THE DOUBLE STANDARD SPORTING HOUSE

In Bernhard’s novel, a high-class brothel owner in 1868 fights to save her establishment from New York City’s political machine.

This novel brims with the defining images of the Gilded Age, from the brazen corruption that passed for public affairs to the rampant inequality that limited opportunities for the great majority of people. Such barriers are familiar to Nell “Doc” Hastings, operator of the titular house catering to New York’s “richest, most discerning men.” It’s a cozy arrangement that’s built to last forever for the price of monthly payoffs to the Tammany Hall political machine. Nell can offer her girls protection from enslavement rings and a realistic path to independence, and she can provide well-connected players, such as city chamberlain Peter Sweeny, ways to indulge their wildest fantasies without tarnishing their glossy public façades. However, the appearance of Lavinia “Vivie” Curtis—a 15-year-old daughter of a lawmaker who was kidnapped from a party months ago and brought to the Double after suffering horrific abuses—threatens to upend this comfortable system. Nell uses all her hard-won medical experience to help Vivie recover physically and mentally. However, Nell must decide what to do about her presence there, amid threats from Tammany Hall, whose denizens want Nell to allow gambling, and enslavers like Vivie’s abuser, Vernon Trent, who vow to ramp up their practices. It’s an epic conflict, resulting in a novel that will pull readers into Nell’s struggles. It’s populated with well-drawn characters, including Nell's chief antagonists, Trent and ward boss Benno O’Connor; and newspaperman Asa Vanderpoel, with whom she must forge an uneasy alliance to expose the enslavers’ ways. Periodic flashbacks to Nell’s struggles with rape and other physical abuse, and her frustrations as she dreams of a medical career, help to round out the narrative. Overall, it’s a richly nuanced exploration of a society that championed the moral superiority of women yet refused to treat them as equals.

An eloquent, emotional historical novel with a charged critique of society’s double standards.