A Drowned Maiden’s Hair: a Melodrama
In general, it’s a part of being human to go to great lengths to be loved and accepted. How far would you go? For Maud Flynn, the question of how much to compromise herself in order to be loved becomes extremely pertinent after she is adopted by the Hawthorne sisters.
It’s 1909, and high-spirited Maud has lived at the overcrowded, prison-like Barbary Asylum for Female Orphans for many years. It’s little wonder that she jumps at the opportunity to be adopted. She is sure her adoption will mean freedom from the persecution and isolation imposed on her by the superintendent of the Barbary Asylum. Unexpectedly, Maud enters a new and different sort of prison–a sort of spiritual and mental entrapment–from which she will have to use all of her character and willpower to escape without forgetting who she is.
Even as Maud trades in her daily gruel for toast and bacon, her grubby asylum uniform for multiple beautiful dresses, and the smelly outhouse for the wonders of indoor plumbing, she begins to suspect that there is more to her new life than its surface perfection. After all, it is a bit suspicious that her new caretakers don’t want anyone to know of her existence and, thus, make her remain upstairs for many hours each day (on the positive side, she does get a large portion of reading done, including reading Little Lord Fauntleroy multiple times).
Maud’s caretakers, the three Hawthorne sisters (aka spinsters), have chosen a somewhat unconventional (and somewhat unethical and illegal) means of sustaining themselves in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed. They are false spiritualists who hold séances to trick the relatives of the dead out of money. Maud is faced with the realization that they did not adopt her out of the goodness of their hearts; instead, they adopted her because they needed her to take part in the séances.
Out of Hyacinth, Victoria, and Judith Hawthorne, Maud particularly longs for the love of Hyacinth. Hyacinth, capable only of self-love, uses Maud’s hunger for love and drags Maud further into the treachery and trickery of the seances.
To enter into Schlitz’s tale is to enter into a story of secrets and séances, of humans passed on and humans left behind, of self-love and selfless love. Multiple séances are held throughout the story, a necessity given the plot, but worth mentioning as a source of potential objection to the tale. Really, though, the paranormal elements provide the foundation for the novel’s probing questions that each of us must come to terms with–life, death, life after death, life after loss.
Given Hyacinth’s hold over Maud, it seems impossible that a happy ending will prevail for anyone in this Gothic paranormal tale. Yet, even as Maud begins to play out her role in the séances, she becomes increasingly unsettled about the repercussions of her actions on others, particularly as she begins developing relationships outside the Hawthorne sisters. In particular, Maud’s relationship with the deaf servant Muffet is poignant and plausibe. Maud desperately needs Muffet’s steadfast love–a love without performance conditions–in order to break free of Hyacinth’s conditional love. Hyacinth tries to convince Maud that they are doing relatives a service through their false spiritualism and seances, but Maud comes to see the false hopes that it sets up for the living relatives and the devastating effects the trickery has on those relatives.
Hyacinth soon learns that she picked the wrong orphan to pick on. Maud’s fighting spirit is present from the beginning (as the novel opens, Maud has been incarcerated in the outhouse (again), and she is singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic). Despite Maud’s being cowed into submission for a time by the fear of Hyacinth’s withdrawal of approval, her resilient spirit and sense of right and wrong come to the fore in the novel’s climax.
Schlitz’ fast-paced novel has depth, raising questions without providing answers about personal responsibility, morality, and eternity. A Drowned Maiden’s Hair: A Melodrama, Schlitz’ first novel, won the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction in 2006.
Read alike: How it Happened on Peach Hill by Marthe Jocelyn
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