Questioning Utopia

Gil knew she was lucky. Lucky that she had great, rich parents, lucky that they had just inherited this huge house, lucky that she lived in such an advanced society that she needn’t worry about anything. Everything was set out for her life under a comforting set of rules to ensure her greatest happiness. She never had questioned this, everybody knew it was for their own good.

She was not lucky however that her mother was only going to let her have the largest bedroom if she cleared it out herself. And if her day couldn’t get any worse, her first foot through the bedroom door went straight through the floorboards.

“For **** sake” she muttered, pulling her splintered leg back through the hole and revealing a dusty old box in the newly created cavity. Gil carefully lifted it with both hands and set it down on the ground for further inspection. She looked up and, scanning the room, felt overwhelmed by the number of dusty boxes that she was going to have to search through today. She took a deep breath and sat down to start with this one.

It was shoebox sized and made of some kind of hard, greeny-greyey paper, with a woven texture peeling away at the corners. She gently edged the lid off and revealed its insides. Here there were notes, trinkets and other such keepsakes someone had hidden away. They were all interesting and held lost memories from a time long past, but what immediately jumped out to Gil was a locket wrapped around a small diary that was backed with the same paper as the box. As she reached up to touch her own, matching necklace, she discerned how cold the one from this box felt in comparison. Her mind flooded with questions. Feeling that she must have inherited her’s from the same ancestor that left this treasure trove, Gil dove straight into the diary hoping to find answers. She had loved learning about history in her classes at school and here she had found a first hand source filled with stories. This was too good to be true. She thought excitedly about sharing this with the world and becoming famous.

‘March 12th 1880

Dear Josephine,

Alice made me promise not to tell anyone but I can’t keep this in, I have to at least write it down. She is so bold and brazen, and so unbelievably beautiful. How can someone with such gifts be so careless with their future at just Seventeen? She’s in the family way and won’t tell me anything of the father so we can presume there’s no ring on offer. I was horribly shocked when she announced it to me with such little fear. So we have made a plan which I will share with you, and only you, my dearest future self.

We’re going on a ‘drawing holiday’ to my family’s seaside residence in Northumberland and there she will have the baby and leave it with a foundling hospital. I have secretly commissioned a little present for her. A matching set of heart shaped lockets in gold, lined with a deep, rich, royal blue fabric inside, one with a christening length chain and each beset with an amethyst for protection, that she may leave one with the Baby and wear her’s always. Who knows, maybe someday they will meet again?’

Gil couldn’t help but feel disappointed that these girls, at her age, were being so reckless and disobedient of society’s rules. She knew how the liberal masses had derailed order and destroyed civilisation past the brink of apocalypse, how did the great leader ever manage to restore society with this kind of behaviour? This was turning out to be quite the cautionary tale. She could see why it had been hidden away, to keep shame from falling on her family. Gil felt an urgent need to see how it ended and skipped to the next pertinent entry.

‘September 19th 1880

Dear Josephine,

After a few months enduring the drab summer in the north, it seems the big date is finally approaching. Everything is prepared and thus far Alice and I have successfully concealed her condition. We’re sure it’s going to be a girl.

…

September 21st 1880 (by one minute only)

Dear Josephine,

It’s happening. I've never seen Alice in so much pain, or with such fear on her face. Its unnerving me to the bone but I know I must keep my chin up and reassure her. We can do this. I'll update you when our secret miracle has arrived.

…

I am unsure I should be writing this at all. But my devastation knows no bounds, no propriety. She was born the most beautiful baby I have ever laid eyes on. Alice named her Perdita. I was so relieved for those first few seconds, I am not sure of what happened, but that tiny soul faded away leaving us with but a few minutes of memories to hold her by. We shouldn’t have tried to keep this a secret, she might still be with us if only we had not been so foolish to think we could deliver her into this world alone. If only we lived in a world where Alice could have kept her and raised her with no shame, no social rules dictating her life. If only. It's such a weak statement.

Alice gave me Perdita’s locket to keep, to remind me of the secret we shared and must protect until the day we die.

We’re going to bury her here, in an unmarked and unconsecrated grave. It’s the best we can do and it’s not nearly enough. I don’t know how we’ll ever recover this. Poor Alice.’

Gil slowly placed the diary back into the box, stunned by the emotions it had stirred. The rules that had forced Alice into losing her baby were the same as those which had brought Gil comfort and safety, or so she had thought. As she reflected upon this she saw holes appearing in everything she had ever been taught, maybe she wasn’t living in a utopia after all. Gil began to look around the room for a safer hiding place to keep her box. This small diary had made her question everything and she did not think others would be pleased to find that out.