I couldn’t care about Elizabeth’s conflicted feelings for a man she dislikes, especially when compared with the Annings’ dire financial situation–it seemed so frivolous in comparison, since Elizabeth doesn’t have to marry for security as Mary hopes to do. (Because, of course, a man must come between them.) While I was annoyed with Mary’s invented sexual encounter with Colonel Birch, I could see and enjoy her falling in love with him–she’s young, he’s dashing, and Mary learns a valuable lesson about men from him.

Colonel Birch is the man that comes between Elizabeth and Mary. This is why I had little patience with the Colonel Birch subplot. While I enjoyed The Lovely Bones, the ending angered me–the main character is given an opportunity to lose her virginity, which the novel treats as closure to her strange life. Elizabeth must brave the male-dominated scientific establishment in order to champion her young friend.Īs an asexual woman, I have very little patience with works that treat sex and romantic love as absolutely necessary to everyone and, particularly, sex as a necessary coming of age ritual. But when Mary discovers an ichthyosaur at the age of twelve, the scientific establishment comes to Lyme Regis and Mary, because she’s working class, is quickly exploited. When Elizabeth moves to Lyme Regis and begins searching for fossils, she takes the young Mary under her wing. Remarkable Creatures focuses on the friendship between Mary Anning, a working class girl who finds “curies” (fossils) to sell to help her family, and Elizabeth Philpot, a genteel spinster also interested in fossils. But length signifies nothing it’s the content that’s important. When I picked up Remarkable Creatures, I was surprised by its shortness–it’s only three hundred pages in paperback. When I was given a chance to read and review Remarkable Creatures, I was quite pleased–two women against the male scientific establishment in Regency England? What a fantastic idea! It also gave me a chance to finally read Tracy Chevalier, whom I’ve heard decent things about. As I reach the end of the semester and, thus, the end of my Jane Austen class, I grow more and more interested by the time period outside of Austen’s narrow scope–the Napoleonic Empire is crumbling, abolition is brewing, and riots are breaking out among the working class.

Remarkable creatures book