Uncovers the life of Jane Cumming, who scandalized her
contemporaries with tales of sexual deviancy but also defied
cultural norms, standing up to male authority figures and showing
resilience. In 1810 Edinburgh, the orphaned Scottish-Indian
schoolgirl Jane Cumming alleged that her two schoolmistresses were
sexually intimate. The allegation spawned a defamation suit that
pitted Jane's grandmother, a member of the Scottish landed gentry,
against two young professional women who were romantic friends.
During the trial, the boundary between passion and friendship among
women was debated and Jane was viewed "orientally," as morally
corrupt and hypersexual. Located at the intersection of race, sex,
and class, the case has long been a lightning rod for scholars of
cultural studies, women's and gender history, and, given Lillian
Hellman's appropriation of Jane's story in her 1934 play The
Children's Hour, theater history as well. Frances B. Singh's
wide-ranging biography, however, takes a new, psychological
approach, putting the notorious case in the context of a life that
was marked by loss, separation, abandonment--and resilience.
Grounded in archival and genealogical sources never before
consulted, Singh's narrative reconstructs Cumming's life from its
inauspicious beginnings in a Calcutta orphanage through her
schooling in Elgin and Edinburgh, an abusive marriage, her
adherence to the Free Church at the time of the Scottish
Disruption, and her posthumous life in Hellman's Broadway play.
Singh provides a detailed analysis not only of the case itself, but
of how both Jane's and her teachers' lives were affected in the
aftermath.
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