Anatomy: A Love Story

When he was 11, Jack ran away from his “overworked, overdrinking mother” and spent a few years living on Edinburgh’s streets (83). An older boy named Munro taught him how to be a resurrection man. Now an expert in the illegal but essential craft, Jack knows how to get past the stone slabs that the wealthy use to protect their dead and the sentinels that the poor post.

At first, Jack intended to stop digging up bodies after he got a job at Le Grand Leon. His small living space above the stage is “the closest to home he had known” (83). From this vantage point among the rafters, he watches the beautiful Isabella perform every night. He resumes his work as a resurrection man to save up for a music box with a blond ballerina figurine that reminds him of the dancer. The music box costs him a month’s wages. He intends to give the box to Isabella, but that night his boss, Mr. Arthur, tells him that two of the stagehands have died of the Roman fever. However, Jack remains adamant that the plague’s return is just a rumor. After the show, Jack sees Isabella kissing the theater’s lead actor, Thomas. Jack drops the music box, shattering the figurine. Berating himself for being a romantic fool, Jack holes up in the rafters with a bottle of wine.

The November 11, 1817 edition of the Edinburgh Evening Gazette reports that six people have died of the Roman fever in the last two weeks. Among the deceased are Penelope Harkness and 12-year-old Davey Jaspar. Dr. Beecham III himself examined Mrs. Harkness’s body and found her symptoms consistent with the dreaded plague.

News that the Roman fever has returned to Edinburgh reaches Hawthornden Castle, and Lady Sinnett decides to take her children to Bath. Not wanting to miss Dr. Beecham’s lectures, Hazel feigns illness. As Hazel expected, Percy’s health is her mother’s highest priority, and Lady Sinnett quickly agrees to leave her daughter behind in Scotland to recuperate.

Hazel’s maid, Iona, is in on the plot and helps her disguise herself as a gentleman in George’s clothing. Iona was in love with George, and Hazel’s guilt at having survived the fever that killed him extends into sympathy for Iona. Hazel decides to give a false name when registering for Dr. Beecham’s lectures. However, since she’s paying the whole semester’s tuition in advance, she doubts that “they’d care if [she] introduced [her]self as Mary Wollstonecraft” (98).

Dr. Beecham’s classroom is filled with an eerie assortment of preserved animals, human skulls, and mysterious tomes. He begins his first lecture by defying anyone who believes that he owes his success to nepotism. The surgeon’s craft in 19th-century Edinburgh is half science, half showmanship, and Dr. Beecham is an expert showman, warning his students, “You will come face-to-face with the strange, the macabre” (103). He promises that those who endure the rigorous, bloody training will pass their exams and so earn the right to practice medicine anywhere in the British empire.

To weed out those who are not suited for this training, he kills a rabbit with a scalpel. One boy runs from the classroom immediately, and the rest of the students are tasked with dissecting dead rabbits and removing the major organs. While the boys around her hack at their specimens, Hazel is the first to finish, drawing the doctor’s attention. She introduces herself as George Hazleton, and Beecham compliments her speed and accuracy. A boy named Thrupp calls her a bootlicker and throws a rabbit heart at her, but she silences the bully by crushing the heart in her fist while making direct eye contact with him.

A letter penned by Lady Sinnett on October 17, 1817 informs Hazel that her mother and brother have reached Bath and will spend several months there before traveling to London for the Season. Lady Sinnett has told Lord Almont that she expects Bernard to propose soon and requests that Hazel “try to arrive in London engaged if [she] can” (109). She inquires about her daughter’s health in the postscript.

As the weeks continue, Dr. Beecham’s lectures become increasingly fast-paced and challenging. More students are forced to leave the class, and Thrupp can’t spare much attention to bullying the star pupil. By the second month, only a dozen students remain.

When Beecham informs the class that he has secured the body of a murderer, Hazel is so excited that she comes to class an hour early the next morning. Looking at the woman’s dead body, Hazel sees “a strange, naked, alien thing, waiting for a knife to split her as final punishment for her sins” (114). As the minutes pass with no sign of their teacher, the students grow restless. Thrupp mocks a boy named Burgess, but Hazel comes to Burgess’s defense and silences the bully with some clever remarks and “the most masculine swagger she could manage” (115). Dr. Straine comes to perform the dissection, and Hazel fears that he will recognize her.

Dr. Straine explains that he will give anatomical presentations to Beecham’s students on Tuesdays and Thursdays because the famous doctor prefers not to dirty his hands. He asks Hazel to name the chambers and valves of the heart. When she succeeds, he has her remove the woman’s heart and again asks her to identify the valves. An actual heart looks very different from the diagrams Hazel is accustomed to studying, and she cannot locate its parts. Dr. Straine tells the other students to use Mr. Hazleton’s humiliation as proof of the limits of theoretical knowledge.

Dr. Straine asks Hazel to stay after class, reveals that he knows she is Hazel Sinnett, and bars her from the lessons because he believes that her future is as a wife and mother, not a doctor: “There is no place in our world for a woman to practice medicine, Miss Sinnett, sad as that might make you” (123). Hazel is too stunned to argue in her defense. She returns to Hawthornden castle in a haze of “shame and embarrassment and anger” (124), hurls her disguise across her bedroom, and breaks into sobs.

The next day, Hazel ponders Dr. Straine’s words. She doesn’t blame him for resenting her because of her social class, and she thinks that his bleak assessment of her future is accurate. She imagines herself becoming Lady Almont and hosting salons for prominent thinkers: “That was the closest she would come to the world of science—the edge of the bubble, permitted to listen and serve tea and smile gamely and offer her thoughts only if they were disguised as harmless witticisms” (126). In a rage, she destroys the corner of her bedroom that serves as her scientific library and laboratory. Pieces of broken glass cut her arms and legs.

Bernard makes an unexpected visit, and Iona hastily helps Hazel dress and conceal her injuries. He gives Hazel white lilies, not realizing that they’re funeral flowers, and invites her to promenade with him. She bluntly refuses his offer with a sarcastic laugh and then tries to soften the blow by claiming to still be ill. After the offended young nobleman leaves, Charles the footman and Iona help Hazel clean up her ransacked room. Noting Charles and Iona’s affection for one another, Hazel encourages them to go for a stroll. The painful emotions that she felt after Dr. Straine’s words seem more manageable to her now “as if they had shrunk to a size where she could deposit them neatly into a hatbox and then forget about them at the back of a closet” (135). Hazel’s mood improves further when she removes the Cook’s sutures and sees that the cut won’t even leave a scar. Determined not to give up on her medical dreams, she decides to return to Edinburgh.

Fear of the Roman plague grips Edinburgh, forcing Le Grand Leon to close its doors in November. Mr. Arthur breaks the news to the crew and performers and encourages them to look for other work. Isabella asks, “Thom, what are we going to do about—?” (139). Thomas gives her a kiss and assures her that he’ll find a solution. Mr. Arthur can no longer pay Jack, but he gives him the keys to the theater and tells him that he’s welcome to continue living there. Standing in a theater “filled only with echoes and ghosts” (140), Jack knows that he’ll have to steal a body soon if he is to survive.