Are Things Really What They Seem?
In describing the process of how the little gang of thieves operates under the management of Mrs. Sucksby, Susan writes: “Everything that came into our kitchen looking like one sort of thing, was made to leave it again looking quite another.” That pretty much describes the book in a nutshell. The reader is introduced to people and situations as being one thing and before too long everything looks different. In a way, the book serves as a warning against taking things at their face value as it asks the reader to consider the ways in which they can be manipulated by a storyteller into an emotional response to characters. Unless one absolutely knows all the facts, the story suggests, even the most sympathetic people may not really be what they seem. With that in mind, the narrative progression then goes on to show how sympathy can be given, taken away and handed right back at the whim of a talented author.
The Unseen Flaw in Victorian Patriarchy
The entire story is put into motion by patriarchal laws in place during the Victorian era which were still handing over far too much power to men at the expense of what should have been a no-brainer in terms of women’s rights. Such laws made it easier for fathers to commit daughters and husbands to commit wives to asylums. Such laws made it easier for unscrupulous men to seduce young women out of their inheritance. But the novel also makes clear something that perhaps had remained murky as it successful hid in the shadows for so long: laws which benefited men could be twisted to use by even more unscrupulous women who profited from the patriarchal mindset that women were either above such dastardly machinations or not intelligent enough to pull off schemes requiring outwitting highly educated and worldly males. The irony at work in this portrait of the Victorian power structure is that the evil genius pulling all the strings is a woman.
The Effects of Pornography
The ironic ending of the novel may come to many as the single most unexpected twist in a story that has been more than generous in offering the reader unexpected surprises. One of the female protagonists suffers a humiliating existence as secretary to a deviant uncle whose life’s purpose is to compile a dictionary of pornography. In addition to secretarial work, the uncle also forces the young woman to read aloud to an audience of men the most explicit sections of erotic literature populating an entire library behind secretly non-descriptive bindings. The effects of this long-term exposure to pornography partly stimulated by the desire to humiliate are revealed at the end in a way that can only be termed ironic relative to reader expectations based on—what else—situations not being exactly what they have seemed.
