The London Séance Society: A Novel

“At her touch, Lenna felt like she’d been flipped upside down, then righted again.”

This passage represents the narrative’s first suggestion that Lenna harbors romantic and sexual desires for other women. The intensity of her reaction also emphasizes the depths of her half-acknowledged feelings for Vaudeline, and the visceral experience of being “flipped upside down” foreshadows the profound ways in which her connections to Vaudeline will invert her entire worldview.

“If only I could run myself through a sieve, Lenna thought, and separate the feelings inside of me so to better deal with them one by one.”

By equating her conflicting feelings to a jumble that can only be clarified via a deeper examination, Lenna emphasizes the many internal and external tensions that threaten to rip her emotional well-being to shreds. Her desire to “separate” her feelings emphasizes her scientific understanding of the world, for when faced with something as intangible as emotions (or ghosts, as the case may be), her first impulse is to put these intangible things under a metaphorical microscope to ascertain their true nature.

“Nothing was promised. Not sisterhood, not friendship. Not the next love note, not the next argument. All that was promised was now—this lone, ever-fleeting moment—and Lenna was tired of missing her chance to do or say the truest thing while she still had the opportunity.”

Lenna’s understanding of the world has been fundamentally shaped by losing Eloise and Evie. As she stares into the void of their absence, she struggles to come to terms with her many regrets over emotions left unexpressed when she had the chance. This passage therefore highlights her own particular version of Coping with Grief, and at this point in the narrative, she has yet to fully process her emotions and lay them to rest along with the loved ones she has lost. Her emotional devastation over these recent deaths also impacts her approach to the possibility of romance with Vaudeline.

“Quite the irony that families are willing to pay me to reach through the realm of the dead for their loved ones, yet mine will not so much as make the trip across Paris.”

In this quote, Vaudeline articulates the reality of being an independent woman in Europe at this time. Her choice to work for herself and her refusal to conform to traditional gender roles isolates her from her loved ones and marks her as an oddity in a world that limits women to only a few specific functions. Thus, her comment reflects her resignation to the injustices of a patriarchal society.

“How must it feel for Vaudeline to exist as a means of connecting people but never truly being seen? Never relishing such connection herself?”

This quote provides a prime example of Lenna’s deep empathy. Given her rational approach to the world, she constantly conceptualizes how the people around her must feel and tries to understand how their emotions affect their actions. Here, she wonders about the loneliness of the line of work that Vaudeline has chosen.

“This forlorn feeling stirring inside of her, knowing she would depart from Vaudeline at the London docks tonight—it could not be identified, could not be touched, yet it was entirely real.”

At this point in the novel, Lenna’s affection for Vaudeline begins to force her to reconsider the authentic existence of intangible things, for although her romantic desire for Vaudeline does not fit into her “rational” world, it is becoming increasingly real for her. This early willingness to reconsider her perspective on romance foreshadows her eventual acceptance of the greater intangibilities of the supernatural world.

“After some time has passed, only the immediate family and friends seem to…ache. It feels as though everyone else has moved on. The visits dwindle. People gather again, laughing as loudly as they ever did. The empty seat fills with someone new.”

In this passage, Vaudeline discusses her own experience of grief as she explains to Morely why she wants to visit Volckman’s widow. Vaudeline describes the embodied feelings of grief, which is in keeping with someone whose line of work is making the intangible tangible. Her words also highlight her empathy for someone who is Coping with Grief.

“You know that wounds often appear under entrancement. It is one way that we, as mediums, know that the spirit has made its way inside of us. But spirits can also act upon us—they can do things to us, make us feel things that should otherwise require flesh or touch.”

Sarah Penner efficiently inserts key information about the nature of séances quite early in the novel, seamlessly upgrading readers’ understanding well in advance so that the climactic scenes can proceed smoothly, without being cluttered with cumbersome exposition. Here, a brief line of dialogue from Vaudeline’s instruction foreshadows the bodily wounds that both Lenna and Morely will suffer during Evie’s séance.

“‘Are you trying, yet again, to steer me into a traditional courtship?’

I blinked a few times, amazes as I often was by her brazenness.”

Morely’s reaction to Evie’s rejection of his romantic intentions underscores how rigidly defined the gender roles of the time period were. Even though Evie has already told Morely that she is only interested in trading sex for information, and even though they met while she was dressed as a man, Morely still finds her rejection “brazen.”

“If the latter were true, it raised another staggering question. Had Evie really ever believed in ghosts at all? Maybe this had always been an enterprise for her—opportunity and money.”

This passage shows how Lenna’s grief over her conflict-ridden relationship with Evie shakes her confidence in her ability to understand her sister. As her exploration of the Society begins to remold her understanding of Evie, she wonders if she ever really knew her sister at all.

“He could go to hell, for all Lenna cared. All of that nonsense about magnets and needles and loneliness…Damned be these men, these money-hungry predators.”

Lenna’s criticism of the men in the novel articulates a fundamental truth about how the men of the Society operate. Rather than representing an earnest exploration into the realm of the supernatural, their work is ultimately a form of social and fiscal predation, for they unabashedly target grieving women and use their desperation to contact deceased family members as a means to gain access to for the bereaved family’s wealth.

“What is it with these men? Lenna wondered. Constable Beck and Mr. Morely both seemed oblivious to the idea that a visit to a grieving wife could entail anything beyond interrogation.”

Here, Lenna speculates about Morely and Beck’s unfeeling attitude toward Volckman’s widow. Lenna doesn’t yet know that Morely doesn’t want anyone interacting with Mrs. Volckman for fear of what she might reveal, but this passage also highlights the fact that the men of the Society fail to value women as people who are fully capable of experiencing emotions like grief and sorrow. To them, widows like Mrs. Volckman are simply a means to their own financial gain.

“Peter has begged us to pull our bright dresses back out. He insists mourning rules don’t apply […] He wears that vest to liven the place up, as he says. Hideous, isn’t it?”

As noted in the additional materials at the end of the book, Victorian society featured elaborate mourning customs, one of which required mourners to wear black clothing for a period of at least a year. This information underscores the disrespect of Peter’s insistence that the sex workers stop wearing black, for he clearly cares far more about the business than he does about the recent loss of life. The quote also demonstrates that the dead woman meant more to the other women in her life than she did to her own son.

“I reminded her once that although my techniques weren’t provable, they were not unprovable. That was all that mattered, wasn’t it?”

Here, Morely justifies his fraudulent practices to Evie. His willingness to exploit the intangible nature of spiritualist beliefs demonstrates the wiliness of his character; he is willing to perpetuate moral ambiguities as long as such methods benefit him financially.

“These sound like mere women’s rumors to me. A grieving widow, a brothel girl? You cannot trust them. They’ve fabricated these stories, as far as I’m concerned.”

Morely’s dismissal of the stories that Lenna and Vaudeline learn from the women they visit highlights the dismissive attitude that the Society—and Victorian culture at large—holds toward women. These male-dominated institutions silence the experiences of women and dismiss them as untrue, but in reality, Lenna and Vaudeline’s network of widows poses a serious threat to the Society’s nefarious activities.

“For as many times as I’d stripped down with the woman, I felt suddenly as naked—as exposed—as I’d ever been.”

At several different points in the novel, Penner creates situations in which the usual gender-based power dynamics are deftly inverted. In this passage, Morely’s articulation of his reaction to Evie’s betrayal—that he felt “naked”—emphasizes the fact that Evie’s ploy shifted the dynamics of their relationship. The word “naked” suggests that Morely feels a lack of protection, but also a sense of embarrassment and discomfort.

“I studied Miss Wickes from across the table. She was as much a varmint as her sister.”

Morely’s descriptions of women shift significantly over the course of the novel, becoming increasingly derisive and demeaning as his true nature is revealed. Here, Morely likens women to “varmints,” or vermin, and such a blatant attitude of disgust shows that he fails to see women as people.

“‘She was a friend once,’ he hissed. ‘Until she started meddling.’”

Volckman’s words to Evie reveal him to be yet another deeply misogynistic character. In this moment, Evie realizes that Volckman is responsible for the Society’s malfeasance. Volckman’s use of the word “meddling” to describe Vaudeline’s methodical investigation into the Society’s wrongdoing reveals his deeply derisive view of women. He speaks of Vaudeline’s interference in the most condescending terms, portraying her as an inconvenient nuisance rather than as a credible threat.

“‘I sent Vaudeline away with no intention of inviting her back.’ He grimaced. ‘What a charade, the whole idea of truth. There’s no money in truth.’”

This quote from Morely articulates the cynical core of the Society’s ethos. Spiritualism, for Vaudeline, is the pursuit of truths that cannot be ascertained by anyone other than the dead; it is a form of justice. Morely and the Society, by contrast, hold no such standards; their only concern is profit, and swindling those who have full faith in spiritualism represents a sly means to that end.

“Death had always been the known thing, the understood thing: eyes fluttering closed, a cessation of pain. But what lay behind it? What lay after it?”

In this quote, Evie’s memories of her final moments highlight the curious, fearless nature of her character. Even as she realizes that she is about to die, she is still asking incisive questions and wondering how this experience will bring her closer to understanding the unexplored aspects of the human experience.

“But in truth, an apology was not at the forefront of my thoughts. Instead, my mind was already hard at work on extricating myself from the situation.”

Morely’s inability to apologize—even when he is confronted with the consequences of his actions in front of Beck—highlights the extent of his narcissistic outlook on life. Morely is unable to think beyond his own interests, which is why he was so well-suited to running the fraudulent Department of Spiritualism.

“A feather for amber. Here to there. The exchange, Lenna knew, meant forgiveness. Love.”

Through Evie’s apportation, Lenna finally finds what she has sought: the knowledge that Evie forgives her. Penner’s syntactic choices highlight the importance of this moment for Lenna; isolating the world “love” underscores the enormity of the sisterly love that Lenna experiences upon the conclusion of the séance.

“But now Lenna understood: desire didn’t require trying of any kind. Desire wasn’t wrested out of someone. On the contrary, it tended to come to life on its own, bidden or not.”

Lenna’s new understanding of the nature of desire reveals just how much she has grown. Growing up in an oppressive society that expects all women to desire nothing more than to marry a man and bear children, Lenna has always believed that desire is something that the external world forces upon her. However, when she learns to accept and embrace her desire for Vaudeline, she realizes that desire is an internal force.