Su Zi's Review of Mrs. Gulliver by Valerie Martin

 

There are those authors with whom one forms a relationship as eager reader.

So it was one summer at the end of the 20^th century, seeking solace in a stroll to the Bywater branch library, there was an astute librarian unafraid of interlibrary loan, and of loading my arms with books from universities across the country. There was also a local bakery. Thus supplied, and thus directed to delicious pleasures of dinosaur cookies and Valerie Martin, the summer was a healing hedonistic haze.  

Seeking solace again this summer, and stumbling through forests of fiction, it seemed fortuitous to remember again this author who then was soul’s necessary medicine. There’s a 2024 release from Doubleday, and a consistent canon that dates back to that sugar cookie summer. This work, Mrs. Gulliver begins with the narration of the title character, and the novel’s arc remains from that point of view, with a sense of being taken from the journal entries of this protagonist; however, it is the narrator who tells the reader of the work’s central character, Carita.

I caught my breath. Her face was beautiful, a creamy complexion with a natural blush, like an English beauty, her nose straight, her lips full and soft, her chin squarish and firm. But it was her eyes that startled me, heavy-lidded and half-closed, with dark lashes, and irises like blue glass, the perfectly translucent blue of a glacier. Beneath the dark bird-wings of her brows, her eyes glittered enchantingly. I studied her. Something was very odd about those eyes [...]

Carita inclined her head toward her sister’s voice, but the eyes didn’t move. "She’s blind from birth” (6-7).

While the characterization is native to romance writing, and literary writers going swimming in both topics and genres is to be expected, disabled characters are still rare enough in their presence to be noteworthy.

Martin challenges notions of disability throughout our intersection with Carita’s 1954 reality:

[...]we had a big breakfast, and then we went to the doctor’s office. [...] the doctor has a soft voice; there was a nurse as well, and she was very kind, helping me undress and put on a robe; and then she showed me how to get up on the table and put my feet in the stirrups [...]

The nurse helped me dress again and led me out to my uncle. [...] When I came in, they fell silent, and I said  "Is somebody going to tell me what this is all about?"

The doctor explained he’d clipped some tube together inside me so that I couldn’t ever get pregnant. Then, we got in the car and went home (48).

    Nonconsensual sterilization is a historical fact in the history of the disability community; that Martin handles this despicable injustice as a conversational topic, “Carita paused and ran a piece of bread across her plate, mopping up bits of egg” (48), is a testament to the overarching elegance of the work.

Disabled characters are often painted as lesser-than just as they are painted within western society, and Martin continually challenges this notion as the character herself is forced to challenge notions about her person. When the character goes shopping and gets “to my surprise, a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses” (85), a scarf, and a haircut:” It occurred to me that, in fact, she now appeared to be what she genuinely was, an educated woman accustomed to wealth and liberty” (86). The novel’s arc is Carita’s, and when the inevitable lover becomes disabled, there is perhaps a scent of a Jane Eyre allusion. Martin’s assessment of disability becomes the musings of the protagonist:

When Carita appeared in my drawing room, what i saw was that her beauty, her blindness, and her poverty made her an object of desire, and she thereby was destined for destruction by the powers of this world. Without protection, she would be worn down and cast aside. Only money could protect her, and we both knew it (271-272).

    While Valerie Martin’s established sensual style moves this novel through an interesting, invented country, the characters are bedeviled in ways both as ancient as star-crossed lovers, and as modern as the Braile typewriter that is Carita’s midcentury mark of personal achievement.  

In our times now, when books about disability are banned from stores and libraries, when disabled people themselves face many hostile forces, a romance novel about a self-determining blind woman is itself an object of taboo. That such a work exists is, again, deep solace from Valerie Martin’s works.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago. Check out her author page on Amazon.