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The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
Title | The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls |
Writer | |
Date | 2025-02-24 00:46:21 |
Type | |
Link | Listen Read |
Desciption
Two young women, living centuries apart, both accused of madness, communicate across time to fight a common enemy...their doctors."It was the dog who found me."Such is the stark confession launching the harrowing scene that begins The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls as Emilie Autumn, a young musician on the verge of a bright career, attempts suicide by overdosing on the antipsychotics prescribed to treat her bipolar disorder. Upon being discovered, Emilie is revived and immediately incarcerated in a maximum-security psych ward, despite her protestations that she is not crazy, and can provide valid reasons for her actions if someone would only listen.Treated as a criminal, heavily medicated, and stripped of all freedoms, Emilie is denied communication with the outside world and falls prey to the unwelcome attentions of Dr. Sharp, head of the hospital's psychiatry department. As Dr. Sharp grows more predatory by the day, Emilie begins a secret diary to document her terrifying experience and to maintain her sanity in this environment that could surely drive anyone mad. But when Emilie opens her notebook to find a desperate letter from a young woman, imprisoned within an insane asylum in Victorian England and bearing her own name and description, a portal to another world is blasted wide open.As these letters from the past continue to appear, Emilie escapes further into this mysterious alternate reality where sisterhoods are formed, romance between female inmates blossoms, striped wallpaper writhes with ghosts, and highly intellectual rats speak the Queen's English.But is it real? Or is Emilie truly as mad as she is constantly told she is?The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls blurs harsh reality and magical historical fantasy whilst issuing a scathing critique of society's treatment of women and the mental health care industry's treatment of its patients.Welcome to the Asylum. Are you committed? Read more
Review
When I first read Emilie Autumn's book in its original hardcover edition in 2010 it was - is the most beautiful biographical novel I have ever read. The type of book that could bring tears to the eyes and mesmerize the mind. Emilie Autumn is an amazing woman with so much to offer the world. She inspires me still to the present day from back when I was 19 years old and first heard her album Opheliac. I know she strives mostly to help young girls and women who struggle with depression, emotional torment, and horrible things that happened to Emilie and I do not want to mention because I hate to see these types of things happen to girls and women all over the world. I am a male but her time she spent in the hospital stood out the most in her book because it compared to my experiences when I was in the hospital twice for my depression. I felt all alone, helpless and many other things. I felt dead inside, empty. I will not go into detail. Emilie spoke - speaks truth through her words, her past, her history, her spoken language of pain and trying to survive in a world built on not understanding the troubled, not normal compared to society who many do not still understand bipolar, depression, suicide and everything that hurts in the mind, heart and physical body. Emilie brought life with her lyrics and written words, voice - a beautiful voice, her violin. She shares a lot of similarities to me especially in classical baroque music. Her album Laced/Unlaced was - is beyond 5 stars. I never thought there was anyone in the world with so much comparison to myself. Between poetry, reading, classical music, struggles with depression. She reminds me of Antonio Vivaldi and Voltaire two of the greatest minds in the world and most inspiring to me. Emilie is right there next to them as my 3 inspirations in my life. Emilie has helped me in many ways than I could imagine and helped me to better understand my own depression and survival that no therapist could understand because I could have been dead many times in my past. I wish I had known her my whole life. I would have listened to everything that was troubling her, the good and the bad. I would have understood, I would have wanted to help when she was going through her roughest times. Her book, her music, herself, her being who she is is everything that is wonderful about the world. She is a beautiful, skillful, intelligent, musical woman and there is so much more for her in the world.