THE CAPE DOCTOR
by E. J. Levy
Little, Brown and Company. 352 pages. $28.
INSPIRED BY the real life story of Dr. James Miranda Barry—a doctor who, after living his adult life as a man, was discovered after death to have been a biological woman—this historical novel tells a wildly improbable tale. But before one assumes that this is territory previously covered in stories like Yentl, rest assured that The Cape Doctor (which also would make a great film) tells a surprisingly lively and convincing story.
Born around 1795 in Cork, Ireland, into a world in which “wit is rarely mistaken for virtue in a girl,” young Margaret and her mother try to navigate the twin misfortunes of not being able to inherit property and not being able to receive an education beyond a certain point. But when her uncle’s friend takes note of her unusual intelligence and curiosity, a ruse is concocted for her to impersonate a missing nephew and attend medical school in Edinburgh to become a doctor.
Author E. J. Levy, who holds a history degree from Yale, is especially good at detailing the particulars associated with that world and period. This research is often illuminating, as when the narrator explains that Barry could have neither attended Oxford or Cambridge nor held public office, because the Test Act barred Catholics from doing so.
On balance, though, The Cape Doctor is not pedantic at all but offers a compelling and even provocative narrative. The little details Margaret mentions as characteristics of maleness, for instance—that very condition she is striving so hard to mimic—are sharply observed and have the ring of truth. Men’s greatest liberty, Margaret notes, is “not to have to please.” In arguments and debate, men use their words “like cards thrown down in whist.” They settle into their bodies “as one might into a comfortable chair.” In taking on her new male role, Margaret, now Jonathan, “walked as if the world were my inheritance, as if I were a fortunate son.”
While one might perceive this as a subtle form of male-bashing, Levy’s intent is larger, as when she has the nascent Jonathan speculate: “When we look at a man or a woman, what is it that we see? We make too much of the difference: having been both, I can say the distinctions are both greater and less than they appear.”
This is not to say that Margaret’s decision to become Jonathan comes without cost. Even early on, Margaret realizes that, while the life of a man seems relatively free, hers will have to be more restrained, especially in affairs of the heart. Indeed, when Jonathan, now a doctor in South Africa, falls in love with Lord Somerton, the Cape Governor, they risk being accused of homosexual relations, which was a capital offence at that time. Sadly, Jonathan realizes he cannot risk it: “For me, the heart would be just another organ.”
These sacrifices, and the need to live one’s entire life in a state of hiding and subterfuge, cannot help but raise the question: was it worth it? As Levy imagines it, Margaret/Jonathan simply had no choice: if they were to live the life they desired, the path Jonathan chose was the right one. Then, taking into account that Barry claims to have performed the first successful Caesarean section in Africa and discovered a cure for syphilis, it’s hard to argue with the choice they made. The Cape Doctor convincingly demonstrates that “a life can be forged by will, that we can invent ourselves and our histories and shape history itself to our vision.”
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Dale Boyer, a frequent contributor to these pages, maintains a website at daleboyerworks.com.
