The Confessions of Frannie Langton

Meg is the beautiful French-born wife of George Benham. Intelligent, witty, and vibrant, Meg is Frannie’s love interest within the novel. She regularly breaks social boundaries, going out dressed in men’s clothes and behaving raucously at clubs and parties. Extremely charismatic, she draws people in. Benham, Laddie, and Frannie herself all experience her magnetism, with their own desire for Meg repeatedly causing them to grow angry and lash out at each other in jealousy. She appears as a lady of upper class London society is supposed to, but pushes at the boundaries of her role through her eccentric behavior. Her French origins, exceptional beauty, and eccentric behavior make her an outsider to the people of her set.

Meg’s intelligence is ignored by her husband, who is in fact disappointed at her eccentricities and interest in philosophy. She struggles with feeling superfluous, and wants to make changes and be recognized. She is ultimately unable to fully cast off her role in society. She is unable to brave divorce from Benham, despite how unhappy she is in the marriage, feeling comfortable only with pressing the boundaries from within rather than fully being cast out. Still, she and Frannie bond over the way they are both dismissed despite their intelligence. She does rebel in her own way. She organizes the lecture series in order to make fun of Benham’s eugenics work. She attempts to keep the painting of Laddie on display. She engages in an affair with Frannie. Her need to push against the boundaries imposed by her position as Benham’s wife manifests in nearly every relationship and situation.

This is further shown through Meg’s depression and struggles with laudanum addiction. Frannie describes her as being “two women. One confident, the other nervous. One bright, the other dark” (176). She moves between phases of excitement, usually upon meeting someone new or having a grand idea, and periods of lethargy and inactivity which worsen when she takes laudanum. Then she spends days in self-exile in her room, barely eating, lying in a laudanum induced haze. Her marriage is untenable, but she cannot bring herself to escape it in anyway but through drugs. This ends up hurting both her and Frannie through the creation of an “easy,” though dangerous, escape. Meg’s despair in being trapped leads to her using people. She calls Frannie back to her despite throwing her out. She is repeating the pattern she began with Laddie and perhaps even Hep Elliot. She does genuinely care for them, but she is not brave enough to fully abdicate her position in society.

Mrs. Linux is Benham’s housekeeper and one of the antagonists of the novel. She attempts to keep the Benham house under a strictly enforced social order, where anyone who steps out of it faces her wrath. She displays her racist antagonism from the first moment, initially forcing Frannie to wash. She goes on to belittle Frannie for being Black and for being from Jamaica. She attempts to erase or change Frannie’s narrative at every turn, giving her cheap clothes to wear, questioning her every move, and even scarring her with boiling water as punishment. She offers testimony that is in stark contrast to Frannie’s telling of her story. Linux is motivated by a desire to keep things, and people, in their place. In her mind, a Black maid upsets the order of a white English house, and thereby must be controlled and put down until she is no threat to Linux’s worldview.

Linux’s desire to maintain the social order extends even to Meg. She disapproves of Meg for not being, in her eyes, a proper wife for Benham. Meg’s flouting of social mores makes Linux feel she must disparage Meg, despite their difference in class. She considers herself a gatekeeper to a properly functioning society and does not recognize that by criticizing or second-guessing Meg, she is herself outside the boundaries. Linux’s need for power is the basis for much of her animosity toward Meg and Frannie. They stray from their assigned roles and the required attitudes.

Linux isn’t incapable of kindness—she gives Pru a job despite her lack of experience. However, this kindness is born out of a similar authority as Benham’s idea of kindness. She can give Pru a job because it maintains her own power. Being kind to Meg or Frannie would only serve to further destabilize the power structures Linux bases her identity on, and therefore she cannot recognize the flaws in her own perceptions and actions.

This antagonism culminates in her behavior at the trial. Even knowing that a guilty verdict will mean Frannie’s execution, she does her best in her testimony to paint a picture of Frannie that is consistent with her own perception rather than reality. She lies about burning Frannie with boiling water, and speculates malicious intentions for Frannie’s innocuous actions. There is even the implication that she attempted to frame Frannie, possibly being the one to plant a clean knife next to her and fabricating a recipe for arsenic written in Frannie’s name. Linux targets Frannie, and to a lesser degree Laddie, which exposes in her ardent adherence to society’s dictates a deep racism. Despite her insistence that she does not judge, only God does, she takes it upon herself to judge Frannie guilty. Her devotion to Benham and the paternalistic white British ideal he represents is unshakeable, even as Pettigrew asks if she is willing to have a hanging on her conscience.