Black Rainbow (1982)

 


Tainted Love

For Megan O'Neill, the black rainbow she arrives at Grayhaven under as a governess seems an auspicious omen. Here there is kindness, comfort and dreams of the handsome Edmund Mandeville. For his sister Jane, it seems more questionable. With the return of her beloved brother, things seem to start going awry in the house and village in ways they never have before. Events escalate as years pass and conflict between the residents becomes a dangerous, toxic brew that might lead down a dark road there's no turning back from...

I wonder what made MPM return to the estate of Someone in the House. It was one of her sadder books (though I maintain one of her most thoughtful), and Black Rainbow is no light-hearted joke like her other 1982 work, Copenhagen Connection. Instead it's the prying apart of a murderous misogyny, with only very mild further exploration of the strange sentience of the Grayhaven estate.

Truthfully, this would be a puzzling read without the context of Someone to clarify the significance of the brass tomb or the references to a pagan goddess that crop up. On the other hand, it sometimes adds further nuance to Someone. Set 1855-7, before Grayhaven was moved from England to America, it's about Edmund Mandeville (spoiled, charming, dangerous when thwarted), his sister Jane (practical, kindly, independent), and Megan O'Neill (pretty young governess who imagines herself in love with Edmund). Grayhaven seems to manifest much as it did in Someone, driving its inhabitants to marry people it approves of and reproduce to ensure its line of caretakers, offering a reassuring presence in times of fear, or appearing as a lovely medieval maiden to sexually satisfy the unmet appetites of its male owner.

Rainbow does explain the origins of the mysterious Victorian portrait of Ethelfleda, and offers some solid clarification that, yes, indeed, the millennia-old worship of an ancient pagan goddess does seem to account for the house's consciousness. Further, it cleverly turns Jane into an incarnation of sorts of that goddess, forced to sacrifice the dangerous male to protect the community. But I will always wonder, what was the name change that Jane references at the very end? 

 I would like to note that the novel itself isn't...great. It's narrated, alternately, by Megan and Jane, and the plot, although reminiscent of traditional gothics with heroines threatened by oppressive men, lacks a defining spark to elevate it. It remains a string of events in which only Jane Mandeville (and perhaps Sam Freeman) is a character worth liking.  

Rating: **

Note:

*This is the last Victorian Gothic MPM will write--from here on she will write Gothics only in contemporary settings. Coincidentally, this is the last year she will write a stand alone mystery as Elizabeth Peters as well.

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