Patchwork Girl

Spiritualism and Sideshows

 

Patchwork Girl, freakish and graveyard birthed finds herself caught up in the practice of spiritualism and friend of a sideshow freak - with a pet armadillo, itself a monster both strange and armoured.

THE SPIRITUALIST

The Madame's ruminations spurred my own. If a person can have a phantom limb, cannot a phantom limb also have also a phantom person? In fact, it seemed to me that each of my parts brought with it a trace of the whole person who was once attached to it. There was a crowd, a whole gaggle of persons, competing for the space occupied by my one limited body. First one, and then another would take precedence— I'd be overwhelmed by the driving spirit of Agatha, or succumb to the gentle blandishments of Constance. (9)
   
  She is disappointed to find that Madame is a charlatan, when she is struck in the face by a slice of cold liver.

 

 
Spirituality was a popular pursuit and one which probably gave women some degree of freedom - it was one of the few public pursuits open to them. Women are, after all, sensitive.  
It is at a séance that she meets the circus freak and his monster.
 

 

As Mediumship is the linchpin of spiritualist practice, nineteenth-century spiritualist women were highly regard. . .

Spiritualism emerged contemporaneously with the consideration of women's proper role and sphere which became known as 'the woman question'. (3)

 
'Madame' was in a position of power.