The ILLNESS LESSON - Lecherous Treatments of Young Girls in the 1870 by

Just post Civil War in MA, a renown essayist Samuel Hood, decides to open a school for young girls to broaden their critical thinking & awakenings outside of merely marriage and motherhood.  It was the norm for matrimony & motherhood to suffice & tether women in society.  All Samuel's well intent does not end well.  This is on the heels of his dismal failure of a social experiment constructing a utopian paradigm.  Pearson, a famous writer of this time is highly critical of Samuel's proclamations.  Suffice to say Pearson's daughter, Eliza, joins the 'Trilling Heart School' in its nascent formation.  Eliza is an extraordinary girl and a natural leader of the others.  Clare Beams' novel had the materials to construct an intriguing novel: an interesting epoch, maverick young women and a lovely setting nestled in the New England countryside.  However, the novel crumbles with torrid adulterous affairs taken off the pages of Harlequin romances. There are red herring references to Hitchcock's haunting film THE BIRDS. And, even more egregious is the lecherous examinations Samuel permits Dr. Hawkens to perform on these young girls; not unlike Larry Nassar & the USA gymnastic team.  The ILLNESS LESSON is ill advised to perpetuate the myth that vibrators or clitoral stimulation were accepted treatments for females during the late 18th & early 19th C.  Furthermore, mistreatment of the women is made more heinous with the submissiveness of adult witnesses for whom their care was entrusted.  Samuel, in his most profound argument to enlighten the  presumed vapidness of young women said, "I would argue that it is always right to think."  What's missing was the formidable ability to question and for the adults to sensibly listen to the girls.  "The girls had adapted quickly to their new right to speak, think, question-as if all of it had been ready inside them and waiting only for someone to ask to hear."