Victorian Psycho: Eat the rich (and everyone else while you're at it)

Spending some time in the mind of a madwoman doesn't have to be entirely unpleasant.

Victorian Psycho
By Virginia Feito
Published by Liveright Publishing, 2025
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Prose stories have the unique ability to really place readers inside the heads of their characters in ways that can’t be replicated in other media. This can be especially effective in horror novels or other stories narrated by characters who may be less than fully sane or may even be complete psychopaths. When a novel makes readers privy to the disturbing thoughts of people who have little regard for human life, who have no sense of morality, or who struggle to maintain a grasp on reality, it can trap someone in an unpleasant-yet-fascinating headspace, forcing them to go along on a journey that can’t end anywhere good.

That sense of being along for the ride in the brain of a madwoman is exactly what the novel Victorian Psycho provides, although it ends up being more humorous than horrific, perhaps because there’s little in the way of sympathy for the victims of the violence it depicts, as well as a sense of absurdity as its main character violates the ridiculous social mores of Victorian England and exposes the vapidity and hypocrisy of everyone around her. It ends up being pretty hilarious, although one’s level of amusement may depend on how accustomed they are to consuming media featuring horrific violence and death.

The psycho in question here is Winifred Notty, a young woman who has been hired as the governess of an upper-class family. She quickly settles in to her role in the household, which is in an odd gray area where she doesn’t really fit in with the other servants, since she dines with the family and maintains a sort of position of trust, but she’s still clearly an employee who is in no way considered to be on equal standing with her employers. But she also doesn’t fit in because she’s a weirdo who can’t relate to anyone else and keeps doing things that range from eccentric (making strange comments about the demon who lives inside her) to disturbing (making out with a calf’s head that has been left on a kitchen counter).

The full extent of Winifred’s madness isn’t apparent from the outset, especially to other characters. Her narration provides some hints that she has some psychopathic tendencies as she talks about a “Darkness” that lives within her and remembers creepy things she did when growing up (some offhand mentions of a spate of disappearances of children in her hometown also imply that she has a history of violence in her past). But before long, the extent of her madness becomes more evident, with her occasionally engaging in impulsive acts of violence and mayhem while also pondering some dark plans for the family and household.

Many of Winifred’s actions are disturbing, but it’s hard to be too upset about what she does when her intended victims are so clearly deserving of everything that happens to them. The family’s father is a pompous buffoon who regularly denigrates his wife, doesn’t care about his children very much, and has built his wealth on the exploitation of others (at one point, he makes some comments about the importance of protecting children from harm, but Winifred dryly notes that a large number of child laborers have died in his factory). The mother is self-obsessed, spending most of her time worrying about whether the servants think she is ugly, although there is some true sadness under the surface, since we learn that her two children are the only survivors out of 12 total births. The family’s son is a spoiled brat who is all too eager to grow up and become an aristocratic asshole like his father. The daughter isn’t much better, especially since it has become clear to her that her only role in life will be to look as pretty as possible until she can be married off to someone and start popping out babies.

It’s highly enjoyable to see Winifred start to mess around with this group of out-of-touch jerks and the other similar people who orbit around them. Every time she punctures some bit of propriety or ignores some nonsensical social rule, we see the people around her react in a befuddled manner, usually deciding that it’s best to just ignore her weirdness and pretend that everything is normal. But eventually, the strangeness becomes impossible to ignore, and everything builds to a gloriously over-the-top explosion of violence.

It’s a pretty short book, coming in at less than 200 pages, but it makes the most of the space it has, throwing in so much internal weirdness and external mayhem that the reader is left reeling by the time it comes to an end. There are plenty of interesting elements to unpack if one is so inclined, including an examination of how much of what Winifred describes is really happening and how unreliable she is as a narrator. But however one chooses to approach the book, there’s plenty to enjoy here, especially for those who find amusement in murder and mayhem that exposes the absurdity of society. Insanity can seem refreshing when you’re living in an insane world.