What She Left Behind: A Haunting and Heartbreaking Story of 1920s Historical Fiction

All of the major female characters in What She Left Behind experience some form of misogyny, sometimes in their personal lives (as with the bullying and sexual abuse Izzy experiences), but just as often in their interactions with public institutions like prisons and hospitals. Ultimately, the novel draws a throughline between the abuse women experience in public and in private, suggesting that what connects the two is an effort to control women’s bodies.

Clara’s storyline furnishes the most explicit example. Her ordeal begins because her father wants to control whom she marries; a match with his business partner would be financially advantageous, and he disapproves of her boyfriend, the working-class immigrant Bruno, anyway. When Clara resists this attempt to commodify her body, he locks her in his home for three weeks, which “[makes] her feel like an inmate being kept in a prison” (11). The comparison to prison underscores the systemic nature of this abuse; Henry is not merely a renegade actor in his efforts to control Clara. When Clara still refuses to give her body to the man Henry has chosen, he has her put in the Long Island Home and then into Willard, suggesting that such institutions served in large part to manage women’s sexuality and reproductive capacity.