Our 103rd week of Lite Reads comes to a close as we finish our selection The Cure by Malinda Lo. There were questions as food for thought on social media as people had the chance to read it and think about it. Before I announce the next Lite Reads selection (November 30), I will be sharing my own thoughts here. Spoilers ahead for those who have not read the story yet.
The Cure by Malinda Lo is a short story published by Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts in 2015. Inspired by the historical quote that opens it, the story tells of an emotional young woman who is diagnosed with hysteria after having “fits” and sees it as a way to escape an impending marriage. She goes through extreme treatments for her hysteria, treatments that wouldn’t have been uncommon during the late nineteenth century. While living in a sanitarium and receiving full time treatments, she meets another woman that the sanitarium staff don’t seem to notice, and during nightly visits from this mysterious woman it is revealed that she is a vampire. As she becomes more erratic as a hysteria patient, she becomes more sure of herself, and the vampiric woman turns her and they flee the sanitarium together. The main character feels complete freedom with her vampire lover, no longer having to worry about hysteria or forced marriages or confinement.
The Cure opens on a quote from 19th century physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, which reads “A hysterical girl is a vampire who sucks the blood of the healthy people about her.” This quote on hysteria, a junk diagnosis to describe just about anything wrong with a woman in the 19th century, was a major inspiration for this story. I personally have a huge soft spot for historical fiction that takes small details like this and spins a completely fictional narrative out of them, so this was right up my alley. While the narrative of a woman being diagnosed with hysteria and the horrible “treatments” she endured in the name of a cure are based in real hysteria diagnoses and treatments, Lo took the story further, introducing vampires to the tale in a wholly unique way. In The Cure, hysterical girls are vampires, or can become them, and that vampirism is what gives them a sense of power and freedom that the real history of the world wouldn’t allow. I thought this was an interesting way to spin history into fantasy.
At its core, The Cure is a purely feminist narrative that reclaims history and vampirism in refreshing ways. It allows us to explore the ways in which history and vampire mythos haven’t exactly been on the side of women and turn that completely on its head. While a diagnosis of hysteria was historically a way to oppress women, the main character here is clear that her emotional state is because she doesn’t want to marry the man her family is chosen, and is even clearer that she sees her hysteria diagnosis as a way to explicitly avoid that. When the treatments, based on the real treatments of hysteria patients, become too much to handle, vampirism is what allows her freedom. I actually thought that this story felt like a modern take on The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (which we read as a Lite Reads selection early on: selection link here and review link here) and Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The Yellow Wallpaper is in itself a classic feminist short story, but The Cure takes those same themes and updates them. Carmilla is an early vampire story (pre-dating Dracula) featuring predatory lesbian vampires, and while some have reclaimed the narrative, it isn’t exactly feminist or supportive of lesbians or sapphics in general. The Cure takes those same ideas and spins it so that the vampiress is a hero to the main character, their relationship helping to spare her more of her archaic medical treatments. It felt like it was paying homage to classic literature while giving it a fresher edge for modern readers.
I think part of why I enjoyed The Cure so much is that it managed to touch on a lot of weirdly specific things I either have a soft spot for or an interest in. I find the history of hysteria diagnoses and treatments incredibly interesting (in a grim and terrible sort of way), so it was hard for me not to be interested specifically in how it dealt with that. Lo’s descriptions match historical descriptions of “fits” that hysteria patients had, the breadth of experience the actual women diagnosed with it had (despite its fairly narrow focus), and the treatments we know hysteria patients faced in the late 19th century. The inclusion of dietary alterations, isolation, the water cure, and electroshock therapy made the story seem like something that maybe could have happened if not for the vampires, especially since the main character was there because she was emotional over not wanting to marry a man.
Overall, The Cure by Malinda Lo was a truly delightful story to read, and honestly, it was exactly to my taste. Malinda Lo’s books have been on my to read list for a while, but I haven’t actually gotten around to any of them, and reading this story put her firmly back on my radar since the style is just my type.
I hope everyone who participated by reading the story and following along on social media enjoyed reading this short story. If you have more thoughts to add, please feel free to comment on this post, or anywhere on The Feminist Bibliothecary’s social media. Our 104th week begins shortly, November 30, with a brand new short story selection!
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