Denise Noeby Denise Noe
First published in Spring, 2012, Volume 7, Issue 2, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.
Through her extraordinary detective novel, Mysteries of Winterthurn, the prolific and renowned author Joyce Carol Oates has written a fascinating fictional examination of Victorian America – its hopes and fears, charms and concerns, ideologies and prejudices.
She also explores and transforms some of the most famous American classic crime cases, including the murders of Abby and Andrew Borden, into her very own unique set of “Winterthurn” horrors.
The “Winterthurn” of the title is a tempest-tossed fictional town in New York State. Like most small towns, at least as portrayed in literature, Winterthurn cherishes a façade of wholesomeness and propriety while concealing a variety of unsavory secrets below the surface. The time period in which the bulk of the novel is set is the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an era particularly obsessed with keeping up appearances so that the seamy activities of Winterthurn inhabitants inevitably cause special shock.
The novel is divided into three major sections with each section boasting several individually titled chapters. The first section is entitled “The Virgin in the Rose-Bower; or, the Tragedy of Glen Mawr Manor.” The second is called, “Devil’s Half-Acre; or, the Mystery of the ‘Cruel Suitor.’” The final major part of the novel is “The Bloodstained Bridal Gown; or, Xavier Kilgarvan’s Last Case.”
Mysteries of Winterthurn starts with an “Editor’s Note” that introduces us to the narrator. Writing in the first person, he (later in the book we learn that the narrator is a man) strikes a defensive note as he begins,
It is frequently observed by our self-righteous critics that we amateur ‘collectors’ of Murder are antiquarians at heart: unapologetically to the right in matters political, moral, and religious: possessed of a near-insatiable passion for authenticity, down to the most minute, revealing, and lurid detail: impatient with the new (whether it be new and untried modes of murder, or new and untried modes of mystery), and enamored of the old (3).
He continues to a peculiar defense of his trade as a murder case collector by asserting that murder is an art form and art requires no justification.
Next, he tells us that the first of the mysteries about which we will be reading occurred more than a century ago. This is a point to give one pause as it means that the narrator is writing well after the Victorian era has ended, but the style in which he scribes is meant to be heavily suggestive of that era’s writing style. We also learn that “The Virgin in the Rose-Bower; or, the Tragedy of Glen Mawr Manor” is a crime “classic” that has never been solved and continues to attract attention from true crime aficionados.
A victim turned victimizer and brutality toward babies
While the narrator of Mysteries of Winterthurn is never named, the protagonist is detective Xavier Kilgarvan. The novel follows his life, through his cases, from his youth to middle age.
The first chapter after that brief but heavily foreshadowing “Note” is entitled “Quicklime.” It introduces readers to Georgina Kilgarvan, a reclusive “spinster” approaching middle age who is in mourning for her father, the late Erasmus Kilgarvan, a renowned and well-known jurist. We learn that the pathologically shy but eminently respectable Georgina often appears in public heavily veiled and has been nicknamed “The Blue Nun” for her tendency to dress in dark blue and the frequency with which she wears shapeless garments.
Georgina has published a few highly experimental poems under the pseudonym “Iphigenia.” An example: “If I – am You –/Shall You – be me?/If You – scorn I –/Where then – We –/Be–?” (1). The poetry by Georgina/Iphigenia is clearly modeled after that of Emily Dickinson.
Since the death of Erasmus, the household of the Glen Mawr manor in which Georgina resides has included her, her two sisters, 14-year-old Thérèse and 12-year-old Perdita, and their Uncle Simon Esdras who has published several books on complicated philosophical matters. They also have a few servants and a dog.
A married female cousin, Abigail Whimbrel, is visiting the grieving family. Abigail’s husband is not with her but her baby Charleton is. Mother and child stay in what has been designated the “Honeymoon Room.” The walls are decorated with a trompe l’oeil copied from an actual painting entitled The Virgin in the Rose-Bower.
We soon learn that our protagonist, Xavier Kilgarvan, is the son of Lucas Kilgarvan, a brother of the late Erasmus, and thus the cousin of Georgina, Thérèse, and Perdita. The branch of the family from which Xavier comes are called “the poor Kilgarvans” and are somewhat estranged from “the rich Kilgarvans” of Glen Mawr. We also learn from Georgina that Xavier paid much attention to young Perdita at the funeral of Erasmus.
The narrator informs readers that Erasmus Kilgarvan was known as a stern jurist who frequently handed down long prison sentences and even death sentences. One of the most famous cases to come before him early in his service was that of Hester Vaugh. The name is obviously intended to recall that of Hester Prynne of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic The Scarlet Letter.
Hester Vaugh was a 17-year-old housemaid impregnated by her employer. When found to be pregnant, she was forced out of the home by the employer’s wife. Penniless and desperate, she took refuge in an abandoned tenement. There she gave birth to a baby that died shortly after birth.
Although the infant apparently died because of exposure to the cold and/or lack of medical attention, a jury convicted Vaugh of first-degree murder “by failing to prevent” the death. Judge Kilgarvan sentenced her to die. The case caught the attention of a “rabble-rousing Suffragette group” and other people who believed Hester Vaugh was more sinned against than sinning and sought a second chance for her. Despite the flurry of support she received, the young woman was executed.
Erasmus Kilgarvan was married twice. Georgina was born during the first marriage to Vivian Battenberg. Thérèse and Perdita were born during the second marriage to Hortense Spies. Hortense also gave birth to a boy who died shortly after he was born.
The narrator informs us that both wives suffered a variety of inexplicable maladies and were oddly accident-prone. We read that they were “forever bruising and banging their heads, torsos, pelvic regions, and thighs” as well as “cracking their ribs and blacking their eyes” (43). These descriptions lead critic Cara Chell to observe accurately that the narrator is unreliable since we are obviously meant to conclude that the late and respected Erasmus was a brutal wife-beater. However, the narrator has Victorian sensibilities, even if he writes a while after that period has closed, and so cannot realize this truth.
The mystery of “The Virgin in the Rose-Bower; or, the Tragedy of Glen Mawr Manor” starts after Abigail’s night in the residence. In the morning, she is found clutching her dead baby to her breast in a room smeared with blood. Abigail has gone mad, humming a nursery song, while little Charleton has “suffered a savage assault, — part of the throat and torso, and much of the back of the tender head, having been, it seemed, eaten away” (55).
Sixteen-year-old Xavier begins enthusiastically investigating the case. A wide variety of villains are suggested for the brutal and fatal assault on baby Carleton. Did the old and arthritic dog do it? Did a pack of rats? Simon Esdras run amok? The cherubs on the wall come supernaturally to demonic life?
As he investigates the puzzling crime, Xavier’s attraction to young Perdita begins to deepen.
Xavier is in the Glen Mawr manor attic when he encounters a secret as horrifying as that of Charleton’s murder. In dresser drawers, he discovers baby corpses, semi-mummified with time, and wires wrapped around their tiny throats. Then he sees Georgina gather these long-dead babies into her hands with an expression of “weeping despair.”
Thus, the reader learns of a secret so terrible that young Xavier himself dare not reveal it. These are the babies with whom Georgina had been pregnant during the times we had earlier been told the so-called Blue Nun “seemed to affect a deliberate carelessness” in her “apparel, wearing dresses that hung on her like sacks.” The narrator interprets this as an attempt “to disguise her inordinate thinness” as he cannot realize that the eminently respectable and affluent spinster was repeatedly pregnant (81).
Not only are these “illegitimate” babies, but they are, in all likelihood, the children of incest – of Georgina’s sexual relationship with her own father. Whether killed by their mother or their father-grandfather, they were killed because society had no place for them and their lives would have proclaimed a disgraceful secret to the world.
The realization of the incest between Erasmus and Georgina puts the judge’s career as a stern jurist in a particularly sinister light. He sentenced Hester Vaugh to die for a crime similar to one he or his own daughter committed repeatedly. Moreover, he suffered a stroke in the courtroom at the trial of a lower-class man whose crimes against his children mirrored Erasmus’s own.
Echoes of Lizzie in Georgina
It is easy to see the spirit of the Borden case hovering over “The Virgin in the Rose-Bower; or, the Tragedy of Glen Mawr Manor.” A respected and affluent home in Victorian America is the setting for crimes of a most brutal and bloody nature.
Lizzie can also be easily seen in the character of Georgina Kilgarvan. Critics Patricia Craig and Cara Chell have observed that Georgina is modeled after Emily Dickinson, not only in Georgina’s style of poetry writing but in her reclusive life and eccentric personality. It is certainly true that Emily Dickinson is a model for Georgina.
However, it can be speculated that Lizzie Borden also influenced the creation of the character of Georgina. The eldest Kilgarvan daughter’s need for privacy and obsessive fear of exposure parallels the life of “Lizbeth” after the trial. The veil Georgina adopts resembles the bars of the basement windows of Maplecroft – the public must be kept away.
Moreover, the tragedies in Georgina’s life do not resemble those in Dickinson’s, but strongly resemble those in Lizzie’s. Like Lizzie, Georgina is an eminently respectable upper-class woman who might – only might – be capable of the most grotesque violence.
There is also the probability that Georgina was the victim of incestuous abuse. Although this has never been proven about Lizzie, many people have suggested that either her Uncle John Vinnicum Morse or her father Andrew Borden sexually abused her. It is possible that all of these aspects of Lizzie’s life, both those that were indisputably real and those that were only rumored, went into Oates’s crafting of the tragic story of Georgina.
Finally, the “The Virgin in the Rose-Bower; or, the Tragedy of Glen Mawr Manor” echoes the Borden case in that it is never solved. Neither the reader nor the fictional public of the novel ever learn how, or by whom, baby Charleton was so brutally butchered.
One of the most striking aspects of Mysteries of Winterthurn in the novel’s entirety is how it deliberately frustrates its readers’ expectations. When we read mysteries, we expect to learn of baffling events, but then to have the mystery solved. Oates tantalizes her readers and leaves us dangling.
The murdered factory girls and the victimized accused
The second section of this novel, “Devil’s Half-Acre; or, The Mystery of the ‘Cruel Suitor’” advances a goal that Oates related in the “Afterword” to the 1985 edition of Mysteries of Winterthurn: “to explore historically authentic crimes against women, children, and the poor.”
Our narrator points out that the cases he deals with here disputes what he says is often “charged against connoisseurs of Murder and Mystery that we remain a snobbish species, with a marked predilection for crimes of high life” (155), and therefore are only interested in cases involving affluent victims. The murdered in this mystery are anything but privileged. However, the narrator also frets that some mystery lovers will feel that “the victims, being mere factory-girls of the lowest social caste, fail to excite interest in themselves” (156).
Five teenaged females have been found murdered in an uninhabited area that, long before the slayings, was ominously named the “Devil’s Half-Acre.” The narrator informs us that settlers gave it this name because they were “struck by the sinister appearance of the rocks and boulders in the area” and “fancied that they had been ‘strewn about, as if by a giant’s or a demon’s hand’” (158).
One of the impoverished victims had been employed as a milliner’s assistant, another as a scullery maid, one had been “employed in some uncertain capacity in the notorious Hotel Paradise” (which we are later specifically informed was known as a brothel), and two worked in factories. The narrator states that each “had endured unspeakable torments before her death” (164).
Authorities examine several suspects and focus on two in particular: Valentine Westergaard, scion of one of Winterthurn’s most prominent families, and middle-aged factory supervisor Isaac Rosenwald. Westergaard comes under suspicion because witnesses recall seeing him, or a man who resembled him, with a couple of the victimized women shortly before their deaths. Rosenwald is suspected because he was the office manager for the Shaw Brothers Textile, the factory at which one of the murdered, Eva Teal, had worked.
A Roman Catholic, Teal had worn a necklace with a gold cross on it around her neck. The murderer had torn the cross off and placed it in her mouth. Several observers thought this suggested a “ritual murder” of the sort that anti-Semitic legend claimed Jews performed upon Gentiles.
The “Devil’s Half-Acre; or, The Mystery of the ‘Cruel Suitor’” is in part inspired by – not based on – the infamous case of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory supervisor who was convicted of murdering 13-year-old factory employee Mary Phagan. When Frank’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, a group that was a pre-cursor of a revitalized Ku Klux Klan stormed the prison and lynched him. Most students of the case believe that Frank was innocent and that anti-Semitism played a major part in his wrongful conviction.
Police soon become convinced of Rosenwald’s guilt. However, Xavier Kilgarvan becomes convinced that Westergaard is the true culprit. Oates leads the reader down a decidedly bizarre trail as Xavier proves Westergaard’s guilt, but a court comes back with a shocking verdict that Oates leaves frustratingly “mysterious.”
Even as Xavier suffers the trauma of seeing the evil Westergaard escape justice, Xavier receives a “Dear John” letter from Perdita who plans to marry Rev. Harmon Atticus Bunting III. Her marriage to this man of the cloth forms the basis for the next and final section of the novel.
Blood and yet more blood
The book’s last section is entitled “The Bloodstained Bridal Gown; or, Xavier Kilgarvan’s Last Case.” It begins with an “Editor’s Note” that laments one of the “churlish criticisms” (353) made against mystery writings, namely that they end in unrealistically tidy conclusions. In this chapter, a footnote dismissively mentions the case of “Miss Lizzie Borden” and the “eccentric personalities who argue” that she was “blameless of the charges laid against her” (355).
The narrator’s confidence in the solution reached by Xavier in his final case may well be a warning to the reader to not place such faith in it.
Early in the section we meet 72-year-old Letitia Bunting, the mother of Perdita’s husband. Known as a devout Christian with a pleasant demeanor and optimistic spirit, she has lately been concerned because her son has informed her that certain ladies of his church, including her daughter-in-law Perdita, have received anonymous letters of an “obscene” nature. Letitia has also been concerned that her daughter-in-law has sometimes of late appeared distracted or sad.
Letitia Bunting goes to visit her son and is confronted by a scene of horror: Rev. Harmon Bunting sitting beside a married woman named Amanda Poindexter, both of them brutally axed to death. The posture of the corpses suggests an adulterous relationship as the narrator informs us that Letitia discovered them with “the frowsy-haired lady resting her blond head cozily against Harmon’s shoulder, and Harmon with his arm slipped about her waist, his outspread fingers lightly resting on her ample thigh!” (369-370).
The scene betrays a macabre sense of humor perhaps meant to underline the supposed romantic relationship of the murdered couple as “paper cut-out hearts, crimson velvet hearts, cinnamon hearts, chocolate hearts” are “liberally scattered about the bodies” (371). Just as she takes in this scene, Letitia turns around to find an ax upraised and she is herself viciously murdered.
When authorities were eventually alerted, they found not only these dead bodies but also a terrified Perdita, attired in her wedding dress and tied up. She claimed that an attacker, whose face she never saw and whose voice she could not identify, forced her to don her wedding dress, and then “had his way” with her.
It is obvious that Oates was influenced in writing about this crime by America’s best-known axe murder, namely the Borden case.
A now middle-aged detective, Xavier Kilgarvan leaves his New York City residence to return to his native Winterthurn. He hopes to find the culprit. Ironically, in that search he also seeks justice for Perdita who left him years before to marry Rev. Harmon Bunting.
That search leads him to many walks along the seamy side of Winterthurn and neighboring Rivière-du-Loup. He even hears rumors of a place where “luckless females were set upon, and torn to pieces by maddened pit bulls” (456). That last rumor is a point to give one pause. It may indicate that Oates’s research into the nineteenth century in which this novel is set was not completely thorough. In contemporary America, attacks by pit bulls are frequently reported. These dogs are notoriously used as fighting dogs and often valued by street toughs for their ability to intimidate if they have been bred and/or trained for aggressiveness.
However, there are authorities that state that in the nineteenth century, pit bulls were known as “nanny dogs” because they were so gentle and friendly that people trusted the breed around children. There are also commentators who say that the “nanny dog” pit bull is a myth and that the breed has always been dangerous. Perhaps Oates did not know of those who believe pit bulls once enjoyed a good reputation. Perhaps she studied the question and sides with those who think they have always had a bad reputation.
As Xavier searches for the murder of the Buntings and Amanda Poindexter, he also rekindles his love for Perdita – and finds that love returned. Indeed, this blood-soaked novel, so full of wounded and hateful characters, boasts a happy ending and one that appears to reaffirm both romance and family.
Clotted with commas
The chief flaw of Mysteries of Winterthurn is the way it is clotted with commas. This is a strongly negative feature characteristic of Oates’s fiction set in the Victorian age. In an article dealing with her previous such novel, A Bloodsmoor Romance, James Wolcott pointed out the effects of Oates’s comma-mania on the reader. He quotes the following passage from A Bloodsmoor Romance: “I am heartsick, at the distinct possibility, that, amidst my readership, there may well be, here and there, those persons of the masculine gender, who, lacking an intrinsic purity of character, may, by laborious effort, and much unseemly exercise of the lower ranges of the imagination, summon forth a prurient gratification, from these hapless pages!” (582). Wolcott advises the readers of his essay to “note how the commas in the above sentence slow down the action like speed bumps, forcing the reader to brake, press down on the gas pedal, then break again.” Wolcott believes that the writing style of A Bloodsmoor Romance ensures against it working in the way its narrator fears: “Sentences that fitful won’t inflame anyone’s libido, as Oates surely knows. She’s simply giving herself a tickle.”
Mysteries of Winterthurn is glutted with similar sentences. An average example: “Though possessed of an enviably placid, and even quiescent, nature, and very rarely, for her sex, prone to outbursts of emotion or hysteria, — save at those inevitable times when female vicissitudes make war, as it were, upon mental equilibrium – Mrs. Whimbrel bethought herself that she must rise from her bed to examine the room and check once more the slumber of her infant son, who, having been fretful earlier, had been placed by his nurse, at Mrs. Whimbrel’s adamant request, in a wicker crib close by her bed” (9).
This style will be off-putting to the many people who prefer a cleaner writing style. However, for those who do not mind reading a story written in this baroque manner, Mysteries of Winterthurn can provide some diverting entertainment that is also thought provoking. Aficionados of classic crimes such as the Borden case may find a special reward in seeing how one of America’s most talented authors explores and transforms them.
Works cited
Chell, Cara. “Un-Tricking the Eye: Joyce Carol Oates and the Feminist Ghost Story.” The Arizona Quarterly (1985). Print.
Craig, Patricia. “Philosophical Tale of Gore.” The New York Times 12 February 1984. Print.
Huston, Lorie. “History of Pit Bulls: From Nanny Dogs to Breed Specific Legislation.” The Pet Health Care Gazette. 12 October 2010. Web. 30 April 2012.
“The Nanny Dog Myth Revealed.” The Truth About Pit Bulls. 4 August 2010. Web. 30 April 2012.
Noe, Denise. “The Lynching of Leo Frank.” Crime Magazine: An Encyclopedia of Crime. 14 March 2005. Web. 30 April 2012.
Oates, Joyce Carol. Mysteries of Winterthurn. New York: E. P. Dutton, Inc., 1984. Print.
Wolcott, James. “Stop Me Before I Write Again: Six Hundred More Pages by Joyce Carol Oates.” Harper’s September 1982: 67-69. Print.
