Evie Wyld’s “The Bass Rock”: The Angels in the House Write Back
By: Denisa Vitova
Tags: Feminism, Books, Women, Abuse, Gender Equality

“They were angry. They are men and I am a girl.”[2]

A modern gothic, The Bass Rock is part ghost story, part mystery, part family drama. It touches on religion and the hypocrisy of the church, infidelity, mental illness, loss, and war. The main topic, however, is something prevalent to women. Even the somewhat marginalised ghost — a murdered girl — does not represent an individual tragedy; rather it is a collective ghost of all women killed and tortured by their men.

“There was a feeling in the drawing room there was more than just the girl, like the hammering of rain on the windows had summoned a host of others.”[3]

The narrative focuses on three female protagonists: Sarah in the eighteenth century, Ruth in the aftermath of World War II, and Viviane in the present. What connects them is not only an uncanny house standing alone somewhere on the Scottish shoreline — the epitome of a domestic sphere as an isolated shelter amidst the raging winds of the masculine world — but also the various ways in which women have been abused by men across centuries. And not just by any men — the abusers often come from the inside, living with their victims and killing them between those four walls that were paradoxically supposed to be the female domestic space, a safe space. It is an illusion sustained by patriarchy that the domestic sphere belongs to a woman, when even there, the master of the house is a man.

“I imagine a wolfman running alongside the car. I used to do this on the drive to Scotland when I was a kid. When you look into the scrub at the side of the road, when you peer into the dark, it’s easy to see them, waiting to race you, willing you to break down.”[4]

In Western cultures, “wolfman”, “werewolf”, “wolf”, or “dog” are often associated with the masculine. The dog is the man’s best friend, not woman’s. Dogs accompany the king’s party during a forest hunt, while the queen embroiders inside the palace walls. The dog mounts a bitch, not a “female dog”.

That’s why the recurring metaphor of the wolfman lurking outside of a protagonist’s “safe space” is so important in The Bass Rock. Wyld doesn’t just play with the threat of the wolf entering the domestic space — the wolf is already inside, in the heroines’ heads, in their beds. He finds a way to control them, intimidate them: emotionally, physically, sexually.

“These things happened in every girl’s life at some point, of course — with Ruth it has been the curate, and he had only wrestled a fondle and a wet mouth out of her.”[5]

Wyld’s characters have been handed all the bad cards — from verbal abuse to gaslighting to domestic violence to rape — but they are not playing victims. What makes the story so striking is that at many times the women seem to accept the injustices inflicted upon them. No, that’s not right, I hope you are screaming now, and you are right, it is not right, but it is what makes the novel so chillingly believable. After all, this is what society has long been telling women to do: be patient, unselfish, always smiling. Don’t ever complain. Men don’t like shrews; they want to tame them.

“She wanted to do more than slap herself, she wished she had fallen harder on the tiles, and it ran through her suddenly that she would feel a great satisfaction if she slammed her head into the fence post.”[6]

As the protagonists become increasingly repressed by men, the means of control turning more violent, their façade as the angels in the house threatens to crumble. They rebel, often by self-destruction — through alcohol, sleep deprivation, neglect of both body and mind. This does prevent any men to claim them — after all, you cannot control someone who’s beyond self-control — but the cost is high. The Bass Rock, in other words, illustrates how the patriarchal order can destroy a woman.

“And if they kiss us afterwards on the mouth it is only to see how they taste.”[7]

While some extreme domestic violence, including gory murders, takes place in the narrative, the most chilling moments of abuse are — perhaps paradoxically — the “everyday” ones.

In particular, the two scenes where female protagonists are being tickled against their will by men whom they trust will stay with you. The simplicity of that “everyday” act is what makes it so uncanny — you can practically feel the character’s terror and helplessness because it’s more than probable that at some point it used to be your own.

“‘Get off me,’ but he keeps going, digging at my ribs, that awful feeling coming on me, the loss of breath, the loss of control, and I hit him hard in a panic, make contact with his ear, and he grabs my wrists and holds me down and the panic worsens.”[8]

Using something as everyday as tickling to dominate women? Now that really makes you think about current power dynamics, sexism, and personal boundaries.

“Men do these things and then they tick on with their lives as though it’s all part and parcel.”[9]

Despite the heavy themes of rape, murder, and abuse, Wyld isn’t a defeatist. She believes that there is a progression towards gender equality, and this belief is mirrored in the story development: while the protagonist Sarah of the eighteenth century ends up murdered by a jealous man, and Ruth slowly kills herself with alcohol, the contemporary heroine Viviane walks out of the narrative triumphant. She manages to save both herself and her sister from abusive relationships and, in the very last scene, we do not say goodbye to Viviane inside the gothic house that oppressed us throughout the novel with its claustrophobic atmosphere. Instead, Viviane is released from the domestic sphere, outside in the “masculine” wilderness, facing the wind and the sea.

“I feel I am looking up into space or into a deep high-ceilinged crevasse.”[10]

Overall, The Bass Rock has an optimistic message: the story progression over the centuries until the present day gives us hope that things might change for the better. Not how men treat women, perhaps, but what we as women will accept. And if there are more novels like “The Bass Rock”, our voices will be heard.