A last look at May Sinclair's Flaw in the Crystal

This article highlights some unconvincing elements in May Sinclair's The Flaw in the Crystal and lists some similarities between The Parasite by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and May Sinclair's novella. These similarities and some other connections I noticed make the effort needed to decode the obscurities in The Flaw in the Crystal seem worthwhile. 

First, two extracts that seem significant to me:

Playing the 'as if' game

There is no humour in The Flaw in the Crystal, but I find this passage where Milly Powell writes to Agatha about her husband Harding both interesting and amusing:

“She wrote as if it was Agatha's fault that he had become dependent; as if Agatha had nothing, had nobody in the world to think of but Harding; as if nobody, as if nothing in the world beside Harding mattered. And Agatha found herself resenting Milly's view. As if to her anything in the world mattered beside Rodney Lanyon.“

Off-the-mark, 'as if' messages are a special interest of mine. It was an unexpected treat to come across such a good specimen in a story written in 1912. 

It is a pity that the whole story is not written in the  straightforward style that we see in this passage.

Intention is everything 

Just as many other people involved with unseen influences have done, Agatha Verrall realises that there is a dimension where thoughts have power. There, the wish or intention to do something is at least as effective as actually doing it in the real world:

“...that world where to think was to will, and to will was to create.“

“For thought went wider and deeper than any deed; it was of the very order of the Powers intangible wherewith she had worked. Why, thoughts unborn and shapeless, that ran under the threshold and hid there, counted more in that world where It, the Unuttered, the Hidden and the Secret, reigned.”

Despite what Agatha Verrall believes, this dimension, this world, is not necessarily a good place and the Powers that can be contacted there are not necessarily benevolent.

Jean Rhys, Jane Eyre and psychological black magic

Psychological black magic, the illegitimate use of subtle forces, is an unseen influence of particular interest. This blog is full of examples of and references to it. I have learned what to look out for over the years, and I have recently seen some material in Carole Angier's biography Jean Rhys: Life and Work that suggests to me that psychological black magic was at work in Jean Rhys's life.

This article covers a small coincidence involving names that reminds me of something similar in the life of Charlotte Brontë, with whose work Jean Rhys was very familiar.

First, some basic information.

Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre

Jean Rhys read Jane Eyre as a girl in Dominica. It made such an impression that decades later she wrote a prequel in the form of Wide Sargasso Sea, her most admired and commercially successful novel. 

I suspect that her imagination was particularly stirred when she read that Mr Rochester's wife also came from the British West Indies – Mr Rochester brought Bertha Mason home to England from Jamaica.

I also suspect that Jean Rhys wished that an English gentleman, someone similar to the romantic Mr. Rochester, would do the same for her! He would rescue her; he would take her away from her unsatisfactory life.

She was sent away from Dominica to school in England in 1907, the year of her 17th birthday. She hoped to find a feeling of belonging there. She may also have hoped to meet the English gentleman of her dreams there. As Mr Rochester says to Jane Eyre:

“...the mountain will never be brought to Mahomet, so all you can do is to aid Mahomet to go to the mountain...”

Psychic powers in May Sinclair's Flaw in the Crystal: Part IV

I find some elements of the plot of May Sinclair's novella The Flaw in the Crystal contrived and confusing. 

The final resolution of Agatha Verrall's dilemma in particular seems unconvincing and unsatisfactory. She finds a solution to her difficulties that leaves some questions unanswered and some issues unaddressed.

Agatha Verrall's dilemma

We left Agatha Verrall in a situation where she is damned if she uses her gift to heal people remotely and damned if she doesn't.

Taking away people's suffering means becoming possessed by her subjects' former mental states: the psychic connection is a two-way street. The links that she creates between herself and her subjects may be also be cross-contaminated such that one subject can get at another.  

Cutting ties with people who have been healed means that their mental anguish returns. This entails watching them suffer and coming under both internal and external pressure to resume the healing. 

It would be an ideal solution to this predicament if Agatha could only use her Power without anyone involved experiencing any unpleasant side-effects.

This is much easier said than done, but Agatha eventually finds the way. Things get worse before they get better though.

Psychic powers in May Sinclair's Flaw in the Crystal: Part III

Just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Parasite does, May Sinclair's novella The Flaw in the Crystal shows how dangerous playing around with occult forces can be for everyone involved. It is not just evil witches such as Helen Penclosa who end up in big trouble: after Agatha Verrall heals two of her friends using a pschic gift that she doesn't fully understand, things start to get unbalanced and out of control. She soon finds herself in a horrible mess of her own making.

May Sinclair gives a very detailed account of what happens next; she also has a lot to say about the Power that operates through Agatha. It is quite a challenge to identify the key points!

The regression of Rodney Lanyon

Agatha Verrall does not see her friend Rodney Lanyon for some weeks. She hears from him that his wife Bella is still well, so she assumes that he is too because he was only ever ill because of Bella. 

Agatha has been using her gift to keep him away; she has removed his strong inclination for her company. This is another unwise decision: she now feels a longing for his company! Something similar to the conservation of energy is involved here: the feelings that she took away from Rodney are now hers.

These feelings become so persistent amd so unbearable that she cuts the thread that connects her to Rodney. She hears from him again: Bella is still well, but he has has gone back to where he was before Agatha started to heal him:

“She might have known it. She had in fact known. Having once held him, and having healed him, she had no right—as long as the Power consented to work through her—she had no right to let him go.“

But what right did she have to hang on to him?