Fingersmith

Hair functions as a symbol of sexuality and, conversely, demure innocence throughout the book. In Victorian society, in particular, no respectable woman would go out of the house without her hair pinned up in the style of the day (the pre-Raphaelite painters caused scandal with their pictures of women letting their hair flow loose and free); thus, concern over hair often doubles as a concern for female morality. When Gentleman shows Sue how to style her hair when acting as a lady’s maid, Sue protests that “I looked that plain and bacon-faced, [I] might have been trying for places in a nunnery” (32). Instead of the hard curls favored by the lower-class women of London, “too fast for a country lady” (31), Sue must wear her hair in a “plain knot” pinned up in back (31). Hair is not only sexual currency, but it is also financial currency. There is a thriving trade in selling hair for wigs and other items. When Sue first attends to Maud’s hair, she praises it: “Her hair was good, and very long let down. I brushed it, and held it, and thought what it might fetch” (77). In the world of thieves, hair is another form of “poke.”

In addition, hair symbolizes possession, ownership, and maternal care. For example, Mrs. Sucksby washes Sue’s hair with vinegar until it shines when she is young. When Maud leaves the psychiatric hospital as a child, the nurses—robbed of their own maternal offspring—tear at her hair in a frenzy, hoping to keep a piece of their plaything: “They reach and squabble over the falling tresses like gulls—their voices rousing the lunatics in their own close rooms, making them shriek” (169). It is a striking scene of violence, the desire to possess the innocence of this child among them. When Sue witnesses Mrs. Sucksby caring for Maud’s hair, it drives her wild with jealousy: “I’d see Maud [...] as if she knew I was watching, and mocked me! [...] And I saw Mrs. Sucksby, at night, letting it [her hair] down.—Once I saw her life a tress of it to her mouth, and kiss it” (447). The jealousy elicited here is ambiguous; it is both an envious reaction to Mrs. Sucksby’s maternal attentions and an implicitly sexual jealousy of the attentions paid to Maud’s hair by another. When Sue’s hair is mistreated in the psychiatric hospital—yanked out in tufts, sewn flat to her head—it weakens her, divests her of worth and beauty, and signifies her castoff status. The significance of female hair flows everywhere throughout the novel.

Like hair, Maud’s gloves represent (or repress) her sexuality and, conversely, her innocence. She is forced to wear gloves by her uncle, who is concerned more for the safety of his precious books than for the propriety of his much-abused niece. Still, the gloves maintain the superficial appearance of innocence. The first time Sue sees Maud without them, she notes her fragility: “Her hands were bare, she had her little white gloves laid neatly by, but she sat beside a shaded lamp, that threw all its light upon her fingers, and they seemed pale as ashes upon the page of print” (69). Maud appears vulnerable without her gloves, and Sue begins to feel protective toward her. Maud sleeps with “her hair put back” and her hands “inside their gloves” (204). This symbolizes her stifled sexuality, kept locked away in Briar, despite her worldly knowledge.

Indeed, when Sue witnesses Maud’s gloves “quite spoiled with paint” (107), she believes her plan with Gentleman is working. Her sullied gloves represent her smudged innocence as she inches her way toward consummating her affair with Gentleman (at least from Sue’s perspective). Sue is more certain that the conspiracy is working when she sees something even more sensual: “She let him kiss her. Not on her lips, but somewhere altogether better” (107). This is left to the reader’s imagination for an agonizing page until Sue relates exactly what she witnessed: “Then, while I stood watching, he lifted one of her weak hands and slowly drew the glove half from it; and then he kissed her naked palm” (108). Her protection has been penetrated, and Gentleman has symbolically sullied her innocence. As Sue puts it, “And by that, I knew he had her” (108). Even the weather agrees, as thunder sounds in the sky and “the rain began to fall, in great, dark, staining drops” (109). Maud is tainted—by her association with Gentleman, whether sexually, as Sue believes, or deceitfully, as Maud herself knows—and the storm is threatening, indeed.

Later in the book, Sue tucks away one of Maud’s gloves as a sentimental keepsake, thinking she will never see her again. In the psychiatric hospital, it becomes a synecdoche for Maud herself, as Sue tears at it and bites it, trying to harm the lover who has betrayed her. When she discovers the complete truth—that Mrs. Sucksby has been the villainous mastermind behind the entire plot—she is overcome with passionate sadness and “wept and wept over [her glove] as if my heart would break” (499). Shortly thereafter, Sue determines to find Maud herself—the glove will no longer suffice.