Torsade Literary Space My Blog Week: February 13 to February 19
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Critical Lapses (part eight)
First, let’s note some great things about The Sword Decides!, by Marjorie Bowen. Not just the exclamation point in the title, my reason for picking it…
Sword belongs to the category of historical adventure, meaning Bowen had put herself in competition with such writers as Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle, and was among few women of the Late Victorian and Edwardian periods published in this genre. She chose a subject whose life was as eventful as can be. What’s more, Giovanna of Naples has not much figured in either our history lessons, or popular culture. She is a Queen we should know better, and Bowen has given us that opportunity.
The real Giovanna fought hard for her right to rule, was suspected of engineering a notable assassination (that of her first husband, Andrew of Hungary), lived during the Avignon Papacy and the Black Death, which arrived in Italy in 1347. She was married three times, and at the last, for the political thorn she had made of herself, was murdered. Her life gives material enough for three novels.
Bowen’s book remains a lost opportunity, in broader literary terms, both for its fairly low standards of engagement, and for her choice to compress or rewrite history altogether. I’ve chosen, in rewriting her book, the opposite—to restore the realistic unfolding of the timetable, and the true historical facts (while still taking the fictionalist’s liberty of inventing characters and circumstances surrounding them).
If we compare a Bowen paragraph to one of the superior writers of her era, such as Hall Caine, or Thomas Hardy, we see the level her writing achieves. But to truly have perspective, we need more information on how publishers handled a woman author, whether Bowen was fairly edited, or left without guidance, due to a fundamental disrespect for her female audience.
Below, I’ve excerpted paragraphs from each of writers mentioned, beginning with three scenes of defiant women:
The man dropped his voice. ‘Well—it is. You sat in front of her in church the other day, and she noticed how exactly your hair matches her own. Ever since then she’s been hankering for it, to help out hers, and at last decided to get it. As she won’t wear it till she goes off abroad, she knows nobody will recognize the change. I’m commissioned to get it for her, and then it is to be made up. I shouldn’t have vamped all these miles for any less important employer. Now, mind—‘tis as much as my business with her is worth if it should be known that I’ve let out her name; but honour between us two, Marty, and you’ll say nothing that would injure me?’
‘I don’t wish to tell upon her,’ said Marty coolly. ‘But my hair is my own, and I’m going to keep it.’
Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders, 1896
“The waistrel! (thwack). The dirt! (thwack). I’m taiching him (thwack), and taiching him (thwack), and he won’t be taicht!” (Thwack, thwack, thwack.)
Pete said never a word. Rolling his stinging shoulders under his jacket, and ramming his smarting hands, like wet eels, into his breeches’ pockets, he took his place in silence at the bottom of the class.
But a girl, a little dark thing in a red frock, stepped out from her place beside the boy, shot up like a gleam to the schoolmaster as he returned to his seat among the cloth and needles, dealt him a smart slap across the face, and then burst into a fit of hysterical crying. Her name was Katherine Cregeen. She was the daughter of Cæsar the Cornaa miller, the founder of Ballajora Chapel, and a mighty man among the Methodists.
Hall Caine, The Manxman, 1903
And there they paused and ceased from their shouting for the Queen.
For she stood under the dais at the far wall, facing them. Her hands were out against the woodwork either side of her, her head raised so that they could clearly see the hollow lines of her cheeks and the sweep of her long throat. Her ermine cote-hardie was all unbuttoned over the yellow silk as if she had stifled in the heat or torn it in fright; her lips were strained, her eyes shadowed underneath. But she looked at them dauntlessly, and they saw she had a great sword fastened to her side.
Marjorie Bowen, The Sword Decides!, 1908
All around for many a mile on every side stretched the fertile and flourishing estate of which he was the master. In the center lay the broad Abbey buildings, with church and cloisters, hospitium, chapter-house and frater-house, all buzzing with a busy life. Through the open window came the low hum of the voices of the brethren as they walked in pious converse in the ambulatory below. From across the cloister there rolled the distant rise and fall of a Gregorian chant, where the precentor was hard at work upon the choir, while down in the chapter-house sounded the strident voice of Brother Peter, expounding the rule of Saint Bernard to the novices.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Nigel, 1906
And Morris saw the point, and came to terms with his uncle. On the one side, Joseph gave up all that he possessed and assigned to his nephew his contingent interest in the tontine, already quite a hopeful speculation. On the other, Morris agreed to harbour his uncle and Miss Hazeltine (who had come to grief with the rest), and to pay to each of them one pound a month as pocket-money. The allowance was amply sufficient for the old man; it scarce appears how Miss Hazeltine contrived to dress upon it; but she did, and what is more she never complained.
Robert Louis Stevenson, written with his stepson Lloyd Osborne, The Wrong Box, 1889
Description is more Bowen’s strong point than dialogue, and we may note she matches well in style to Conan Doyle (and surpasses him in these particular examples). We can surmise both authors were influenced by Walter Scott. A difficulty with these passages is the roteness of listing, in Bowen’s case, Giovanna’s clothing (also vaguely cringy phrases like “her long throat”); in Doyle’s, the buildings of a monastery, informative to a reader, but giving no point of view, since any resident of the monastery would pass by the commonplaces of his life, not walk along naming them. Hardy and Caine both supply a telling psychology, that economically, within a paragraph, lets us know the respective characters, and want to know what happens to them next. Stevenson has a confiding and humorous style, suggestive of Dickens.
On Monday, a new Folly, the last of this grouping, as I prepare to publish them, collected with other poem stories. On Tuesday, “The Resident”, with the visitors explaining something of their origin. Wednesday, Hammersmith, the last of a chapter that needed a lot of reediting. Friday, a third part of the short story “Fellyans”, with more wayward magic on the part of a well-meaning sprite. Saturday, Catastrophe, Hess’s interview with Dr. Guérin continued.
Images on my posts often have a link to related information (click first image), sometimes serious, sometimes whimsical, sometimes in answer to a direct reference. Since people can be leery about links, I include them here: what they are, what sites they point to.
My Blog Week: February 13 to February 19
Could It Be: Eighth Allied Forces
February 13
The Resident (part two)
February 15
Hammersmith: A Prisoner Goes Missing (part four)
February 16
Fellyans (part three)
February 18
Catastrophe (part fourteen)
February 19