If you’re a fan of the “I support women’s wrongs”, Good For Her, feminine rage genre/movement then do I have the book for you (it’s also subtly sapphic). Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito is a story about a bloodthirsty English Governess, Winifred Notty, in the Victorian era who tries to maintain a sense of normalcy and suppress the evil inside of her, until the time is right, while caring for her charges, and living amongst the Pounds family, the rest of their staff, and friendly visitors at Endsor House.
I fail to understand why men think violence will intimidate women. Women, who bleed all over themselves every month, who rub blood clots between their fingers and burst them like insects, and sometimes can’t because they’re not blood clots, they’re tongue-coloured strings of meat from the womb. Women who burst open in childbirth, vagina splitting and anus sagging, tiny, hardening fingernails clawing inside of them, placentas like thick filet mignon.
The book reads like a diary from Ms. Notty, or Fred, as she prefers to be called, to the reader, who is not a completely unreliable narrator, as she does let us in on the dark thoughts in her mind, but sometimes waits to reveal them, or is unsure whether or not they are even real. As she continues to let us in more and more, she becomes increasingly more feral. Just barely qualifying as a novella with its slightly under 200 pages, Victorian Psycho has short, easily digestible chapters, and headings that come before them to clue you in on their happenings. Instead of walking you through every moment of her time at Endsor House, Fred sticks to discussing only the most vital ones that had the biggest impact on her, or vice versa. While some may not be a fan of the format of the story due to the length and slight jumps in time, I was. I found that it made the book stick out to me in comparison to books of a similar genre or theme. Feito utilizes each page well, and is able to paint a complete picture of each incident that takes place and the full story, despite the short nature of the book. The diary-like aspect of the book allows us to connect with Fred quickly, and gives us just the right amount of insight into her mind and the heinous acts she commits that we can start to piece together things like why, when and how they may happen, but are still shocked once they do. As a fan of horror, it’s natural for the mind to wander and try to predict what macabre events might unfold in the story we’re consuming, oftentimes imagining a much worse fate than what is delivered, but Victorian Psycho is unafraid to go there, and holds nothing back. Feito masterfully builds up the tension throughout the book, with small moments of unease that eventually lead to actionable offenses by Fred, then brings her back down to earth to clean up her messes and resume her act of normalcy before doing it all over again. Fred’s crimes are just the right amount of cruel and grotesque to keep you appalled, yet interested to see how she recovers, and what she will do next.
Albeit her clearly odd and wicked nature, you can’t help but like Fred. She has an internal struggle with the darkness inside her as all she really wants to be is loved, but this has kept her from feeling that, and humorously recounts her days not only at Endsor House, but other momentous ones throughout her life as well. You are successfully put into her shoes, and feel like most of the people around her get what’s coming to them, after their unpleasant and mightier than thou behavior towards Fred. Of course the punishments she doles out are far more cruel than the victim’s crimes they are answering for, which are mostly just bad attitudes, but it is easy to make excuses for Fred. Even though the Pounds family is mostly unlikable, they are still represented as simply flawed humans who have their own hang ups, rather than mythically evil people who we are actively rooting against. In fact, if anyone is mythically evil, it’s Winifred Notty, but by the time we come to understand just how evil she truly is, you are already too connected to her, and can’t help but feel compassion for her, rather than completely disgusted by her atrocities. Once it gets to that point, there’s no turning back for Fred, and each chapter is filled with even more violence, until the culmination of her time at Endsor House. It’s as if the evil had been bubbling up inside her this whole time, until suddenly it overflowed and Fred is no longer able to stop herself from committing one shocking act after the next that will leave you feeling floored each time, especially since she transitions from her dormant, as normal-as-she-can-be state to action with such haste and ease.
I first heard about Victorian Psycho in December, when news of A24 acquiring the rights to produce a film adaption of it with Margaret Qualley and Thomasin McKenzie attached. Author Victoria Feito is set to write the screenplay, with Qualley’s past Sanctuary collaborator Zachary Wigon set to direct. I can easily imagine Qualley in the titular role of Winifred Notty, and have no doubt that she will kill it. While reading the book, concerns did cross my mind about how the film would be able to pull off the delicate balance of being sympathetic yet fearful of Fred that the book’s first person narrative effortlessly captures, but there’s certainly no better person to write the script than the author herself, and I’m sure she will know just how to remold the story to get all of the same things across in each version of it.
I’m thankful to NetGalley and W.W Norton & Company for receiving an ARC of Victorian Psycho. Only when I saw the title available on NetGalley did I realize that it had yet to be released, as it came out February 5. With the current risk averse state of the industry where producers only want to make sure fire hits, and place high importance on things like the amount of followers the creatives involved have, Victorian Psycho securing a film adaption prior to the book’s official release definitely set some pretty high expectations for me, and thankfully it did not disappoint! You might think of it as The Haunting of Bly Manor meets American Psycho meets Crimson Peak, all of which I love, so as a sort of combination of them, its safe to say I loved this story. Ultimately, I give Virginia Feito’s Victorian Psycho five out of five stars, as it perfectly delivers everything you expect from a Gothic Horror story.
I’m not one to rally for a sequel when a project is perfectly fine as a stand alone entry that doesn’t really call for one, but I definitely see potential for a spin off type sequel, and would love for that to come to fruition.
For more of my thoughts on books, you can follow me on Goodreads. For more Fright Like A Girl content, you can follow the Fright Like A Girl instagram.
