The Romantic Armchair Traveller

Liberia: The Doctor’s Mission by Debbie Kaufman

 

It was with considerable hesitation that I picked up The Doctor’s Mission by Debbie Kaufman (Harlequin Love Inspired, 2011). Although my sampling of inspirational romance has given me a certain appreciation for the subgenre it has also confirmed that its aims make it a tricky one for me to read on any but a detached level. Even so, the rarity of a Liberian setting was a strong lure. Moreover, I was curious to discover how a present-day romance writer would tackle the anything but straightforward subject of Christian missionary work in Africa. Debbie Kaufman’s debut category historical brought several sharp surprises.

 

1918*. The Great War has ended and Red Cross doctor, Mary O’Hara, volunteers her services where she will not have to battle discrimination by the medical profession against female physicians. The missionary outposts in the Liberian interior are desperate for staff, and after the dangers and losses she has survived at the front the jungle appears a veritable sinecure. That is, until she meets her arrogant co-worker, who refuses to believe she can be part of God’s plan for Nynabo.

Despite high hopes Pastor William Mayweather has been unsuccessful in his attempts to continue the work begun by his martyred uncle and aunt. Delays caused by war-imposed interruptions in shipping, deaths from malaria, and the rules of the Mission Board have hampered progress at every turn. Being sent a young suffragette whose utter lack of local experience could prove a deadly liability is the last straw.

Their tense, adventurous trek to Nynabo is nothing compared to the conflicts that erupt once they tackle the problems at the neglected mission station. Both are used to being in charge. But when their mistakes put lives in danger, trust in everything they have questioned becomes their only hope.

 

 

Christian-themed romance, or inspirational romance as it is commonly termed in the USA, is sometimes dismissed or criticised by readers unfamiliar with its conventions as “preaching to the choir”. But from the viewpoint of Christian ministry this can be considered its great virtue: inspirational romance seems mostly written to edify believers and to strengthen the faith. As I understand the subgenre, if reading it encourages positive curiosity or turns thoughts to conversion, that is generally considered a bonus, not the primary goal.

 

Whereas the typical inspirational romance appears intended for members of Protestant denominations that embrace conservative values, the level or intensity of spirituality and religious themes within the novels seem to vary quite a bit. The quotient in The Doctor’s Mission starts out relatively breezy but intensifies and is escalated as the plot builds to its multi-part climax. Paradoxically, while the book ended up being the most religion-heavy inspirational romance I have read (which, given the subject, is of course not unexpected), it wears much of this content with an ease and naturalness that translates into fluidity and lightness. Before now, the religious conversion of a non-Christian or non-practising Christian hero or heroine has been the central focus of every inspirational romance that has come my way, and in each case issues with what I have perceived as facile handling and resolution of that process has interfered with rational acceptance and enjoyment of the story. The implausibility issues makes this premise the inspy equivalent of the “reforming the rake”-motif in general historical romance. The Doctor’s Mission chooses a different course. While it has its share of didactic dialogue the expression of religious sentiments is unforced, an organic outgrowth of Christian characters’ personal struggles instead of tiresome author-manipulated lectures in dogma followed by magic-wand-style conversions. Matters of faith are inextricable from the tightly woven plot, not a tangential theme. For a reader who belongs to (the misnamed) evangelical fiction’s target audience The Doctor’s Mission could, from a certain aspect, serve a devotional, spiritually uplifting purpose.

 

As in any standard romance, the relationship between the heroine and the hero drives the story. Their reactions to each other are at first defined by the losses they have suffered and their present struggles: the death by malaria of William’s wife and the killings of his aunt and uncle, plus his own lack of progress at Nynabo; as well as the death of Mary’s brother on her operating table in a field hospital in France, and her fight for professional recognition among men determined to treat her as a member of the weaker sex and therefore a problem. Mary and William’s conflicting expectations and strong, goal-oriented personalities result in palpable tension on every page. What is more, the tension is never contrived but grows naturally from the situations they face and the choices they make, which in turn makes makes their actions understandable and believable even as the knots tighten around them, worsening their problems. The intricate plotting of the relationship, which acknowledges their attraction to each other but takes a levelheaded, practical path rather than a romantic one, is perhaps the book’s greatest strength. It far surpasses the skill of the average debut author. Together with the organic and meaningful examination of their actions and beliefs from a spiritual standpoint this makes for a compelling and inspirational relationship development with a shy dash of sweetness at the end to lift the romance into demure bliss.

 

I wish I could finish by concluding that The Doctor’s Mission is an impressive and memorable debut by an author with mature writing skills. Those things hold true, but only partly. Unfortunately their import is severely diminished by coming stamped with a large caveat lector.

 

Past reading experience inclines me to believe that almost any set-up can be redeemed from the dangers of typecasting by thoughtful, layered writing. Quite a bit of planning and subject-specific research has evidently gone into the crafting of The Doctor’s Mission. Unfortunately, the portrayal of the indigenous peoples who inhabit the chosen setting has not benefitted from those efforts.

 

Around thirty years ago a kind-hearted and cosmopolitan teenage daughter of European career diplomats complained to me about the family’s servants in Africa: how lazy the black locals were, taking forever to do simple chores, and how stupid, always forgetting points of etiquette such as wearing white gloves when setting or serving at a table. I mention this because The Doctor’s Mission reminded me of the lesson that girl drove home: blind spots related to people of other cultures and countries crop up in the most unexpected places.

 

For a quick idea of the nature of the trouble with The Doctor’s Mission, one might picture caricatures from a pre-WWII cartoon of African jungle natives, or perhaps a campy silent era film complete with a staccato piano score to emote tension as hostile, spear-wielding tribal villagers led by a lecherous chieftain threaten a feisty white woman, pale with distress, while the valiant, morally upright, broad-shouldered white hero plots her rescue. Rinse and repeat, this time with knife-wielding cannibals doing the threatening. Only the awful comedy of ethnic stereotyping in The Doctor’s Mission hardly has the same excuse for blinkered ignorance that one might at times claim for authors of the aforementioned eras.

 

Highlighting a few text samples should show the extent of the problem. This is not an exhaustive list.

• Primitive living conditions and hostile surroundings are a danger specifically to white women: “A shock ran clear down William’s spine. A sturdy-looking woman of about forty years, but a woman nonetheless. What were they thinking? Had his last venture into the interior not proven Nynabo unsafe for the fairer sex?” Although another female colleague in the less remote Newaka sensibly reminds him that generations of women missionaries have worked in Liberia, the fragility of white women in the jungle is a steady theme of William’s world view. While his white female co-workers force him to re-examine this belief, the complete exclusion in their ongoing debate of any mention of the indigenous women who actively inhabit the same space frames the latter as not only irrelevant but invisible. The exception is when they provide a foil for North American/European competence or morality. Indigenous women in the novel exist to be rescued (Anaya, Nana Mala’s wife), pitied (the female Kru villagers), and feared (Mammy Tarloh).
• Here is the very first entry on the scene of non-white characters, a group of porters: “Three shiny black torsos covered in little more than sweat and grass cloth entered the compound through the open arch” (p. 10). This is the full extent of the description of the local members of a caravan arriving to Newaka (Nyaaka/Nyyake) with supplies from the coast (presumably the port town of Harper/Cape Palmas) in a scene that devotes several paragraphs to describing the two white female mission workers who arrive with them, carried in hammocks, and has in the preceding pages given rounded outlines of two other white, minor characters. It is also interesting to compare the fictional representation with the photo (below) of a real-life caravan in the Liberian interior, taken in 1928.
• The introduction to one of two prominent secondary characters, this one a local of Kru ethnicity who on the trek to Nynabo is the head porter: “Hannabo had returned with his catch dangling over his shoulder. ‘[William:] I see you have had good hunting.’ Hannabo grinned. ‘Yes, Nana Pastor. I got a fine monkey. We eat soon’” (p.32).
• The first description of villagers living along the trail to the mission station: “All of [the villagers present] were deferring to the one native in a worn black bowler hat and bright red loincloth standing with his arms folded across his chest, a chest hung with some decorative type of necklace. Must be the chief” (p.44).
• The first glimpse of the women in this village, which is “unfriendly” (p.44): “ [Children mentioned.] Of the five women present, presumably their mothers, although there was little doubt about the one who was nursing, expressions ranged from wary to curious to downright hostile on one thin woman with blue cloth covering her modesty while she stirred the pot. Without exception, the rest of the women wore nothing more than a cloth skirt fastened about their waists and a small fetish bag [Mary]’d come to expect hung around their necks. Mary found herself gawking and forced herself to take her eyes off the uninhibited display of uncovered skin. Even as a physician, the nudity discomfited her” (50-1). Despite the inclusion of this reaction, the subject of nudity does not form any part of Mary’s character development.
• William’s attitude toward Hannabo, a friendly local whose official position at the mission station is never clarified but who appears to be a general helper: “William immediately cheered at the sight of Hannabo. Hannabo was the living legacy of [William’s] uncle’s work, proof a heart could be turned from the darkness of superstition and witchcraft of the bush” (138); “This primitive bush man believed. [...] For all my learning, it is one with a childlike faith who teaches me” (229).
• Hannabo expresses his opinion of Mary: “The Mammy Doctor, her medicine was strong. First she cured the evil of the sasswood and now the shaking sickness [=malaria]. Father God made her a powerful healer.” William corrects him: “’Yes, well, God uses the science of man to save the body. Still’, he admonished, ‘it is God who does the healing. It is in his hands whether we live or die.’” In response, “Hannabo looked puzzled” (138).
• When William falls ill during work on readying the mission station for the rainy season, (in a scene not shown) the local labourers immediately prepare to desert the project since they fear they may not be paid. Hannabo’s account of events: “Without Mammy Doctor, we could not have continued. The workers were about to disappear into the bush but she stopped them. Because of her powerful medicine they listened” (139).
• Mary and the labourers: “Every time she set foot out the door, the men sought her approval or wanted her direction in their work, especially Jabo” (144); “Jabo pointed at the pile [of building materials] with some pride. Ah, approval was what he wanted. Approval and recognition. ‘Jabo, this is marvelous. I am so proud of how you’ve kept the work going while Hannabo helped me tend the pastor’” (144). While the story later provides a specific reason for this deference, this is one of numerous instances that view relations between whites and blacks from a narrow, colonial perspective and beg the question what that dynamic is doing uncritiqued in a 21st century narrative. Are Mary and William mistress and master of a plantation or are they apostles of Christ? As representatives of the heavenly kingdom, the symbolism of their names adds a further, suggestive dimension.
• When Mary changes her trousers for a skirt, Hannabo comments on her looks to William, who confesses to Mary: “Well, if you must know, Hannabo speculates you’d bring many oxen to your father from a suitor. I’d guess the change in attire prompted him to comment on your beauty” (150). William, too, reacts (p.16) to Mary’s physical attractiveness (as she does to his, p. 13): “she was even more beautiful than his beloved Alice”. No person in the book calls the looks of any adult Liberian/Kru/Pahn beautiful or attractive. Here are details from the one complimentary description I found, of the amiable head female of the Kru village nearest Nynabo mission station, Mammy Lehbo: “At the far end sat a majestic older woman [...] Her nose was narrow by tribal standards and her lips full and lush. Her keen brown eyes spoke of the intelligence within. [...] A queen and her court” (170-1) The not so amiable head female of the Pahn village, Mammy Tarloh, is introduced thus: “At the far end of the room sat an enormous woman. She had to be at least three hundred pounds” (249). (Details of adornment follow, but no additional description of her features .) And: “Some would call [Mammy Tarloh] a queen, but it was hard for Mary to think of it that way” (248).
• William is frustrated when the labourers refuse to heed him: “How did you convince men who’d lived their whole lives around the teachings of the bush school? Who’d been indoctrinated from an early age in witchcraft, devilmen, and all the animistic beliefs of their country” (166).
• Mary’s reaction to being informed of the approach of a group of men from the Pahn people, led by the husband of one of her patients; ‘Nana’ appears to be a courtesy term for men of a certain rank (William is called Nana Pastor): “You know, there’s far too many Nanas around here for me to keep track of. And then, one is friendly, one is not. And now one is Pahn, whatever that means. The only thing these Nanas have in common is they are hard on the women in their lives” (p.182).
• William’s reaction when Mary (in what appears to be a unique moment of inter-cultural sensitivity) suggests that he is treating the villagers like children: “I do no such thing. I deal with ignorance, that’s all. They need correction from their heathen ways. If that sounds a little like a parent talking to a child, disciplining them, correcting their mistakes, so be it” (203). (See plantation comment, above.)
• William’s internal impression of the “devilmen”, the only term used in the novel for the indigenous bodio or high priests/ritual priests: “Their garish tattoos made quite a spectacle, but today they’d pulled on the full regalia” (p.213); “Evil in greased braids and a face of implacable hatred glared at him” (214).
• A tense confrontation sees locals scuttling off for safety, with only William and both converted Christians standing fast: “William’s party of men quickly broke apart when they reached the village. The chief disappeared like cook-fire smoke on a windy day.” (211).
• Description of the “fetish house” (medicine house) that guards the entrance to the village closest to the mission station: “It was a small mudded and thatched structure covering the idol. The idol was clay sculpted into the semblance of a squat, misshapen little man with no legs, a symbol of ancestral spirits” (211).

 

In the sections that deal with the setting and its indigenous peoples The Doctor’s Mission is strangely indistinguishable from period literature about the “Dark Continent”. (Not only the views reflected about locals and their culture but much of the contents of The Doctor’s Mission make the story read like a jungle adventure penned in the 1920s, complete with all the expected props: treacherous rivers, cannibals and other assorted hostile, “brown bodies”, impenetrable vegetation, white ants, a trouble-prone, porcelain-complexioned (p.11 ), redheaded heroine, and hard-muscled, tall, knows-the-ropes hero, etc. In fairness, the physical characteristics of the couple are just as typical of romances today.) Thus, a period authenticity that could have provided constructive historicism had the narrative led a dialogue with these perceptions becomes wholesale Othering in its absence. Liberia is reduced to a theatrical stage for pushing a message that sensationalises difference through images of brutal exoticism.

 

That the setting despite its centrality to the plot is a subject or a backdrop rather than an active participant is observable in the attitude of William and Mary to their surroundings. Not once during the journey to the mission station, a section that takes up nearly ninety pages (27-115), does Mary proactively inquire about the people among whom she will be working, about their lives and customs. William does not share lessons learned or anecdotes or information that would demonstrate personal interest in the people whom he hopes to draw into the Church, nor does he engage on an individual level with the carriers, porters, or guards other than to “bark orders”. On arrival in Nynabo he does not go out and greet villagers after his absence to share and inquire after news but keeps to himself when he is not working on maintenance and repairs in the compound. There is no awareness on display of the importance for successful mission work to build bonds of trust and loyalty and friendship, or acknowledgement on the part of the story of identifying and adopting local ways of communicating and socialising, merely an emphasis on the avoidance of causing offense that would endanger the missionaries. Similarly, Mary is never shown interacting on a direct, personal level with a single local patient.

 

Any representation of the country and its peoples is filtered through foreign sensibilities. For example, discussions between William and Hannabo centre on the former teaching Hannabo about Christian thought. Nowhere in the novel is there a reciprocal discussion about the belief system or religion of the Kru (or the Pahn), an exchange which normally has crucial relevance for any missionaries seeking to establish a theological dialogue with a prospective flock.

 

Politics is a topic romances tend to avoid unless it is a historical that champions a cause that is generally embraced as self-evident today (for example, exploitation of child labour in Tessa Dare’s A Lady Of Persuasion, as well as sugar produced by slave labour). Depending on one’s point of view, any foreigner who travels to a country not his/her own with the intention of introducing change may be considered to be engaging in a political act or an act with political consequences; historically, too, missionaries have played a role, whether voluntarily or not, in promoting foreign interests in the territories they have settled in. In addition, while mission workers believe they are fulfilling a Christian obligation in helping to spread the Word of God, inhabitants in the regions to which they travel are as likely as not to regard them not as benevolent messengers but as intruders. It is therefore interesting to note that The Doctor’s Mission fleetingly introduces a known political issue only to dismiss it as nonsensical.

 

Here is a condensed historical note to provide context the novel does not. (I had to look up the historical information and would be grateful for corrections regarding any errors.) Ever since US settlement along Liberia’s coast in the early nineteenth century established a form of colonial rule by freed American slaves, indigenous peoples had been resisting this foreign-imported government. (Initial Christianising activities were also conducted by pioneering black missionaries as part of programs to develop the country along North American and European lines. There is no mention of them or other black missionaries in Debbie Kaufman’s story.) Only three years before the events in The Doctor’s Mission an uprising by the Kru had been defeated with assistance from an American warship. The clashes between the Americo-Liberian ruling elite and the indigenous peoples, who until 1980 were excluded from political power, continued with periods of armed conflict into the late twentieth century. Ethnic and religious oppression, condemned in a report by the League Of Nations already in 1930, contributed to the country’s two civil wars (1989-96, 1999-2003). In Kaufman’s novel, a Pahn leader voices suspicion that the missionaries form part of the government’s attempts to invade the interior and subjugate the independent native tribes there. In the novel, this concern is treated as paranoia, put in the mouth of an antagonist marked as villainous through his cannibalism, and summarily dismissed without discussion.

 

The rounded portrayals of William and Mary and the perceptive sketches of the three other white mission workers demonstrate the author’s ability to build nuanced, complex chararacterisations. Even on a purely writerly level this skill underscores how unworthy of Debbie Kaufman’s talents the typecasting of non-white characters is. The issue in question is not, for example, about disallowing Mary and William to be horrified about, say, cannibalism or to have negative reactions to customs they deplore, don’t understand, or believe to be unchristian. On the contrary, such reactions mark them as relatable human characters with virtues and flaws instead of cardboard Mary Sues. But unless characters of other cultures and ethnicities are depicted with the same attention to individuality and nuance, the authorial representation of them will reek of discrimination, prejudice, and bigotry. A narrative that juxtaposes unequally represented parties for the purpose of comparison loses the integrity of its message.

 

As I noted earlier in this post, an inspirational romance aspires to do more than to entertain. On one side The Doctor’s Mission achieves that goal in William and Mary’s journeys toward God and each other. But in infantilising and dehumanising indigenous people and in portraying their spirituality, in fact entire religions and cultures, as the face of evil, the creed the larger narrative promulgates ends up not Christ-like but sinister. As such, the attitudes on display in The Doctor’s Mission exemplify why in Africa missionary work has as often been the problem as it has been the answer. The polarisation is painfully ironic, too, when one considers the efforts of the Liberian peace and reconciliation processes to address the root causes (p.16-19) behind the country’s devastating civil wars, among them ethnic intolerance. It is to be regretted that Harlequin and Kaufman apparently did not consult any of these memoranda.

 

*Considering that the Great War ended in November 1918 and that Mary's brother died in the Argonne forest, presumably during the offensive fought that same autumn, I would have expected the story to open in 1919, but 1918 is the year stated on page seven (the month is not given).

 

Non-fiction of related interest: Tribes Of The Liberian Hinterland by George Schwab and edited by George Harley, missionaries and field investigators, is an ethnographic survey. Based on a Peabody Museum (Harvard) expedition begun in 1928, it partially includes the Kru/Grebo/Bar(r)oba peoples of the south-eastern interior, where The Doctor’s Mission appears to take place (going by the map, above, in the Garlock book, below, approximately present-day Maryland County, along the border with Côte d’Ivoire). Among the many subjects treated that may be of interest to readers of The Doctor's Mission are fetishes, cannibalism, and medical practices. The complexities of the former and the existence and successful application of the last are distinctions The Doctor’s Mission ignores unless it is to uniformly relegate any belief in remedies or medicine not gained through European/North American science to the realm of superstition and witchcraft. The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction Of Liberia And The Religious Dimension Of An African Civil War by Stephen Ellis (New York University Press, 2001) delves into the historical reasons behind Liberia’s wars through an examination of the interplay between politics, religion, culture and ethnicity. Before We Eat And Kill You by Ruthanne Garlock is based on the diaries and other materials belonging to US Pentecostal missionaries Henry B. Garlock and Ruth Garlock, who in the early decades of the twentieth century worked in Liberia; this is the book cited by Debbie Kaufman as inspiring The Doctor’s Mission. And as two of the three recipients of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize are from Liberia, I cannot think of more relevant books than theirs to represent Liberian voices: Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, And Sex Changed A Nation At War, co-authored by peace and women’s rights activist Leymah Gbowee (with Carol Mithers), and This Child Will Be Great, a memoir by the country’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Fiction of related interest: For those looking for fictional representations of missionaries in Africa Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible is perhaps best known. For lighter fare, Tamar Myers's mysteries The Witchdoctor's Wife and The Headhunter's Daughter are set in the Belgian Congo (later Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) (Kingsolver's novel partially uses the same setting) of the late 1950s and feature missionary Amanda Brown. I harboured the same hesitation about Myers's books as I did about Kaufman's, but the review and comments by Sarah Johnson at Reading The Past changed my mind. The first book in the series had been languishing in my TBR stack, but my reaction to The Doctor's Mission has caused me to move it to my nightstand in the hope that it will indeed explore a difficult subject from a more thoughtful point of view (Myers was born in the country she writes about).

 

This is my fifth and final entry in the Romance Reading Challenge, hosted by naida of The Bookworm. Thank you, naida and all other participants, for inspiring me to read a diverse range of romances this year!

 

 

On The Matter Of Historical Accuracy in Fiction

 

This post evolved from my meditations about historical accuracy in fiction while reading and blogging about Scoundrel’s Kiss, a historical romance set in Castile at the beginning of the thirteenth century. It looks at why I believe that accuracy in fictional treatments of history matters, and uses some examples from Scoundrel’s Kiss as a springboard for this argument. If it seems odd to single out for critical discussion a historical romance that sets a high premium on organically integrated and careful historical detail, I should perhaps clarify that these were the qualities which engaged me in the first place and stimulated a dialogue with the representation of a period, if not a place, that has long interested me.

 

Warning: please note that this piece contains an abundance of plot spoilers.

 

The Middle Ages. There is dismissal in the very term used to define the millennium between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of the self-importantly titled Renaissance and Enlightenment. By turns perceived as quaint and incomprehensible, by turns as darkly disturbing yet chivalrous, this period tends to inspire fiction that juxtaposes extremes of light and dark, holy and demonic, chivalric honour and barbarous inhumanity, benighted ignorance and zealous truth-seeking. Typically, every last drop is wrung from its share of darkness, pain, and suffering, even or especially when it comes to love. I adore intense, gritty historical fiction, but when it comes to the mediaeval period I sometimes think of its fictional depictions as the swords-and-sorrows genre. How often do you find even remotely comedic novels set in the Middle Ages?¹

Scoundrel’s Kiss is no different in this respect, yet it exhibits an awareness of nuance that prevents the portrayal from becoming hackneyed. The spy, a standard character in the mediaeval genre, is Jewish, the also standard (sort-of-)warrior is actually a novice, the scattering of nobles are assigned minimal visibility, the light-relief-character turns out to have a poignant, secret life, the heroine is a translator, and another woman runs an unconventional, very setting-specific business. And of course, this being a romance, love is allowed to triumph. Where the representation does run aground on one-dimensionality is, paradoxically, one of the story’s most conspicuous areas; a fundamental one, too, in understanding the mediaeval world.

 

Matters of faith tend to receive short shrift in non-inspirational historical romance, and up to a point it can certainly work. In a story that takes place in a mediaeval European region on the border between Christendom and Islam (a cultural landscape that for eight centuries was moulded by religious conflict and co-existence), and blends major plot elements of a religious nature, a monastic setting, religious knighthood, a relationship forbidden by canon law, a novice hero about to take his final vows, a prominent Jewish secondary character, and an illegal relationship involving a minor Muslim character, it most emphatically does not work.

 

Despite its heavy reliance on religious elements Scoundrel’s Kiss sweeps faith under the rug. I am not referring to an atmosphere of agnosticism or a sceptical attitude to institutions or rituals. What I mean is that religion in Scoundrel’s Kiss is a trapping without substance. Spirituality and devotional aspects are non-existent; a blank void gapes where theology or Christian, Jewish, or Muslim faith-related concepts and practices are concerned. The priory of Uclés might as well be an office building, the monastics office employees, and the Catholic Church the human resources department where nobody has heard of this God-guy. Characters possess neither a vision of God/Yhwh/Allāh nor any relationship with defining, everyday concepts such as sin or virtue. For example, the hero-novice’s dutiful obedience lacks any spiritual dimension: when he violates a rule he is shown fearing only the consequence for his novitiate, not the displeasure of God or St. James (the patron saint of the Order of Santiago). His attraction to a cloistered life and suppression of sexual urges – exotic enough in this day and age to automatically confer a “mediaeval” flavour – are uncoupled from the belief systems and customs that governed the thoughts and behaviour of even the average lay person. Even while this would-be monk still clings to a future within the Order, not a heavenward appeal nor formal paternoster ever passes his lips (the Rule prescribed a minimum of twenty-three per day), not a devotional thought enters his mind, not a genuflection bends his knee. So devoid of meaning is the novel’s religious landscape that the narrative actually seems to confuse faiths: at one point, the Jewish character exclaims “Saints be!” (p. 328).

 

Listed separately, particulars of religious expression and the issues I discussed in my previous post are arguably trivial – inconsequential in a story written for entertainment. Pieced together, however, the sense of the period that emerges from this mosaic of errors and omissions has meaning for the understanding, or misunderstanding, of mediaeval civilisation. It blots out a larger truth and contributes to a common confusion about premodern periods: that, because we share emotional responses and physical needs, people in previous times were no different from us, as indeed wallpaper historicals would have us believe. Well, what does it matter, one might reply? After all, doesn’t each age impose its own moral judgment on the past? Isn’t the history we are taught merely an interpretation anyway?

 

If the past has no influence over the present then perhaps how it is represented truly makes no difference. If, however, the past does influence the present, its representation does acquire significance.

 

Try, if you please, to imagine a description of your country today written by a destitute vagrant, and another written by a wealthy investor. What motives/purpose/bias would drive their descriptions? Where and what would the differences be, and to whom would they matter? Would the descriptions garner equal credibility, equal respect? Should they be treated as equally valid or invalid? If one of the versions had to be chosen to represent your country to the rest of the world, which one would it/should it be? Why? Who should make that decision? Why? The answers to these and similar questions are among the things that have shaped and continue to shape received history.

 

How history is presented has consequences. Not merely for the often chanted reason about learning from the past to avoid repeating mistakes – a lesson history itself proves is often lost upon those it would caution. History is a living, shifting phenomenon that, among other things, lends itself to the the use and abuse of power. Its malleable nature allows it to be appropriated and reconstructed in a manner orchestrated to harm or benefit. Thus, asking whose voice is representing received history is delving into whose interests are being protected by that particular representation.

 

During the period in mediaeval Castile in which Scoundrel’s Kiss is set, the default writers of the text sources historians study today were Christian men. They were the lawmakers, the prelates, the chroniclers, the custodians, the judges, the educators. Most of them probably believed that their ideologies and actions were for the best of society and the souls of the people in it. In observing, commenting, explaining, exploring, obscuring, admonishing, advising, prohibiting, permitting, condemning, absolving, executing, freeing, imprisoning, isolating, segregating, uniting, questioning, answering, raising up, and pulling down, they dominated their world. These men became the official voices of the Castilian Reconquista. Therefore, a key question becomes: what was the consequence for the representation of those who were not Christian, not men, not text-writers? What does it all mean for the image we have today of mediaeval Castilian society? How do all these circumstances affect current study of Reconquista Castile and the transmission of its history?

 

The frontier that ran through the centre of the Iberian peninsula (where Scoundrel's Kiss is set) was not rigid and fixed but permeable, reflected in the variegated societies of the towns and settlements there. An ebb and flow of armed conflict, religious identities, emigration, immigration, legal and illegal trade, and cultural interchange washed through the region, producing diverse systems of coexistence now popularly described as “convivencia”. The praise² for the (increasingly diluted) concept of convivencia³, has arisen in no small part from the Christian perspectives of the original studies of the sources. These suggest that an exemplary tolerance enabled people of disparate religions to live harmoniously and profitably together in the same community. Comparisons with the fraught conditions for religious minorities in other parts of mediaeval Europe and the stricter Islamic doctrine of the Almohads who had assumed control in al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia, now southern Spain and Portugal) reinforce the idea of a haven. For example, looking at convivencia from the standpoint of prerogatives and exemptions granted to Jews under various regulations, one could imagine that Jews in the Christian kingdoms of mediaeval Iberia attained roughly equal legal status with Christians in the more liberal period before the mid-thirteenth or early fourteenth century.

 

Yet, whether one takes a sunny or doleful view of religious, cultural, and ethnic relations in mediaeval Iberia, convivencia proved a volatile system that ultimately favoured the dominant culture and eroded the rights of religious minorities, forcing them into subordination and lower social status. In Reconquest Castile, there was room for only one authoritative culture: the Christian.

 

How, then, does Scoundrel’s Kiss address the interaction between characters of different religion in this dynamic yet fragile setting? First, some excerpts:

 

“Upon finding a Jew alone with a dazed Christian woman after dark, they would not ask questions before detaining him. Or worse. (p.19)

‘'I am...her friend' [says Jacob about Ada] 'And more if you’d have your way, judio?' Fernán asked. 'But she wouldn’t have you, would she?'” (p.23)

“As with most towns on the plateau, once governed by the Moorish regimes in the south, its citizens comprised an uneasy mix of cultures. Convivencia, the subtle art of living and prospering among diverse peoples.” (p. 53).

“'Relations between a Christian and Moor – that’s not legal.'” (p.255)

“'Some resist the idea of awarding parcels to Jewish courtiers, but I cannot think of a reason why you don’t deserve this.'” (p. 334).

 

While all but one of these snippets are instances of telling, not showing, they indicate a narrative that recognises the presence of discrimination and portrays it in the setting. If one then turns to the plot and character arcs, this impression seems confirmed by three particular components that reference these tensions. The first relates to the hero’s background: his (long dead) mother was a Berber slave, a Muslim. The second deals with a subplot woven into the main suspense plot: one of the secondary characters, a Christian, has a child with a Muslim lover. The third is the prominence of a secondary character who belongs to the Jewish minority.

 

These set-ups appear to reflect the multi-faceted societies of the frontier, but a closer look reveals the portrayal is generally window-dressing rather than an integral function of the story. The hero’s childhood baptism has eliminated the issue of discrimination. While his maternal heritage is exploited for emotion it does not lead to the character reconnecting with or in any way whatsoever exploring his Muslim roots. His hatred of his father is explained in language that describes the abuse and violence by a sadistic master against a defenseless slave and bastard progeny, not in terms of faith or religion. As for the subplot involving the interfaith relationship, this is a late-coming revelation, and the particulars of the relationship are implied and sketchy. Furthermore, the secret is shown only from the perspective of the Christian man. He is shown to love his concubine and to know that the relationship is illegal, yet when the plot puts him in danger of being found out, he buckles to extortion with the motivation that the relationship would incur the wrath of his family and cause him to lose his inheritance. Nowhere (that I can see) is it shown that were the illicit relation to be discovered, it would mean death, prostitution⁴, or slavery for the Muslim woman (who has no voice in the story). If her Christian lover were to abandon her, as the plot rather readily makes him do (whether permanently or not is unclear to me), she would be doubly damned: Islamic law, too, required women to be virtuous and forbade sexual liaisons with Christians. This method of introducing a religious conflict, then converting it into a non-religious issue is particularly observable in the characterisation of Jacob ben Asher. More about him in a moment.

 

A potential problem with prejudice and discrimination as it is handled in Scoundrel’s Kiss is that the sinister facets of an unequal society can become isolated along the fringes of the story, making them appear to have only distant or minor connection to normal daily life. The narration that in the first few chapters suggests that Muslims and Jews had to exercise caution in a society that “comprised an uneasy mix of cultures” becomes more ambiguous in its subtext as the story progresses. Some of it is due to imparting information by having a character mouth commentary or delivering it in passing, generic asides without actively integrating concrete instances of persecution and segregation into character actions and the plotline. Therefore the dark tone of the story arises primarily from the personal issues of the hero and heroine, the friction between them, and the external suspense plot. Moreover, since actual discrimination remains theory in Scoundrel’s Kiss and religious persecution is invisible, character responses to interfaith relations are reduced to indifference. The character who, as shown above, calls Jacob judio (Jew), is presented as an exception who must be reprimanded, and his prejudice does not translate into active discrimination or lasting suspicion. A final reason for the blurring of discriminatory realities is that the story takes place wholly within the dominant culture (the Christian), and that the viewpoints expressed are with one exception those of Christian characters. That exception, the Jewish character, lives and works successfully in a Christian environment and is not shown within a Jewish community or expressing his faith. His characterisation creates a bright foreground that is much more ideal than the setting makes clear. Thus the “uneasy mix of cultures” is more of a painted, static tableau that now and then briefly shivers to life, then resumes wooden immobility.

 

If anything, this speaks to the difficulty of placing a story written for entertainment within a setting that will intrude with inconvenient demands. If, for example, the author populates her romance strictly with the set that would receive an invitation to Almack's, then a sort of protective bubble forms around the story that serves to cushion or insulate it from conflicting realities. But once a story straddles separate worlds, for example by making an eighteenth-century noblewoman and her stable groom fall in love, contortions that involve artifice or fantasy will likely be needed to prevent social, cultural, and political realities from entering the story world and ruining the marriage prospects.

 

Regarding the Jewish character in Scoundrel’s Kiss, it is not the use of exceptions that is objectionable to me – commercial fiction thrives on exceptions – but the representation of exceptions as the norm. If an author of historical fiction does choose to include characters from minority groups it is not an inconsequential matter how those minority characters and their place in society are portrayed. Every selection about what to include and what to exclude builds a narrative relationship with history that can either distort or illuminate.

 

The closest interaction the narrative has with a member of a minority is Jacob ben Asher, a young man who learnt sword-fighting back in England and now works as spy in the service of a Castilian noblewoman. An appealing character who has something of the air of a younger, earnest brother of Andrea Orsini from The Prince of Foxes, he is nevertheless a token Jew whose characterisation is rife with potential for misperceptions about the life of mediaeval Jews.

 

First, some general context. Although free-born Jews and Muslims of Castile were technically not slaves but free, legally they were the property of the king (servi regis/servi camerae – serfs/servants of the king/of the Chamber, also translated as “Treasury” or “Royal Household”; Jews and Muslims were sometimes called the King’s Treasure) or his lords, who exploited them as a credit resource – special taxes in exchange for protection. Any rights or privileges granted to Jews or Muslims and any protection the law afforded them could at any time be undermined by conflicting Christian interests. In Toledo, for example, it was decreed that the judge in cases involving both a Jew and a Christian must be Christian. And in the business and legal documents of Toledan Christians, Jews, who often bore the same names as Christians or Muslims (a naming practice later made illegal, if I recall correctly), were meticulously identified as such; fellow Christians were not.

 

In Scoundrel’s Kiss, Jacob associates freely and closely with Ada. We are told that they have travelled together from England, that he has been her only friend, and that he has been the person looking after her in Castile. The limits historically imposed on such a relation, however, makes this intimacy somewhat tricky to imagine. Law forbade Christians and Jews from eating and drinking together as well as from sleeping under the same roof, although evidence shows that these were not prohibitions that were always followed to the letter. But Ada and Jacob’s close association also sidesteps the dangers of and anxieties about interfaith sexual relations. In this case, the fact that they are not lovers would be beside the point: merely spending time alone in each other’s company could be misconstrued and expose them to gossip and thereby capital punishment. In this period in Castile Jews were not yet required to wear outward markers of their faith, which would have made it easier for the pair where nobody knew them, but in Castile they both belong to the same, noble household. Travelling together through England and France presupposes that they would have taken measures to conceal their religious identities, and were comfortable to the point of arrogance with the inherent dangers.

 

The story solves the remaining obstacles and differences – synagogue attendance, dietary restrictions, Talmudic rulings on interactions with Christians, etc. – by purging every last vestige of Judaism from the description of Jacob’s inner and outer life. The only way the reader knows he is Jewish is because the characters tell us so. One of the distracting puzzles raised by his narrative is why this secularism never causes him to contemplate the resulting logic of shedding what essentially is a meaningless and irksome identity enforced only for plot reasons, and have him consider becoming a converso.

 

By making Jacob a character in the diplomatic employ of Castilian nobility, the author has found a first-rate way of demonstrating the harmonious and productive aspects of convivencia. What is not shown is that those who gained such preferments were an elite who nonetheless only periodically were on a near-equal footing with their Christian counterparts. For example, Jews were barred from holding political office as they were not allowed to be in a position of public authority over Christians. (Nor were Jews (or Muslims) permitted to employ Christian house servants, though farmers were allowed to have Christian agricultural labourers). Jews in Iberia were privileged to bear arms (some became famous soldiers) but Jacob wields his sword in attack, not self-defense, in public and with deadly effect, without the slightest murmur of repercussions. Admittedly, a lot of (guilt-free) killing by both men and women goes on in this book, none of it in war, and none leading to a single question by the authorities except at the end, and then only to put the heroine in trouble. But the reader is also informed that Jacob has become a master swordsman in England. English Jews had been stripped of the right to wear armour, and while merchants and travellers probably discreetly bore weapons to protect themselves, the increasingly restrictive and hostile climate (which climaxed in the explusion of Jews from England in 1290) would have made it perilous to stand accused of killing a Christian. In this instance, it takes an actual legend to circumvent this quandary: Jacob apparently honed his skills while a member of Robin Hood’s band.

 

This method of filtering out what plotwise may be justifiably extraneous detail without thoughtful consideration for the impact it has on the larger narrative can lead to a slant on history that, irrespective of the author’s intentions, becomes related to fairytale.

 

In sum, realities that shaped the life of minorities in mediaeval Castile in a different mould from the Christian majority are largely missing from the interpretation Scoundrel’s Kiss presents of convivencia. This arguably does history a double disservice. By refraining from commenting on aspects of Jacob’s Jewish life, the story never explains the unique reasons that for a long time made Iberia a far more desirable place to be Jewish than anywhere else in mediaeval Europe. And by advancing a minority narrative that is nearly indistinguishable from the majority narrative, a reader can be left with the idea that charges of severe anti-Semitism in mediaeval society have been exaggerated.

 

Calling for historical accuracy is not about forcing writers whose primary aim is to entertain into a critique of the past or comparative analysis of the present. Rather it is to do with the responsibility to observe a standard that does not unduly flatter and deliberately deceive. That is achievable if the writer approaches her/his historical material with respect, knowing that doing it complete justice may be beyond her/his means but that the concept of fairness is not. Where a precise picture of the past would force the inclusion of material that conflicts with the story goals, accuracy instead entails sharpened focus on the quality and legitimacy of the historical material selected. Rejecting things known not to be true is the cardinal rule, to which I would add the corollary that that which is an exception is not to be made out to be the norm. In the end, while fiction has the power to influence public perception about what is true or acceptable history (The Da Vinci Code, Georgette Heyer regencies), at its best historical fiction is an inspiring supplement to the study of history, and is neither intended to nor has any obligation to replace it. So when disciplined adherence to factual accuracy is the gauge by which the lay historian in a fiction writer (co-)operates, falling short is no dishonour however much such errors or problematic elements may be scrutinised by others. Some authors are new to a period and have yet to learn how much they don’t know (or wrote before technology and public libraries facilitated research), but, as in Carrie Lofty’s case, genuine effort usually shines through.

 

That said, I am not convinced that every writer merits charity for the way they use dramatic truth against historical fact. Some appear to subscribe to a philosophy which holds that historical accuracy in romances is a nuisance that must be tamed, remodelled, or mutilated in order to be fit to serve the (perceived) requirements of entertainment. Knowingly using popular but erroneous beliefs as a yardstick of what is an acceptable treatment of history in fiction because the alternative is having disgruntled readers who chide you for perceived errors which in fact are not errors at all, or altering factual events to cater plotline may seem innocuous from the point of view of escapism, which is perhaps why opinions to the contrary are commonly refuted with charges of snobbery and nitpickery, and the banner of artistic license is raised.

 

Nevertheless, by claiming to write historical fiction/romance an author implicitly sets herself/himself up to be held accountable for the history in her/his book. Certainly art can be as fanciful as it likes, but fanciful history makes the author who claims to write historical fiction/romance complicit in, at a minimum, willful historical amnesia, and at worst, falsifying history. In such cases, repairing the damage by filling the afterword with notes about deviations from known facts sometimes treads a thorny line between conscientiousness and laziness. In the latter instance, a frank note at the front that the historical portrayal has been adapted to better serve the story would seem more honest and, well, charmingly disarming.

 

Writers and readers who say that they are tired of discussions about historical accuracy/authenticity/historicism, or that, for a number of reasons, historical accuracy is unattainable or illusory, are not, I speculate, those whom received history forgets, mistreats, stereotypes, silences, dismisses, or otherwise discriminates against. Groups to whom a say about history and their place in it is a recent and hard-fought-for privilege seem fully capable of mustering enthusiasm for the topic. For example, in the USA romance author Beverly Jenkins has long gone looking for the exceptions or those ignored by the history of the dominating majority, bringing attention to the historical contributions of African-Americans rather than producing a more marketable Regency about English Dukes and Almack's heiresses or creamy-complexioned (pretend) courtesans. Writers of LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) fiction are unlocking doors on historical sources that help to explore and claim a historical identity that has long been in the custody of the same authorities that were the instruments of its oppression. Writers from former colonies are re-weaving a past distinct from the usurping histories of foreign regimes. Through the efforts of those who probe the health of received history, whether through academic research or in fiction, our historical panorama grows richer, and stagnation, the ally of historical conceit, is averted.

 

^1. I am told that The Adventures Of Alianore Audley by Brian Wainwright is an outrageous romp (but then it is set so late in the Late Middle Ages as to be virtually knocking on the door of the Renaissance). I can personally recommend The Long Ships, a classic, ironic Viking yarn by Frans G. Bengtsson.

^2. See, for example, the romantically evocative The Ornament Of The World by María Rosa Menocal or the nostalgia of A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians, And Jews In Medieval Spain by Chris Lowney, both popular books for general audiences, or the “optimistic” views advanced in the academic works by Norman Roth. Obviously, an insistence on studying minorities solely through the lens of calamities can give equally myopic results as magnifying instances of harmonious interaction and glossing over discrimination.

^3. Scholarly focus has been shifting away from the “inadequacy” of the original and increasingly misused concept of “convivencia”. Elka Klein notes in Jews, Christian Society, And Royal Power In Medieval Barcelona that “the debate about convivencia is, at its root, about acculturation, about the degree of influence of these cultures upon each other (or more accurately, in [Américo (who introduced philologist Ramón Menendez Pidal’s term convivencia to academic historical discourse)] Castro’s terms, the influence of the two other cultures on Spanish Christians). But with a few notable exceptions, it is mostly reduced to a discussion of tolerance, stability, security, and cordiality” (The University Of Michigan Press, 2006, p.14). In Conflict And Coexistence: Archbishop Rodrigo And The Muslims And Jews Of Medieval Spain Lucy K. Pick writes, “As convivencia is understood and used by historians today, it describes something far more problematic and interesting than simple tolerance between different groups sharing the same space. It describes a cultural situation in which potential cooperation and interdependence in economic, social, cultural, and intellectual spheres coexist with the continual threat of conflict and violence” (University of Michigan Press, 2004, p.1). It is worth remembering that tolerance meant something different to mediaeval people than it does today. To mediaeval Christians truth was absolute, not relative, and so religious dissension was condemned and had to be contained. At the same time, Jews, although seen as unbelievers, were the chosen people of the Old Testament, which obliged Christians to exercise self-restraint (but not love) toward them even as it was a Christian duty to police the boundaries of permissible liberties. In other words, in the Middle Ages discrimination had positive connotations. Muslims, who were not included in the Bible but whose monotheistic faith was influenced by it, were similarly “tolerated” but liable to be treated harsher than Jews.

^4. See Isabel Bonet O’Connor’s essay, ‘Between Whipping and Slavery: Double Jeopardy against Mudéjar Women in Medieval Spain’ in Women and the Colonial Gaze, edited by Tamara L. Hunt.

Kingdom of Castile: Scoundrel’s Kiss by Carrie Lofty

 

The storytelling of Carrie Lofty’s intricately plotted historical romance, Scoundrel’s Kiss, is immensely engaging, encompassing a complex romance fired by robust conflict and gritty emotion. High action and adventure layer the never-relenting intensity with movement and changing vistas. However, as a rendering of Castilian frontier society during the Reconquista – the southward expansion by the Christian Kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula (now Spain) as they captured the formerly Visigothic territories held by North African Muslims since the early eighth century – the mediaeval setting is an intriguing illustration of the paradox that a wealth of accurate detail does not automatically equate to historical authenticity. These rich and absorbing contrasts inspired a two-part post that is as much about the topic of historical accuracy in fiction as it is about Scoundrel’s Kiss – specifically, its treatment of history. An unusual and very readable romance that held me fascinated despite, not because of, its portrayal of history, Scoundrel’s Kiss epitomises all the reasons I do not assign grades.

 

Due to the dual nature of this post I have divided the material into two sections. Today’s installment is a general evaluation of Scoundrel’s Kiss. The second part will combine a discussion of the use of history in this historical romance together with my thoughts about historical accuracy. [Edited to add: that second post is now up, titled On The Matter Of Historical Accuracy In Fiction]

 

 

1201. A stranger from far-off England, Ada of Keyworth makes her living as a translator in the cultural centre that is Toledo, but she is in trouble. Pain and shame have made her dependent on the release found in narcotic poppy-tinctures, and her mounting debts have finally put her on the auction block to be sold as a slave.

Gavriel de Marqueda is seeking an escape from his violent past through membership in the Order of Santiago. His novitiate is drawing to a close, and only a last test stands between him and his final vows. He is to save a soul for the Church. But the foreign woman rescued from the slave auction does not want redemption, only forgetfulness. Their desperate battle of wills pushes both of them to the breaking point, where lethal danger forces them into a mistrustful, seductive alliance.

The scarred borderland in the heart of the Iberian peninsula becomes the testing ground for more than Gavriel’s vocation or Ada’s independence. With treason swirling around them, is love simply another betrayal – or is it salvation?

 

Spoiler warning: One of the strengths of Scoundrel’s Kiss is how integral history is to the plot. Trying to extricate and comment on history-related issues without exposing details and developments at times proved beyond my capability. An end spoiler and a little-known historical fact incorporated in a story twist have been marked with a spoiler warning in red.

 

Carrie Lofty has paired her dramatic historical setting with a romance that matches the former’s dark and conflicted undertones. Scoundrel’s Kiss charts the companionship that grows between two very damaged people whom circumstances have forced together against their will. Physical intimacy develops out of needs that are unrelated to romantic love, but it helps nurture a tentative partnership and eventually a loyal friendship. Short on romanticism, this is a dark-toned story where couplehood grows out of shared ordeals and love comes as the well-earned dessert. While intriguing ideas are not always smoothly implemented, Scoundrel’s Kiss is about as far from an anemic, run-of-the mill romance as one could hope for.

 

When was the last time you read a romance with a sexually lead-taking, belligerent drug-addict for a heroine? Lofty goes against romance convention and tackles addiction without too much prettification. Ada of Keyworth is a woman whose demons drive her to extremes. As a character, her moral ambiguity made her unpredictable and challenging. Not created to win easy sympathy points, at times her character tested my patience and understanding but she always kept me curious and interested, and quickly grew into the main focus of my involvement in the story. I thought it a clever idea to make her a translator since Toledo at that time was one of the centres of translation of scientific and philosophical texts from Arabic to Latin (and in the mid-thirteenth century to Castilian). Her prodigious linguistic talents do seem weakly utilised, though, because the plot limits the need for such skills to an ability to speak Castilian (Castellano, the Ibero-Romance language that developed into modern Spanish) and read Arabic. Nevertheless, having this intellectual strength take primary importance in her characterisation and be the reason she earns notice and admiration from other characters is another way Scoundrel’s Kiss distinguishes itself favourably from the average historical romance narrative, which can seem fixated on looks (whether beauty or plainness).

 

As a romance heroine in general, Ada is a strong and memorable character: caustic and self-absorbed but capable and ardent. It was truly exciting to read a romance that resists the trend for writing universally likeable heroines and instead creates high interest through a focus on individuality. Looking at Ada as a character in a historical, however, practically nothing about her convinced me she was mediaeval. Interestingly, in Scoundrel's Kiss the author is portraying more than one woman on the fringe, yet in fundamental ways only Ada seems disconnected from the real issues of women in their society. She also displays shock and bewilderment about several commonplace aspects of mediaeval life, making her seem frustratingly clueless. I felt she could be transplanted to another period, including the twenty-first century, without making her seem out of place. Bluntly put, in the context of a mediaeval world she and Gavriel often appear to be imbeciles.

 

My impression of the character of Gavriel underwent fewer revisions than was the case with Ada. Tormented and patient, he seemed sympathetic almost from the start. I say almost, because the description of his initial encounter with Ava caused me to lay the book aside for several days. Gavriel lusts after her from the second he first spots her, a sluggish opium addict on the display block of a slave auction in a brothel. Enviously mistaking her drug haze for serenity, he imagines what it would be like to have sex with her. This (anguished) lust never relents: it is the steady theme of all his interactions with her and the world. Still, self-denial and long-term goals intervene to keep stereotypical scenarios in check longer than I expected. Moreover, he quickly redeems himself, nursing Ada conscientiously and with kindness as she suffers withdrawal symptoms, and refusing temptation as Ada uses her body to deliberately provoke him into breaking his religious pledges.

 

Gavriel is an interesting anomaly in the mediaeval romance genre, where heroes typically are the ultimate warriors. The narrative tears into shreds the romantic shimmer that often seems to surround military Orders in fiction, chiselling out a hero who grows more tormented with every page. His past is genuinely traumatic, much more so than Ada’s, and for once the reasons have nothing to do with a woman’s love or betrayal. More to the point, the rather funnily conceited “He had been as brave as ten men that long day” actually segues into thoroughly unexpected self-condemnation: “[he had been] slaying enemies with glee and impunity. His bravery had bordered on bloodlust, devoid of thought or humanity.” I cannot recall the last time I read about a historical romance hero who has a personal problem with killing or who wishes to embrace the monastic life in order to atone for a violent past.

 

I would have been more impressed if the narrative had made this resolve a true character dilemma. Disappointingly, Gavriel has barely started agonising about his need for redemption when, sword in hand, he is off killing again. Repeatedly. Not once does he actually make the choice to lay down his sword. When faced with a fight, he does not give abstaining from violence a fraction of a thought. Any guilt or regret he suffers afterwards is shown to be due to fear of having his entry into the Order rejected; we do not see him torn by ethical concerns. As a result, Gavriel’s brooding fear of the violence in himself seems employed mainly for emotional effect: his (very real) self-loathing is tied to past events, not to current deeds, making his psychological suffering clear but voiding his story arc of actions that bear out the sincerity of his commitment to non-violence. That eventually distanced me from deeper emotional engagement with his torment.

 

Then again, intelligent he is not. Significantly, had Gavriel not been given the obliviousness of a 21st century visitor about matters a genuine mediaeval person in his place would have known, the plot would have had to look quite different. For example, the Order of Santiago, which required that its novices must study its Rule in full once a month, would have made certain rights and obligations quite clear to new recruits, and mistakes, omissions, and errors would have been immediately noticed by the community and corrected by the proper authority. Only in a fictional mediaeval world could Gavriel remain so egregiously deluded, but it certainly does not help that he haplessly accepts things at face value and never questions or talks to obvious and readily available sources of information.

 

In addition, I never managed to make sense of why exactly a man who is determined to leave fighting behind is seeking entrance into a military Order whose first duty was to bodily defend Christendom against the Moors. The monasteries belonging to the Order were in effect military garrisons charged with guarding and patrolling territories vulnerable to Muslim incursions. Membership was, in essence, a crusading undertaking. Secondly, Scoundrel's Kiss keeps referring to Gavriel being a clergyman, as if membership automatically turned laymen into priests or clerics. This is wildly misleading. Freyles caballeros ("friar knights"), which is what the Rule would make a swordsman like Gavriel, were expected to fight. (There is a special clause (XI) in the Rule which deals with "pusillanimous" knights, and the mental fitness of applicants was assessed.) Only those who were already ordained priests or simple clerics were admitted as freyles clérigos (canons): the priests had the cure of souls, clerics assisted during the Divine Office and Mass, and both knew Latin, needed also for administrative and legal tasks. Applicants who were neither knights nor clergymen could become freyles legos, lay serving brothers. Taking into account the scorn the Rule displays for ablebodied knights who shun battle, I rather doubt the Order would have been impressed by Gavriel's intentions.

 

It can be difficult to balance intense emotion in a romance so that passion and drama do not not teeter into melodrama. In Scoundrel’s Kiss a slight tendency for hyperbole and florid similes at times pulled me out of the story by reminding me of the stereotypes of genre fiction. Both Gavriel and Ada possess some larger than life traits that owe rather more to fantasy than seems necessary. Ada is not merely a polyglot: employed as a translator in the household of a noblewoman, she is a linguistic genius who after barely a year of study (p.2) has mastered idiomatic Castilian (p.32) as well as half a dozen other local languages, and is able to distinguish sundry regional Arabic dialects (p.248). Gavriel is “as brave as ten men” (see above), and as for his looks, “not even a master sculptor could recreate the sharp, strong bones of his face, the cut of his jaw and the straight length of his nose” (p. 108). Instances such as these rang as falsetto notes in a resonant narrative style that for the most part does an exceptional job with emotional tension.

 

I wondered whether the author would at all exploit the symbolism of translators and translation. The notion seemed conspicuous and rife for potential in a plot and setting that involve the meeting of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, of locals and foreigners, of Castilian, Arabic, and English languages, of secular characters and monastics. But if it was explored, this eluded me. For a while, the discrepancy between Ada as a translator of written and spoken language and her (21st-century) opaqueness to the alternative way of life chosen by Gavriel seemed fruitful ground. Not only does she have no respect for or even understanding of celibacy – she scorns Gavriel’s religious pledges and harbours not the slightest scruple about luring him away from his monastic allegiance. A romance heroine who disparages commitment is certainly novel. Unfortunately, the narrative does not appear to pick this up as significant and declines to comment on it in the context of relationship building. There are perhaps hints that her attitude could be seen as a rejection of zealotry, but this is not followed through to any clear conclusion.

 

At 342 pages, Scoundrel’s Kiss demonstrates the shortened length of single title romances. In the case of such a complex story this page quota means that something non-trivial is going to be cut. What stood out most sharply and irritatingly to me in terms of technique was the severely truncated backstory. Sometimes it was entirely missing, at other times it was back-fed in delayed fragments that seemed to assume I knew more than I did about what was being referenced. I understand that Scoundrel’s Kiss is preceded by another book, set in England, in which Ada and Jacob ben Asher figure as either secondary or minor characters. I really could not care less. This is the book I am reading and this is where I need context and information that illuminates character baggage and behaviour. I felt I was dropped cold into a story that was so impatient to get up and running that it deferred clues until later – making me fumble in the dark – then either forgot about them or decided they were not that necessary anyway. Well, to me the clues were essential. I found the characters intriguing but impossible to engage with on a visceral level because I was lacking information that would help me make sense out of behaviour that was destructive, selfish, or cryptic. By the time an explanation was finally offered, I was usually past caring. As much as I enjoyed this book and as interested as I was in the outcome of the various threads, I was rarely moved.

 

For example, by page 148 I still did not know know why Ada had picked Castile of all places when she, as I was forced to assume, fled England. Nor did I know why Jacob had accompanied her, why she had forced her sister to choose between Ada and her brother-in-law, or why Gavriel thinks he will be lost if he is not accepted into the Order. The blithely casual explanation that is eventually mentioned in passing on page 170 for the choice of Castile made me reel on account of what historically would have entailed immense hurdles and dangers: “Because Jacob had always longed for adventure, we departed for London, then Toledo”. Apparently lost or unfinished threads also impacted my reaction to the ending. I was puzzled about how the outcome addressed, or did not address, Gavriel’s fears.

 

Now for the history. Nine times out of ten I will enjoy a flawed but respectfully-researched novel from any historical genre more than the smoothest and cleverest of can’t-be-bothered-historicals. History in Scoundrel’s Kiss belongs to the former category. Easily set apart from the great majority of current historical romances by a history quotient that is substantial as well as integral to the plot, the detailed world-building has many positives. The hero’s backstory has grown organically and believably from the social setting, the plot is tightly knotted with historic political events, and the particulars of the Order of Santiago (St. James) and aspects of Iberian laws included in the story reveal some painstaking research. The storyline acknowledges that the Iberian wars were not simply an affair between the Christian north and the Muslim south - al-Andalus - but that it also involved rivalries between competing Christian kingdoms (and, while not shown, internal Andalusi conflicts). In recognition of one of the special characteristics of Reconquista society, the narrative also incorporates minority characters, primarily Jacob ben Asher, who is swashbuckling hero-material and may yet receive his own book. More about him in my next post. In brief, Scoundrel’s Kiss is loaded with historical details that are correct more often than not.

 

So does the historical setting capture the spirit of Reconquista Castile? Is Scoundrel’s Kiss an example of that rarest of historical romance species, a solid, accurate mediaeval? My answer would be to wiggle my hand. Yes and no.

 

The more detail of a historical nature an author includes, the more credibility the novel’s representation of history is liable to gain in the mind of the reader. Although Barbara Cartland wrote several historical biographies, few readers appear to treat the history or research in her increasingly thin romance novels as credible; but as a quick internet search will show, many are the admirers of Georgette Heyer* who have received their notions about correct period manners etc. from her Regency-set books. Yet, that a high amount or complexity of historical detail does not necessarily convey a reliable depiction of the past can be discovered by comparing, for example, Philippa Gregory’s popular but sensationalist The Other Boleyn Girl with the historical record.

 

Attempting an un-superficial treatment of a subject with which one is not deeply familiar is fraught if expected territory for fiction writers. In such a case, even dedicated preparation or a theoretically relevant academic degree can leave the door open for any number of gaffes. That is what has happened in Scoundrel’s Kiss, where the mediaevalism is more flawed than the richness of specialised subject-matter implies. Often the details fail to add up to a particularly authentic mediaeval world because basic assumptions are erroneous, because context is missing, because characters reason, react, and behave in ways and according to values that disregard mediaeval realities, knowledge, and concerns. The general impression I brought away is that here is an author who has resolutely applied herself to creating an authentic, trustworthy setting, but who has not fully internalised what she has read and who does not yet possess a thorough enough familiarity with the general period to recognise when her grip is slipping.

 

Some of the issues are the common and debatable flaws of most, perhaps all, historical fiction/romance. For example, anachronistic words may grate but they do not undo the veracity of the thing described as long as the concept existed**. Language and its meaning (and syntax) changes, and so a genuine rendering of, say, vernacular English (Middle English) from Ada’s time (circa 1200) would make a novel’s prose a chore to decipher. Employing non-anachronistic language could entail accepting “wedde” for “insane, go mad”, “wonen” for “dwell, reside”, “swikeful” for “deceitful”, “nikken” for “deny”, “her/heir [hair]” for “(eye)lash”, “nutte” for “usefulness”; and avoiding words like "happy", "plain", "beautiful", "joke" (and "jest") etc. A reader might be provoked to snap, like Chaucer’s Reeve, “Stint thy clappe!” (stop your noisy/idle chatter, i.e. shut up). Thus, when Lofty uses words like señorita and señora I appreciate that her frequent Spanish is correctly spelled more than I care about its un-mediaevalness (the exception, "gramercy", antedates common usage by about a century). Also used is “convivencia” which is a twentieth-century term used in describing the interfaith societies in mediaeval Iberia (usually translated as coexistence). The word itself works as a descriptive shorthand, but the story’s depiction of the concept in action is something I found problematic. I will have a great deal to say about it in my second installment.

 

More irksome than anachronistic words are missteps that evince ignorance about basic facts of daily life in the Middle Ages. In small doses these can amuse as much as they irritate, as when the townspeople of Uclés “[stream] into the cathedral for midnight Mass” on what is apparently a perfectly ordinary weeknight (p.253). The story is set in early spring (leaves are described as budding, which in the Toledo area at least nowadays occurs in March), so in theory the action could be taking place during the Lenten/Easter season (in 1201, first week of February to last week of March), but the story neither alludes to this nor makes allowance for the major practical consequences this would have for the plotline. Time and chronology are often treated as negotiable in historical fiction, and Scoundrel's Kiss seems no different in this respect, as timelines, too, yield the impression of having been compressed.

 

At other times, research details that are accurate in themselves have been misapplied or misinterpreted.

Spoilers:

This appears to be the case with the general presentation of family life, marriage, and claustration in the Rule of the Order of Santiago, greatly compounded by the lack of a proper grasp of conventual life. Descriptions convey an impression that the wives and children of married members lived and worked on the monastery grounds instead of actually residing, together with their husband/father, in their private homes except at Lent or when the man was off on campaign. The lack of knowledge can result in unintentional farce. Instead of being rigidly segregated into separate complexes, claustrated freyles and freylas (monks and nuns) in a (alleged) double monastery have free and unsupervised access to each others’ dormitories and mingle and flirt as a matter of course in the cloister garth. Guests share the monastics’ quarters and are at liberty, in modern hotel-like fashion, to join them in this ludicrous running in and out of private cells. No separate lodging exists for pilgrims and vistors; but then neither, it would seem, does an infirmary or infirmarian. (Uclés, the priory in question, did in fact have an infirmarian at this time (see, for example, La Encomienda, El Priorato Y La Villa De Uclés En La Edad Media (1174-1310) by María-Milagros Rivera Garretas). Not having one would have been an especially remarkable state of things for the headquarters of a military Order that had to arrange for the care of members wounded in battle).

 

The slave auction on which a major plotline is predicated appears to disregard that the penalty for trading in Christian slaves, and for Christians who sold themselves into slavery, was hanging or burning (see Heather Dillard's Daughters Of The Reconquest (Cambridge University Press trade paperback, 1989, 207-8), which is listed as one of Lofty’s sources). As for the trial by ordeal (in the afterword, acknowledged by the author as unusual), its artificiality wrenched me from a textured historical to a swords and sorcery-inspired fantasy (or, come to think of it, a feminist riff on Ivanhoe) so jarringly that I winced from whiplash. On the positive side, the segment affirms that Ada is the heroine of her own story, a message that I sometimes feel is rarely unequivocal in the case of fictional female protagonists.

End of spoilers

 

Historically speaking, Gavriel’s novitiate and related plot points are nonsensical. Instead of spending another page enumerating specific examples, suffice to say that plot and narrative exhibit unfamiliarity with the basic functioning of mediaeval religious (including paramonastic) communities, including daily routines, obligatory devotions, terminology (for example, the head of the Order of Santiago was, according to my sources, titled “Master” (Maestre), not “Grand Master”), the spiritual purpose and attitude to the mortification of flesh (through hair shirts, flagellation, fasting, etc.), the purpose of and relationship between confession, forgiveness, and penance, and the powers and limits of authority of major officials and obedientiaries (by the way, no designated “novice masters” in the Order of Santiago at this time; instruction and guidance was provided by the oldest and most respected members of the community).

 

The last category of problems to do with the historical accuracy of Scoundrel’s Kiss deals with trickier issues than incidental errors. Whereas they are probably the least noticeable to the average reader these are the elements that gave me pause and caused me to take the closest look due to my interest in this mediaeval period. They will be addressed in a separate, spoiler-riddled post which I will try to format and put up in the next few days.

 

Scoundrel’s Kiss is a vibrant, ambitious romance. When it fails, it does so because Carrie Lofty has taken genre-convention-breaking risks and wrestled with complex historical material. When it succeeds, it is for the same reasons and because the author possesses that enriching combination of storytelling flair and dynamic prose. It is a book that yielded even more to me upon rereading. For all these reasons I am very curious and a little nervous about the author’s shortly-to-be-released historical romance, Flawless, which, set in the 19th century, appears to deal with the blood-soaked subject of South-African diamond mines. In sum, although I am going to pass over the companion title to Scoundrel’s Kiss (What A Scoundrel Wants), the intensity and richness of Carrie Lofty’s storytelling undoubtedly makes her the most fascinating new-to-me romance author since I discovered Meredith Duran.

 

*An aside in regards to the representation of minorities in historical romance: It might be interesting to compare Cartland’s fictional Romanies (in titles such as Gypsy Magic) with Heyer’s literary treatment of Jews. (Cartland was actively involved in the real-life issues of Romanies and Travellers.)

**A more complex matter of fiction versus history arises when constructs are used that assume mediaeval people understood certain words, signs, and symbols as we do or had the means to imagine concepts familiar to our age. Acknowledging that analyses about the mentalities and outlook of people of the past easily become speculative tugs-of-war between saming and othering, there are still certain things that warrant caution. While mediaeval people were no less intelligent or diverse than we are, the mediaeval image of the world differed from ours, as did sensibilities, mental associations, etc. It is a complicated level of historical accuracy that few writers of fiction possess the foundation to aspire to, much less achieve. Whereas such problems ultimately reinforce that fiction is and shall remain fiction, in my view the gap makes striving for accuracy more imperative, not less. Per aspera ad astra and all that. More about this in my next post.

 

Excerpt

(Zebra Books mass market paperback, 2010, p 27)

 

“Ada awoke in the back of a cart. Her head rattled as fiercely as the rickety wheels. Her stomach tightened, that place where hunger met nausea, but she thought she would never be able to use her sticky, swollen tongue again. The side of her face ached with a bruise the size of a fat, ripe olive.

She sat up, her joints and muscles stiff. Squinting against the sun, she saw a gray donkey pulling the cart. Two men riding ahead on horseback wore white robes. The one holding the donkey’s tether might not have needed reins; he rode his animal with graceful ease. His tall, lean body absorbed every movement of the horse’s plodding steps. The other man, however, fought his mount with stiff and jerking movements.

Toledo was nowhere to be seen. The jagged mountains that bounded the city looked like pale blue teeth, far behind her on the horizon. Limitless grasslands stretched wide, broken only by dots of windmills, the occasional cluster of distant sheep, and the banks of the Tagus River. Its waters ran quietly beneath the bright spring sun.

But where was Jacob? The previous night’s events were a blur of colors and melodies punctuated with bright moments of fear and anger. More nightmares. They seeped into every breath, even when she abandoned herself to the throes of the tincture. She would never escape if they followed even to that unwordly place.”

 

This is only my second entry in The Bookworm's Romance Reading Challenge. I am glad other participants are doing a much better job of keeping up than I am! The generous rules make for stimulating latitude and that broader definition of romance has inspired me to read the genre more widely than in years. I have a stack of finished books to prove it, but the notes have not yet made it into posts. A Rosie Thomas novel is finally in the pipeline, though.

 

Afghanistan: Beyond All Frontiers by Elizabeth Darrell

 

Novels that marry historical fiction with sweeping historical romance seem never to go entirely out of fashion. Its mix of high emotion, graphic violence, and 19th century colonial exploits makes Beyond All Frontiers by Elizabeth Darrell (also known as Emma Drummond, Edna Dawes, Eva Dane) a juicy example. Originally conceived before the late 1970s US and Soviet interventions in Afghanistan but published at the height of the Soviet occupation in 1983 (author’s introduction), one might expect super-power conflicts to colour attitudes in Beyond All Frontiers. Instead, historical Russian concerns get short but sympathetic shrift as Darrell gives her hero a Russo-English parentage and focuses on the consequences of British military aggression in the region. Lessening its effectiveness, however, history in Beyond All Frontiers is one-sided, relying so overwhelmingly on Western primary sources that the native populations are reduced to cartoonish bit players. In consequence, although the external plot poses as a critique of blundering imperialism, the execution portrays Afghans and Indians as menacing shadow forces whose cruelty and unpredictability are impervious to civilized Western codes. Despite the emphasis on its sober historical trappings, Beyond All Frontiers works best as a romantic melodrama.

 

1837. After being brought up by a spinster aunt in England, seventeen-year old Charlotte Scott cannot wait to rejoin her longed-for family in the northern territories of India. Sadly, on arrival she finds her parents as disenchanted with her as she is with them. Society on the remote East India Company station is ruled by mores and strictures she does not understand, and her coming-out is a disaster. Even her beloved brother, Tom, seems ashamed. While his best friend, Lieutenant Richard Lingarde of the Royal Engineers expresses interest in the mind behind her mousy exterior, Charlotte only has eyes for the dashing, daunting Major Colley Duprés.

As Charlotte’s personal life falls apart, the British invade Afghanistan and occupy Kabul. There, the biggest test of her life awaits Charlotte. But just as happiness beckons, a fateful event alters British fortunes. And after a march of terror through the snowy mountain passes between Kabul and Jalalabad nothing will ever be the same for Charlotte or anyone she ever held dear.

 

The energy in Beyond All Frontiers is infectious, and I started out highly entertained by the colourful and dramatic storytelling. While the omniscient narrator has a tendency to tell rather than show political and military developments, interspersing page-long explanatory summaries here and there, the plot’s concentration on points of high drama ensures the action moves swiftly forward. Historical fiction lovers may feel a shiver as they vicariously live through the vividly depicted trials and tribulations of the British contingent in a particularly bloody chapter of colonial history. And romance readers able to digest a hero whose behaviour today would be considered non-politically correct receive their fill, too, for although the ending is not of the triumphant type, the Happily Ever After is still piquant in an unpredictable way; Beyond All Frontiers compares well with the much meatier historical romances popular in the 1980s.

However, if like me you also expect some insight into Afghanistan and its people or at the very least a creditable look at shared history in a novel that centres on the First Anglo-Afghan War, the uppermost response may become frustration and a bad taste in the mouth. I explain why further down in this post.

First I would like to discuss the characters, because they are the reason I stayed with Beyond All Frontiers despite my problems with specific aspects of the story. Darrell creates protagonists who possess wonderful vitality and blaze off the page. Deeply flawed, they also evolve in interesting ways, and one or two of the characters who start out least likeable are eventually revealed to have more to their personalities than is evident at first. Thus Felicia Scott, Charlotte’s mother, grew into the character who most intrigued me and for whom I ended up feeling perhaps the most sympathy. I would have liked to see more of her, preferably through other eyes than Charlotte’s. Colley, too, is an ambiguous character who I felt needed more independent “on-screen” time to be fully explained and explored.

Charlotte is a heroine I did not always like but also a dynamic character with lots of personality. When she is introduced to the story, she is seventeen years old and full of illusions. Awkward and insecure, she is made endearingly real through her yearning to be loved and approved and her gauche attempts to fit in and impress. Her dramatic reaction when everything goes horribly wrong seemed quite in tune with her age, naivety, and sense of being unwanted – “a parcel”. In these early parts of the book I found the author’s portrayal of her honest and poignant and the outcome of her journey seemed refreshingly unpredictable. Charlotte grows and develops continuously throughout the six years spanned by the novel and so, because she is never a bland or static character, retained my interest even when she exasperated me. Her self-centredness and unforgiving nature seemed understandable in an immature girl trying so hard to earn affection or at least admiration and yet being made to feel a failure. But I had to take the narrator’s enthusiastic championship of her intelligence with a humorous dose of salt, despite being told that “her quick intelligence enabl[ed] her to follow the extremely complicated diplomatic nuances that were making nations nervy and suspicious of each other”.

Later on, after hard life lessons cause Charlotte to mature and to reform her attitude to the people around her, that self-centredness I mentioned develops into a self-righteousness that gradually began to erode my appreciation for her. The final straw was when she – far from a saint herself, often seeming affronted when people don’t feel sorry enough for her – exhorts her brother to take “his belt to his wife”, whom she considers “selfish” and “spoilt” (p. 443 in my edition, Severn House hardcover, 2002). In the end, to me, her redeeming feature was her capability to acknowledge her mistakes and pick herself up and humbly try again.

The narrator often seems under the impression that Charlotte and Richard Lingarde are the only competent people in India or Afghanistan. In subjects ranging from diplomacy to medicine, these two correct and instruct friends, colleagues, and professionals. But Richard seems cursed like Cassandra to have his warnings and predictions disbelieved, always powerless to prevent catastrophe. Also like Cassandra, although the circumstances are different, he is driven into (temporary) madness. Unfortunately, he behaved too much like a self-imposed martyr for me to find his suffering tragic or affecting. For more than a year, he drinks himself into stupor, shoots anything that moves, plans revenge “on everyone he could think of”, and calls his wife a slut and a selfish, heartless creature. Pot, meet kettle. His orgy in destructive self-pity makes the original cause for these excesses pale by comparison. It also compounded my unease about my and the narrator’s divergent opinions about what constitutes justifiable grounds for anger/punishment (a childhood incident involving a whip and a gypsy, p. 61).

Another aspect that drew nervous reactions from me was the language of sexual domination. On one side, Charlotte is afraid of marriage, keenly aware that marriage turns a woman into her husband’s legal possession, thus changing the balance of any prior friendship. On the other, she longs for sexual mastery by the man she loves. At one point she justifies her “overriding desire to surrender” to temptation by seemingly taking the attitude that marital infidelities are the norm rather than the exception in the society of which she is part, and reasoning that women are “weak creatures” who find it nearly impossible to resist other men’s attentions when deprived of their own husbands: “she would be a willing victim” and “It had probably been merely what all the other women had felt”. When around the same time the narrator describes as “indecorous” the women who (unlike Charlotte), on a long, arduous journey, are cooling their bare feet in a stream, I muttered a long litany that included several repetitions of the word “hypocritical”. As for the man who loves her, he wants “a demanding wanton”, “a mistress as well as a wife, a submissive tormentor, a girl to whom he could be a passionate master besides a tender guardian [...] who could make him conqueror rather than mentor.” See what I mean about 80s-style romance?

The emphasis the story places on physical beauty and attraction took me aback. Looks may have been of great significance for a woman whose main career would be an advantageous marriage, but the implications in the story go well beyond historical realities. In a scene that discusses Tom Scott’s little son, for example, Tom is put off by the boy’s looks and sighingly implies that he would be more inclined to be affectionate toward his son if the boy were as attractive as another character’s toddler child. That parent drops a few consoling words about children improving with age, but his internal thoughts indicate satisfaction at having had a child who has been beautiful since birth. Even more remarkably, each and every time we encounter them we are given long and detailed descriptions of the two women acknowledged to be the most beautiful in society. Countless paragraphs are devoted to making comparisons between them, and to the excitement the opportunity to compare them side by side engenders among the characters (“at last, the matter would be settled”). Yet when one of them, Felicia Scott, who is “nearing forty” and retains “the shape of a girl”, is seen by Charlotte in the privacy of the former’s bedroom, without makeup and dressed in a lacy nightgown, the tearing down of beauty's façade does not show Felicia as human but laughable: “the effect was almost vulgar; the lace confection she wore gave a touch of the bizarre to a woman desperately holding on to her youth [...] Her beautiful mama did not exist”. And when a character who has been determined to reject his child sees that child for the first time, he forgets his resolutions and takes the toddler to his heart because “All this time he had pictured a small monster of some kind – a grotesque female picture of [...], or a miniature of that blotched-faced travesty [...] But Anna was beautiful, entrancing”. Great care is also taken to describe Colley's clothing every time he appears on the scene. And, as my final example, in one of several instances of clunky exposition through dialogue (these disappear later in the book) Lady Lingarde remarks to her son, Richard: “You know that I have always been absurdly and outrageously fond of you. But despite a mother’s prejudice, no female has ever denied you are irresistibly attractive, destined for brilliance, and virile to the point of a woman’s desperation.”

How thrilled I would have been if the minute observations about dress had been extended to the physical setting, too. Instead, there is no texture to the Afghan and Indian landscapes. One reads about rivers, mountainous terrain, icy snows, busy bazaars, and provincial towns, but descriptions tend to create only generic pictures: “Spring came. The snows melted to swell rivers that rushed down the mountains into the valley. It grew lush and beautiful once more, with blossoms on the fruit trees scenting the air that was clear and pure.” I cannot recall a single instance of a plant or wild animal being identified by name, but rarely is the colour of a gown omitted.

This brings me back to my early comment about the novel’s rendering of Afghanistan.

At first glance, it may seem an outrageous claim about a book that painstakingly dedicates so much space and effort to detailing the First Anglo-Afghan War that there is hardly anything to be learned in it about Afghanistan or its people (or indeed India, for all that a couple of hundred pages take place there, too).

But what we are shown is really only British policies and attitudes and the pleasures and hardships of British soldiers and civilians. Not one Afghan with a speaking role makes more than a fleeting appearance in the book. Of the ones we meet, none are shown in a light that is positive, admirable, virtuous, or independent. The only Indian character lives entirely at the mercy of a British character. Once that relationship becomes an impossibility, it signals the character’s exit.

Every Afghan action seems merely a reaction to something done or said by a British character or authority, and Afghan motivations are left to be enigmas unless one accepts British interpretations of them. For example, the surrender of Dost Mohammad Khan, a key historical personage frequently referred to in the book although he appears in the story only indirectly, comes out of the blue. It is fine for the protagonists and the British civil and military authorities to be stunned by this unexpected turn of events, but Dost Mohammad’s reasons for the surrender also remain entirely unexplained to the reader. The omission is symptomatic of the novel’s treatment of everything and anything Afghan.

It is true that none of this is atypical of popular fiction stories that place the principal protagonists in a country not their own and weave the plots around tensions arising from this situation. Moreover, unabashed popular fiction that makes no excuses for making entertainment its sole reason for existing is something I regularly read and enjoy. When, however, a novel purports to present a serious and measured interpretation or explanation of something, it is asking to be judged not merely on what it is (entertainment/art) but on what it says (messages).

And that is where Beyond All Frontiers took a nosedive. I find it astounding that the story was written thirty years or more after WWII. Quite apart from the “Rule Britannia” opinions of its nineteenth-century British characters, the blinkered attitude exuded by the narrative itself is disconcertingly at odds with both the tone and amount of research poured into the historical setting. Pointedly phrased, the history in Beyond All Frontiers has a human, three-dimensional face: British; and an inhuman, one-dimensional: brown.

Afghans, Sikhs, Persians, and the various tribal groups of Central Asia take on uniform, crude and brutal traits without ethnic or national distinguishers. The sepoys who swell British Army ranks receive only slightly less hysterical treatment. Consider the descriptions applied: “barbaric cutthroats”, “rabble of [...] brutes” (40); “cruel, arrogant [facial] features”, “fanatical shrieks” (57); “Persians were quite as viciously barbaric as Indians” (62); “greedy” (89); “treacherous”, “murderous and bloody” (90); “lazy” (93); “cruel faces” (105); “rabble of Persians” (107); “viciously cruel and tyrannical” (164); “[an army’s ceremonial parade is] ‘exciting, if one cares for the wail of native bands and the smell of elephants’” (167); “maniacal fighters”, “supreme insolence” (170); “these people did not hesitate to mutilate and torture others in ways that made an Englishman sick with revulsion” (197); “treacherous villains” (210); armed forces are “ragged” (256); “cruel downward tug of [a] fleshy mouth”, “a man of few virtues” (304); “a personality verging on insanity” (386); “‘at a whim, can abandon fine feelings and indulge in cruel practices that defy all pretence of sanity’” (394); “a tide of petrified brown faces that saw nothing, heard nothing but the evidence of their own panic” (419); tell “cruel lies” (440); “cruel in the extreme” (446); “enjoying the discomfort of the infidel women” (446).

“Eastern delights and sensuality” become titillating subjects that are marvelled at or scorned without any qualms about stereotyping. “The Sikh leader’s own erotic interest in females – to the extent of having a corps of mounted amazons to perform for his pleasure – was famed over India, yet the haughty covered women of the British who had their menfolk bowing before them, earned his great admiration. It was as big a mystery as the scarlet jacket!” (165); “her hands were moving over his body in ways that only women of the East understood” (230); (my italics) “The ladies of Kabul found the pale-skinned gentlemen in scarlet coats quite as beautiful as their conquerors found them and, the Afghan men being overwhelmingly homosexual, seized every opportunity to enjoy the delightful bounty while it lasted” (220); (my italics) “was strongly built and handsome in the aggressive and somewhat dissipated manner of his race. The features were bold and striking, but already showed signs of cruelty, self-indulgence, and sensualism” (307).

 

Warning: plot spoiler

In the above context of sex and race, here is an episode that particularly disturbed me. In consequence of the degradations he perceives he endured at the hands of a captor, a principal character’s longtime mistress is rejected in the blink of an eye. Throughout the story it has been stressed how crucial she has been to his sanity and well-being, but his experience in captivity suddenly causes him to feel “an involuntary revulsion so strong that he had to stand away from her”. Why? The mistress and the captor are not known to each other or related in any way. Only one reason is directly stated: “He stood staring at her beautiful face, her slender perfection of body, her miniature dusky feet that had aroused him sexually on so many nights, and saw only an echo of [the captor] in her dark eyes and brown skin” (351). Four pages later, the same day, he notices that a British female protagonist’s skin is “beautifully pale in colour” (355) and admires her face which “contained no hint of Eastern passion, no expression of sadistic pleasure, no promise of erotic mystery”. Note that – in addition to the automatic parallel drawn between perversion, eastern peoples, and sex – until the time he summarily dismisses his mistress, he has expressly dwelled on the fact that he has never experienced anything from her but kindness, devotion, and soothing pleasure.

End of plot spoiler

 

 Like Patricia Maxwell/Jennifer Blake with Bride Of A Stranger, Darrell too fails to draw any distinction between her character’s opinions and the general narrative. The particular appeal of light skin colour to Western protagonists may be an accurate reflection of 19th-century attitudes, but paired with the numerous negative associations with “brown skin” and a complete absence of challenging commentary in a book released in 1983, I felt plunged into The Twilight Zone.

Any compliments about regional people are derogatory: “Despite his severe rule, he was as just as any sovereign one finds in this part of the world” (276). At other times, even that effort is dropped: “ [he] followed the trend of eastern rulers by living surrounded by opulence whilst his subjects starved in squalor.” (305).

A look at how British characters, in their turn, are represented reveals an interesting paradox. Keep in mind that Beyond All Frontiers conscientiously portrays how the British made a bungle of the situation in Afghanistan, that its hero is the sharpest critic of the war, and that it includes a scene depicting torture of prisoners by a British character. Here are some descriptions of British individuals and groups: “noble” (62); “inexhaustible patience and moral courage” (105); “had been forced into absolute invasion” (127); “courageous tenacity” (135); “chivalry”, “marched out bravely” (137); a Sikh army trained by Europeans is “therefore, quite disciplined” (164); “laying down his life for his country”, “gallantry in the face of the enemy”, “brave nonchalance”(175); “mesmerizing the simple natives into slavering submission” (101); “helpless captive of cruel sadistic tribesmen” (62); when the British ice-skate for pleasure, “the watching Afghans gazed with awe upon such wondrous and magical skill” (220); “fighting now with gritty determination under leadership inspired by outrage and true British wrath over ungentlemanly practices” (431); “retained an air of command which, despite the fact that he was a prisoner in great danger of his life, greatly impressed the Afghans” (440); “The garrison had orders to remain until Shah Soojah effectively ruled his people, and this the Amir was making no attempt to do [...] With their characteristic calmness, the British simply heaved a sigh and resigned themselves to doing their duty for a little longer” (290). “‘They [the Afghans] are barbarians. We are Christians’” (260).

What did Elizabeth Darrell intend to say with Beyond All Frontiers? ‘We bungled, but did it nobly; “they” sort of won, but foully’? ‘Don’t mess with people you don’t understand’? Did she truly mean to express some of the other messages I have taken away from the story? I suspect not. Or rather, I hope not. I am assuming her concern was not with articulating the point of view of the Afghans, but to shed light on a monumental but overlooked episode in history as experienced by the British. And indeed, the story successfully conveys how the British perceived the unfolding events. In taking this approach, however, the author also chose to become a mouthpiece, and that causes a host of moral and ethical tangles. Any distinction between views held by a particular character and those of the omniscient narrator are blurred by the absence of contextual commentary, by a lack of characters or events or situations that challenge or analyse or demolish prejudice and discriminatory messages. A partisan view of history is one thing; demonising and vilifying quite another.

 

Thank you to Misfit of At Home With A Good Book And The Cat for consistently finding and blogging about buried historical fiction treasures. While this one fizzled for me, many others have become keepers.

This is my first entry in the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

USA: Bride Of A Stranger by Patricia Maxwell

The recent reviews of some of Jennifer Blake’s historical romances by Misfit of At Home With A Good Book And The Cat drew my interest to the author’s gothic fiction, originally penned under the name Patricia Maxwell. Bride of A Stranger was released at a time when the boom in gothic romances had begun its downward slide but – with the exception of marketing’s choice of cover – shows none of the effects of weariness, artificiality, and cynicism that marked much of the output by the mid-1970s. Gothic romances generally focus on the heroine's journey, and the best of the later ones are often clearly influenced by or deliberately incorporate feminist themes. In Bride Of A Stranger marriages of convenience are a tragedy, not a source of romance.

 

1816*. With one pitying glance across a hot Creole ballroom at a stranger's scarred face, Claire de Hauterive’s life changes. Society outcast Justin Leroux tears her from her comfortable fiancé and beloved New Orleans by marrying her against her will and installing her on his isolated sugar cane plantation on the banks of a Louisiana bayou.

Sans Songe is indeed a place without dreams, without illusions. In the main house, unspoken trespasses and mutual dependencies have woven an uneasy truce between bitter family members. In the slave quarters, fear and voodoo reign. Accidents and threats harass Claire from the first, but her new husband is more intent on breaking her will than listening to her concerns. Gradually Claire realises she can trust no one but herself if she is to survive – and that nothing is more dangerous than blind love.

 

The most interesting thing about Bride Of A Stranger is its heroine, Claire. Even now, almost forty years after the novel’s publication, she remains in some ways a unique romance heroine. Nothing proves this better than the last scene in the book, which shows a bedroom dynamic and personal priorities I don’t think I have seen in any other romance I have read over the years. An unequivocal nod to feminism, it certainly wrings something fresh out of formula.

Claire has her less intelligent moments in the latter parts of the story, but in the final judgement I thought her a breath of fresh air. She has been brought up to behave in accordance with society’s conventions and to respect accepted authority, and when these trap her into unjust situations she protests but, if unsuccessful, adjusts without indulging in self-pity. If it is true now that heroines often melt or grow passionate when locked in an embrace with a hero they supposedly despise, this was doubly true in romances in the seventies and eighties. Yet when Justin forces his bruising attentions on Claire, she is neither seduced nor weakened by his warm, low-voiced coaxing. She recognises that he tries to use passion as a tool of subjugation, and refuses to take responsibility for his sense of humiliation at her self-possession:

“’What kind of man are you to expect me to fall in with your – your – [...] – plans, and meekly agree to make you a comfortable and accommodating wife?’ Her voice shook with the strain of putting her resentment into words and also her fear of what he would do to her, but she was determined. [...] ‘And now – now that you have proven that you can force me to your will, that you care nothing for my feelings. [sic] I wish you pleasure then of your reluctant bride.’ Her voice was hard with the promise that, so far as it was within her power, he would gain nothing. [...] Claire wished, as the quiet seconds passed, that she could agree, could say that she too had enjoyed their days together, but the lie stuck in her throat. She had not enjoyed them. She had known constantly that she was only there because Justin willed it.” (Pages 45,46,62-3.)

Justin’s response? “But he grasped her arm, his fingers bruising her flesh so that she bit back a cry of pain.’Don’t try my patience, Claire. When it snaps I might enjoy the consequences. You, I’m persuaded, would not!’” At Sans Songe, cruelty, violence, and death are the legacy of love gone wrong. Justin’s understanding of love has been warped since childhood, and in adulthood he behaves like a spoilt boy who in a perverse fit destroys his toy, then whines over its loss. As a “hero”, he is an arrogant and domineering yet marginal figure; a deliberate stereotype, it seems, used to expose dangers inherent in romanticising a certain type of hero or love.

It is probably relevant to note here that there is no instance of rape or forced seduction (pick your euphemisms) in Bride Of A Stranger, nor any sex scenes either on the page or behind closed doors. Physical consummation of the marriage is tied up with the outcome of Claire’s fight to establish her equal standing in a juster relationship.

Not everything about the story questions stereotype, however. It felt peculiar, not to say bizarre, to read scene after scene of master-slave interactions that, in the complete absence of narrative commentary to the contrary, imply that the greatest enemy here is not the inequality of the institution but an outside threat that disrupts this relationship. On the face of it, the situation parallels the inequality between husband and wife in marriages of the time, as experienced by Claire. But (within the story) Claire is allowed to explore her role and challenge injustice, whereas the slaves, once the outside threat has been contained, are expected to remain as they were: subservient, and now smiling about it. There is one potential exception: a person of colour who is shown to have an intriguing life of her/his own making beyond the relationship to the Lerouxs. Nevertheless, this is a remote character who all but disappears into the cloak of mysticism that surrounds her/him, rather than a path-builder.

At no point does Claire observe or study the slaves to try to come to any conclusions about her own situation. Instead her reactions to the house slaves, for example, alternate between uncertainty, suspicion, and fear for her life. (Exactly who truly controls the servants is a source of tension and mystery in the plot.) In Bride Of A Stranger, slaves seem synonymous with unreliance, savage passions, and loss of control. While the atmosphere of paranoia that pervades the novel (not merely in regard to the slaves) may reflect how slave owners historically felt about their own situation as a minority among a much larger group of people who might quickly overpower them if they chose to rebel, any commentary about these or similar considerations is absent from the novel. Similarly, I was jolted when Justin remarks on Claire’s colouring, (blonde hair and) “'your skin so white [...] so different from the sallow crones’” who were her fellow Creole women at the ball where the pair first met (p. 45-6). It is a remark that is probably true to the historical period but that, unexplained, becomes very disturbing in a modern novel where the hero is a slave owner.

The success of gothics rely heavily on a doom-laden, unsettling atmosphere. Evoking a tense, ominous mood seems an effortless talent on Maxwell’s part. With plenty of nice details about the material culture and customs of early nineteenth-century Louisiana Creole society, there is a solid, rich feel about this aspect of the setting. The writing style is sharp and readable, and the plot entertaining despite a conventional mystery, many unsympathetic characterisations, and an extremely contrived denouement.

While Bride Of A Stranger most definitely is an interesting gothic, calling it a romance almost seems a misnomer. While the novel contains many recognizable elements of romance it also defies some of its most cherished tropes. It is the heroine’s realisation of the importance of self-respect and self-reliance that is the main story here. The growth of a loving, romantic relationship gets short shrift since the increasingly random interludes between the hero and heroine are more concerned with redressing the unequal balance between their states than with deepening the bonds of couplehood.

Patricia Maxwell displays considerable storytelling gifts in this novel, not least in her breaks with romantic convention. But the enjoyment this gave me was marred by a portrayal of slavery that I cannot call anything but insensitive. To me, Bride Of A Stranger ultimately reads as a commendable gothic experiment with a strangely flawed narrative.

 

*The year is not explicitly noted but in the first chapter it is stated that “Napoleon had been mewed up on St. Helena for several months” (page7). Chapter three, a few weeks later, mentions spring rains. Since Napoleon was taken to St. Helena in the summer of 1815, I have assumed Bride Of A Stranger opens in the spring of 1816.

 

Excerpt

(Fawcett Gold Medal paperback, 1974, p.47-8):

“The rumble of thunder woke her. Lightning forked the sky and a wet wind filled with rain struck the coach. Claire shivered and felt a stir of pity for the driver and groom riding up on top. She hoped that they had brought oilskins with them. And where was Justin? His great-coat would hold the rain off for a time, but he would eventually be soaked. Hard on that thought came the fear that he might ride back to join her inside the coach, and hurriedly she pushed her feet into her shoes. Then, gathering her hairpins from the floor and the seat, she smoothed her hair and coiled it in a flat knot on top of her head.

Straightening in her seat, she looked out the window. On one side was the forest, thick, dark, and impenetrable, but on the other was a fairly large bayou, its current swollen with spring rains. It must be near daylight, she realized, for although it was raining she could still see the water running swiftly along and also the thick, green grass studded with flowers at the edge of the roadside.

Abruptly the coach tilted forward, and by leaning against the glass she could see that they were heading down to what appeared to be a crossing; a crude, railingless bridge over the bayou. The body of the coach jounced on its springs as the wheels struck the thick hewn planks, then there was a rumbling as they started across. Claire could feel the bridge sag with the weight of the diligence, and her breath caught in her throat, but then they were past the dangerous half-way point and she began to relax.

At that moment she heard a hoarse yell above her. The coach stopped, and began to rock violently as the sounds of scrabbling hooves and frantic neighing came to her. The coached backed, then slewed sideways.”