It’s hard to find a father more disappointed in his child than Dr. Mead is in his daughter—or a father for whom I have so little sympathy about it. Olivia Mead is a burgeoning suffragist when we meet her at the beginning of Cat Winters’ The Cure for Dreaming. All she wants is to be heard, but all her father wants is for to be quiet, biddable, and domestic. The fact that Dr. Mead is willing to hire a hypnotist to remove Olivia’s “rough edges” escalates their domestic drama into a disturbing battle of wills.
The Cure for Dreaming opens with a scene that establishes just how susceptible Olivia is to hypnotism. Later, she learns that the hypnotist, Henri Reverie, actually stood on her during the act. It doesn’t take much to put Olivia under. She’s so tightly wound up most of the time that even the suggestion of relaxing is a relief. Olivia’s troubles really begin after her father finds out that she attended a suffragist rally. Once that news leaks out, Dr. Mead hires Reverie to “treat” Olivia. After hypnosis, Olivia starts to see strange things. Men look like vampires. Some women look like ghosts. It’s even harder for Olivia to keep her mouth shut about the injustices that she sees all around. And worse, she can only say “All is well” when she’s angry.
The longer I read, the more disturbed I was. Both her father and Henri play with Olivia’s mind and completely ignore her wishes. Henri is worse, I think, because he’s presented as a savior for quite a lot of this book (so that he would be a palatable love interest, I think). But he keeps doing what he thinks is “best” when he hypnotizes Olivia time and again. Olivia is batted back and forth between two men who think they know what’s “best;” they constantly override her agency and it bothered the hell out of me.
What I liked most was the way Olivia fought against her fetters throughout The Cure for Dreaming, even if she was rarely successful. I also enjoyed that the action played out against early suffragist agitation in Portland, Oregon. But I don’t know that I like this enough to make up for the problems with consent in the book.