lip lit: the asylum

You could be forgiven for thinking The Asylum, the latest novel by Australian author John Harwood, was written during the height of the nineteenth century sensation novel. Harwood’s work effortlessly imitates this style of writing with its melodramatic Gothic tropes – stolen identities, madness, forbidden lust and family secrets – though the novel’s cleverness occasionally overshadows its other strengths.

Georgina Ferrars (whose very name connotes an Austen heroine) wakes in a private asylum in Cornwall with no memory of the past six weeks. Dr Straker, the asylum’s overseeing doctor, claims she voluntarily committed herself the night before under the name Lucy Ashton. Distraught, Georgina insists they telegram her uncle in London so he can confirm her true identity, but when he replies that the real Georgina is safe at home, the doctors decide to incarcerate her permanently.

Confined to the asylum’s grounds, Georgina is determined to find her journal, which would have been in her travelling case, in order to explain her missing weeks. First, she must contend with Frederic, the asylum’s love struck but untrustworthy heir, an unsympathetic Dr Straker, and the mystery woman who stole her identity and her life.

The Asylum is broken up into three separate narratives – Georgina’s story, letters from a relative twenty years prior, and Georgina’s old journal entries. While this pastiche format allows Harwood to slowly unveil plot details, it does interrupt the flow of suspense. It also stifles Georgina’s present day voice, preventing her from developing into a fully engaging heroine.

As a Gothic character, she is on point. Stripped of her identity, she finds herself at the mercy of the asylum’s sinister male occupants, who view female hysteria as a common malady. She attempts to rescue herself, but her propensity for fainting spells and scarce deductive reasoning skills are a hindrance. These passive traits can be hard to take as a modern reader.

On the other hand, nineteenth century sensation novels were written to shock and arouse their straight-laced Victorian readers, who were predominantly women. Their heroines were victimised by their surroundings so readers could vicariously experience that excitement. Developing their personalities was a secondary concern. Harwood, who has an innate and academic familiarity with the genre, has recreated this sensibility perfectly – it’s just a shame Georgina’s character feels like a missed opportunity as a result.

The departures into the past also shift us away from the asylum, which should really dominate the novel considering its importance to the plot. Though she has some fantastic interactions with the hospital staff, it doesn’t quite feel as if Georgina is trapped inside a nineteenth century madhouse – which would have been a horrific place to visit, regardless of how ‘enlightened’ it may have been. This is partly because the other patients are non-entities, and partly because the building’s chilling atmosphere is never fully utilised. Instead, Georgina flits between the grounds and her reasonably comfortable private quarters. There are no Brontë-esque screams in the middle of the night, and no lost wanderings in the asylum’s many rooms.

There is one interesting twist. Harwood acknowledges and then subverts that layer of unspoken sexuality that can be found in classic Gothic novels like The Woman in White by introducing a modern lesbian undertone. Georgina’s questions about her sexuality add an interesting and rather unexpected dimension to the overall identity theme.

The biggest disappointment is the mystery, which tapers off in the last act. The villains conveniently (and proudly) confess their crimes in a way that suggests Harwood wasn’t sure how to bring about a resolution more organically. These easy answers leave you waiting for a plot twist that never comes, and so the novel ends on a rather unsatisfying and anti-climactic note.

Despite these issues, there is something engaging about the initial set-up that keeps you glued to the book until the end, even if you can’t help feeling that Harwood’s attempts to channel a sensation novel prevent him from properly developing the setting and the characters. There is no doubt that he masterfully exploits familiar Gothic conventions, but their familiarity may be the problem – it’s a little too easy to guess where the plot is going to lead.