The Phoenix Crown: A Novel

Suling is another protagonist and point-of-view character. At the beginning of Act I, she is “not even twenty” (255) and was orphaned eight months before. She lives with Third Uncle, who took over her family’s business, and she works as a seamstress. Suling is Chinese American and was born in San Francisco, as she frequently has to tell the white people who praise her fluent English. The intersection of racism and sexism causes her to dress as a man while working for her family’s laundry service. Third Uncle wants her to marry Dr. Ouyang, who was fond of Suling’s mother, Ming Lee, when she was a sex worker. Suling remains close with her mother’s friend, Madame Ning, who is the madam of a brothel in Chinatown. Suling works with some of Ning’s employees serving refreshments at Henry’s octagon house. There, she meets and falls in love with Reggie.

Whereas Gemma chooses a new name for herself and makes that name synonymous with her chosen identity as a performer, Suling must insist that people call her by her real name. When Henry meets her, he says, “Sue Ling? All right, Susie” (59). The ease with which he claims the right to rename someone he’s just met is an early clue to his malevolent character. When Gemma repeats this nickname, Suling has to correct her: “[M]y name is Suling, not Susie. My family name is Feng” (154). In addition to her name, Suling’s identity is formed around her career. She not only works for Madam Ning and her family’s laundry business, but she also sells her own silk flowers. Alice is one of Suling’s many customers, and Suling agrees to take on sewing projects for Henry. Her work repairing his dragon robe leads circuitously to a job in Paris at Callot Soeurs.

By the end of the novel, Suling is transformed by her vocation. In Act II, there was “nothing of the silent San Francisco seamstress with her girlish plait and buttoned tunic here: the self-assured young woman […] had glided up to the cafe in the tiny fluid steps demanded by the most fashionable of hobble skirts, her glossy hair was shingled to outrageous shortness” (304). She financially and emotionally supports Reggie after they are traumatized by Henry.

Alice is another point-of-view character, but there are fewer chapters from her perspective than there are from Gemma and Suling’s perspectives. Fifty-two years old in 1911, she is based on the real-life Alice Eastwood who served as curator of botany at the California Academy of Sciences for over half a century, from 1894 to 1949. The fictional Alice is passionate about her career and supports other women in their careers, such as advocating for Suling to get paid a good rate to repair the dragon robe. Less fashion-conscious than the other women, Alice wears clothes she can hike in and loves nature. Both Gemma and Alice love music, but Alice is much more practical than Gemma and the other artists.

Alice is consistently impressive throughout the novel. She sets the events of Act II in motion when she discovers Henry’s true identity in the Prologue. During Act I, she bravely climbs up the metal banister of the Academy’s broken staircase for six floors to rescue botanical samples from her office. Alice even convinces Gemma to help her with this daunting task. When they are nearly burned alive by Henry, Alice insists on saving the Queen of the Night flower and distributing clippings of it to her friends. Furthermore, she is the one with the good sense to ensure that a respected man witnesses Henry’s confession at the end of Act II.

Reggie, a visual artist, is the fourth main character, though no part of the narrative is told from her point of view. Rather, she is described by other people. Reggie has dark curly hair, and “wears trousers” (71). Gemma knows Reggie by her birth name, Nellie, and lived with her in New York. Gemma believes that Reggie is the “one person in the world who could be exempted from the general rule that everyone in the end would just let you down” (12). However, when Gemma arrives and finds that Reggie is missing, she believes Reggie has abandoned her. Suling, on the other hand, doesn’t believe Reggie would choose to leave San Francisco.

For the first third of the novel, Reggie’s gender identity and role as Henry’s mistress are obscured. The authors accomplish this by avoiding pronouns and by having Madam Ning refer to Reggie as a “white devil” (30)—a term that while not explicitly gendered, is typically understood as masculine. Though Reggie’s disappearance leads Madam Ning to believe she has abandoned Suling, Ning liked Reggie before she disappeared. She said Reggie was “not like most white women” (169). The reader learns more about Reggie after it is revealed that she is a woman and previously went by the name Nellie.

Reggie’s personality changes dramatically after Henry pays to have her imprisoned in an asylum. Gemma describes Reggie as “[v]ibrant, irrepressible” (180) before she is committed against her will. After her imprisonment, and the terror of the San Francisco earthquake, she struggles with lingering trauma—enduring frequent nightmares and finding herself unable to paint. This artistic block continues until Henry stands trial for his crimes. In the memories of her friends, and in physical pieces of her art, Reggie has a history of being a great artist. She is even able to get a job teaching Americans to paint in Paris. After Henry’s trial, in the Epilogue, the authors describe Reggie as a successful artist, rather than a blocked one. She is able to create art once again.

Henry is the antagonist of the novel. Henry Thornton is his alias when he is in San Francisco. His real name is William van Doren. He is a railroad tycoon and a patron of the arts, but he uses his patronage to control and manipulate the young women he takes under his wing. He is addicted to opium, and his extensive collection of Chinese artifacts and rare plants have been stolen from their rightful owners. When he first meets her, Henry warns Gemma that he is “not very nice” (41). This seemingly charming bit of self-deprecation turns out to be an ironic understatement as Henry’s murderous character is revealed. Before meeting Gemma, he was Reggie’s lover and patron. When Reggie witnessed him committing a murder, Henry had her imprisoned in an asylum. He learns about Gemma through Reggie and hides his involvement with Reggie from Gemma. At first, he fulfills Gemma’s dreams. His money allows her to practice every day with an accompanist, and he arranges parties where the upper class of San Francisco will hear her sing.

However, Gemma’s impression of Henry changes when she discovers he played a role in Reggie’s disappearance. The name she uses for him reflects her changing attitude toward him. She “refused the intimacy of using his first name, even in her mind” (158). When Henry sees Gemma and Reggie together, he decides to kill them both by setting his own house on fire after the earthquake. He survives the earthquake and the subsequent fires—a cosmic injustice echoed by Alice’s statement that “[t]he ones who survive are not necessarily good” (287). The women’s tireless efforts do eventually succeed in bringing Henry to justice, and he dies by suicide while awaiting trial for his many crimes. He loses the titular phoenix crown, his new fiancée, and his reputation.

Ning was friends with Suling’s mother, Ming Lee, before her death, and remains friends with Suling after Ming Lee dies. She runs a brothel called the Palace of Endless Joy. Suling describes her as an ethical sex worker, and Ning is supportive of the LGBT+ community. Reggie says Ning “could survive any number of natural disasters” (244). However, she does not survive Henry’s murderous rage. After the earthquake, she relocates her employees to Oakland and invites Suling to join them. When Ning tries to collect a payment from Henry before heading to Oakland herself, he shoots her in front of the main characters.

Ning was sexually and romantically involved with Sergeant Michael Clarkson. This relationship kept law enforcement from bothering her place of business. He also admitted to deeply loving Ning after her death. Suling thinks, “[P]erhaps some white devils are faithful in love” (103). When the police won’t investigate Ning’s murder, Clarkson joins the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He rejoins the main characters at the end of Act II to put Henry in jail.

Gemma meets these men through her job with the Metropolitan Opera. The authors based their fictional Caruso on the real-life tenor who sang the lead in Carmen just hours before the earthquake. He is a somewhat static character with a great love of music and women. However, he does argue with another female opera star, Olive Fremstad, who is also based on a real-life figure. This shows a different side to his character. After the earthquake and fire, it is Caruso who inspires Gemma to sing again. In the Entr’acte, Gemma suspects Caruso got her the job in Buenos Aires and, in the Epilogue, the authors note that Gemma and Caruso performed together at the Teatro Colon in 1917.

George is an accompanist (also known as a repetiteur) and Gemma’s romantic interest. He meets Gemma when she visits the opera house in San Francisco. Shortly after this, she insists Henry hire George to help her rehearse daily. They become close during these rehearsals, and start their romantic relationship after the earthquake. Eventually, they get married and remain happily so for the rest of the novel.