The Victorian Chaise Lonuge by Marghanita Laski - A Feminist Piece of Furniture
If you’re looking for something classically spooky and a little under-the-radar for this Halloween season, look no further than your local antique store (where, let’s be honest, a creepy story is just waiting behind every butter churn). Originally published in 1953, The Victorian Chaise Longue was unfortunately soon forgotten and left out of print. Thankfully, it was semi-recently republished by Persephone Books—a U.K. based publishing house that specializes in resurrecting neglected fiction written by women. It’s a quick read at just about one-hundred and thirty pages. but don’t let its brevity, age, or sketchy original cover-art fool you—this is a story that packs an amazing sense of dread and unease, and it will make you want just a little more wiggle room wherever you’re sitting as you tear through it.
The story focuses on Melanie, a new mother suffering from tuberculosis. She’s been unable to see her son and confined to her bedroom for months. However, her health has started to improve, and she’s now being moved to a different room in the house in the hopes that more sun and fresh air will help her recovery. Her bed cannot be moved, and she can’t be expected to sit in a chair all day, but thankfully Melanie had been mysteriously moved to pick up a chaise at an antiques store months before her baby’s arrival and the real onset of her illness.
It’s doesn’t match any of the furniture in her home and isn’t particularly her style, but she cannot help but feel drawn to the chaise. Aside from a mysterious rust-colored stain, the chaise seems to be just the thing her house needs. The chaise is moved into the room and Melanie is excited to be one step closer to being fully recovered and finally able to hold her son.
Soon after, Melanie wakes to find herself in a different room and in a different time, but on the same chaise lounge. She feels ill and is unable to move, but no one she tries to speak to in her new reality will tell her what’s going on. Melanie struggles to figure out the details of her current situation and how she got there, and along the way discovers that some horrors are inescapable.
Laski is tricky in her use of forced situations and physical space—so much so that I didn’t notice how claustrophobic I felt while reading the story until I was kicking the covers off me and having to move around to shake the story’s grip. Laski seems to start small, wrapping confinement around the reader like little ribbons until you finally realize your circulation is starting to get cut off. There are glimpses of pre-illness, current-day Melanie’s resentment over having to decorate her home, feeling pushed to buy the chaise by a mysterious force, and then her subsequent seclusion and constant monitoring when her tuberculosis really gets bad. It all adds up to show readers that Melanie is already trapped before any paranormal forces decide to jump into the mix.
Laski’s story about a woman trapped in her own body and unable to have any autonomy in her situation is of course classically spooky (not big on the scares, but heavy on the slow-chills) and may seem like old territory, but it’s still eerily and unfortunately relevant in 2019. Pick this one up if you’re looking for something that subtly creeps under your skin and makes you question all of your future furniture purchases.
