Last time on Gemma, Gemma’s whiny and wants the power now.

It’s finally Assembly Day, and we find out whose parents show up and, in Gemma’s case, if they’re coherent. That’s her real worry.

Father might walk in, looking well fed and well groomed in his fine black suit. He might hold out a gift for me, something wrapped in gold paper. He might call me his jewel, might even get sour-faced Brigid to laugh at his tales, might hold me close.He might. He might. Might. Is there any opiate more powerful than that word?

I think the opiate thing is meant to be a play on how the very thing she’s worried about is his opiate addiction, but it just comes off as trivializing the whole thing. The issue isn’t her dad clinging to false hope, it’s that he’s addicted to the point he does nothing but stare off into space. Under the circumstances, I can’t see her comparing anything harmless to opiates.

Ann asks if she can come along, since it’s not like she’ll be meeting anyone today. Despite how worried Gemma is about what her father’s going to be like, she says yes.

We both know it’s a mission of mercy, but for which one of us, I can’t say yet.

…no, definitely this is Gemma being nice. She doesn’t want anyone to see her dad if he’s a mess, and having Ann around isn’t going to make the rest of her family more enjoyable. I think this is just some attempt to emphasize how miserable she thinks the whole thing will be.

Anyway, Ann doesn’t really know how to do her hair and stuff, so Gemma brushes her hair and puts it up. Well, Gemma at least claims it’s an improvement, Ann doesn’t like it so it really comes down to who has the better fashion sense and we have no idea which that is. I’m really not clear on the point of telling us that.

Then Felicity shows up.

Felicity pushes open the door and leans provocatively against the frame, playing the coquette. “Bonjour, mesdemoiselles. ’Tis I, the Queen of Sheba. You may save your genuflecting for later.” The laces of her corset have been cinched so tight that her breasts are pushed forward noticeably. “What do you think, darlings? Am I not irresistible?”

Yes, she dressed like that to meet her father.

I can’t wait for him to see what a lady I’ve become these past two years.

He’ll see it better if you don’t shove your breasts in his face.

I really can’t make sense of this. Is it meant to be a criticism of how appearance is so intricately tied to sex appeal, so even a kid dressing up for her parent’s approval does so? Is it meant to be Felicity having no concept of subtlety, so any attempt to dress up naturally goes for asset-flaunting and not demure restraint? Has her father’s past rejections led to her attempting to get his approval by other means? Is, perhaps, such confusion of roles meant to be commonplace between parent and child, as the girls are ultimately judged by how they can appeal to suitors? Has her father in the past encouraged this sort of thing, and she’s just following his lead? Or does the author just want to write about Felicity’s boobs?

I don’t know. I’m going to guess it’s because the author just wanted to write it.

Gemma makes some makeshift perfume by crushing a rose and Felicity is thrilled.

She throws her arms around me, gives me a little kiss. It’s a bit disconcerting, this side of Felicity, like having a pet shark that thinks itself a goldfish.

I quote this just because I like it. I’m not even sure this really makes sense, because Felicity has always been enthusiastic and friendly when things go her way, but pet shark that thinks it’s a goldfish is still a cool description.

Also, Felicity mentions that Mr. Bumble came with Pippa’s family. Turns out he’s now her fiance.

This rude old man with the fat face is going to be lovely Pippa’s husband? Pippa, whose every waking moment is consumed by thoughts of a pure, undying, romantic love, has been sold to the highest bidder, a man she does not know, does not care about.

Oh Gemma, your second sentence does not help your case.

Yes, getting married off without a choice sucks for Pippa. But that’s separate to the issue of Pippa’s delusions of romantic love. She’s in love with the idea of it, not actually looking for something like that with a person.

“It’s good to see that my fiancée is acquainted with the right sort of girls,” Mr. Bumble sniffs. “There’s so much that can taint the young and impressionable. Wouldn’t you agree, Mrs. Cross?”
“Oh, absolutely, Mr. Bumble.”
He deserves to have his head on a spike for all to see. Warning: If you are insufferable, do not walk here. We shall eat you down to the marrow.

I realize that you could argue that a sixteen year old might legitimately think this is a terribly clever bit of snark. But I don’t think a Victorian girl would, and regardless it’s hard to see this as anything but the author thinking it’s terribly clever.

Ann says the ring is lovely after Pippa leaves.

We’re both trying to put a good face on it. Neither of us wants to admit the enraging hopelessness of the situation—or the guilt at not having drawn that short straw ourselves.

Uh…I don’t think Ann looks at getting married to a wealthy old guy as enraging hopelessness. I’m sure she’d rather marry Gemma’s twenty year old brother, but either is an improvement over her own prospects. Plus, before long the old guy will probably do what old guys are best at and die, giving his former wife the one female position in Victorian society that has any actual power: the wealthy widow.

Felicity, meanwhile, is freaking out because her dad isn’t there yet at all.

Gemma’s own family shows up with her dad a shaking, skeletal mess.

As you may recall from my rant while working through the Hunger Games series, opiates do not actually turn you into a skeleton on their own. Now, a side effect of severe depression can be a lack of interest in food, and certainly opiates would help you not care about that along with everything else. But he’s supposed to be with the grandmother so she can take care of him, is there no one there to stick food in front of him?

They ask about Ann’s parents, so Gemma lies and says they’re abroad.

“How very exciting. Where are they traveling?”
“Switzerland,” I say, just as Ann barks out, “Austria.”
“Austria and Switzerland,” I say. “It’s an extensive trip.”

So now they’ve inadvertently suggested that her parents are rather wealthy.

Then her dad calls her Virginia and everyone gets sad and embarrassed before they shift the conversation again.

No one asks how I am or what I am doing. They could not care less. We’re all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they’d like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance.

This would again be more convincing if the past chapters had shown any real sign of repression.

But regardless, Gemma suddenly snaps and asks if there’s any news of their mother’s murder. Tom is all HAHA MAKE BELIEVE TIME IS OVER GEMMA and continues in their vein even after she says Ann already knows the truth, so Gemma snaps at him.

Amazing that her cholera didn’t kill us all. Or perhaps it is. Perhaps it’s coiled in our blood, suffocating us all slowly with its poison each day

This is really lame. Her grandmother tries to get her to shut up, so Gemma deliberately needles her dad trying to get him to chastise her too, but he doesn’t even notice. So Gemma decides it’s flounce time and stands, leaving Ann to flirt with her brother. She tries to get her dad to come to the gardens with her, but as soon as he gets up he almost falls.

Cecily may no longer be part of the dominant wolf pack, but she can still smell weakness and immediately zeroes in to see what’s up. She starts off by making it clear Ann is a scholarship girl, and Gemma snaps at her and then flounces for real.

Outside, she finds Felicity, who has a card from her father saying he’s too busy to come, as written by a secretary or someone.

Then two younger girls come by reciting part of the Lady of Shalott poem, because symbolism? And then suddenly it starts to rain. Felicity sits out in it because she’s sad.

Next chapter, the mini-Order meets for a misery session. Felicity is sitting dully, Ann is self-harming with the candleflame, and Pippa’s just regular complaining.

Pippa’s laugh is bitter, tinged with tears. “Ha! Why do girls think that being beautiful will solve every problem? Being beautiful creates problems. It’s a misery. I wish I were someone else.”
It’s a luxury of a comment—one that only pretty girls can make.

Fuck off, Gemma. Yeah, maybe she just doesn’t know how much it sucks to not be pretty, but maybe you just don’t realize how much it sucks to be. In Pippa’s case, her appearance is why her parents can marry her off so easily when the rest of the girls can remain girls.

Pippa says she’d rather be Ann, which is going a bit far since someone in Ann’s position won’t be allowed to marry at all, and says it’s because no one pays any attention to Ann.

Pippa tries to apologize and then suggests they read the diary, but Ann shoots it down since they know the ending already. They start to argue and then Felicity interrupts them to tell a story of her own, a ghost story about four girls who were damaged and unloved but had big dreams, and they sinned by thinking they could be important. The author seems to have forgotten that when the story opens, Felicity is the undisputed queen of the schoolgirls and Pippa’s right below her. They were always the special people.

Things couldn’t be different for them, because they weren’t special after all. So life took them, led them, and they went along, you see? They faded before their own eyes, till they were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be.

So Gemma decides to get the magic.

Oh come on!

The only one of their problems that’s immediate is Pippa’s, and even then that’s only immediate in the broadest sense, she’s only engaged right now, there’s still a while before she’s actually married.

All around me in the semidarkness are the symbols etched into rock with the sweat and blood of women who’ve gone before us. Their whispers urge me on in a single word.
Believe.

The women who gave their sweat and blood would kick you out of the cave for being a bunch of useless pansies.

Look, the idea of using magic to fix mundane problems is an old one, and it can work. But treating it like there is no other option is ignoring that lots of people did, in fact, deal with those problems on their own, with actual sweat and blood.

Here, it’d help a lot if the story was more grounded. If, instead of general issues they had specific ones that they couldn’t handle despite their best efforts.

For example: Pippa getting married off should be more clearly an anomaly. Perhaps to some foreigner who barely speaks English, because those are the sort of people who don’t know the whispers of Pippa’s defect, and someone who has more against him than “old”, “stupid name”, and “not particularly interested in chatting with her schoolgirl friends”. Hell, it’s not like this is a subtle book, have him be an abusive, groping slob, the sort of person that no decent parent would let near their daughter. Have Pippa already try to refuse a suitor, and for her family to have said they’ll disown her and leave her to die on the streets if she does it again.

There. Pippa now has a legitimate problem, not a problem because she’s obsessed with storybook soulmate love. It’d also make her fantasy knight look more understandably helpful if it was her attempt to try out a relationship with someone who wasn’t abusive and stomping all over her.

Gemma needs a clearer problem with her family. Earlier she alluded to the fact her brother was the one supplying her father with the laudanum, which she disapproves of, but here she doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with that in particular, she’s just generally upset by the fact her dad is a wreak. And of course she doesn’t like the cholera story, but it doesn’t actually matter – she knows what really happened to her mom, it’s not like they’re preventing her mom’s murderer from being brought to justice or something.

If her family really is passively killing her dad, her own lack of control is more of an issue. Maybe they’re threatening to stick him in an asylum or try some horrible medical treatment, maybe they just keep giving him all the drugs he wants. As a girl, she has no real say in what happens to him, and she can’t do anything at all while she’s stuck at school. Seeing how far gone her father is would then be a good reason to spur her into action, she doesn’t think she has any time left to wait.

Ann’s prospects are lacking, but really, governessing is comparatively one of the better jobs available for women. Okay, so she won’t be a singer, most people aren’t able to be singers either and it’s not like they’re going to cut her tongue out so she’ll never be able to sing again. Ann’s big worry should be about falling even further down on the economic ladder – or, she needs some sort of reason why being a governess would be particularly bad, like ill health. Personally, I think the easiest option here would be to have her paying-but-poor relatives deciding that they’re not going to be able to marry her off so she’s no longer worth the effort of schooling. This would also better show why she’s so obsessed with appearance, instead of it being a ticket to a better life, even her current existence is in jepardy if she doesn’t develop enough to be useful to them.

Felicity, I really don’t know. She’s very badly characterized. It’s not even clear if her dad is actually a huge dick or legitimately getting called away all the time, and the way she doesn’t seem to have any real opinion on her mother breaking up the family is just weird. The first thing that comes to mind is having her be unmarriageable because of everyone assuming she’ll run away to whore it up in Paris the first chance she gets.

And they attempt to deal with these problems before now, Showing the girls making an effort of their own would show that they really can’t handle things without magic, and why they’re desperate enough to try.

Also, either better develop the Gypsies or cut them entirely. Gypsies are people, not magic fairy fortune-telling and sexual tension dispensers. If you’re so upset with the way your society treats women, either justify why running off with the Gypsies is no improvement (this shouldn’t be that hard) or don’t bring it up. Currently there’s no reason Pippa couldn’t solve her true love problem by going to their camp and starting up a relationship with one of the pretty ones and Ann could avoid the horrid governess fate as well. And evidently Felicity is already in the process of transferring her need for male approval onto a boyfriend, so just finish that and run off with the guy. As long as they’re being treated as magic forest-dwelling spirits, there’s no reason why the girls can’t just escape their lives by joining up with them.