Sophronia is 14 years old, from a very proper (and very
large) family – and she is expected to be a lady. Which is unfortunate, because
she doesn’t exactly fit – as becomes clear when she spills trifle all over a
visiting lady while climbing in the dumb waiter; it all seemed like such a good
idea at the time.
In despair, her mother sends her to finishing school –
Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality, which
only the very best ladies go to.
Of course, her mother doesn’t know about the advanced curriculum in the floating school – held aloft by 3 giant blimps. The studies of poisons and weapons, of tumbling, of lying and manipulations; everything an intelligence gatherer – or an assassin – would need.
Learning alone in such a school would be a story in and
of itself – but one of Sophronia’s fellow students is up to something –
something that has even her teachers perturbed and angry and may risk the
school itself. If that weren’t motivation enough, Sophronia doesn’t like her
very much and is determined to get involved.
I love the delightful tone of this book, a tone that is
common to all of Gail Carriger’s steampunks. We have the delightful formality
of the time – the speech, the mode of dress, the stilted, powerfully
restrictive modes of etiquette and proper behaviour all combine to ensconce us
firmly in the Victorian era. Yet at the same time it’s funny and fun, there’s a
lightness to it that both pokes fun at the rigid strictures of the time while
at the same time using them to produce endless fun and a lot of good humour.
Even the very basis of the school rests on the inherent
jarring juxtaposition of what the finishing school is. Here are young ladies of
quali-tay learning all the proper
(and relatively useless or frivolous) things such a young lady should learn –
the proper way to dress, the way to speak, the way to address people of varying
ranks; manners and deportment and attire and posture and polite conversation
over dainty teacups and all the other important and vital information.
And then mix it up with the art of espionage and assassination. How does one order a lamb dinner AND strychnine when on a budget? What is the best way to hide a knife in one’s décolletage?
But it’s more than just the mix of the two – it’s how
wonderfully well they’re blended. The stifling requirements of Victorian
Etiquette aren’t just something they have to work round - after all, this is something we’ve seen
before, deadly assassins, warriors and martial artists who dress up as helpless
normal people – even frivolous, silly people – and then cast all that aside to
become the lethal people they are underneath. Their fancy top is camouflage that
gets in the way and needs to be cast aside and struggled with.
But not here – the finishing school USES Victorian
Femininity as a strength, an asset. They have lessons on how to manipulate and
control people by the way they faint, on the way they talk and act. They have
lessons on inventive applications of a handkerchief, of how a sewing kit is
always useful to carry in the most odd of occasions, even the intelegencer’s
use of a ribbon. They have fighting styles that relies on stealth and surprise,
approaching and killing quickly someone you engage in conversation – styles that
rely on manipulation and stealth and people’s assumptions against them.
In order to become powerful, skilled and dangerous these
women don’t have to be at war with the traditional feminine gender roles, they
can embrace them and make them strong and assets. It’s fascinating in a genre
where traditionally presented femininity is so often presented as something the
protagonist
must strive against or reject to rise above to see women being strong and
powerful and even dangerous while embracing this.
Of course, the gender roles are certainly restrictive and that is shown as well – with Sidheag’s pushing against what the finishing school expects of her, preferring simple clothes, much preferring to fight openly (which she does with great skill and capability) with a sword than subtly and stealthily with a knife as the school teaches. And there’s Vieve who prefers to wear men’s clothes for ease of moment. And even Angela who, while not grasping for what are presented as traditionally masculine styles and pursuits, simply doesn’t fit the schools rigid, perfectionist teachings of what a lady should be.
It shows the stifling restrictiveness of these roles and
how they’re a painfully poor fit to women who are strong in different ways
without denigrating the strength of those who do match them.
We had a Black character in “Soap” and here we have a
shakier representation. Due to the attempt to be authentic to the attitudes of
the time, characters felt the need to comment on his race – while that’s
understandable drawing actual comparisons between the colour of his skin and
the soot he is covered in due to his work in the boilers is not. The
descriptions cross the edge and cast his nickname, “Soap” into unfortunate
implication territory. At the same time he openly mocks the idea that because
he’s Black he’s not from England and Sophronia openly states that anyone who
dislikes Soap must do so because of his skin colour or class – and she calls that
bigotry. Still, to take away from that, his role in the book is entirely to
help Sophronia even when it could get him into trouble.
On the class note as well, not only is there an
undercurrent of contempt for the lower classes (as well as a hierarchy between
the girls – much as Sidheag is disdained for her “masculine” ways, she’s also
acknowledged as the most ranking girl present) but there is an interesting byplay
in which Sophronia works to prevent Dimity providing patronising and silly “charity”
to the workers in the school.
The writing of this book is pretty much a joy. We cover
so much in so much detail that I actually thought the book was much longer than
it was – I was astonished to see, after I’ve finished it, that it was more a
novella than a novel. To have so much information and story, I thought the book
must have been crammed – but it never felt that way; the pacing and style
worked, conveying all the necessary information with a great deal of fun along
the way.
It’s also nicely balanced between hints of the Parasol
Protectorate Series, without driving the links home to heavily or too
obviously. I’m definitely intrigued by this series.
