The “Irish” Female Servant in Valerie Martin’s <i>Mary Reilly</i> and Elaine Bergstrom’s <i>Blood to Blood</i>

• Main Author: Dara Downey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-10-01
• Series: Humanities
• Subjects: servants; Irish; emigration; immigration; domestic; gothic
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/9/4/128

This article examines two neo-Victorian novels by American writers—Valerie Martin’s <i>Mary Reilly</i> (1990) and Elaine Bergstrom’s <i>Blood to Blood</i> (2000)—which “write back” to Robert Louis Stevenson’s <i>Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i> (1886) and Bram Stoker’s <i>Dracula</i> (1897), respectively. Both novels ostensibly critique the socio-cultural inequalities of Victorian London, particularly for women, immigrants, and the working class, and the gender and class politics and structures of the original texts. However, as this article demonstrates, the presence of invented Irish female servants as key figures in these “re-visionary” narratives also undermines some aspects of this critique. Despite acting as gothic heroines, figures who traditionally uncover patriarchal abuses, these servant characters also facilitate their employers’ lives and negotiations of the supernatural (with varying degrees of success), while also themselves becoming associated with gothic monstrosity, via their extended associations with Irish-Catholic violence and barbarity on both sides of the Atlantic. This article therefore argues that Irish servant figures in neo-Victorian texts by American writers function as complex signifiers of pastness and barbarity, but also of assimilation and progressive modernization. Indeed, the more “Irish” the servant, the better equipped she will be to help her employer navigate the world of the supernatural.