Georgina Clarke Delves into the Dark in The Dazzle of the Light

BY TRISH MACENULTY

Before Georgina Clarke wrote The Dazzle of the Light (Verve Books, June 2023), she had written two novels as part of the Lizzie Hardwicke series. In those books, her protagonist is a crime solver. In her new stand-alone novel, the protagonist, Ruby Mills, a member of the notorious real-life Forty Thieves gang, is the one committing the crimes.

“I came across the Forty Thieves and they jolted my imagination into life – just as the first Covid lockdown began,” Clarke said. “I rather enjoyed wandering the streets of London in 1920 (in my imagination) when I couldn’t go anywhere.”

Ruby Mills looks like a movie star and has the acting chops to go with her beauty. Her “job” as a member of the Forty Thieves is to shoplift or hoist expensive items from stores, and she’s a pro.

Clarke said the appeal of writing about women like Ruby lies in their ingenuity and “the sense that they are using their brains to scrap for survival.” Even though the women are criminals, they are also survivors.

While it can be challenging to explore the world of protagonists who lead lives readers might not find sympathetic, Clarke said it’s important for the writer not to offer judgment.

“Treat them on their own terms,” she said. “Human beings are not always nice or sympathetic – although there are usually reasons for how and why people become the adults they become. Don’t try to make excuses for their motivations or behaviour, but just tell their stories. Let the reader be the judge.”

Members of criminal organizations rarely leave diaries and their lives are not usually recorded by contemporaries except in terms of their criminal activities, so research for the book was “a bit of a nightmare” according to Clarke.

“There were a couple of books written about these women, and I’d recommend Brian McDonald’s Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants for some insight into the criminal activities, particularly,” she said.

But a lot of her research was tangential.

“I read about department stores, life in the Southwark slums, and women’s prisons, and I read some newspaper reports of the thieves’ court appearances, and books about police, and books about the male gang members (which mention the women in passing). Sometimes (often) historical research is about gathering up bits and pieces and getting a ‘feel’ for the context.”

Clarke deliberately set the story in 1920, as London was still struggling from the after-effects of the Great War but before the later and more prosperous 1920s.

“I wanted that shabby, grey, broken feel to the landscape. I wanted to write about the exhaustion of four years of war in order to allow the sparkling, colourful energy of the story to come more sharply into focus,” she said.

“Men returned from war altered in so many ways – missing limbs, or comrades, or memories. Women welcomed them back, but they had to give up the new-found freedoms of work beyond the home. At the same time, women were cautiously becoming involved in political life and the world was opening up to those with money and education.”

One of those women cautiously involved in public life is Harriet Littlemore, the other point-of-view character in the book. Harriet comes from a “good” family and, through her father’s connections, gets a job writing for a newspaper. But Harriet, who has always had everything handed to her, is a bit naive.

“She reminds me of some of the girls I encountered at Oxford when I was at university – who would sail through life without needing to worry because they had wealthy parents and a trust fund,” Clarke said.

“Harriet thinks that she’s talented, but doesn’t recognize that she is privileged, and that she has her job because of her father’s connections. She doesn’t put in the hours at the office, but fits her work around her life, and yet she believes that she can offer Ruby a helping hand.”

One of the intriguing elements in the book is the political hierarchy of the Forty Thieves. There’s a ruthless queen, of course, as well as her enemies and minions. Women like Ruby are often treated like pawns, a fate that cunning Ruby does everything to avoid. Clarke said the hierarchy represents the “violent and filthy undercarriage” of society both then and now that we would rather ignore.

“It’s like Dorian Gray’s picture in the attic – we know it’s there, but choose not to look at it,” she said.

Through her work at the newspaper, Harriet reflects the role of the press in 1920, specifically regarding the criminals who worked the streets of London.

author Georgina Clarke

“From what I’ve read, media of the past is remarkably similar to modern media – obsessed with crime and the need to clamp down on it, yet also enthralled by criminals with flair (like the Forty Thieves) and always ready to sensationalise,” Clarke said. “Court reporters, for example, always described in detail what the women were wearing. I find that really interesting.”

Harriet is also a prime example of the stifling world of upper-class women.

“You can see it in Harriet’s mother, I think. Isabel is held together by a combination of social requirement and personal anxiety. She passes this on to Harriet. Everything in their home is heavy and constraining,” Clark said.

“I imagined it as being very Edwardian – thick curtains and oppressive. Harriet knows that the world is changing – she’s read about the suffragettes, for example – but for her, as for most women, she’s caged in by what’s expected of her.”

Clarke was influenced by events of the present when writing about the corruption of the past, for it isn’t only the so-called criminals who violate the public trust in her book.

“I wrote the book at the time when the public in the UK was learning of corruption among upper-class politicians during the Covid restrictions: rule-breaking parties, and lucrative contracts being given to friends,” she said.

“One rule for us and another for them. I think I was working out some of my present-day fury.”

About the contributor: Trish MacEnulty is the author of the Delafield & Malloy Investigation Series, set in Manhattan in the 1910s. Her historical YA novel, Cinnamon Girl, is forthcoming in the Summer of 2023 from Livingston Press.