Set in Melbourne during the Victorian gold rush, The Butterfly Women follows four women as they get tangled up investigating a serial killer targeting sex workers. Based on extensive archival research, Madeleine Cleary joins a growing number of Australian authors, such as Kate Grenville and David Marr, who are drawing on their family histories to restore dignity to groups of people largely overlooked in school curricula and public monuments. A gripping page-turner, The Butterfly Women suggests that historical recovery is not over.
All four protagonists are women who bend society’s rules to achieve a level of freedom. Mary dresses herself in her alcoholic husband’s constable uniform and patrols the streets to maintain his income. Harriet, the younger sister of the town’s uptight magistrate, becomes a journalist under the cover of darkness. Johanna, an Irish servant struggling to find work, remakes herself as a “dressed girl” in the Papillon, one of Melbourne’s most infamous brothels. At the top of this underground pyramid sits Papillon’s Madam, Catherine, who trades town secrets as the wealthiest men indulge in her offerings.
Cleary did not manufacture these situations to artificially give women more power, all four circumstances are largely true. In a city addicted to gold and rum, growing too fast for the state to keep up, it was often women who filled in the gaps. They told stories, protected each other on the street, and seized opportunities to make a profit.
The novel is strongest in its representation of sex work. Cleary uncovers Melbourne’s hypocritical dependence on prostitution; the newspaper editors and magistrates who condemn women to social ruin and jail in the morning lie beside them in the evening. The stereotype of the fallen Irish vagrant with no means of support falls apart, yet Cleary is cautious not to glamorise prostitution either. Even the richest dressed girls are hunted, and others age out of the profession, doomed to fall back onto the street. For Johanna and other prostitutes like Bridget and Diana, sex work is uplifting and empowering. For ‘street walkers’ like Nanette, every piece of dignity is traded for another meal.
Sex work in the early 19th century was, in some sense, just like many other precarious jobs, but it carried unique risks to mental and physical health. Catherine goes to great lengths to make sure her dressed girls have adequate security guards and contraception. Selling your body was sometimes a choice and sometimes not, but it always necessitated sacrifice. Whenever a sex worker in the novel is killed, Cleary writes them a hypothetical obituary — a story the newspapers of the day would never run. Even after decades of reform, today’s newspaper editors are too ashamed to do the same.
The mystery itself was engrossing. The characters all become amateur detectives as they piece together the psychology and identity of “the butcher”. Cleary uses red herrings to demonstrate that Irish and Chinese migrants were often the first to be scapegoated. However, the final reveal did not fully unpack the visceral realism of each murder. After such a nuanced depiction of sex work, the crazed killer’s motivations felt rushed and simple.
To add personal stakes and drama, Cleary weaves in multiple Victorian romances. While heartwarming at points and radical at others, the character arcs are too predictable to resonate. The conservative magistrate William unwinds by falling for Johanna. Bridget and Harriet tease out a forbidden love. These interactions are full of dramatic irony and move along the plot, yet the subtlety of illicit desire is largely lost in a fast-paced thriller.
Books like The Butterfly Women are essential because they do the work historians cannot. When fragmented newspaper clippings and court records are all we have, novels provide the necessary color and conjecture. While feminist academics have largely shifted their focus to structural analysis, from mining the past to uncovering missing women, authors like Cleary are bringing archival recovery into the mainstream.
The Butterfly Women by Madeleine Cleary is available in bookstores now.
