I am working on my review of Captivity by Deborah Noyes (due out in June) and yet again feel myself pulled into the very real twisted, tormented and completely complicated love affair of Margaret Fox (founder of the American Spiritualist movement with her sisters) and Elisha Kent Kane (famous polar explorer). Captivity includes two narratives - one of Margaret Fox and how she gained fame talking to the dead (sort of) and the fictional Clara, a recluse who has been in hiding for years after the demise of a doomed love affair. The two women become friends and while I can't tell you much about Clara (because that would ruin a gorgeous story) I can tell write about Margaret and Elisha because their story is already infamous in the annals of the tragic and the doomed (and the ever classic refrain "He done me wrong".)

Noyes has all the historical facts intact: Maggie was from a small town who got caught up in a lark she could not control. Alternately embracing her fame and hating it, she attracted Elisha's attention for reasons she never understood (and he could not articulate). Elisha saw right through her - he knew the sisters were showmen first and foremost - but he could not stay away. He kept telling Maggie she was wrong and bad and a fraud, but still he kept on coming back.

The facts get murky as they near the departure of Elisha's third (and most famous) Arctic trip in 1853. From the letters he wrote and what he told his friends it is clear he was very in love with Maggie, but determined she change (to be worthy of him and his very wealthy family). He sent her off to take lessons and get smarter but big surprise, Maggie was bored out of her ever loving mind and ditched the whole set up. But according to her, Elisha gave her a ring and they took vows before he left for the Arctic. But when he got back he was sick and busy and his family was so not interested in the whole association with "show people" so it never got to be officially recognized. Whether or not the marriage was real only Marggie and Elisha ever knew for sure. (Maggie's Wikipedia page says they were married; Elisha's does not even mention her.) And then he died in 1857 and Maggie fought tooth and nail to be recognized as his wife and it didn't work. And she had a miserable life and died penniless even though she was the love (if not wife) of one of the most famous American heroes of the 19th century. (His funeral was second only to Lincoln's in pomp, circumstance and attendance.)

I swear it is about the saddest love story ever - for Maggie. I think Elisha was a complete ass and she would have been way better off if she never met him. Poor girl.

What Deborah Noyes does with all this real life drama is give us what might have been Maggie's side of the story. And she shows that while he kept dangling respectability in front of her, he was also controlling and would have taken all of her freedom away because that was pretty much how it was for women in 1850 and it was what Elisha wanted to do. Noyes suggests that Maggie knew that - and she knew that while Elisha might have loved her and been all that and a bag of chips when it came to explorers, he also was a control freak who would never let her be who she wanted to be. Not that Maggie knew for sure who that was but she at least wanted to get out of her podunk town and was willing to take a shot at anything to accomplish it. (Can't blame her for that - the life of a farmer's daughter back then was pretty darn grim.) Elisha was going to take all her hard fought freedom away and in exchange he spent all of his time telling her that she wasn't good enough for him.

Maggie really deserved better. And Elisha needed some serious time with a few dozen feminists (where oh where is Amelia Peabody when you need her?)

Captivity is a lovely story about complicated families (the Fox sisters and Clara and her father); complicated friendships (Clara and Maggie) and love that does not work out well (again, Clara and Maggie). It's so elegantly written, just lovely to read. I already knew what to expect about Maggie and Elisha but Noyes puts a very original spin on things and it made me think a lot more about Maggie in particular. But the Clara story - that one seems to be one thing and then hits you WHAM with a shocking spin. In the end though the book is about being captured by expectations - those of society, family, class and gender and fame. It's about how so many of us became captives without even realizing it and what it is like in these cages that crush our hopes and dreams.

I'm so glad I was not born in 1833. Tthe 21st century might be rough but it's light years better then being told who you can love and sadly, who you can not.

[Post pics: The Fox Sisters, Margaret on the left and Elisha Kent Kane.]