The Girl Behind the Gates by Brenda Davies
Genre: Historical fiction, Contemporary fiction, Women's fiction, True stories
Read: 27th December 2021
Published: 23rd July 2020
★★★★★ 5 stars
DESCRIPTION:
1939. Seventeen-year-old Nora Jennings has spent her life secure in the certainty of a bright, happy future - until one night of passion has more catastrophic consequences than she ever could have anticipated. Labelled a moral defective and sectioned under the Mental Deficiency Act, she is forced to endure years of unspeakable cruelty at the hands of those who are supposed to care for her.
1981. When psychiatrist Janet Humphreys comes across Nora, heavily institutionalised and still living in the hospital more than forty years after her incarceration, she knows that she must be the one to help Nora rediscover what it is to live. But as she works to help Nora overcome her past, Janet realises she must finally face her own.
Based on a true story, The Girl Behind the Gates is perfect for fans of The Girl in the Letter and Philomena.
MY REVIEW:
Wow! There are no words to describe how this book made me feel. Well, there are...but where to start? THE GIRL BEHIND THE GATES is compelling, haunting and chilling in the first half while poignant, raw and redeeming in the second half. Like the two halves, it is divided into two parts that each tell a different story of the same journey. It is heartbreaking and harrowing but so completely touching by its end.
I have long been familiar with the archaic concept of committing young women who find themselves pregnant out of wedlock to mental asylums and while in today's society we cannot comprehend such treatment, it was once a common occurrence. One has to remember that psychiatry was a relatively unknown field and the treatments given were pretty much all they knew, however that was no excuse for some of the treatment and abuse dealt out to patients for no reason whatsoever but to exert a sense of power. This story is a fictional account based on actual events of an idealistic and privileged young girl who finds herself in the most harrowing of circumstances through which most of us could probably never survive.
1939: Seventeen year old Nora Jennings is in love. She also has a secret. Finding herself pregnant by her cousin Robert, Nora tries to hide her growing stomach from her strict father who thinks nothing of beating her into submission and obedience. Upon discovering her condition, her parents call upon the local priest and family GP who, after a humiliating examination to ascertain the pregnancy, then drag her from the house, her parents giving her no backward glance, and is taken to Hillingsworth hospital known as the local mental asylum where she is sectioned under the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913.
Diagnosed as morally defective, Nora is then subjected to the harsh realities behind the walls which had until then seemed a surreal fantasy. She receives no visitors but for the family housekeeper, Mrs Lampeter, who doted on Nora like a mother and whom Nora loves like a mother. When her baby is born, as Nora is deemed morally defective any offspring she produces is regarded as such also, and so the cruel and nasty Sister Cummings leaves the little girl naked to die in the sluice room. Nora never even got to hold her baby or even know of its sex.
As the years progress, Nora makes a sort of peace with herself and is comforted by the thought that her baby was adopted and grew up feeling loved. But a shocking revelation brought the horrible truth crashing down sending Nora into a downward spiral from which she intended never to recover. That is, until a kind and caring doctor on her ward made it his mission to look out for her and upon learning of her catatonic state, attempted to bring her back from the brink. And yet despite this, the cruelties and harsh treatments doled out to the patients of Hillingsworth, Nora continued to suffer more indignities as every basic human right that we all take for granted was taken away from her bit by bit.
1981: Although she has the ability to fix others' fractured lives, psychiatrist Janet Humphreys' own personal life is in disarray. She works long hours, is never home and even when she is she is absent, leaving her husband feeling unloved and unwanted. In an act of desperation, he leaves her and despite this, Janet soldiers on. She has to. She has patients who depend on her. And one of them is Nora Jennings who, after over forty years at Hillingsworth, is completely institutionalised. Although life became easier in the later years when Sister Cummings was dismissed, Nora simply found it is easier to succumb to whatever was asked of her.
When Janet comes across Nora's case file, she is intrigued. She meets Nora in the hospital's "back ward" of long forgotten patients who have been there for decades. At first Nora is silent, apprehensive and untrusting. After all, the only people she had any form of contact with were cruel and abused their authority, aside from a handful of nurses who were at least kind. And Dr Stilworth who always stood up for her and helped her when all others took away any liberties she may have had. But then he retired.
Now there is this new doctor...and Nora is unsure whether she can trust her. Because anyone she places her trust in usually leaves her in the end. Joe did, Patty did, Dr Stilworth, even her parents...and Robert. Can she trust this Dr Janet? Or will she betray her too?
THE GIRL BEHIND THE GATES is a harrowing tale of one woman's journey cruelly snatched from her privileged life and thrown into a life of abuse and torture at the hands of those who are meant to be caring for her. Deemed morally defective because she fell pregnant at 17 and was unmarried...as if no one else was to blame for the consequence of the act that creates a baby. Not only that, but any offspring she produces would therefore be also considered morally defective by the defective gene passed down from her mother. What rot! It angered me to read such rubbish but angered me even more that this was a fact that people actually believed. And sadly, as psychiatry was a relatively unknown field at the time, doctors simply had to go with what they knew...and this is what they knew. It was all the tools they had at the time. But that's not the only angering part of this story. It's the harsh treatment of patients, or inmates as they were often referred to like they were prisoners...and they were in a sense, because they could never escape the walls that bound them there. As if beating a patient and calling her a whore who deserved everything she got wasn't bad enough, but the wet wraps they were subjected to...for simply grieving a loss! It's barbaric. Wet wraps are a form of torture and it was heartbreaking to read that such treatment existed...and for what purpose?
Four decades of abuse, torture, humiliation and loss. Four decades of isolation, grief and adversity. Four decades of such harsh treatment it's not surprising Nora was well and truly institutionalised. But when Janet enters the story in 1981, she brings with her hope and in the journey that follows highlights Nora's resilience, her stoic endurance and her survival against all odds.
THE GIRL BEHIND THE GATES is a heartbreaking read that is harrowing and chilling at times but shines a ray of hope on even the harshest of circumstances. I doubt I could have lived through and survived all that Nora had done and yet she did...and though the scars remained, her ability to rise above her trauma is inspiring.
Horrifying, shocking and compelling, THE GIRL BEHIND THE GATES is a heartbreaking yet beautiful story with which one will need tissues. And plenty of them. I could not stop the tears from falling as I read of Nora's harrowing treatment and the rejection of her basic human rights. What also angered me was that the country was at war with Germany over the Hitler's discardment of human rights and yet here they were stripping an innocent woman of the same. It defied logic. And another thing that annoyed me was that Robert could have intervened due to his authority and yet he didn't. Nora had no one. She was stripped of everything she had and was left to rot in Hillingsworth until Janet reached out and allowed her to see her true worth.
While Janet's personal life was an aside to the main story, I felt it paled in significance to Nora's journey and, while others failed to see whether it played a part or not, for me it showed that not only are psychiatrists human but the point that the author made at the beginning in her "Author's Note" was that Nora taught her and inspired her a great deal as well. In my view, Janet was inspired by Nora and her strength to make peace with her own past and the issues that plagued her marriage. It was Nora who gave her that.
A very powerful story, THE GIRL BEHIND THE GATES is not one I will forget in a hurry. I loved it, I hated it and I was moved by it entirely. Thank you to Brenda Davies for telling Nora's story...a story that needed to be told because as is the case with history - its purpose is for us to learn from, to remember and to never let it happen again.
I would like to thank #BrendaDavies, #Netgalley and #HodderAndStoughton for an ARC of #TheGirlBehindTheGates in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
A lover of life and people, Brenda relishes challenge and adventure and believes that living all of our gifts simultaneously and loving doing so, is the epitome of life.
The Girl Behind the Gates is her first novel.
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