‘Mermaid’: A deep, mystic dive
1780s London is alive in story of brothel worker
The small world of 1780s London is plunged into dark wonder when the corpse of an infant – a mermaid – comes into Jonah Hancock’s possession.
Intrigue catches like a fire, setting the town into a frenzy over the otherwordly creature. It is “brown and wizened like an apple forgotten,” more like a rat than a magical being. Its horror is captivating to Londoners.
But the mermaid isn’t what fascinates Imogen Hermes Gowar in her debut novel, “The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock” (Harper, 496 pp., ★★★ out of four stars). It’s the city and the mermaid’s captors.
Hancock, a well-off merchant haunted by the ghosts of his dead wife and son, turns the mermaid body over to public viewing when he sells it to Bet Chappell for her “exclusive club.”
This club turns out to be a brothel, where the ugliness of the mermaid’s corpse is meant to accentuate the beauty of the prostitutes, costumed as sirens in strings of pearls and sea-green chiffon.
One of them is Angelica Neal, who has her own complicated feelings about the sex work that sustains her. “Angelica has endured many encounters that were not to her liking: some too brief, some too extended; some brutal, some tentative; some bizarre, some tedious,” Gowar writes.
But at the same time, the novelist acknowledges the small power Angelica finds in her work. “It tickles her to see men grown stupid when they gaze upon her, all soft-eyed and slow in the head. In fact it inflames her. To find that her eyes and body and manner drive them out of their wits.”
It’s through Angelica that Gowar finds the real substance of her story. Angelica’s life has been defined by other people’s definitions, limiting her ability to move in society. As a prostitute, her social standing cannot be very high. And then when she marries, she is disparaged once more.
“Do you know how they speak of you?” Eliza Frost, a woman trying to recruit Angelica to her brothel, asks. “‘That Mrs. Neal,’ everybody says, ‘ who stooped to marry a nobody. Who threw away all her opportunities; who could not tolerate the difficulties of this life she chose.’ You are a laughing-stock, my dear.’
Blame is thrust upon to Angelica by her peers quite unfairly. As gossip grows, the effect is poignant in this nov- el anchored by Angelica, who contains an incredible complexity to her identity as a sex worker, as a wife and as a woman just trying to survive.
Angelica may not be a perfect heroine, but she’s easy to empathize with. Gowar brings her story is to life with lush, immersive descriptions; the author has a beautiful skill for carving out the world of 1780s London in immaculate detail.
“The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock” is fascinating, though a hampered a bit by the lengthy track Gowar takes to reach her novel’s conclusion – which makes a small, anticlimactic splash.
As an escapist fantasy, Gowar’s debut delivers. Readers will be submerged in an authentic old world, seen through the enlightened prism of contemporary values.