The Dark Side of Historical Fiction by Mary Ann Rodman

Trigger Warning:This post contains terminology that although objectionable today, was considered scientifically and medically correct in the first half of the twentieth century. The books under discussion, set circa 1928,use these terms unsparingly. Being the last of the group to write about Historical Fiction leaves me in something of a pickle. Everyone has done such a good job covering the various aspects of the genre, there is not much I can add...except this. Historical fiction for children tends to dwell on the sunny side of life; young adult, not so much.Older readers can handle the not-so-lovely aspects of our history One topic that has gotten some recent interest is eugenics. The Nazis didnt invent eugenics. The eugenics movement first gained popularity in pre-WWI America with the theory that all human traits are inherited--nature vs nurture.The result was institutionalization of anyone who fell outside the parameters of "normal." This included the mentally and physically challenged as well as the mentally ill,women of "poor character (sexually active outside of marriage), homosexuals and a list of conditions and diseases that are treatable today. Eugenics also played a large role in the Immigration Act of 1922 which placed quotas on immigration from southern and eastern Europe (the non-Anglo-Saxon areas) and banned Asian immigration altogether. Lest you think this is all in the dim dark past,consider our current immigration policies. Know that the last "eugenics asylum" closed in the early 2000's. Forced sterilization continued into the early 1980's. Two YA books that address this subject are The Foundling by Ann Leary and The Degenerates by A.J. Mann. Both take place in US "schools for feeble-minded women"in the 1920's.Both are based on actual institutions. The Foundling is told from the viewpoint of 18-year-olf Mary, raised in a Catholic orphanage and then boarded, grudgingly, with an aunt. Trained as a secretary, she is excited to find a job with a notable "lady doctor" who runs the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. Mary has never met such a glamorous,highly educated woman as Dr. Vogel, a paragon of virtue,devoting her life to the care of the "feebleminded." The institution is set up as a gated village in the wilds of Pennsylvania. Mealtimes are shared by staff and inmates, allowing Mary to observe the allegedly mentally impaired women, finding them little different from herself. She is shocked to recognize, Lillian, an old acquaintance from the orphanage,a girl she had admired. She knows that Lillian is in no way feebleminded. When she talks to Lillian, she learns that her "crime" was giving birth to a child of a black man, out of wedlock. She begs Mary to help her escape. In the ensuing intrigue and chaos, Mary learns the truth about Dr. Vogel's altruism and what happens to those who oppose her. Just when you think that the author has perhaps too much imagination in creating such a world, you learn that she was inspired by her own grandmother, who worked in such a "eugenics asylum,"also in the wilds of Pennsylvania. The Foundling begins as a typical "girl sets out to find love and adventure" story. The reader slowly learns the horror of the Village along with Mary. In contrast, The Degenerates hits you with reality from the first page. Told from four different third person POV's, you first meet London. She's a fourteen-year-old orphaned, Italian immigrant who has bounced from foster home to foster home for ten years. She is smart, streetwise and mouthy. She's also pregnant from her one attempt to form a friendship. When she tells the boy responsible, he tells the police. The next thing London knows, she is arrested and dragged away, for being "a knocked-up, moron,dago slut." The paddy wagon delivers her to the Massachusetts School for the Feebleminded, a "school", she soon learns, from which no one ever "graduates." As London plans her escape,she meets the other teens who share her fate. Maxine and her younger sister Rose(who has Downs Syndrome but who in the parlance of the time is called a "mongoloid")are the only girls in a large family of boys. Rose is too much trouble for their overworked mother,and Maxine might as well go with her. Two less mouths to feed. Maxine never gives up hope that their mother will retrieve them. Their mother needs help with all those boys. Four years later, Maxine is still waiting. The cot next to the sisters is occupied by Alice, dumped off by a brother who didnot want the burden of a child with a clubfoot.Alice and Maxine are in love, another "crime" they are hiding from their abusive "caretakers." Alice is black and rarely speaks. She knows that the slightest infraction will sentence her to the dreaded solitary cells. If this sounds like a grim story, it is. There was a real Massachusetts School for the Idiotic and Feebleminded, founded in 1848 by esteemed educator Samuel Gridley Howe, the first such institution in the Western Hemisphere. It eventually became the Fernald School, infamous im the 1940's and 50's for medical experiments secretly performed in the boy's section. But in the fictional world of London and her friends, the bond among the four girls, their never-say-die attitude and eternal hope for a "happy ending" keeps you reading. Although the books are set in 1928, the lack of sexual autonomy is still an issue for females nearly a hundred years later. The reasons for institutionalization for the most part have cures, or are more socially accepted today However,control over their bodies is still largely in the hands of the state. Some things never change. Posted by Mary Ann Rodman