Fingersmith

Maud could be considered a more complex character than Maud, with a backstory more sordid and motives less honorable. Still, for all of the sexual knowledge gleaned from her work in Mr. Lilly’s library, Maud is also an innocent; she has never been beyond the boundaries of Briar, and her knowledge becomes commonplace to her, like dry facts to a weary librarian. As a result of her remarkable education, Maud also possesses a dual nature, like Sue: “I am as worldly as the grossest rakes of fiction,” she notes, “but have never, since I first came to my uncle’s house, been further than the walls of its park. I know everything. I know nothing” (188). She is extremely knowledgeable in matters of sex, yet she has absolutely no experience, a contradictory combination of innocence and expertise—again, much like Sue, though in different arenas.

Sue’s initial impression of her immediately gives lie to what Gentleman has told her:

She was certainly, then, what you would call original. But was she mad, or even half-way simple, as Gentleman said at Lant Street? I did not think so, then. I thought her only pretty lonely, and pretty bookish and bored—as who wouldn’t be, in a house like that? (72).

Later, as she begins to love her, Sue’s impressions grow more expansive: “I knew that, whatever he [Gentleman] said about hearts and gas-pipes, she was sweet, she was kind, she was everything that was gentle and handsome and good” (124). Of course, the reader finds out that Sue’s impressions are misleading; however, in some sense, Sue’s vision of who she is actually becomes who she wants to be. All of the doubling between them, in the effort to make Sue appear as if she were Maud, also impacts Maud; she becomes kind and gentle like Sue. She describes herself as one of her uncle’s books:

My uncle keeps us separate from the world. He will call us poisons; he says we will hurt unguarded eyes. Then again, he names us his children, his foundlings. [...] I believe he likes the gross ones best; for they are the ones that other parents—other bookmen and collectors, I mean—cast out (202).

She is objectified and mortified, another product of her uncle’s obsession, made to feel abandoned by all others. This feeling intensifies through her relationship with Sue, tainted by its impending betrayal: “I have grown used to thinking of myself as a sort of book. Now I feel myself a book, as books must seem to her: she looks at me with her unreading eyes, sees the shape, but not the meaning of the text” (232). Maud laments her “corrupted blood beneath” (232). Ultimately, however, Sue’s illiterate caring is what saves her. She becomes a writer, not a book, the subject of her story rather than the object of someone else’s. Furthermore, the words she writes are words for Sue, for all the ways she wants her.

Gentleman’s nickname is, of course, a misnomer. As he admits, in many passages throughout the book, he is a villain—though, like all of the characters, he is more complex than he initially appears. When he arrives at Mrs. Sucksby’s house, Gentleman is described by Sue:

He kept his hair and whiskers long [...]. There were rings at his fingers, and a watch, with a jewel on the chain, at his waistcoat. I knew without studying them that the rings and the watch were snide, and the jewel a paste one; but they were damn fine counterfeits (18).

Gentleman’s carefully curated looks reflect his character; he is handsome and handsomely outfitted, but these elements are fraudulent and mask the ordinary (and morally flawed) character lurking beneath the superficial accouterments. His backstory—that he really once was a gentleman with money but “lost it all gambling” (19)—is also eventually revealed as false. His real name is the rather unglamorous “Frederick Bunt,” and he is the son of modest, middle-class merchants (482).

There is also something suspect about Gentleman that Sue points out from the beginning: “Boys like that [one of the thieves] always think that men like Gentleman are nancies” (18). This is derogatory slang for being gay, and there are hints throughout the text that Gentleman is not sexually interested in women. First, when asked about Maud’s physical appearance, Gentleman “shrugs,” saying, “She can fill a man’s eye, I suppose” (24). He freely admits that once married, “I shan’t want her about me” (25). Later, the reader discovers that—contrary to what Maud believes—Gentleman did not have intercourse with Agnes, Maud’s maid, who must be dispatched to make room for Sue. He tells Maud, “There are more ways of shaming a virtuous girl, than that one” (273). Finally, he frequently identifies with Maud herself: “We’re alike, you and I,” he tells her. “More alike than you know. You think the world ought to love us, for the kinks in the fibres of our hearts? The world scorns us” (281). This references what Gentleman sees as their “wicked” natures and their socially unacceptable desires.

Gentleman is often described in terms of moral corruption, in general: “His eyes were yellow at the whites, as if stained with flip” (47). The jaundice of his eyes—flip is an alcoholic beverage—reads as the physical manifestation of a character trait. Later, when Maud first meets him, she notices that “[h]is hands are slender, smooth and—but for a single finger, stained yellow by smoke—quite white” (191). Shortly thereafter, Maud observes that, when he bites his lip in concentration, “his teeth show[ed] yellow, wolfish, against the dark of his beard” (200). Again, the moral habits reveal themselves in physical characteristics.