The Devil Kissed Her

Kathy Watson argues ably and nimbly that we should not regard Mary Lamb's madness as an occasional thing that visited her and left no traces, leaving the essential Mary Lamb behind. No, it was part and parcel of her personality, and can be seen in her writing as well. Watson discovers that outside of the famous TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE which she wrote with her brother Charles (splitting down the corpus of Shakespeare by ignoring the histories, writing up the comedies, and leaving the tragedies to Charles), Mary Lamb wrote other books as well, which she makes sound perfectly fascinating. I would love to read the "Mrs. Leicester" book and hope that Tarcher, which published this fine biography, will print a companion book of Mary Lamb's collected writing. She hints also that Mary was drawn to many men, including the romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was so sexy that she just couldn't help herself when he was around. Charles eventually had to ask Coleridge not to come around because a visit from him would find Mary going a little crazy. Watson brings us into the early 19th century world of the madhouse, which is a pretty creepy place. Women with private means like Mary Lamb had their own rooms and own attendants, but still they must have seen some dreadful sights, making their lives very different from other women of their class who were in general protected from the seamy. You can never forget however, that Mary killed her own mother with a knife, a crime so rare that people hardly ever run into it, even judges with long histories of criminal cases, even hardened homicide cops. Why did she do it? Watson provides a limited answer. In my mind Mary Lamb's psychology was similar to Lizzie Borden's, except she was perhaps more lovable and had more of a humorous nature. But both were brooders and both nurtured an unassimilable hatred toward the patriarchal structure of the family.