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Pushing the boundaries

21.11.08 Caroline Horn

Jane Eagland Wildthorn (Macmillan Children's Books, March, pb, £6.99, 9780330458160) Age 14+
Wildthorn, the début novel from Jane Eagland, formerly a head of English at a grammar school in Lancashire, is set in the 1870s, at a time when the Victorian era was slowly changing into the modern. The main character, Louisa Cosgrove, is a wilful child who announces as a teenager that she wants to follow in her father's footsteps by becoming a doctor. The story begins with her journey to "Wildthorn", where Louisa believes that she is going to spend a few weeks acting as a companion to a young lady. She instead finds herself incarcerated in an asylum where she is given a different identity. As the story develops, we discover the mystery behind her incarceration and, through her experiences, we see Louisa grow into womanhood. Eventually, she is able to assert her own character, wishes and lifestyle, including a love affair with another woman.

Eagland, who is 57, decided to leave teaching after she turned 50 to focus on writing. "I wasn't terribly happy at that time and decided to put my effort into something that I had always wanted to try, which was writing," she says. "The first thing I did was to sign up for a short writing course and I remember getting onto the train feeling very depressed but coming back from the course completely ecstatic as I had discovered what I was looking for.

"I wanted to write children's fiction, but the MA course I subsequently took in creative writing at Lancashire was geared to adult writing, so I started Wildthorn then. I was reading a book by Jeffrey Masson called Against Therapy. He argues that throughout history, psychiatry—even when it didn't mean to be—was oppressive because there was an imbalance of power between the patient and the psychiatrist. He cited various stories about real people and one of these was about a French woman in the 19th century who spent 15 years in an asylum, even though she was completely sane. They had taken away her identity without explaining why, and this forms the basis for Wildthorn. The more she protested, the more they said it proved she was insane.

"I have always reacted very strongly to injustice and oppression, not just against women but anyone being abused by power, and I think that is why this story was the springboard for Wildthorn. There was probably an unconscious motivation, too, as my mother was diagnosed as a manic depressive and spent years in and out of institutions.

"Louisa ends up in the institution because she doesn't fulfil the traditional Victorian notion that a woman like Louisa should be happy being a wife and a mother while she wants a career. Nor does she conform in her emotional life. Her relationship with another woman gives her more battles to fight but makes her a more interesting character. She is pushing the boundaries in all ways.

"The hardest parts of the book to write, though, were her father dying, and then her incarceration in the worst part of the asylum. There were days while I was writing that when I also felt like I was incarcerated with her, it was such a relief to get her out of there. I feel like I went through it with her."

Authors Caroline Horn Macmillan Profile Jane Eagland

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