Alienist Books History

The Education of Sara Howard – Part Two

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View Part One, Part Two, and Part Three of the Education of Sara Howard series.

Late last month, we began an examination of Sara Howard’s historical context in an effort to understand the kind of upbringing, education, and career choices a young woman born in a similar decade and socioeconomic group to Sara would have had available to her in the late 19th century. I termed this woman a “hypothetical” Sara, and today’s post will build upon on last month’s to discuss the pre-college and college educational opportunities our hypothetical Sara would have had during the 1870s and 1880s in New York.

The Pre-College Years

The Alienist, 90-1:

“… My father was an expert marksman. My mother, however, was an invalid, and I had no siblings. I therefore became my father’s hunting and trap-shooting partner.” All of which was perfectly true. Stephen Hamilton Howard had lived the life of a true country squire on his estate near Rhinebeck, and had trained his only child to ride, shoot, gamble, and drink with any Hudson Valley gentleman – which meant that Sara could do all those things well, and in volume.

As described in Part One, our hypothetical Sara was an only child born to an upper-class New York family in the mid-to-late-1860s. Given her father’s ownership of a Hudson Valley estate as well as a city home on Gramercy Park, it seems reasonable to assume that he would have shared some of the values common among old New York gentility such as the importance of “good looks, health, grace, and cleverness” in women. However, as the quote above describes, this particular father seemed to be determined to provide his only daughter with the same advantages he would have offered a son. Although this would have resulted in our hypothetical Sara receiving an education superior to that received by many girls during the same period who were frequently educated in “practical” subjects at home for most of their youth, statistically Sara’s was not an unusual upbringing for girls raised by educated parents in middle- and upper-class families in the Northeast—provided, of course, that their daughters were only children or had few brothers. Even though most of these parents still ultimately desired their daughter enter the respectable sphere of domesticity once she reached her early-to-mid-20s, a good education during her formative years reflected the family’s belief in the value of self-improvement and personal advancement (also see Part One). | Continue reading →

The Education of Sara Howard – Part One

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View Part One, Part Two, and Part Three of the Education of Sara Howard series.

Beyond the enigmatic Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, the character that appears to intrigue readers of the Alienist books the most is the brave, independent, and feisty police secretary turned private investigator, Miss Sara Howard. Although we have yet to learn Sara’s complete background story, I thought it might be interesting to devote a blog series to examining her character more thoroughly based on the information we have been provided with thus far. Was the derringer-toting Sara Howard’s unique brand of feminism appropriate for the time period in which the books are set? What educational and career opportunities would a real Sara Howard have had during the late 19th century?

As we currently lack adequate detail about Sara’s background to overview her particular education and career choices as intended in the books, the present discussion will focus instead on what I am terming a “hypothetical” Sara. Specifically, throughout this blog series I will be examining the kind of upbringing, education, and career choices a young woman born in a similar decade and socioeconomic group to Sara would have had available to her in the late 19th century. Today’s post in the series will focus on our hypothetical Sara’s historical context, particularly the notion of the “woman’s sphere”, an ideology that pervaded upper- and middle-class American culture throughout the 19th century.

The Woman’s Sphere in 19th Century America

The Alienist, Chapter 5:

Back in the early seventies, when I was in my teens, [Sara’s] family moved into a house near ours on Gramercy Park, and I’d subsequently watched her spend her single-digit years turning that decorous neighborhood into her private rumpus room.

womans_sphereAs indicated by John Moore’s quote above, in order to fit the timeline put forward in the Alienist books, our hypothetical Sara Howard would have been born in approximately the mid- to late-1860s. This period immediately following the Civil War was a time of great upheaval for women’s roles in American society. During the latter half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, the idea that men and women should rightly function in two separate “spheres” was a core tenant of American thinking. Although women had been considered inherently inferior to men for centuries leading up to this point, with women holding no legal rights to property or legal standing in society, the agricultural nature of early America had made labor equality within most households a necessity. Despite holding subservient positions in the household, wives and daughters were considered an integral part of family farming and cottage industry businesses. They frequently learned crafts from husbands and fathers, and were often capable of carrying on alone if necessity required. However, societal changes resulting from the rise of the Industrial Revolution prompted a dramatic shift in the American home that changed women’s roles dramatically in the latter half of the 18th century.

Instead of households or small shops producing custom goods for small self-sustaining agricultural communities, mass production of goods through factories changed living and working conditions throughout the country. Money was now the primary means of obtaining basic commodities, and it became increasingly important for men in the household to take on the role of “bread winner” by working outside the home in the newly established commercial world to earn money for the family’s survival. With the rise of this new capitalism, a woman’s role in her household had evolved from equal contributor in the family business to that of a homemaker, and her most important responsibilities had been reduced to those requiring the “feminine” traits of patience, nurturing, and altruism: the raising of children and the care of her husband. The male sphere of the commercial world outside the home, on the other hand, was viewed as an aggressive, competitive domain that required men to act in less than virtuous ways in order to get ahead, and consequently the idealisation of women — or, more specifically, of wives and mothers — in writings of the day was prevalent. The image we have today of the docile, submissive, and loving Victorian wife who soothed her husband’s cares in the evening and instilled her children with good Christian moral values throughout the day originates from this period. | Continue reading →

The Line Between Fact and Fiction in the Alienist Books

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It didn’t surprise me to learn that Caleb Carr’s agent and editor had believed him when he originally pitched the story of The Alienist as non-fiction (see the afterword to The Alienist’s 2006 trade paperback edition for the complete–and amusing–tale of intrigue and deception). Even though I had known the novel was fictional when I first read it, many of the background details in the story had such a feeling of authenticity to them that I distinctly remember closing the book upon finishing it and wondering just how much of what I’d read might really have happened. Certainly, I had known that Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, his principal investigative colleagues, and the murderer had been fictional, just as I had known the major historical figures featured in the book were real; but there were minor characters mentioned or included throughout the story who had felt real, but who I knew could have been just as fictional as the principal investigators, developed to meet the needs of the plot.

Some of the characters who intrigued me the most were the other criminals Dr. Kreizler assessed throughout the novel in order to determine whether they could be connected to the case. Indeed, the first of these individuals provided us with our introduction to the Doctor and his methods in Chapter 4. After speaking to our narrator, John Schuyler Moore, on the telephone–and deducing in true Sherlock Holmesian style that Moore was still in his nightclothes–the Doctor requested his friend read an article in The New York Times (while dressing) about a certain Henry Wolff who had shot a five year old girl in the head. The Doctor explained that he was to conduct the psychiatric assessment of Wolff later that morning at Bellevue Hospital’s Insane Pavilion, and he wanted Moore to accompany him on the chance that it would prove relevant to the case.

nyt-markowitzThe original article Dr. Kreizler was referring to can indeed be found in the archives of The New York Times, with a date appropriate for the timeline of the novel (March of 1896). “HE SHOT A CHILD IN THE HEAD”, the headline reads, and the article goes on to state that the aforementioned Henry Wolff had shot Louisa Rudesheimer, the five year old daughter of Wolff’s neighbour, Conrad Rudesheimer, while Louisa had been sitting on her father’s lap. The two men, along with an additional third man, had been drinking in the tenement rooms where Rudesheimer and his daughter resided on East Tenth Street. The article indicates that Wolff had used inappropriate language in front of the girl that offended the father and resulted in a quarrel. Although peace was restored temporarily, the men continued drinking and Wolff drew a revolver, firing three shots into the air before targeting the five year old girl.

We can find another such example in Chapter 12, although in this instance the case appears to have been adapted slightly for the purposes of the novel. Specifically, Harris Markowitz of No. 75 Forsyth Street had been accused in the novel of murdering his grandchildren by poisoning their milk prior to gassing them while they slept. Even though the investigative team were already confident by this stage that the serial killer they were hunting was not a poisoner, they felt it might be useful to develop a “negative image” of the killer by looking into such cases; that is, they hoped that by being able to identify more clearly who their killer was not, a clearer picture would emerge of who their killer was. Once again, an article in The New York Times with a date that matches the novel’s timeline can be found that details a highly similar case; however, in the Times’s version of the story, Markowitz had not succeeded in killing the children and had only been accused of attempted murder.

So, if you’ve ever wondered whether some of the background detail in The Alienist or The Angel of Darkness have their origins in fact or are completely fictitious, it’s worth taking the time to look it up through whatever means you have available to you. Over the years that I’ve spent running this website, I can attest that doing so can provide an interesting insight into both the history of the period and the creative process involved in writing the books.