Although Richard
Calder's Babylon opens with the appearance of a Victorian era
story, Calder doesn't allow the misperception to last for very long.
This is a nineteenth century London which is heavily influenced by the
Babylonian cult of goddess worship, as a world separated from ours by a
mystical gate has revealed a lost colony of Babylon, which has come to
influence human society.
Madeleine Fall is a
young school girl in this society who rejects her middle class upbringing
and desires to become a whore of Babylon. Although Madeleine sees
this as something to aspire to, it is clear that her parents will
disagree, which leads to her estrangement not only from them, but from her
best friend, Lizzie. Madeleine quickly replaces those attachments
with one to Cliticia Lipski, one of the girls in her class who is
hereditarily targeted to become a whore of Babylon.
Madeleine's switch
from a good middle-class girl to one in rebellion would have been more
powerful if Calder had shown more of her life with her parents and with
Lizzie before she fell under Cliticia's sway and her yearning to become a
whore of Babylon. Calder could, at the same time, have provided a
deeper introduction to the alternative London he created, perhaps showing
some of the less seedy aspects of the city.
Calder examines
Madeleine and Cliticia's naive beliefs about the world they are going to
enter against the background of Victorian society and secret
society. To further show how naive the girls are, even when
Madeleine looks up to Cliticia as a more advanced and aware friend, they
find themselves in the company of the mysterious and ominous Lord Azrael
and his partner, Malachi. The play sensuality Madeleine and
Cliticia have as future whores of Babylon becomes a much more threatening
sexuality in the mouths and deeds of Lord Azrael and Malachi.
Eventually, Madeleine
and Cliticia are transported through the gate to New Babylon. Where
once they would have viewed this world with the eyes of naïveté
and wonder, instead their innocence is tempered by the corruption
which they imbibed while with Malachi and Lord Azrael, who viewed the
girls as pawns in their undisclosed plot. Although Calder poses the
question of whether the girls will realize their role or not, it isn't
central to his story of seduction. Instead, the real question is whether
the girls will see the evil of their mentors and do something to
prevent destruction akin to Nazi actions in World War II.
While it would be
easy to mistake Babylon for a coming of age story or a tale of a
girl in rebellion, Calder's story is one of innocence versus
evil. Azrael and Malachi's actions affect not only Cliticia and
Madeleine, but the world of Babylon and Earth. Their activities
threaten all of society as Calder looks at how evil can infiltrate the
world simply by focusing on the unsuspecting.
