x

[hauntmethen]

Whereas Thérèse proudly promenaded on her father’s arm, his ‘little queen’, Gemma pushed her father away as he tried to hug her. No one was to touch her, she said; and one thinks of the nefarious servant, in the locked room. When her one pious brother, a seminarian, died of TB, she took to wearing his clothes; and when her father died of throat cancer, she slept in the bed his corpse had vacated. There is something desperately sad about these gestures. They are quasi-suicidal, for sure, for she hoped to ‘catch’ their illness – she had very little investment in life – but there is also something thwarted about them, a bungled attempt at both closeness and control. Living, she won’t let them touch her; when they are dead, she touches them. She tries on a man’s life, a priest’s life; she tries to follow her father, who had abandoned her just as her mother had done years before. Nuns at their clothing ceremonies dress as brides, so Thérèse had her wreath of orange blossom, and veil of Alençon lace: Gemma had a sheet with the sweat of death on it.

─ Hilary Mantel. Some girls want out