Side Notes: Sorry for the lateness of this month’s entry. It’s just been one of those months. This entry might contain more typos and mistakes than usual. Also, happy International Transgender Day of Visibility! Big hugs to my trans friends. Thank you for being in my life as yourselves, and also for being so hot <3
I live in a decently old house, by American standards. It was built in 1880 for laborers in my little industrial riverside town. It’s a classic row house, skinny and tall. While it has been flipped (poorly) and updated in almost every way, it does still have the original fireplaces and chimneys which adds a tiny bit of character to the space.
I grew up in an old house (older than the house I currently own), and I enjoy living in a space with a sense of history. The local histories of the places I’ve lived have always fascinated me. It will come as no surprise that I spent time on the historical commission of my current little riverside town.
One of the great things we came across while I was on the commission was a 1904-05 directory that covered our borough and a handful of the neighboring boroughs, some of which have different names now. In this directory, you could find the name, profession, and sometimes phone number (very rare) of who used to live in your house!
The man listed as living in my house was a Robert Morgan, and he was a glass blower. Sometimes I say hi to Robert, or think about what Robert was like. And maybe one day soon I’ll fall in love with Robert and marry him, much like Rachel did with Horatio in Wish Her Safe at Home.
Wish Her Safe at Home by Stephen Benatar (1982)
I read a lot of books about women slipping into madness, but this one might be the best for reasons I’ll discuss. While I was still in the throws of euphoria over Wish Her Safe at Home, I binged Swarm on Amazon Prime. If you enjoy this book or stunning portrayals of the elastic minds of women, I highly recommend this show. Dominique Fishback’s performance as an obsessed fan taking her obsession too far is flooring. It’s both extremely subtle and like a sledgehammer. Please watch it!
Normally I add these recommendations at the end, but Swarm deserves a spotlight. On to the book!
What it’s about.
Wish Her Safe at Home is told in the first person by Rachel, a middle-aged single woman living in London in the 1980s. In many ways she feels like a modern, free spirit, but there have been things out of her control that have penned her into the life of a frumpy spinster. When she was young, her overbearing mother prevented her from fulfilling her life’s potential, and in many ways that is responsible for what happens to Rachel throughout this book.
Now she’s stuck in a dead end job with no great excitement, living in a stuffy apartment with her annoying friend Sylvia. Rachel’s life changes for the better, however, when an aunt of hers passes away and leaves her an extremely old house in Bristol. Rachel sees this as the start of a fresh new phase, and she dives in head first.
Rachel’s aunt’s house is in need of an enormous amount of love and money. It’s a mess, which is to be expected from a structure built in the 1600s recently inhabited by a hoarder. But to Rachel no cost or effort is too much! She is finally seizing life!
The renovation is over in a matter of pages…which was a big shock to me, as I expected the book to focus on it. Rachel has the house and gardens looking fabulous, apparently, to the point where it bewitches the young gardener Roger Allsop, who soon brings around his wife Celia and their infant son Thomas.
Rachel falls for the Allsops, and the Allsops seem to fall for Rachel (and her house). Without going into too much detail, the Allsops begin to insert themselves into Rachel’s life in a way I found extremely interesting. It reminded me of the current cuckooing crisis happening in the UK right now, but I don’t want to spoil too much here.
At the same time that Rachel is making these new friends and becoming a known entity around town, she begins researching a man who once lived in the house: Horatio Gavin. She becomes enamored with him. She hunts down a portrait she’s convinced is his and hangs it above her mantel. She begins writing a fictionalized biography of his life. And then she falls deeply in love with him.
As we read Rachel’s life through her perspective, we start to notice an increase in things being off. Rachel doesn’t react properly to an overdraft notice from her bank. People have strange reactions to her in public, as if they’re put off. They start to struggle in conversations with her, but Rachel just assumes folks are being silly. Rachel behaves very oddly at church during the sermon. This all starts to escalate drastically, and I will leave it at that as to not spoil too much. There will be more spoilers moving forward, so if you care about that you may want to save the next section until after you read the book.
My thoughts.
While at first Wish Her Safe at Home feels like a slice of life story with a quirky protagonist, readers eventually realize that we are in the middle of a very disturbing and tragic situation. The forward of my edition includes references to Don Quixote, if that helps you imagine the tone.
Benatar quickly shows his skill in how he handles Rachel’s descent. Rachel slowly slips into what appears to me to be schizophrenia (I am not very knowledgeable on that topic), but readers don’t quite notice at first because Rachel herself doesn’t notice, and we are in her mind. It’s so subtle at first, but the way Benatar builds her confusion is extremely impressive.
Something I greatly enjoyed about reading this book was how readers are forced into an empathetic position. We experience Rachel’s life with her. What happens to Rachel happens to us. This is anxiety inducing, because we can see when certain things are wrong. We hear the alarm bells go off time after time, but we can’t do anything but witness a very tragic story unfold.
Rachel’s life was severely stunted by her selfish and possessive mother. Her needs, wants, and larger than life personality were forced into a container, suppressed and controlled. Her mother manipulated and stole every opportunity Rachel had. Eventually, the grief and trauma from that experience had its toll. The container started to fracture, her personality squeezed out of the cracks, distorted and mixed up. I also suspect that Rachel is responsible for the death of her mother, adding to this trauma.
We are told about the life Rachel wanted by Rachel herself, and we are shown the moments in which that life slipped further and further from her. But by the end of the novel, Rachel has created the life she wanted for herself by brute force. She is the only one who acknowledges it as reality, but it is hers all the same. She wanted to be famous, adored, carried away by life. And she could have been.
There is a point in the book where she reflects on her past, what her life could have been, the great turning point for her, and she compares herself to tragic characters like her roommate Sylvia, to her miserable Aunt Alicia, and to Miss Havisham.
…poor disappointed ladies who had each in one fashion or another been left waiting at the church, waiting at the church, waiting at the church…I could have cried for them; my heart was overflowing. Because there, I know only too well, there but for the grace of God…” p. 180
She understands her true position in life. She sees it clearly, admits it, for a brief moment. But shortly after this, she fully plunges into her fantasies.
Earlier on, we are offered a moment of personal reflection when Rachel is trying to cheer herself up. She is trying to conjure back the feeling she had when holding baby Thomas in her garden, but instead she is reminded of menopause.
For some reason what I recaptured was the way it had felt, less than a year before, when my periods had stopped coming. Useless. Unused. Wasted. I recaptured how—when the realization had finally sunk in—I had cried on and off all through one rainy Sunday afternoon. Sylvia had thought I was crazy.” p. 78
While this thought is framed around menopause, Rachel might as well be thinking of her entire life. While Rachel’s story is extreme and itself a trope, her experience is relatable. Who among us isn’t scared of wasting our one life? Is there anyone who doesn’t look back at their past with at least brief moments of regret or grief for a lost opportunity? Rachel’s pain should be taken very seriously, because it is real and common. We all share it to some extent.
Wish Her Safe at Home is another entry into the mad woman cannon, and it’s a particularly well crafted and tragic one at that. Stephen Benatar’s writing is phenomenal. He creates a manic space for Rachel and readers that will leave you feeling disoriented. That’s a compliment.
Additional Recommendations
Don’t forget about Swarm on Prime!
Want more Miss Havisham? Hulu has a new adaptation of Great Expectations featuring the formidable Olivia Colman in the role.
Here’s a book that I ate up: Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt. As I posted on my Instagram, this book was the best examination of fascism I’ve ever read in fiction. Blew me away, I loved it. But this is a Grade A horror title. Do not go into this one lightly, it’s fucked up. Not only is it disturbing in all the big grotesque capital H horror ways, it also forces readers to face the real horror of the current rising fascism, anti-Semitic, anti-trans, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Black, anti-woman bullshit we’re all fighting currently. It’s a challenging read.
Interested in more mad women about town? Read The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark, or watch the adaptation starring Elizabeth Taylor.
Need a boost? We all do. I’ve been listening to Cyndi Lauper’s 1984 debut She’s So Unusual quite a bit lately, and it’s been giving me a lot of joy. Pick a bubbly, fun, energetic album to enjoy this weekend! Points for nostalgia.
Next Month
April already, sheesh. Next month I’ll be reading Fairest Flesh by K.P. Kulski, which is a take on the Elizabeth Báthory legend. This is a horror book, so check your trigger warnings before proceeding. I’m really excited for Fairest Flesh. It seems like the change of pace I need. And I’m not sure if it qualifies as a ‘Women Be Eating’ title yet, so we’ll learn that together. In the meantime, take care of yourselves!