I sometimes wonder if it is safe for a novelist to attempt to portray cultures other than her own. Sarah Dunant is an English writer who now divides her time between London and Florence (half her luck!) I daresay she feels that, having studied Italian history and lived amongst Italians, she knows Italian culture. However, as an Italian woman myself, I know how Italians relate to the foreigners in their midst and they are not as easily understood as a British “Italophile” might believe.
Ms Dunant’s first venture into writing about Italy was a contemporary novel, Mapping the Edge, about an English woman’s fractured adventures on an emotional trip to Florence. However, this is an outsider’s view of Italy. In her two most recent works, historical novels set in Renaissance Italy, Ms Dunant has ventured to get inside the Italian psyche. Let’s see how well she has succeeded.
In The Birth of Venus (Random House/Virago 2004), Sarah Dunant tells the tale of Alessandra Cecchi, the daughter of a rich merchant in fifteenth-century Florence, who is everything a woman should not be, strong-willed, intelligent, talented and ugly. Alessandra’s greatest desire is to be an artist, but as a woman she will never have the means or opportunity to fulfil her ambitions. However, she finds a focus for her creative desires when her father brings home from a trip abroad a painter to decorate the walls of his house. A withdrawn and taciturn man, the unnamed painter is yet drawn to Alessandra and her artistic sensibilities. But then, as Florence comes under threat from French invaders, Alessandra’s parents marry her off for her own protection to Cristoforo, a sophisticated and wealthy older man.
To all intents and purposes this would be the ideal marriage for Alessandra. Cristoforo appreciates her artistic talents and is happy for her to pursue them. He is even willing to turn a blind eye to her relationship with the painter. But Alessandra is shattered to discover that Cristoforo is homosexual and can never be the ideal lover a woman might want.
And it is here that I baulked. The writer’s portrayal of Alessandra’s marriage and the circumstances surrounding it is where, I feel, this novel, however much acclaimed it might be, fatally falters.
Until her wedding night Alessandra never demonstrates any desire for physical love. All her passions have been focussed on art and her cerebral rather than sensual relationship with the painter. As far as I understood the character, Cristoforo’s inept attempt to deflower her might have been embarrassing and disappointing, but a disappointment for which she would easily find solace through her art.
Alessandra soon finds out that the matchmaker was actually Tomaso, her older brother and Cristoforo’s lover. Tomaso, it seems, has always resented Alessandra because he is jealous of her intelligence and talent. He has cynically used her to protect himself and his lover from the forces of religious fanaticism unleashed by the monk Savonarola.
In creating this antagonistic relationship between brother and sister, the writer revealed very little understanding of gender relations in an Italian family. In that time and place, it would have been inconceivable that a boy would be jealous of his sister’s abilities. For a traditional Italian man everything he does and is is, ipso facto, superior to anything a woman can be simply because he is male and she is female. And if a woman should have any abilities, those abilities might be ridiculed by the men in her family, but not resented. Yet, while women may be little regarded as people in their own right, they are still cherished and protected as part of the family.
The writer’s portrayal of the relationship between the brother and sister, therefore, is not credible and I felt that the writer had fashioned it simply to create conflict and crisis. I would have found it much more credible, and indeed poignant, if it turned out that Tomaso had acted not out of spite, but rather out of a misplaced fondness for his sister. How much more devastated Alessandra would be if she were to learn that the brother she has always adored, who has always seemed to love her and tolerate her eccentricities, has proven to be totally insensitive to her real feelings.
After this disappointment I approached Sarah Dunant’s next book, In the Company of the Courtesan (Random House/Virago 2006), with some reservations, but I found it to be a much more successful novel.
The story begins in 1527 on the eve of the infamous Sack of Rome. The dwarf Bucino goes to the walls of Rome to find out the latest news for his mistress, the beautiful courtesan Fiammetta. Warned of the imminent arrival of a marauding army of war-hardened Spaniards and fanatical Protestant Germans, Fiammetta devises an ingenious strategy. Rather than run or hide, she will charm the invaders with her wit and beauty. The plan almost succeeds, but even the resourceful courtesan cannot escape the city’s fate. Having been stripped of her beautiful hair and most of her belongings, Fiammetta persuades Bucino to join her in swallowing their remaining jewels and escaping to Venice where she was born. There, with the help of a hunchback and half blind wise woman, known as La Draga, Fiammetta slowly regains her beauty and confidence and re-establishes herself as a successful courtesan.
A large part of the novel’s charm lies in its depiction of Venice, its culture and its physical beauty, all the more engaging as the city is seen through the eyes of a narrator, Bucino, who arrives in Venice already prejudiced against it, but who unconsciously comes to love it. But fundamentally, its major success lies in its characters. Each of them is well-rounded and finely drawn, especially Bucino.
And there, I feel, lies the reason why this is a much more successful novel than The Birth of Venus. Here, Ms Dunant has not attempted to get inside the Italian family, an insular institution not easily penetrated by the unfamiliar, but has instead created a cast of outsiders who are therefore free to create individual lives and forge unique relationships, thus creating a much more credible and engaging story. In the Company of the Courtesan is a novel I can highly recommend.
Thanks to the Internet, lovers of historical fiction are no longer limited to what they can find on the shelves of brick-and-mortar booksellers. Self-publishing has allowed talented writers whose books lack mass appeal to find an appreciate niche audience, while novels that are long out of print, but still well worth reading, can be found via online booksellers. This review focuses on two novels – one self-published, the other traditionally published but no longer in print – that are worthy examples of the genre.
One author who has taken advantage of self-publishing to tell the story of a relatively obscure, tragic couple is Nobilia Paen. Set in the fifteenth century, Paen’s White Lion, Red Dragon was published through Plane Tree Publishing in 2003. It tells the story of the marriage of Edmund Mortimer to Catherine, daughter of the Welsh leader Owen Glendower, here spelled Owain Glyn Dwr. (An interesting feature of this book is that the back cover copy is in both English and Welsh.)
The author describes this as a love story, and it is, without being a romance novel. Catherine, called Cathi, is forced to disguise herself as a boy and wander about the countryside to evade her father’s enemies. She falls into the hands of a farm couple who put her to work, still in her guise as a lad. When Edmund Mortimer is injured and taken prisoner, she nurses him, and nature takes its course when a recovering Edmund stumbles upon Cathi sneaking off to take a bath. The smitten couple gain their freedom and marry, bringing Edmund over to the doomed Glendower cause.
I found Cathi and Edmund to be extremely likeable characters, presented by Paen with affection, sympathy, and even some gentle humor. Cathi remains sweet and somewhat naïve even after tragedy after tragedy strikes, bearing her trials with admirable fortitude. Edmund, though brave, kindly, and good to his dependents, is not always the sharpest tool in the shed: it takes him two full pages to get the hint after an older woman comments knowingly on the cause of Cathi’s sudden nausea.
White Lion, Red Dragon is narrated in the third person but mostly from Cathi’s point of view, so most of the historical events unfold as they are told to Cathi. This can be confusing at times and also somewhat limiting, as major historical figures like Hotspur and Glendower himself appear only briefly here. It would also have been nice for Paen in her short author’s note to provide a little more detail as to the likely fate of Edmund and Cathi’s son, Lionel, instead of the unenlightening comment that Adam of Usk “knew a very great deal more than he dared to write.”
This novel isn’t an epic tale in the style of Sharon Penman or Nigel Tranter; those who are looking for something like that here will probably be disappointed. As a moving love story between two good people whose happiness is tragically cut short by political upheaval, however, White Lion, Red Dragon is well worth reading.
Unlike the relatively obscure Catherine Mortimer, Henry VIII’s six wives have been the subject of countless historical novels, but The Ivy Crown: A Biographical Novel of Queen Katherine Parr, Last Wife of Henry VIII (that’s a mouthful!) by Mary Luke (Doubleday, 1984) takes an unusually in-depth look at its subject.
A caveat: readers wanting a fast-paced novel are not going to find one here. The Ivy Crown starts off when Katherine is about nine and ends with her death at age thirty-six, and very little detail of the period in between appears to have been left out. Katherine’s first two marriages, which often get short shrift, are both depicted here, even in the negotiation stage, and her various friends and relations almost all have speaking parts. It’s through these relationships and her interaction with all those who pass through her life, though, that we get our understanding of Katherine’s character, so to have cut all of this detail would have left a much less rich novel in its place.
Katherine herself is a strong female character without being that dreaded creature of historical fiction, the feminist centuries ahead of her time. She values learning and has a rich intellectual life, particularly with regard to religion, but she does not hold modern attitudes about gender roles and is not the subject of the author’s censure for failing to do so. In the famous episode where she avoids arrest by telling Henry VIII that she has disputed religious matters with him merely to divert him, not to instruct him, she garners neither pity nor patronizing scorn for her submissiveness, but the reader’s respect for being able to talk her way out of a dire situation.
Katherine Parr, of course, is known for having given up her romance with Thomas Seymour to marry the king, only to marry Seymour after the death of Henry VIII. Luke handles this love story, as well as Katherine’s three previous marriages, deftly. Though Katherine’s first two marriages are depicted as being without passion, Luke succeeds in showing Katherine’s yearning for something more without turning her first two husbands into the stereotype of the Old Man Married to the Bought Bride; they’re decent men who try to be good husbands and landholders. Henry VIII is not the monster depicted in so many novels about him and his wives; he’s deeply flawed, but we’re also allowed to see his good qualities and his charm, as Katherine herself does. As for Seymour, Katherine’s gradual disillusionment about her dashing husband is handled skillfully, again without turning Seymour into the villain of the piece.
The Ivy Queen appears to have been carefully researched, and it has a helpful afterword detailing the fates of many of the principal characters. For those interested in a queen who gets far less attention in historical fiction than her predecessors, it’s well worth a read.
White Lion, Red Dragon can be obtained through Amazon UK, and The Ivy Queen appears to be readily available second hand.
Susan Higginbotham is the convenor of Historical Fiction Excerpts and author of The Traitor's Wife (see her website.)
You remember the old proverb. It was drummed into our heads by our parents and teachers. Don’t make hasty negative judgements about people based on their appearance. Well I’m here to turn that old wisdom on its head and warn you not to have too high expectations of a novel based on the quality of its cover design. How often have you picked up a book because of its arresting art work, but then got to the end of it thinking either (in Peggy Lee’s immortal words) ‘Is that all there is?’, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ or, worst of all, ‘How did this rubbish get published?!’ It’s at times like these I’m glad that, being poor, I get most of my reading matter from the library. I’d hate to spend thirty odd dollars on a book and end up feeling cheated as well as short changed!
The Lost Letters of Aquitaine (aka The Canterbury Papers) by Judith Koll Healey (Harper Collins 2005) is based on an interesting premise. Ms Healey has resurrected one of the lost women of history, Alaïs, Henry II’s young mistress, a girl who had been destined to marry his son Richard and had been brought up as one of the children of his household. (If you have seen The Lion in Winter, you might remember her.)
We pick up Alaïs more than twenty years later, middle aged and unmarried, living in the household of her half-brother, the king of France. Tired of her half-life as a virtual non-person, Alaïs is planning to retire to her country estate when she receives a message from Eleanor of Aquitaine. The messenger, a trusted and noble retainer of the late King Henry, carries a letter from Eleanor pleading with Alaïs to cross the Channel to Canterbury Cathedral and retrieve a hidden cache of letters she wrote to Thomas à Becket many years earlier. As an inducement, Eleanor promises Alaïs information about the son she bore to Henry who was taken from her at birth.
Already the reader suspects a set up. Eleanor hates and mistrusts Alaïs and the feelings are mutual. Why would she ask her to undertake such a mission, a mission that could, depending on the content of the letters, put Eleanor in Alaïs’ power? And why send a woman when the very man who carries the message is quite capable of carrying out the mission on his own? Who, we wonder, is being set up here, Alaïs, or the reader?
Although a pleasant enough read, and competently written, The Lost Letters of Aquitaine time and again sets up expectations that are not met. The novel begins with a sensationalist prologue in which Alaïs is kidnapped. (This is the latest trend which is meant to meet readers’ perceived expectations of a rape, murder or kidnapping in the first two pages of a novel. If, heaven forbid, this is not forthcoming in the text, ie the text starts at the beginning of the story and not at its climax, the deficiency is made up for with a prologue which anticipates it.) Later we find that Alaïs was never in any actual danger as her kidnapper is her old childhood companion, now King John, who, although unstable, has no real intention of harming her.
On reaching Canterbury, Alaïs finds that the acting abbot of the monastery is another childhood friend, William, an orphan who was also raised in Henry’s court. Meeting him brings back painful memories of her relationship with Henry and the night, when Alaïs was barely sixteen, that Henry came to her bedroom giving her no say in the outcome. William, we are later told, was acting as Henry’s trusted secretary at the time and they were also very close. Finally, we learn that when Henry and Eleanor split up, all of the older children took Eleanor’s side while Henry kept only John, the youngest, with him. Given this build up, and hints in other literature that Henry was partial to both boys and girls, the reader is led to believe that a dramatic revelation is coming, that Henry seduced William, as well as Alaïs, and perhaps, given the instability we witnessed earlier, sexually abused John. We read on in breathless anticipation, but nothing comes of it. Why is this? Did the writer not see for herself the expectations she had created? Did she begin going along that path and then pull back for fear of what – being politically incorrect, veering into melodrama? Or was she just leaving a convenient opening for a sequel?
Eventually, Alaïs finds out all about her son, but not from Eleanor, and the letters contain no startling revelations, so what was it all about? Why is the novel so disappointing? There is a clue early in the text when Alaïs is on her way to Calais and comes across her uncle and his party. Remember now, we are still in France and the people we are with are all French. So what language would you expect them to be speaking? Well, the party is joined by an Arab scholar, who, we are told, speaks lightly accented English. It is only one word, but it speaks volumes. Why didn’t anyone pick up this small, but obvious, error? What was the editor doing? Was the book actually edited at all?
It is one word that confirms my theory: that modern publishing houses put more resources into the cover artwork than into editing the text. And why is this? Because basically they want the public to buy the book, to pick it up off the shelf, to handle it, to take it to the checkout. They care very little whether you actually read it. They see editing not as an investment, but as an expense. They have no interest in cultivating an author. If an author’s second book doesn’t succeed, who cares? There are plenty more where she came from.
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (Fourth Estate 2001) is a beautifully written book. Set in 1665/6, and inspired by actual events, the novel tells the tale of a remote village in northern England which contracts the Plague from an infected bolt of cloth sent up from London. Inspired by their charismatic young rector, the villagers decide to quarantine themselves so as not to spread the contagion.
The effects of this dramatic undertaking are witnessed by Anna, a young widow, and housemaid to the rector and his aristocratic wife. Although inexperienced, in these extreme circumstances Anna discovers in herself a talent as a healer and midwife and in this role comes into contact with all aspects of village life. And, in her position as housemaid and confidante to the rector’s wife, Anna discovers the tragic secret behind their seemingly ideal marriage.
For the most part, the reader is enthralled by the story, characters and poetic language, but every now and then one is left shaking one’s head. Anna sometimes seems to have superhuman powers. Having only learnt about midwifery by observing her long dead mother, on her first call out to attend a birth, Anna manages to turn a breech baby in the womb, an achievement found difficult by the most skilled midwife. And we sometimes feel like warning the author that her research is showing. Trying to maintain an orphaned girl’s claim on a tin mine, Anna and her genteel mistress don breeches to go underground and do some mining, explosives and all. It is as though the author, having done so much reading on tin-mining, is determined to get it in there, no matter how unlikely the circumstances might be.
The author’s modern sensibilities are also in evidence. Anna is shocked and indignant when she discovers the secret of the rector’s marriage. As arrogant and self-righteous as the rector might be in the penance he extracts from his wife for a youthful indiscretion, it is not physically cruel or out of keeping with the time. In fact, for his time, the rector’s actions are quite enlightened and even compassionate. The climax of the novel is, in large measure, unrelated to the effects of the Plague, and its main function seems to be to blacken the rector’s character even further. The author seems to be at pains to make the point that all men are bastards, and all priests are hypocrites.
The ending, too, strains credulity. Fleeing from England, Anna fortuitously finds herself in north Africa, in the very town where the author of the medical reference she has been studying lives. There, with little ado, she is taken into this Arab doctor’s household, ostensibly as one of his wives, but in reality as his student. The reader can only take it as a surreal moment of wishful thinking.
I’m afraid that I cannot write a complete review of The Innocent by Posie Graeme-Evans (Simon & Schuster 2004) as I could not finish it. (I had no intention at the time of writing a review!) Already put off by the sloppy writing, fantastical characterisation and implausible plotting, I had to put the book aside when I got to the pornographic sex.
Born under strange circumstances, Anne is brought up in Arcadian innocence in an enchanted forest, learning about the healing power of herbs. When she reaches her teenage years, she is taken from this isolated and idyllic life directly into the heart of the city of London and put into the household of a powerful merchant with links to the court. The merchant’s wife is dying of a mysterious disease which all the best doctors in London cannot cure, but after very little persuasion, the master of the house happily follows his newest maidservant’s advice to dismiss all these eminent doctors and allow her to take sole charge of his wife. Of course, the woman is miraculously cured and one can already anticipate how Anne will come to the King’s attention. Meanwhile, one of Anne’s fellow maids has become pregnant as the result of a sadomasochistic sexual relationship, complete with whips, with the son of the house. Is it any wonder I felt no need to continue?
I had to ask myself how could this amateurish effort have been published, and, I now find, go on to spawn a whole series. I guess the old saw is still valid: You’ll never go broke underestimating the taste of the public. And who is the author that she should so well understand this fact? She is just an executive of Australia’s major commercial television network which is owned by one of the country’s biggest companies with extensive holdings in publishing. Does that answer my question? And to add insult to injury, soon after this book’s publication, Simon & Schuster announced they would no longer publish new Australian authors. What a swansong!
So, the next time you find yourself drawn to an attractive cover in a bookshop, pause before taking it to the cashier. Are you really willing to pay that much for the artwork alone? If so, proceed to the cash register. If not, you might do what many of us do: take a note of the title and request it from your local library!
Five hundred years ago, the Spanish Conquistadores defeated the mighty Aztec empire. It is a story we all know well, but there is one aspect of it that is largely unknown outside Mexico: that Cortés could not have prevailed without the help of his interpreter and mistress, a native Mexican woman, Malinali. Known as La Malinche, she is both reviled as a traitor to, and revered as the mother of, the Mexican people.
In Feathered Serpent: a novel of the Mexican Conquest (aka Aztec) (Random House 2002), Colin Falconer has taken this complex and contradictory woman as his central character. Although known as a writer of thrillers, Falconer here demonstrates that he is a writer of fine prose and deep insight. What is most striking about this novel is the way Falconer enters into the minds and world view of his characters, especially the native Mexicans. Through them we observe from the inside a clash of cultures that leads to inevitable tragedy.
The question generally posed by history is how a ragtag band of Spanish treasure seekers could have so easily defeated a strong and warlike nation like the Aztecs. Books like Guns, Germs and Steel (by Jared Diamond) can tell us about the external factors that may have contributed, but what were the people involved thinking, what motivated them to act as they did, what influenced them to make the decisions they made? We are pretty familiar with what motivated Cortés and the Spaniards: a lust for gold and glory, thinly disguised behind religious fervour. But what made Malinali decide to collaborate in the conquest of her country? What made Motecuhzoma, the Aztec King, capitulate so easily?
These are questions that science and history cannot easily answer, but fiction can. Through fiction we can enter not only into the minds and hearts of these people, but also see the world through their eyes. We come to understand their system of beliefs, the paradigm through which they interpret the events around them and come to their decisions. And we come to see that there are a myriad of pressures which influence events – the political, the religious and the personal.
On the political level, we learn that the Aztecs are but one of a mosaic of nations in Central America, but they are the most powerful and the cruelest. They are hated and feared by the surrounding tribes whom they have conquered and from whom they demand large numbers of young people for their endless human sacrifices. The other tribes are only too eager to join in a revolt against them. In the meantime, the Spaniards also have their internal power struggles, as Cortés defies the orders of his governor to press inland on his mission of conquest, thus dividing his crew between those who are loyal to him and those who cleave to a higher authority.
But perhaps the most important factor in the outcome of events is religion. The religion of the native Mexicans is populated by savage and bloodthirsty gods who vie with each other for power in the heavens and on earth. Any of these gods, with their many attributes, could descend to earth at any time and wreak their vengeance on any human who fails to show them due veneration. These gods are pitted against the Christian icons of a dying man nailed to a cross and a doe-eyed woman holding a baby.
Falconer uncovers all these forces by focusing on a small group of central characters. Cortés is the charismatic and mercurial leader who yet remains a mystery to his followers. Benítez is one of Cortés’ lieutenants, a basically decent man who tries to hold onto his integrity despite the atrocities he participates in. Norte is a Spaniard who, after being shipwrecked on the Mexican coast, adopted the lifestyle of his Mayan captors. Now, reclaimed by the Spaniards, he straddles both worlds. Mistrusted for having ‘gone native’, Norte sees his own people with a jaundiced eye.
After cutting a swathe through the costal tribes, the Spaniards are offered appeasing gifts, including women. Among them are Malinali, a former slave whose detested husband has recently died, and Rain Flower, her sweet natured step-daughter. Rain Flower is given to Benítez, but catches the eye of Norte who misses his Mayan wife. Eventually she must choose between the man she considers to be her husband, and the man she desires. Malinali’s choices are more complex.
Originally given to one of his lieutenants, Malinali is fascinated by Cortés, whom she believes to be the incarnation of her beloved father’s totem god, Feathered Serpent. Malinali has been raised to believe that one day Feathered Serpent will return from across the seas to deliver her people from the hated Aztecs and that when he does, she will be his chosen companion. Through Cortés Malinali believes she can fulfill her destiny and take revenge on the people who killed her father.
Meanwhile, in his stronghold of Tenochtitlán, Motecuhzoma is taking council from his religious advisors. Who are these men relentlessly pressing through the jungle and over mountains, bring all the conquered tribes in their wake? Are they gods and if so, which gods? Are they the gods Motecuhzoma has assiduously worshipped with endless sacrifices of blood, or gods that he has inadvertently insulted or neglected? Are they more powerful than his gods? Should he remain loyal to his own gods or risk changing his allegiances? And if they are gods, what power can a human being possibly wield against them?
Although we know the outcome of all these choices, in its exploration of the human heart, Feathered Serpent keeps us spellbound. Falconer has created an honest, engrossing, complex world populated by people we come to know intimately. I cannot recommend it too highly.
One of the pleasures of reading historical fiction is to see what different authors make of the same historical figures, especially with regard to those figures about whose inner lives relatively little is known.
Isabella of France, queen to England’s Edward II, is one such figure, and one whose turbulent life is the very stuff of which historical fiction is made. To briefly sketch her history: Isabella married Edward in 1308, probably when she was twelve years old. Edward II’s predilection for male favourites and his ineptitude as a military commander caused constant strife between him and his nobles. This discontent reached a peak in the 1320’s when his most ambitious favourite, Hugh le Despenser the younger, used his influence over the king to acquire land and wealth for himself, often by dispossessing others, including vulnerable widows and children. Isabella became increasingly alienated from her husband. In 1325, she sailed to France to negotiate a peace treaty between her husband and her brother, the King of France. While in France, she became the lover of Roger Mortimer, an escapee from the Tower of London. In October 1326, the pair sailed to England with an army of mercenaries and with little opposition overthrew Edward II and placed the fourteen-year-old Edward III, Edward II and Isabella’s son, on the throne. Hugh le Despenser the younger and his father were executed gruesomely and Edward II was imprisoned, first at Kenilworth Castle and then at Berkeley Castle, where he died in 1327, probably having been murdered at the behest of Mortimer, Isabella, or both. Legend has it that he died via a red-hot poker shoved up his rectum, though it’s quite possible that he died through a more conventional means, such as smothering. (Another possibility, favored by some historians, is that he escaped his would-be murderers and fled abroad.)
Once Isabella achieved her objective of overthrowing the Despensers and put Edward III on the throne, she is notable mainly for the greed, short-sightedness, maliciousness and sheer stupidity she displayed. She granted herself an enormous dower and went through the considerable amount Edward II had left in his treasury with remarkable speed. She and Roger Mortimer quickly alienated their allies by excluding them from decision-making, even when those allies were members of the young king’s regency council. She entered into a hugely unpopular treaty with Scotland and wrecked any chances she might have had of reconciling the northern landholders to it by appropriating most of the reparation money from the Scots for herself. She tolerated the increasing disrespect with which Roger Mortimer treated the maturing king and seems to have done nothing to protect her own son’s interests against those of her lover. She and Mortimer duped her own brother-in-law, the Earl of Kent, into believing that Edward II was still alive, then had him executed for attempting to rescue his brother from prison. This act of tyranny was probably the last straw for Edward III and his friends. In October 1330, two dozen young men, supporters of the almost-eighteen-year-old Edward III, entered Nottingham Castle through a secret passage, overpowered Roger Mortimer, and arrested him. He was tried before Parliament as a traitor and was hung in November 1330. Isabella was not punished, but her days of power were over. She spent the next twenty-eight years living on her own estates in the luxurious manner befitting a dowager queen, only occasionally coming to court.
Isabella is the subject of Alison Weir’s 2005 biography, Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England (originally published in the UK under the title of Isabella: She-Wolf of France, Queen of England). Weir’s biography is well researched and thorough, though its presentation of the theory that Edward II escaped his murderers failed to convince me. It also strikes me as fallacious to blame Isabella’s downfall on “her involvement with the rapacious Mortimer” and her poor reputation on her “perceived immorality with Mortimer.” Isabella has to be held responsible for her own choices, good and ill, including that of becoming involved with Mortimer. As for her reputation, Isabella’s invasion had been a popular one; she and Mortimer foolishly squandered that popularity through their actions outside the bedchamber, not in it.
Weir’s book is the first full-length published biography of Isabella. In the last few decades, however, Isabella has been the subject of historical novels by Margaret Campbell Barnes, Hilda Lewis, Brenda Honeyman, Jean Evans, Maureen Peters, Pamela Bennetts and Edith Felber, among others. I’ll focus here on the novels by Margaret Campbell Barnes, Hilda Lewis, Pamela Bennetts and Edith Felber, as the Lewis and Felber novels are in print and the Barnes and Bennetts novels, though out of print, are relatively easy to find second-hand.
Margaret Campbell Barnes’s novel, Isabel the Fair, published in 1957, follows Isabel from her arrival in England until shortly after the execution of Roger Mortimer. The plot is summed up neatly by Edward II’s first favorite, Piers Gaveston, who predicts of Isabella,
“An eager, generous girl, exquisitely molded for high destiny, grows bitter with good cause, harboring the seeds of cruelty.”
Isabel is tricked by Mortimer and the Bishop of Hereford into condoning the murder of her husband, but when she learns how she has been deceived she remains loyal to her lover; later she takes a positive glee in proving to the men about her how she can cleverly entrap the Earl of Kent. Though Barnes provides ample psychological justification for Isabella’s actions, she does not excuse them either; the last scene shows Isabel in her full complexity, demanding at one point to know how large an allowance she is to receive, praying for forgiveness at another.
In her recently reissued 1970 novel Harlot Queen, Hilda Lewis takes a similar psychological approach, emphasizing Isabella’s slowly deteriorating character and her eventual repentance. Lewis, however, gives her story an interesting twist, revolving around the identity of the friar who visits the aged Isabella twenty-eight years after Mortimer’s fall; she also makes nice use of the fact that Isabella was buried in her wedding cloak. Though the novel contains some irritating inaccuracies – Edward III did not leave Isabella impoverished after Mortimer’s execution or prevent her from seeing her grandchildren – these aren’t as bothersome as they could be, given Lewis’s strong characterizations and its balanced portrayal of Isabella.
Pamela Bennetts in The She-Wolf, published in 1975, takes a rather different approach from Barnes and Lewis. The story starts out in 1323, by which time Isabella has already become a practiced dissembler and Mortimer’s mistress. Far from being romanticized, her and Mortimer’s relationship has a twisted quality about it; there’s a vivid scene where he exerts his dominance over her by forcing her to walk over to him as a prelude to a sexual encounter. Unlike Barnes and Lewis, Bennetts ends her story with the overthrow of Mortimer and the rejoicing of Edward III’s supporters; Isabella’s future life, along with any regrets she might or might not have, is left entirely to the reader’s imagination.
Edith Felber’s 2006 novel, Queen of Shadows, is less successful than its predecessors. Isabella is depicted as a strong woman, yet her strength mostly consists of making tedious speeches about the responsibilities of royalty and the injustices done to women. At the same time, she is sanitized: she is completely guiltless of her husband’s death, not even wishing for it as Isabella in Harlot Queen does; and the other excesses of her and Mortimer’s reign, such as the execution of the Earl of Kent, are dealt with by skipping over them entirely, except for a passing mention of “Mortimer and his black deeds.” Paradoxically, though Felber depicts Isabella as being repulsed by Mortimer’s murder of her husband and fearful of his intentions toward her son, this strong queen is also shown as being helpless to do anything about Mortimer’s abuse of power except to wait for Edward III to take action – as if a woman who could overthrow a king would be powerless to topple a mere lord. (Historically, as Alison Weir points out, had Isabella actually wanted to get rid of Mortimer, there were many people who would have been only too happy to help her.) Isabella is also given a mysterious Scottish lover in her past, who is never identified but who, it is hinted, fathered Edward III. Because the lover has nothing to do with the plot, it’s hard to discern any point to this except perhaps as a sop to admirers of the movie Braveheart, which famously, and impossibly, has William Wallace fathering Edward III by Isabella.
Three out of four Isabella novels that are well worth reading, however, isn’t a bad percentage. Given what appears to be an upsurge of interest in this period of history, as evidenced by Weir’s biography, the recent reissue of Hilda Lewis’s novel, Ian Mortimer’s 2003 biography of Roger Mortimer, and Paul Doherty’s 2003 popular account of Edward II’s downfall, one can hope that more books, nonfiction and fiction alike, will be forthcoming about a woman who despite all of her flaws – or perhaps because of them – remains one of the most fascinating figures in medieval history.
Susan Higginbotham is the convenor of Historical Fiction Excerpts and author of The Traitor's Wife (see her website.)
©Susan Higginbotham 2006
How can one not be intrigued by a novel that begins thus:
When I was a young man, King François of France greatly admired my bare buttocks. The bare buttocks, of course, are in a painting, An Allegory with Cupid and Venus painted by Bronzino in 1545 and which inspired this novel, the imagined story of how the painting came about.
One hot afternoon, while all of Florence is taking a siesta, Giuseppe, a painter’s apprentice, is at work making gesso while his master, Agnolo il Bronzino, retires to his bed. Having spent the morning posing for nude studies, Giuseppe has decided not to dress to undertake his rather noisome task. Suddenly the door is broken in and the house is invaded by Duke Cosimo de’ Medici and his guards. The Duke orders Bronzino to create a painting that he can send to King François of France as a diplomatic gift. Seeing the seventeen-year-old Giuseppe in his nakedness, the Duke insists that the boy should pose for Cupid even though he is too old for the role.
Bronzino takes on the onerous commission in the hope that it will lead to his appointment as official court painter, but his progress is blocked until his former master, Jacopo da Pontormo, diagnoses his problem. He needs to find the perfect model to pose for Venus. Together the three men comb the city until Giuseppe spots a tall, beautiful young woman with a mysterious smile, standing at her window. She is Angelina, a mute, simple-minded girl living under the protection of a nun. With the Duke’s intervention, Angelina is taken from her safe and happy home into the perilous art world of Florence. Giuseppe sympathises with the innocent, exploited girl and inevitably falls in love with her.
I was engaged by this novel from beginning to end. Alan Fisk brings the sights, sounds and particularly the smells of Renaissance Florence to life, and his characters, especially Bronzino, are captivating. But as much as I enjoyed reading this novel, I felt that there could have been so much more to it – more about the actual process of creating the painting, more about the characters and their relationships.
Like the painting it describes, the novel is somewhat chaotic with a disparate set of minor characters that seem to be there largely to act as models for figures in the painting. But what gives the painting its unity is the delicate rendering of the two central figures and the complex relationship between them. It is this strong centre that the novel lacks.
At the core of the novel is the three-way homosexual relationship between Pontormo, Bronzino and Giuseppe. Giuseppe, while accepting Bronzino’s instruction as his apprentice, must also accept his sexual attentions, however unwillingly. At the same time, Bronzino continues his relationship with Pontormo, even though his own apprenticeship is long over. Fisk is not coy about acknowledging his characters’ sexuality, yet seems uncomfortable with it, on the emotional level even more so than on the physical. Time and again he gives us a glimpse of what might be complex emotions, but then shies away.
I doubt I am the first reader to have noticed this trend. In his Author’s Note, Fisk attributes any shortcomings to the limitations of his narrator, Giuseppe, but after all it is the author who creates the narrator. Here I feel that the author is only doing himself a disservice. Rather than defending himself against the criticism, he could have made constructive use of it. By failing to explore the deeper, emotional potential of his own characters and the relationships he has set up, he has missed the opportunity to make this book into a truly memorable novel, rather than merely the good read it is now.
Cupid and the Silent Goddess was published by Twenty-First Century Publishers.Com, one of the proliferation of small publishers modern technology has made possible. For the aspiring author whose work has been ignored by agents and publishers, these companies offer the fulfilment of their greatest dream, to see their work in print. But this gift can be a two-edged sword.
Twenty-First Century Publishers.Com describes itself thus:
We are a direct link between readers and writers of quality literature in various genres. They are making a virtue of the fact that, as with most of these publishers, they offer little if any editorial support. This can do their authors a terrible disservice as they publish many books which, to put it kindly, are not yet ready for publication.
There is an old adage among writers that goes: You never finish a novel; you just stop working on it. That is to say that no novel is perfect and even the most accomplished authors can see room for improvement in their work. But very often the writer himself is too close to his work to see the flaws. That is why the editor was invented and why even the profit driven multinational publishers have had to bring their editors back.
Writing need not be a lonely business. I would urge all writers to seek out a critical second (third, fourth and even fifth) pair of eyes for their work. I admit I have had my own disappointment with a ‘Manuscript Assessor’, but I have found the input of a writing group invaluable.
Taking criticism isn’t easy, but it is something writers have to learn to do in order to keep improving their craft and reach their full potential.
You can find out more about Alan Fisk from his homepage and Cupid and the Silent Goddess is available from Twenty-First Century Publishers.Com.
Cupid and the Silent Goddess by Alan Fisk.
I have that information only by hearsay, of course, because my buttocks were in the
king’s château of Chambord while I was here in Italy.
The mission is to provide to the reader a broad range of material which has not been
filtered out by the rigidity of the publishing system…[W]e offer a forum…to write as you
know you should, rather than as you may have been advised, to prove you were right.