The Little Stranger – A Gripping Slow-Burn Psychological Mystery

“The sexual impulse is the darkest of all, and has to emerge somewhere. It’s like an electric current; it has a tendency, you know, to finds its own conductors. But if it goes untapped – well, then it’s a rather dangerous energy.”

I read British novelist Sarah Waters’ fifth novel The Little Stranger (published in 2009) based on a misconception. What I wanted to read was a spooky ghost story and Waters’ book was labeled as ‘ghost & horror fiction’. It was wrong on both counts. The Little Stranger didn’t frighten me, pushing my mind to conjure a spectral figure in the dark. Yet I was thoroughly intrigued by the author’s strangely affecting slow-burn storytelling, credible characters, and profound social set-up that the novel ‘haunted’ me for few days. Previously I got acquainted with Waters’ consummate prose while reading her dark twisted novel ‘Fingersmith’ (after seeing Park Chan-wook’s excellent movie adaptation ‘The Handmaiden’). The Little Stranger was similarly psychologically layered and class resentment or class anxiety once again plays a pivotal role in setting the rich characters.

The Little Stranger boasts all the Gothic motifs of the classic stories, ‘The Turn of the Screw’ (Henry James) and ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ (Shirley Jackson): a huge, spooky and crumbling manor with a dreadful past, the stranger noises and bloody accidents alleged to be the work of a ghostly pestilence, a well-bred young woman, and a skeptical man of science. However, Sarah Waters uses these familiar elements to intrigue us on surface level, while gradually and boldly infusing wholly different layers of tumultuous emotions beneath it, which eventually comes across as a smart reconstruction of the Gothic literature themes. The novel is set in a rapidly transforming post-World War II England, where social hierarchies are shaken up by the new Labour government. The country hasn’t still escaped the shadow cast by the prolonged period of war. It’s not just the common populace facing the torment of rationed food supplies, the once-wealthy owners of sprawling housing estates are also struck by the weak and recovering economy.

The Ayres Family of Hundreds Hall is one such family, ravaged by the uncertain times. The freshly emerging working classes are bringing about a change in the social system that indirectly affects the landed gentries. In those high-tax times, Warwickshire’s exquisitely beautiful 18^th century mansion ‘Hundreds Hall’ is reduced to a grim structure encircled within thicket of weeds. Dr. Faraday, the middle-aged town doctor (and our narrator) well remembers his boyhood visit to the Hundreds, back in its glory days. He warmly recollects the day he paid visit to the Hundreds’ basement kitchen and partly glimpsed the estate’s marvel. Faraday’s mother was a former Hundreds housemaid and his father was a local shopkeeper. They had both sacrificed their lives for the sake of his medical degree. Dr. Faraday doesn’t have a family of his own, but relishes at the chance to serve the townspeople through his distinguished profession. One fine day in 1947, the doctor gets a call to treat an ailing servant of Hundreds. As soon as entering the estate, he finds that the 14-year-old servant girl isn’t ill, but simply frustrated and terrified by the place’s imposing, intimidating nature. The doctor discreetly addresses the girl’s anxiety. And to his surprise, he is invited to tea by Mrs. Ayres.

Sarah Waters

Initially upon entering into the house, Faraday meets the master of the house, Roderick Ayers. Though a young man in his early 20s, Roderick is worn-out by his wartime experience; a plane crash has awarded him with a burned face, hands, and an impaired knee. His older 26-year-old sister Caroline Ayers however displays boundless energy. Caroline is described as ‘plain-faced’ and a woman with ‘masculine features and unshaven legs’. Caroline’s physical features combined with her eccentric nature has nearly rendered her unmarriageable within their own class, since a girl’s duty in the gentry families is to be ‘proper’ and ‘dazzling’ so as to safeguard their property through a perfect alliance. She cavorts through the isolated mansion and surrounding areas, accompanied by her beloved dog Gyp. Nevertheless, Caroline’s marriage isn’t the only turbulent problem faced by the Ayreses. The family is sustaining on the meager income from the dairy farm. Acre by acre and farm by farm, the Ayreses are giving away the estate’s finer possessions. Most of the valuables within the estate are also sold. Still they have to spend a fortune to keep the structure upright, to mend the pipes, and keep the ever-peeling wallpapers intact. The old Mrs. Ayres’ has had her share of forlornness long before the war, ever since she lost her first daughter Susan (to diphtheria at the age of 6).

Dr. Faraday has known the Ayres family history and now observes firsthand their gradual descent. He is sympathetic towards their plight, but the bachelor doctor is also bothered by his “faintest stirrings of a dark dislike” whenever the Ayreses involuntarily display their old entitled status. Over the next few months, Faraday forges a friendship of sorts with the family, especially the sprightly Caroline. Alongside these rather mundane developments, there’s a strain of unease within Hundreds, supposed to have been caused by a mysterious force. After one particularly horrific incident, the unnerved young maid says, “There’s a bad thing in this house, that’s what! There’s a bad thing, and he makes wicked things happen!” The doctor believes that the ‘bad thing’ or wrongness associated to the old mansion must have a grounded, rational reason. But soon the restless and over-worked Roderick starts to see and feel inexplicable ‘things’, which sets off a madness that threatens to overpower the already bereaved family.

Spoilers Ahead….

Sarah Waters is best known for her historical fiction, set in Victorian-era England and often contains unflinching lesbian protagonists. The Little Stranger differs from those set-ups as it is set in the postwar period and doesn’t have any overtly lesbian characters. However, repressed sexuality and class dynamics play a major role. The author's prose is notable for restraint. It shows in the four characters she has created – 3 Ayres family members and the doctor – who all remain ambiguous throughout the end, never taking the easily identifiable position of good and evil. Waters spends good time (at least 100 out of the 512 pages) to establish the characters, their desires, conflicted emotions, and demoralizing thoughts. She also immerses us into the dilapidated yet strangely enchanting atmosphere of Hundreds – a vestige of the old British class system. Only one-fourth into the novel the ‘bad thing’ is mentioned. Still, the madness perpetrated by the alleged poltergeists isn’t amped-up like in a Stephen King novel. The question over the origin of ‘shadow-creature’ is coated with ambiguity with Dr. Faraday persistently balking at the idea of any supernatural presence.  

Domnhall Gleeson and Ruth Wilson are playing Dr. Faraday & Caroline Ayers respectively in the upcoming movie adaptation (releasing 31st August this year)

An unreliable narrator is one of the fascinating literary devices. Many times it is used to merely conjure a trick for unsuspecting readers. Rarely, the unreliability of a narrator philosophically questions the human consciousness, which despite yielding to science and reason doesn’t entirely quell its darkest desires, prejudices and paranoia. I loved how Waters subtly hints at Dr. Faraday’s clouded perception. His observations may seem transparent and clear-cut, yet slowly we get the feeling that a lot of emotions are boiling beneath that placid surface. The novel might be utterly disappointing to those expecting a chilling tale of ghosts. But I wasn’t bothered by the lack of preternatural forces because Waters makes the ravenous impulses and cravings of the characters' consciousness and repressed emotions much more haunting. While Henry James’ classic ghost literature used Freudian ideas of sexual repression to explore female sexuality of the Victorian-era, Sarah Waters intrepidly reassigns it and offers a different take on the sexual and gender politics. Waters provides ample clues to from where the Hundreds Halls’ “bundle of projected repressions” originates. The cumulative force of these clues tardily gathers and heavily strikes us in the book’s plaintive and nuanced final passage. It’s a baleful reminder of how ‘the little stranger’ (or ‘miasma’, ‘dark germ’) could creep inside any heart, nurturing self-deluded sense of love, class anxiety, repressed sexuality, etc. Altogether, The Little Stranger is a deeply unsettling novel, brimming with psychological complexity and unnerving mood, which smartly reinterprets the Gothic horror novel tropes.