June 5, 2013

April 10, 2013

March 10, 2013

  • Emilie Autumn’s The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

    The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
    by Emilie Autumn

    Emilie Autumn’s insights about bipolar disorder and mental health care were extremely fascinating.

    The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls is a large, glossy coffee table book, and though it is kind of heavy its weight is overshadowed by its beauty. Inside, the pages are glossy and in full colour, complete with photos, drawings and writings by Emilie herself.

    The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls is a mind fuck blend of fiction and reality. The nonfictional portion consists of “hospital entries” written by Autumn, documenting her horrible stay in the mental health ward of a hospital. This book is clearly very personal the Emilie Autumn, it includes her Cutting Diary, Suicide Diary and Drug Diary. (MAY BE TRIGGERING) I admire the fact that she would share something so personal with her fans.

    The fictional portion follows her alter-ego, Emily, a poor Victorian violin-prodigy sent to a fancy girl’s music school to pursue her gift. What Emily doesn’t know is that upon “graduation” the girls are sold off to different masters, where they must live under torture and slavery. Emily’s master is awful and cruel, but with the help of her maid they both escape, and with their master hot on their trail, they decide it better to jump off the bridge in double suicide than to be captured and taken back.

    Emily wakes up on the cold ground behind a cathedral, with soaking wet corpses all around her, all dragged from the water. Left cold and alone, Emily ends up a beggar, wandering the streets with soaked clothes, and nowhere to go. She soon finds herself jailed for stealing bread, and this eventually leads her to the Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls.

    The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls is a large dingy hospital full of girls, rats and Mengele-like doctors. The inmates are forced to endure outdoor showers that consist of being blasted with ice water, and are subject to bleedings with leeches and life-threatening experiments that often lead to death. On top of this, they are often forced into sexual encounters at the profit of the Asylum.

    Emily grows weak as she watches the death cart remove bodies of dozens of girls nightly. She makes friends with a group of eccentric girls including the Captain and Veronica, and together they keep each other slightly happier. Emily also makes friends with the rats, who ensure she has paper to piece together her thoughts and send them to Emilie in the hospital. Together Emily, her friends and the rats decide they must take revenge on their detainers and take charge of the Asylum.

March 5, 2013