Helpful Score: 1
There is a tad of something for everyone in this now obscure novel from women's emancipation and independence to love in several forms. Spiritual conjuring begins it all, leading to delusions nearing madness and finally to incarceration for lunacy. At this point the story becomes Dickensish with a treatment of the "lunacy laws" invoked at the time. Laws obviously enacted by lawmakers who should have been charged with it themselves. So Wells, ever the sociologist, attacks these with a passion. The central character, once interred, does manage to escape. But does he really? And, what of love and the women's movement? This is not as an exciting novel as Dickens or Wilkie Collins would have written, yet to may still strike home when one considers the inanity of our current governing bodies. Merely twist the central issue a bit and there you are.
