douglas
Home. Like Michel Jourdain, Home was very, very effective, and people swore
by his ability. He was also considered to be something of a healer, and was
accepted by the aristocracy and royalty of the time and invited into their
homes, though rumors of immorality dogged him throughout his career. There
were those who said that Home knew the secrets of the upper class, and those
secrets protected him from exposure as a fraud. In his 30s, he was adopted by
an rich and besotted older woman, and took her name, but was later sued by
her for money she had given him under false pretenses–it was a much-talked
about case during this time. Like Jourdain, no one was ever able to prove
conclusively that Home was a fake, though Houdini went to great trouble to
explain how Home might have performed his “miracles,” and Robert Browning
wrote a scathing poem based on Home called “Mr. Sludge, the Medium.” None of
this dimmed Home’s popularity. You seem to be making a statement about the falsity of psychics
with the character of Michel Jourdain, but Evelyn
Atherton seems to be quite real in her abilities. Do you believe in psychic
phenomena yourself? I think there are very, very clever people out there along the
lines of Michel Jourdain. Reading human behavior is not so very difficult to
do; we are all creatures of habit and people fool themselves into believing
what they want to believe all the time. I will say that in my researching of
19th Century mediums, I never read the account of one that I
didn’t feel I could explain. That is not to say I don’t believe that people
can communicate with spirits–I agree with Michel when he says that some
things are facts of nature not yet discovered. Quantum physics and new
theories of science are proving everyday that we don’t know everything about
the world we live in. Shakespeare’s words in Hamlet: “There are more
things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
pretty much sums up my own beliefs. T h e S p I r
I t u a l I s t
Also available as an E-book
CROWN
BOOKS/THREE RIVERS PRESS ISBN 978-0-307-40611-8 Copyright 2009 Megan Chance |
