Butcher

March 25, 2024
Oates (Zero-Sum) delivers a deliciously arch and relentlessly gloomy fictional biography of Dr. Silas Aloysius Weir, a character based on two 19th-century doctors. Weir, known during his time as the “Father of Modern Gyno-Psychiatry,” was also called the “Red-Handed Butcher” for his gruesome experiments on women during his 35-year stint at the New Jersey State Asylum for Female Lunatics in Trenton. The bulk of the novel is presented as a Nabokovian manuscript composed of accounts by Weir’s colleagues, family members, and patients, which have been assembled and annotated by his oldest son, Jonathan. Banished from a Pennsylvania hospital after a failed cranial surgery on an infant, Weir applies his “colossal egotism” to his new patients at the asylum, asserting that “mental illness in females is a consequence of infection, particularly of the female genitals.” To that end, he turns a tablespoon into a speculum and introduces sadistic treatments with misleading names like the “Chair of Tranquility.” The recipient of many of his surgeries is Brigit Kenealy, a young, indentured albino Irish servant who becomes his romantic obsession and assistant. Oates’s scathing indictment of the physical and psychological treatment of women by the medical establishment makes for compulsive but challenging reading. Unlike the ghastly procedures depicted, Oates’s inventive gothic novel pays off. Agent: Warren Frazier, John Hawkins & Assoc.

Starred review from September 13, 2024

Oates (Zero-Sum) dives into the real career of Dr. Silas Weir (narrated by Robert Fass) as he evolves from being a doctor who fainted when looking at female genitalia to a monster mutilating women inmates at the New Jersey State Asylum for Female Lunatics in the 1800s. A full cast skillfully portrays witnesses to Weir's descent, with each telling of their experience. Narrator Tavia Gilbert conveys the sorrow felt by a wealthy woman who spurned Weir's romantic attentions, while a fellow apprentice doctor, voiced by Edoardo Ballerini, expresses gnawing disdain. An emotional edge to editorial notes by Weir's son is palpable in Max Myer's nuanced delivery. Jeremy Carlisle Parker projects a wealthy wife's eerie calmness as she desperately seeks a cure. Danny Campbell intensely chronicles a local gravedigger's awe, then disgust at Weir's failed experiments. Dr. Weir's first patient at the asylum, the deaf Irish indentured servant Brigit (superbly captured by Amy Shiels), blooms as she goes from the object of his obsession to his downfall, and Cassandra Campbell describes the horrific attack on Weir. VERDICT A compelling thriller based on the work of actual 19th-century doctors, serving as a chilling reminder that women have long been deprived of bodily autonomy.--Stephanie Bange

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