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? 

Jean Rhys: feeling different and not belonging

Carole Angier's biography of the novelist Jean Rhys contains some very insightful remarks about her and her life. Some of these remarks are very similar to what I would have come up with myself if I had looked at the same source material. 

The miraculous deliverances and spiralling down elements of Jean Rhys's life have been introduced. This article covers some more key features: she felt different from most people and she felt that she didn't belong anywhere. 

Feeling different 

There is nothing unusual about Jean Rhys's feeling of being fundamentally different from the people around her; after reading biographies of other writers, I would think it very unusual if she didn't feel like that! It's what they all say; it goes with the territory. 

What does seem strange to me is how various people of interest quite independently describe their feelings and experiences in much the same words. 

Something that Carole Angier says about Jean Rhys could equally apply to many others, including Stella Benson and Antonia White:

“One of the strongest feelings Jean had always...was that she didn't fit in the world, that life was a game she had never learned how to play...She did not understand the rules.”

This is exactly how some people feel: everyone knows the rules of the game but them; everyone else knows how to behave, what to say, where to go and what to do, but they are baffled and clueless.

Such people may see the world as a club to which they will never belong no matter how much they want to and how hard they try. The article about Jean Rhys and Antonia White contains uncannily similar quotations about how something always goes wrong when they try to be like other people.

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

Agatha Verrall, the main character in May Sinclair's novella The Flaw in the Crystal, discovers that she has a psychic gift: she can improve the mental states of both herself and other people by tapping into an internal power source. 

As often happens, this activity starts well but ends badly. As we have seen from what happens to Austin Gilroy in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Parasite, even actions taken with good intentions sometimes backfire on the originator. 

Rodney's Lanyon's recovery

The first recipient of Agatha's healing attempts is her friend Rodney Lanyon. He is in a terrible state because of the effect his disturbed wife Bella has on him. Not only does he improve out of all recognition after Agatha's secret interventions, Bella incidentally becomes much better too.

Agatha is delighted to hear from Rodney about this unexpected development:

“It was another instance of the astounding and mysterious way it worked. She must have got at Bella somehow in getting at him. She saw now no end to the possibilities of the thing. There wasn't anything so wonderful in making him what, after all, he was; but if...Bella...had been, even for a week, a perfect angel, it had made her what she was not and never had been.“

The future may seem bright, but what looks like the start of something big at the time often turns out to have been as good as it gets. This was the high point in Agatha Verrall's career as a healer.

The arrival of some more friends

Agatha Verrall has come to live in a remote place, one that Rodney can easily get to, so that she can concentrate on using her gift to heal him to the exclusion of everything else. 

Agatha has told two of her friends, the Powells, that she moved to the area for her health. What a tangled web we weave...

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

I recently came across a horror story by the neglected novelist May Sinclair that immediately reminded me of one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's horror stories, a story that has been featured in a whole series of articles on here.  

The Flaw in the Crystal, which was first published in 1912, will probably not inspire quite so many articles as The Parasite did, but it has some material that is worth quoting. As is often the case, it is mainly the metaphysical elements and some connections I noticed that inspire commentary.

Both novellas feature a woman who uses supernatural methods to influence people, however May Sinclair's Agatha Verrall is very different from Conan Doyle's evil witch Helen Penclosa in that she tries to use her powers ethically and for the good of others.

Agatha Verrall's gift

Agatha Verrall has a psychic gift: she can affect people remotely by concentrating her mind on them. She discovered this gift accidentally and uses it deliberately.

Agatha uses her gift to heal people telepathically. Her friend Rodney Lanyon is her first subject. He has a troublesome, demanding wife, a 'mass of furious and malignant nerves' who often drives him to breaking point. As a sanity-saving exercise he regularly escapes to Agatha's house, which he sees as his refuge, his place of peace. 

Although Agatha loves Rodney, she refrains from using her gift to make him come to visit her but uses it – without his knowledge - to make him well when he comes of his own free will.

Jean Rhys: miraculous deliverances and spiralling down

As mentioned in the previous article about the novelist Jean Rhys, Carole Angier's biography is very comprehensive indeed. She has done huge amounts of research; she describes Jean Rhys's personality, life and works in great detail and provides much background information. She makes good points and provides neat summaries; she has many insights that seem spot on. So what more can there be to say about Jean Rhys, this woman who seems to have been by far her own worst enemy? 

Some of Carole Angier's material that is particularly interesting and relevant is worth highlighting and expanding on, as are some more connections and elements that are familiar from books by or about other writers. 

This article introduces a recurring element in Jean Rhys's life that I think is very significant indeed: whenever she was in deep trouble, something or someone would come to her rescue. Money, somewhere to stay and support and assistance would appear as if by magic and save the day. 

I suspect that there was more to this than just chance, benevolent, compassionate people – and victims and enablers - and sometimes unashamed begging and emotional blackmail on Jean Rhys's part: I think that unseen influences were involved. There are other elements and incidents in Jean Rhys's life that support this idea.

Jean Rhys and the miraculous deliverances

Carole Angier says that whenever Jean Rhys was in dire straits and at the end of her resources, something or someone would always turn up and bail her out:

“Whenever she was at rock bottom, someone would always help.”

“...Jean's life was full of benefactors – her unusual need drew unusual help, as though by magic.”

“Again the last-minute rescue, the magical, fateful possibility of change!”

This is independent confirmation of a phenomenon that I have mentioned in several other articles, Some of these deliverances do indeed seem almost miraculous; perhaps something metaphysical really was at work in these unexpected strokes of Providence. 

While I believe that some people do have the ability to manifest things that they need, there are good – and safe – ways and bad – and dangerous - ways of doing this. I have mentioned various aspects of this elsewhere. 

A last look at John Christopher’s Guardians

This is the final article in the series inspired by The Guardians, John Christopher’s dystopian science fiction novel. The young hero Rob Randall's story has been told and elements in common with other books described, but there is still something to say about some issues that The Guardians raises, serious issues that have wider applications. 

The people in The Guardians live in either the urban Conurbs or the rural County, places with complementary lifestyles. Rob Randall experiences life first in the Conurbs then in the County. He decides for reasons of conscience to relinquish his comfortable and privileged life and return to the Conurbs, where he will live secretly as part of an underground resistance group that is working to destroy the evil, oppressive system that controls both societies. This will entail a life of hardship and great danger - if he is caught he will be killed - but Rob sees dissidence as his only acceptable option.

The role of the Guardians

The Guardians run the show. They conspire to secretly manipulate, condition and control the inhabitants of both the Conurbs and the County and perpetuate the status quo. The people in the two areas are kept apart by a huge fence and psychological control mechanisms. 

We get an indication of how the Guardians operate when Sir Percy Gregory, Lord Lieutenant of the County, wants to know why Rob decided to cross over. The discovery that his mother had been born in the County was a factor. Sir Percy says this to Rob:

“Would the discovery in itself be enough to allow an enterprising youngster to break the conditioned taboos against the County, or did she, even without saying anything, unconsciously predispose you in that direction? Worth bringing up at the next meeting of the Psychosocial Committee.”

Dealing with dissidence

The aristocrats in the County rule over the masses in the Conurbs, but they are equally brainwashed. Only a few dissidents there realise that they are not free and that a life of idleness and pleasure-seeking is not worthwhile. There are even fewer dissatisfied people in the Conurbs. Both societies are conditioned to be contented with their lives.

Dissidence is not acceptable. The Guardians are on the look out for it; they crack down hard on it.They operate a kill, crush or co-opt policy.

Dissidence in the Conurbs is dealt with by killing off anyone who is a threat. Rob Randall's Conurban father was a rebel, and he paid for it with his life.

Money and envy in Stella Gibbons's My American

This article in the series inspired by Stella Gibbons’s My American contains some minor material of particular interest.

The power of money
Stella Gibbons obviously knew the value of money. Some of her books describe the big difference that a small increase in someone's wages - or even a few extra coins - can make. 

She informs us that the Beeding children were rather afraid of their mother – until they became old enough to leave school and start earning some money for themselves:

“All three were larger, more self-confident, less afraid of their mother than they had been three years ago. Mona and Maurice’s weekly pay envelopes had done that for them...Dora had recently been given a rise of five shillings a week and promoted to taking letters in Spanish, which had considerably increased her ambition and self-respect.”

There are some good points here. I know from experience that having an income of one's own – money that has been fairly earned from suitable work, reflects competence and is a by-product of self-improvement – does indeed increase morale and self-assurance. A certain amount of independence is no bad thing; people treat you better when they know that you have other options.

Stella Gibbons balances the positive effect that earning a wage has on the young Beedings with an account of Amy Lee's increasing unhappiness after she becomes very wealthy: 

“It is commonly admitted that money is delightful: but it must also be admitted that money is not much use if you happen to want things which money cannot buy. There is no extraordinary merit in wanting such things; to want them does not give you the right to despise other people who want the things that money can buy; it only means that your money, though useful, will not be more important to you than anything else in the world.

Amy did not know what she wanted; but she was already sure that money could not buy it. She was deeply unhappy, and her unhappiness grew deeper every week. Her luxurious home, her lovely clothes, the charming and intelligent people to whom Lady Welwoodham had introduced her, did not make her one atom less unhappy.”