“I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.” So begins The Virgin Cure, a novel set in the tenements of lower Manhattan in the year 1871. As a young child, Moth’s father smiled, tipped his hat and walked away from his wife and daughter forever, and Moth has never stopped imagining that one day they may be reunited – despite knowing in her heart what he chose over them. Her hard mother is barely making a living with her fortune-telling, sometimes for well-heeled clients, yet Moth is all too aware of how she really pays the rent.
Life would be so much better, Moth knows, if fortune had gone the other way – if only she’d had the luxury of a good family and some station in life. The young Moth spends her days wandering the streets of her own and better neighbourhoods, imagining what days are like for the wealthy women whose grand yet forbidding gardens she slips through when no one’s looking. Yet every night Moth must return to the disease and grief-ridden tenements she calls home.
The summer Moth turns twelve, her mother puts a halt to her explorations by selling her boots to a local vendor, convinced that Moth was planning to run away. Wanting to make the most of her every asset, she also sells Moth to a wealthy woman as a servant, with no intention of ever seeing her again.
These betrayals lead Moth to the wild, murky world of the Bowery, filled with house-thieves, pickpockets, beggars, sideshow freaks and prostitutes, but also a locale frequented by New York’s social élite. Their patronage supports the shadowy undersphere, where businesses can flourish if they truly understand the importance of wealth and social standing – and of keeping secrets. In that world Moth meets Miss Everett, the owner of a brothel simply known as an “infant school.” There Moth finds the orderly solace she has always wanted, and begins to imagine herself embarking upon a new path.
Yet salvation does not come without its price: Miss Everett caters to gentlemen who pay dearly for companions who are “willing and clean,” and the most desirable of them all are young virgins like Moth. That’s not the worst of the situation, though. In a time and place where mysterious illnesses ravage those who haven’t been cautious, no matter their social station, diseased men yearn for a “virgin cure” – thinking that deflowering a “fresh maid” can heal the incurable and tainted.
Through the friendship of Dr. Sadie, a female physician who works to help young women like her, Moth learns to question and observe the world around her. Moth’s new friends are falling prey to fates both expected and forced upon them, yet she knows the law will not protect her, and that polite society ignores her. Still she dreams of answering to no one but herself. There’s a high price for such independence, though, and no one knows that better than a girl from Chrystie Street. – Publishers Website
I had read and adored Ami’s last book The Birth House and this one is no exception. A girl who is poor, wandering the streets until her Mother sells her to a wealthy woman to become a maid in her home. That is until Moth runs away because she is abused, and fears that she will be better off on the streets. The thieves, pickpockets, and prostitutes; until she meets a prostitute who is giving her a way out until at least she is old enough to be able to pay the madam back for everything she has provided for her.
In the meantime, she meets a female Doctor – Dr. Sadie, who helps young women like her. She takes Moth under her wing, gives her the tools so to speak that she needs to be able to grow up and become something other than what is in line for presently. Moth is given the safe haven of a place that she needs to grow up, to thrive, to learn, until it is time for her to find her own destiny. In a brothel or out in the world enjoying her life, on her own terms.
This book made me think of people today, how some things haven’t changed since those times long ago. Sure some problems are the same, but, our choices I hope would be different. Dr. Sadie isn’t thought of as just a woman. Now a days, she is thought of as a member of society as is every other female doctor. We are allowed to vote and state our opinions. Dr. Sadie, was in her time a person who was opening the way for women to be able to do what we now know as a right, an everyday occurrence. Ami shows us that we have come from a long line of strong women, who have paved the way to be able to enjoy the rights and freedoms that we now forget that we even have them and should pay homage to these women before us for these rights.
It just so happens, that Ami has a strong women in her family as well. You will learn more about it and the quirky little tidbits alongside the dialogue in the pages as you read. The customs and laws of the day she writes about. I really had to chuckle at some of them, as they were either hard to believe or just funny, but, true. So, if you are a historical fiction fan, and enjoy learning about some place, with a strong woman at the beginning of the 19th century, this is your book.
The Virgin Cure was chosen as the first book for the Chatelaine Book Club, where they discuss a new book every month. To keep track of the discussions, here is a link to the forum.
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