Nights at the Circus

Fevvers’s personal narrative begins when she is dumped at the doorstep of a brothel, where she spends her youth cared for by Lizzie. The brothel is owned by the imperious yet generous Ma Nelson, who was once an admiral and still dresses as such. At the whorehouse, the women are not simply prostitutes; they are also encouraged to educate themselves in whatever pursuits interest them, including music, art, and politics. Fevvers first notices her wings at 14. She admits that she dyes her wings in order to resemble a “tropic bird” (25), and her natural color is closer to a light brown.

Fevvers learns to fly with the help of Lizzie and their careful study of thermodynamics. At the whorehouse, Ma Nelson incorporates Fevvers into the ambiance of the brothel as a piece of living art—first as a baby Cupid, and later as the Winged Victory statue. For this latter role, Ma Nelson gives Fevvers her admiral’s sword. Eventually, Ma Nelson dies, and her brother claims the brothel as part of his inheritance. The women who remain there burn it down in protest before parting ways. Lizzie takes Ma Nelson’s old broken time piece, which is perpetually stuck on either midnight or noon, and Fevvers takes the admiral’s sword. In the present, Walser notices the time piece on the mantelpiece of Fevvers’s dressing room. He is deeply disconcerted when he thinks he hears Big Ben toll midnight three separate times, only to realize it’s not midnight at all.

Fevvers picks up where she left off in her story: after Nelson’s death, Fevvers and Lizzie move in with Lizzie’s sister Isotta and her family in Battersea. Lizzie and Fevvers help run the family ice-cream shop and take care of the children. However, a series of ailments befalls Isotta’s family and financial burdens increase. A mysterious woman visits Fevvers and invites her to join her “museum of woman monsters” (55). Lizzie clarifies for Walser that the woman was Madame Schreck; Walser recognizes the name, which strikes a chord of foreboding within him. Despite the staunch dissuasions of Lizzie and the rest of the family, Fevvers decides to join Madam Schreck’s “museum” to bring in money.

At Madame Schreck’s, Fevvers is exploited as a participant in a tableau vivant with other women who have some kind of bodily abnormality. They are all forced to stand in stone niches while men pay for the privilege of ogling them, and occasionally more. Once there, Fevvers cannot leave and does not receive her owed wages. She is cast as the “Angel of Death” in a tableau vivant with another woman nicknamed the Sleeping Beauty, who is only awake a few minutes of the day and asleep the rest of the time. Fevvers stands with her sword as the guardian stone angel over the Beauty’s sleeping form while their audience views them as they would a work of art.

A man who wears a golden medallion with a crude engraving of a phallus with wings encircled by roses becomes a regular there, but, peculiarly, he only asks to see Fevvers alone, calling her “Azrael” when he does so. Shortly thereafter, Madame Schreck receives an offer for Fevvers from one Mr. Christian Rosencreutz. Schreck offers Fevvers 50 guineas as her share of the deal. Fevvers, knowing that Madame Schreck is withholding the true value, refuses to accept it and compels Madame Schreck to reveal the true value: 1,000 guineas. Fevvers forces Schreck to open the safe where she keeps her money, but before Fevvers can take her dues and escape, two men break into the room and capture her.

Fevvers arrives at Mr. Rosencreutz’s estate, and inside, she sees the emblem of the phallus with wings encircled by roses on a wall. She realizes that Mr. Rosencreutz is the man who would come to see her at the museum. Fevvers discovers that Rosencreutz is perverse and mentally unsound. He thinks she is a virginal goddess and “Angel of Death,” and that he can gain immortality by “uniting” his body with hers. Although adverse to this idea and wary of Rosencreutz’s intentions, Fevvers resolves to bear it in exchange for the significant sum he has offered her as payment. Rosencreutz is insistent that they not do the act until dawn, as he claims that it is an in-between state like Fevvers herself (81).

Once dawn arrives, he orders her to lie down on her back on the “altar” which is actually a coffee table. Fevvers lays on her belly on the table, but she realizes Rosencreutz is advancing on her with a knife. Fevvers quickly retaliates with her sword, and escapes, naked, out the open window. Fevvers rides a train back to Battersea, where she discovers that the other members of Madame Schreck’s museum have taken refuge in her family’s house. Madame Schreck is dead, or “passed away,” appearing to have simply evaporated. The other women leave to pursue their own lives, but Beauty remains with Lizzie and Fevvers, though she wakes less and less each day. Fevvers and Lizzie say that it appears her eternal sleep is drawing her more and more inward, and one day soon she will not wake at all. They believe that her dream “will be the coming century” (86).

Fevvers and Lizzie reunite with Esmerelda, one of the women from the brothel, who introduces Fevvers to Colonel Kearney from the circus, and Fevvers signs onto the circus. Her history now caught up to the present moment, the interview is concluded, and Walser walks Fevvers and Lizzie partway home before returning to his own lodgings. The next day, Walser persuades his news chief at the London office that Walser should continue investigating Fevvers undercover as a circus employee.