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Agnieszka Taborska: Niedokończone życie Phoebe Hicks (The Unfinished Life of Phoebe Hicks)

Agnieszka Taborska is keen on French surrealism and while we do get some surrealism in this book, the book focusses more on one of her other interests, the portrayal of women. This is very much a feminist book. Interestingly it is set not in Poland but in mid-nineteenth century Providence, Rhode Island.

The eponymous Phoebe Hicks is, unusually, a comfortably off, independent, unmarried woman. She was an only child and her parents both died, probably from eating crab. Eating seafood in Providence seems to be dangerous as, at the beginning of the book, Phoebe eats clam fritters. She is very ill and thinks that she might die but does not. She has what might be called surrealistic dreams, her mind flying over New England before crashing into a door, opening it and crashing against the undulating walls of the Earth’s aorta. She does survive but is surreptitiously photographed. We see this photo and other later photos, shown as if taken by a nineteenth century Talbot camera, a camera which allows multiple prints to be made. Some of the photos taken by this camera look as though ectoplasm is escaping from the subject. All of this enhanced Phoebe’s reputation.

Her reputation is based on spiritualism. She becomes a spiritualist and holds seances. We may mock spiritualism but as with Hilary Mantel in her Beyond Black, Taborska treats it very seriously, not necessarily because she believes in it but more particularly because spiritualism is essentially a women’s profession and, indeed, recognised as such. While Phoebe does not need the money and can therefore limit herself to small, more intimate seances, for many women it became their livelihood and they accepted what they were offered – public trances or seances many miles away from their home. It was also seen as a path to social advancement for them. It was the daily bread of thousands of women whose vocation of “medium” found its way into the official list of American professions and It’s no accident that the birth of Spiritualism coincided with the publication of the Declaration of Sentiments, modelled on the Declaration of Independence and recognizing women’s citizenship rights for the first time. . However a few ill-disposed doctors claimed that Spiritualism was no more than a safety valve for madness and old-maidenhood.

We learn a lot about the seances and that is fascinating, even if we might be sceptical. We get strange images of the participants, heads bowed and showing up in the subdued oil lamp light as a row of guillotined heads. We get Talbot photos of various phenomena including but certainly not limited to the release of ectoplasm. Many of these photos are decidedly surrealistic.

We learn that there were fakes – some women faked trances the way they faked orgasms, Taborska comments. We learn that the spirits do not like high-pitched voices. We learn about what happens in Phoebe’s seances, including the appearance of Houdini, a nose and a complete Egyptian panorama (with participants finding sand afterwards). Furniture and other items are moved by the spirits.Leonora de la Cruz, allegedly the heroine of a justly forgotten eighteenth-century French novel of unknown provenance, but, in fact, the heroine of Taborska’s own work puts in an appearance.

There are problems. There are of course such as sceptics but other problems include her being affected by the full moon and her voice killing birds.

We learn a lot more about what happens at seances and the social ramifications of spiritualism in New England . However we also learn about the town of Providence and how Phoebe had been influenced by the town while the town had been influenced by her and other spiritualists. It seems that Providence is the centre of spiritualism but not only are there more spiritualists in Providence than elsewhere, there are also more spirits. The citizens of Providence associate the presence of phantoms with the presence of women. Male spirits rarely interfere in the affairs of the living.

The author wonders why Phoebe’s life had remain hidden up to now though many female inhabitants think that Phoebe has been reborn in them.

Taborska treats spiritualism and Phoebe and what she does and what happens to her, particularity in seances, with deadly seriousness. While she accepts that there are sceptics, she does not condemn or mock these sceptics but casts them aside as a minor irritant.

For us, who may well be sceptical, Taborska’s treatment of the subject as a feminist issue and her overall treatment of the subject with seriousness, while mentioning both in the text and showing in the photos some of what we may consider the outlandish aspects of spiritualism (flying objects, the dead speaking) make this both a thoroughly worthwhile book and a very enjoyable read.

Publishing history

First published in 2013 by Fundacja Terytoria Książki
First English translation in 2024 by Twisted Spoon Press
Translated by Ursula Phillips