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Noémi Kiss-Deáki: Mary and the Rabbit Dream
This the story of Mary Toft who was a historical character. She lived in Godalming, Surrey in the early eighteenth century. We learn early on that Mary was very poor, but lived not far from people who were very rich . Mary is illiterate. She married young and is now pregnant for the fifth time, though she has lost three babies. This has had a devastating effect on her but has pleased her mother-in-law, Ann, with whom she and her husband, Joshua, live as it it means that there will not be an extra mouth to feed. Joshua works as an unskilled clothworker, a job that it is likely to disappear soon, as sheep pastures disappear. We first meet Mary and her sister-in-law Elizabeth, weeding hop fields for a penny a day.
The economics of the area are changing. As well as cloth working, various agricultural areas and professions are also disappearing as rabbit-breeding takes their place. The rich have the rabbits, forbidden to the poor. For the rich they provide food, comfort, warmth. The rabbits occasionally escape but woe betide any poor person who tries to capture one. The penalties are heavy as they are for stealing fish from the ponds of the rich, as Joshua has discovered.
Ann rules the roost and she has a plan. Men are stupid. They are so stupid they will believe this and if you play your part well you might even become rich. This happens after Mary has had her latest miscarriage. Ann has a plan to take advantage of the fact that Mary’s cervix is open. She inserts various rabbit parts into Mary’s vagina, which her body expels very promptly. A local rich lady witnesses the next event and then a well-to-do doctor, Dr Howard from nearby Guildford, also sees a rabbit birth. They need Howard, a man of some standing, so that people will take notice of what is going on and recognise that Mary is giving birth to rabbits.
Howard is impressed and writes to eminent people in London about what is happening but they ignore them. Howard decided to move Mary to his house in Guildford, which Mary agrees to in order to get away from her mother-in-law and the other women , of whom she is frightened and also because, not surprisingly, she is in considerable pain from the various animal parts inserted into her. She is accompanied by her sister-in-law Elizabeth, who acts as go-between with Joshua providing the various animal parts. By this time Howard is party to the conspiracy.
Howard’s letter are having some effect. The first to arrive is a St André, a Swiss former dancing master turned doctor who once treated the King. He is impressed and convinced. Cyriacus Ahlers, a German doctor has been asked by the King to investigate. He is less impressed and less convinced. Both men see themselves as outsiders and want to make their mark. Ahlers is not convinced because, while he sees Mary give birth to a rabbit, he cannot understand why the rabbit is skinned. Howard’s explanation is not convincing.
Meanwhile poor Mary is suffering. She has yet to see a penny of the promised riches and she is in constant pain. She is treated as if she was a piece of meat.The distinguished male midwife Sir Richard Manningham is the next emissary from the King. Kiss-Deáki insists on incorrectly calling him Sir Manningham. She justifies (not very convincingly) this in the afterword. He is immediately aware that she is faking it and urges her to confess. She insists that it is all true. Manningham only got involved to show that it was a fraud and to show the power of science.
Mary is again moved, this time to a bagnio in Leicester Square in London, again accompanied by Elizabeth but also by her husband , Joshua. Armies of doctors and others turn up and poor Mary is poked and prodded and examined. Joshua is horrified by what is happening to his wife and turns to drink. He will eventually walk back to Godalming (around thirty-five miles).
Elizabeth remains, threatening Mary and causing her much pain as does Manningham . She tells Manningham that his hands have brought her more pain than all the other hands together. I thought you were a doctor but you are the opposite. When he asks what is the opposite of a doctor she says an executioner.
Things are going to come to a head. Back in Godalming, Baron. Onslow , worried about the reputation of Godalming carries out his own investigation. Mary is pushed harder to confess and threatened with imprisonment and, by Manningham, with vivisection.
Kiss-Deáki makes it very clear that the real victim in all of this is Mary Toft. She is subject to so much abuse, pain, threats and, without a doubt, torture. The band of women led by her mother-in-law are, of course, to blame to a great extent, not least because Mary is most frightened of them but the eminent doctors who treat her as a piece of meat and cause her great pain are clearly, in Kiss-Deáki’s view, the real guilty parties. The three main ones – St André, Ahlers and Manningam, all suffer a loss of reputation. They are satirised in cartoons such as this one. Kiss-Deáki has been warning us throughout the book that their reputations will suffer.
Most authors write in paragraphs,with obvious exceptions for dialogue and occasional emphasis. Kiss-Deáki tends to write in s sentences , often quite laconic sentences . Of course she does have paragraphs but there are a lot of single sentences. We tend to talk in sentences rather than paragraphs (certain politicians excepted) and her sentence approach gives the impression that she is telling the story orally which works well with this book. She is also very happy to throw in judgements about what will happen to the characters well in advance , which reinforces this oral telling approach.
Though this story is known, as there has been a non-fiction book and a Wikipedia pge, linked above, I was not aware of it and I am sure most readers will not have been. It is an original and most interesting and different story, well written and shows that brutal male power and the cruel power of (usually male) rich people over women has a long history.
Publishing history
First published in 2024 by Galley Beggar Press