Meihan Boey on the colonial Singapore in The Formidable Miss Cassidy
Today we are honoured to have Meihan Boey here to chat
Set in colonial Singapore, The Formidable Miss Cassidy features magical realism, history lessons, and Malay folklore. The story follows Miss Cassidy, who is hired as a governess to accompany 2 families that are subject to the curse of local ghosts and spirits. Today we are honoured to have Meihan Boey here to chat about historical anachronism, and using local phrases in her book.
Mary Poppins, Maria from The Sound of Music, and Miss Cassidy are all governesses. Why do you think this type of character works so well?
My favourite fictional governess is Jane Eyre! And honestly, I think the obsession with governesses, especially with regards to the romance genre, probably started right there.
I think there’s something in the position which Charlotte Bronte capitalised so well on – the fact that a governess can be both subordinate and superior at the same time, invisible and underestimated. Most governesses were women of genteel poverty who were usually quite well-educated, but were obliged to work for their living. They’re given quite an intimate connection to a family that isn’t theirs, educating children who technically outrank them; but they could be, and often were, more intelligent and better-read than their employers, exactly because it was necessary for them to be, in order to survive.
So you get a character very well-placed to judge bad behaviour, discover secrets, and have the discreet power to shape the minds of the children in their care. It’s a perfect role for a certain kind of heroine!
Let’s talk about the chapter titles in The Formidable Miss Cassidy. Each one is so fun and starts with “Miss Cassidy…”. Why did you decide to use this format?
Haha I’m delighted you noticed! This is a bit of an Enid Blyton throwback – her chapter headings are always tantalising things like ‘Amelia Jane is Too Naughty For Words’ which tells you nothing
much about the chapter, but immediately hooks you into going ‘why? what did she do? I must find out’ and then, of course, you keep on reading.
The ‘Miss Cassidy…’ chapter headings are designed to do something similiar, except that the descriptions are usually even more circumspect…
Singapore’s political history certainly plays a role in The Formidable Miss Cassidy. However there is also so much more you can’t cover. Was it difficult to find the right balance between historical fiction and magical realism?
Yes indeed. There are multiple historical anachronisms in the Miss Cassidy world. Some of them are there because the plot needed certain things in place to work, although they are historically too
early or too late. There were a couple in the original draft which needed to be fully corrected, though, because I had put someone in the wrong outfit, or had them speaking the wrong language!
Singapore has a very complex history. I had help from a number of fact-checkers, most notably one of Singapore’s most famous speculative writers, Ng Yi-Sheng, who is also a very avid historian.
At the end of the day, though, my main purpose was never 100% historical accuracy, because the exact date and year of anything happening in the plot is something most readers are not going to remember after they put down the book. I hope what endures is the sense of the chaos and wonder of old Singapore – the people, the places, the glorious weirdness of my little corner of the world.
Why do you think this setting of colonialism works well for this paranormal story?
Because Victorians were a strange bunch, haha. I think colonialism, especially with regards to how Singapore developed within the colonial framework, gave rise to a really staggering mish-mash of ‘paranormal’ beliefs in the region. There have always been monsters and gods, spirits and shamans in our part of the world, for sure; but when the colonial influence opened Singapore up to quite aggressive migration, the people by and large did not decide, ‘my beliefs are real and yours are not’. Instead, they
mostly went ‘oh, you have a goddess of fertility? she sounds a lot like my goddess of fertility. But my goddess isn’t listening to me, how about I pray to yours?’
And because Victorian England was at the time exploring ideas of the supernatural – seances, mystics, mummies and the like – there were lots of British/ European explorers who then started writing
these cultural beliefs and practices down, in English, as much as they were able. A lot of those books did very well at the time they were published, and are still in publication today.
There are many phrases and terms in The Formidable Miss Cassidy that readers might not have heard of. Why do you choose to include them?
This wasn’t a conscious choice at all! I was writing for a Singaporean audience, and the phrases and terms are totally commonplace to us. Kudos to Pushkin Press, who made the excellent editing decision to not over-explain any phrases, nor even italicise them. I would hope most of the phrases are easily guessed from context; if not, there’s always the Internet.
If I can read Irvine Welsh and Roddy Doyle without a glossary, I wouldn’t underestimate any reader crossing the literary ocean the other way.
Speaking of, the mythical creatures like pontianak and toyol are not something that readers get used to. Is it difficult to explain them and is it weird to have to explain them by comparing them with Western counterparts?
Hmm, I’m actually not sure a reader would have difficulty understanding a pontianak and a toyol.
The pontianak especially is essentially a ‘wronged woman’ monster, which is not unlike, for instance, the bain sidhe, or even Carrie from the Stephen King novel. There is a lot of mythos surrounding her
(she’s our most famous monster), but I did avoid going too much into her background and origins, because it would not really have contributed to the simple fact that she is a wronged woman whose
spirit seeks vengeance. I think that’s a near-universal monster; she isn’t Western, Eastern or anything very specific, so I wouldn’t say she needs much explanation or comparison.
The toyol is a little freakier, and deliberately so, because there are far less counterparts to the toyol in most other paranormal stories. The toyol is essentially an undead baby that is raised to serve a
master or mistress. Again there are a lot of rather gruesome details on how a toyol is created, but I didn’t go into that! The main takeaway is that this creature is a malevolent imp, not unlike a
malicious fairy who has turned up in your house, your things keep going missing, your cat is going mad, and you can’t seem to get rid of it! Miss Cassidy does say something of the sort, to add a quick
explanation of what it is; but again, its place in the story is not much different from any other beastie who ‘serves’ a master.
Finally, to shine more light on Singapore literature, please recommend some books where we can learn more about Singaporean mythology.
The best one to come out in recent years is the graphic novel Work-Life Balance, by Wayne Ree and Benjamin Chee. It features almost every major monster throughout Southeast Asia, working together
in a bureau in charge of regulating paranormal activities. It’s gorgeously illustrated, wonderfully written, and an absolute hoot. It won Book of the Year in Singapore when it came out.
A Mosque in the Jungle compiles some old stories that were originally published in Malay by a famous local figure, Othman Wok.
They were recently translated by Ng Yi-Sheng and republished in English. The stories are meant for entertainment, and have a penny dreadful feel to them.
Another great horror story is Audrey Chin’s The Ash House, which features a ghostly pipa diva, a haunted mansion, and a psychic nun.
Our great literary doyenne, Catherine Lim, has a collection of short horror stories called The Howling Silence. There are 14 short stories, all featuring ghosts and spirits across Singapore’s cultural
landscape.
Finally, if you are really into it, there is Malay Magic, originally published around 1890s by William Walter Skeat, who travelled the region with guides and translators recording the shamanic practices
of the bomohs and pawangs of the region (at least, those who were willing to speak to him). It’s very hard to find a physical copy these days (I have a very old copy that belonged to my father, published
in the 60s), but the copyright is long expired and you can find most chapters on resources like Jstor. It’s still one of the most extensively recorded and researched resources you can find in English.
