Affinity is a 1999 historical fiction novel by Sarah Waters. It tells the story of Margaret Prior unmarried woman from an upper-class family, visits the Millbank Prison in 1870s Victorian-era England. Millbank Prison was a London prison which was built beside the Thames, so that it was easier to transport prisoners when they were banished to Australia and America. The prisons sordid conditions and poor treatment of the prisoners enabled diseases such as typhoid, scurvy, and cholera, to run rampant within its walls. Cholera broke out on numerous cases in the early and mid 19th century and the death rate in Millbank was extremely high.
Piranesi’s ‘Imaginary Prisons’ (1750).
The protagonist becomes a “Lady Visitor” of the prison, hoping to escape her troubles and be a guiding figure in the lives of the female prisoners. It’s interesting that she pins a panopticon design of Millbank on the wall by her desk;
‘The prison, drawn in outline, has a curious kind of charm to it, the pentagons appear as petals on a geometric flower. . . Seen close, of course, Millbank is not charming. Its scale is vast, and its lines and angles, when realised in walls and towers of yellow brick and shuttered windows, seem only wrong or perverse. It as if the prison has been designed by a man in the grip of a nightmare or madness – or had been made expressly to drive its inmates mad.’ (Waters, p. 8)
The panoptic prison is meant to be place of light and rationality – but for Margaret Millbank it is a gothic prison of darkness, mystery, pain and suffering. The image that she places on her wall may be a reminder of how she feels, a prisoner of her own life.She is an overall unhappy person, recovering from her father’s death and her subsequent failed suicide attempt, and struggling with her lack of power living at home with her over-involved mother despite being almost 30.Her mother controls her life, just as the matrons control the prisoners and Margaret retreats to self-confinement in her bedroom.
Of all the prisoners, she is most fascinated by a woman, whom she learns
Front cover of Affinity novel (2000)
to be Selina Dawes, a medium of spirits. Their relationship blossoms, and the novel sometimes hints at sexual and homosexual undertones. Selina recognises that Margaret is vulnerable and abuses her relationship and trust by manipulating her. She says to Margaret: ‘You are like me, then. Indeed, you are like all of us at Millbank.’ (Waters, p. 208) Selina begins to give Margaret gifts, and although initially Margaret is soon drawn into a twilight world of ghosts and shadows, unruly spirits and unseemly passions, until she is at last driven to concoct a desperate plot to secure Selina’s freedom, and her own.
Bibliography
Waters, S. (2000) Affinity. Riverhead Books
Image of Millbank Prison : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millbank_Prison
Image of Affinity book cover: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25337939-affinity
Image of Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons (1750) : http://www.italianways.com/piranesis-imaginary-prisons/
Prison Memoirs 