Fingersmith is a 2002 historical crime novel set in Victorian-era Britain by Sarah Waters.
Plot summary
Part one
Sue Trinder, an orphan raised in "a Fagin-like den of thieves" by her adoptive mother, Mrs Sucksby, is sent to help Richard "Gentleman" Rivers seduce a wealthy heiress. Posing as a maid, Sue is to gain the trust of the lady, Maud Lilly, and eventually persuade her to elope with Gentleman. Once they are married, Gentleman plans to commit Maud to a madhouse and claim her fortune for himself.
Sue travels to Briar, Maud's secluded home in the country, where she lives a sheltered life under the care of her uncle, Christopher Lilly. Like Sue, Maud was orphaned at birth; her mother died in a mental asylum, and she has never known her father. Her uncle uses her as a secretary to assist him as he supposedly compiles a dictionary, and keeps her to the house, working with him in the silence of his library.
Sue and Maud forge an unlikely friendship, which develops into a mutual physical attraction. After a time, Sue realises she has fallen in love with Maud, and begins to regret her involvement in Gentleman's plot. Deeply distressed, but feeling she has no choice, Sue persuades Maud to marry Gentleman, and the trio flee from Briar to a nearby church, where Maud and Gentleman are hastily married in a midnight ceremony.
Making a temporary home in a local cottage, and telling Maud they are simply waiting for their affairs to be brought to order in London, Gentleman and a reluctant Sue make arrangements for Maud to be committed to an asylum for the insane. Her health has already waned as a result of the shock of leaving her quiet life at Briar, to Gentleman's delight. After a week, he and Sue escort an oblivious Maud to the asylum in a closed carriage. However, the doctors apprehend Sue on arrival, and from the cold reactions of Gentleman and the seemingly innocent Maud, Sue guesses that it is she who has been conned.
Part two
In the second part of the novel, Maud takes over the narrative. She describes her early life being raised by the nurses in the mental asylum where her mother died, and the sudden appearance of her uncle, who arrives when she is eleven to take her to Briar to be his secretary.
Her induction into his rigid way of life is brutal; Maud is made to wear gloves constantly to preserve the surfaces of the books she is working on, and is denied food when she tires of labouring with her uncle in his library. Distressed, and missing her previous home, Maud begins to demonstrate sadistic tendencies, biting and kicking her maid, Agnes, and her abusive carer, Mrs Stiles. She harbours a deep resentment toward her mother for abandoning her, and starts holding her mother's locket every night, and whispering to it how much she hates her.
Shockingly, Maud reveals that her uncle's work is not to compile a dictionary, but to assemble a bibliography of literary pornography, for the reference of future generations. In his own words, Christopher Lilly is a 'curator of poisons.' He introduces Maud to the keeping of the books—indexing them and such—when she is barely twelve, and deadens her reactions to the shocking material. As she grows older, Maud reads the material aloud for the appreciation of her uncle's colleagues. On one occasion, when asked by one of them how she can stand to curate such things, Maud answers, "I was bred to the task, as servants are."
She has resigned herself to a life serving her uncle's obscure ambition when Richard Rivers arrives at Briar. He reveals to her a plan to help her escape her exile in Briar, a plan involving the deception of a commonplace girl who will believe she has been sent to Briar to trick Maud out of her inheritance. After initial hesitation, Maud agrees to the plan and receives her new maid, Sue, weeks later, pretending to know nothing about the plot.
Maud falls in love with Sue over time and, like Sue, begins to question whether she will be able to carry out Gentleman's plot. Though overcome with guilt, Maud does, and travels with Gentleman to London after committing Sue to the asylum, claiming to the doctors that Sue was the mad Mrs Maud Rivers who believed she was her own maid.