Misfortune by Wesley Stace

Misfortune by Wesley Stace


A month or so ago I randomly purchased Misfortune by Wesley Stace, having never heard of the book or author before. Of course, this is Stace's first book so I suppose my ignorance can be forgiven. I was interested in it largely because it was set in the Victorian era, and as any of my friends know, I really enjoy 19th century books, or works set in that period.

The hero is Rose Old Loveall, an abandoned child who is discovered and adopted by Lord Loveall. Lord Loveall, traumatized by the childhood death of his beloved sister, is a bit off his rocker and refuses to recognize that Rose is, in fact, a boy. The woman he marries to make the child appear legitimate goes along with the farce of raising Rose as a girl because of her attachment to the philosophy of a particular writer, who believed in the androgynous being who is a blank slate at birth yada yada. Consequently, Rose is raised as a girl.

Obviously this fact could not be hidden forever, either from everyone else, or from Rose himself. Following the death of his father, Rose learns the truth of his gender (through a process too complicated to outline here), and it’s also revealed to his greedy family that he is not Lord Loveall’s biological child, and is thus not the rightful heir. After struggling with the gender conventions demanded by Victorian society, Rose leaves Love Hall. He goes through a long process of self-discovery, and that is as much of the plot as I’ll give away.

This book was entertaining, but in some ways unbalanced, or unexpected I suppose. The whole narrative basically concerns Rose and his discovery of his identity, and the first half obviously focuses on gender. The second half, though, returns the reader to the first chapter when Rose was abandoned, as the characters search for Rose’s biological parents and ancestral identity. This shift was unexpected simply because gender had been the major focus of the previous half, and the two aspects of identify had little to do with each other, excepting that they both dealt with Rose.

At any rate, this story certainly provokes interesting meditations on gender. Finally, in the true Dickensian spirit, the conclusion of the novel involved a bucket load of improbable fortunate coincidence, which never bothers me.

I’m interested to read Stace’s next novel, just to see where on earth he goes from here.