[Februaryuri 2024 rerun] Goodbye, My Rose Garden
(base post on Februaryuri here!)
(note that all that follows, unless mentioned explicitly or in the rerun section, was written in February 2024)
Goodbye, My Rose Garden (Sayonara Rose Garden), by Dr.Pepperco
Publication
Ended (3 volumes)
Published in English (Seven Seas Entertainment), 3 volumes
Published in French (Komikku Editions) under the same title, 3 volumes
Summary
The early 1900s. Hanako, a young Japanese woman, has traveled all the way to England to meet her favorite author, Victor Franks, whose progressive books on oppression and women's condition have inspired her to someday become a writer too. Sadly, she's harshly discriminated against when she reaches Franks' editor, in spite of her combativeness... and she's found heartbroken in front of that building by young noble Alice Douglas. The latter, another fervent reader of Franks' books, is a regular of these editions as a proofreader, and knows the author well. She suggests hosting Hanako and hiring her as a maid so that the foreigner can extend her stay, and says she may be able to introduce her to Victor Franks. Hanako, mesmerized both by the opportunity and by Alice herself, accepts.
Alice, however, has some ulterior motive, in the form of a terrifying request: she will grant the young girl's wish if Hanako helps her... by killing her at some point in the near future.
As her stay goes on and she is left pondering on that demand with little more information, the newly hired maid overhears conversations on Alice being "special", gets glimpses of her arranged marriage, and slowly starts to figure out what hides behind the noblewoman's words...
CW
- Suicidal ideation as a tragic trope (the only way out of an arranged straight marriage and interiorized lesbophobia)
- Sexism (1900s England, addressed)
- Homophobia and lesbophobia (same)
- Occasional elements of xenophobia against Japanese people (same)
- Occasional classism (same)
Sexual elements?
None.Comment
It's hard to think of something more to say about this manga when I feel like it's been thoroughly analyzed and its strengths perfectly highlighted in this AnimeFeminist article by Dee. However, said article spoils the whole three volumes, so let's do something a little lighter on the spoilers.
Suffice to say, this manga is made unique in the yuri genre by the expert use of its end-of-Victorian-era setting. This gives it two things:
- some kind of real-life anchor, with direct references from that time, be it of contemporary authors or of women's rights movements, that support the manga's themes and make it feel grounded at the same time;
- that one tragic vibe and the codes you would expect from such a setting: something slow, full of longing and ache, involving different social standings, and crystallized in the sword of Damocles of an inevitable straight marriage, or death.
Interestingly, these codes inspired both indirectly a lot of the tropes one can find in the classic high school yuri genre, at least in spirit; and much more directly what we get in modern Western lesbian movies: this same kind of slow historical tragedy. Rose Garden feels like these two things at the same time: some return to the roots of common yuri tropes, and a lesbian movie but it's a manga.
It's consequently predictable in most of its plot beats - and yet it's an enjoyable ride, simple and effective, if you're looking for this kind of story. Furthermore, this predictability is also a strength: it makes it more impactful when the manga swerves away from what is expected of it. It is notably worth mentioning that it addresses or defuses to some extent some of the more debatable elements one could expect from the genre, such as love stories with an unaddressed age gap or power gap.
And, you know, there's the ending. I will say no more - there's simply something in the way this work is aware of its own genre and converses with it, that really elevates it.
Bottom line: if you're not into reading classic historical lesbian romance and tropes, this may not be the manga for you. If you are, though? This is both a tribute to that, and a gold standard of it.
Rerun section
Once again, Frank Hecker on cohost added several remarks here on how grounded Rose Garden is in the time period it depicts. I am quoting here two elements he added there, and that may be of interest to people invested in lesbian representation notably at the dawn of the 20th century.
[...] if you want to get a good feel for the sorts of queer-coded fictions created by contemporary writers of that era, I strongly recommend checking out Sarah Orne Jewett’s story "Martha’s Lady,” referenced in the manga. It's a lovely story in its own right, and also a good example of how a premise like that of Goodbye, My Rose Garden might have played out in real life.
Finally, if you're inclined to write your own historical fiction on queer themes, you could do a lot worse than to consult the various articles Heather Rose Jones has created as part of her Lesbian Historic Motif Project, which collects and presents information “that would be useful in grounding a fictional lesbian character in the context of historic human experience.”
As a closing aside, it is sweet to see the name of Sarah Orne Jewett crop up as I write this, since I was just a few days ago lost on Wikipedia pages like Boston marriage and romantic friendship (landing there from the page of the Class S literary genre, that had a big impact on modern yuri), and that Jewett's Wikipedia page does reference the notion of Boston marriage too (and her - by all accounts - married relationship with Annie Fields). This feels like a treasure trove on historical lesbian and lesbian-adjacent relationships of the late 19th/early 20th century.