“If thou wilt marry, marry a fool.” (Hamlet, Act III Sc.1)

December 4, 2023November 15, 2023 / madamebibilophile / 23 Comments

Literary Wives is a quarterly online book club which considers the question: What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife? You can read all about the club and its previous choices on whatmeread’s blog here. When I saw on Naomi’s blog that the December choice would be Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (2020) I thought this would be a great incentive to pick it off the TBR and join in!

Hamnet is historical fiction, taking the death of William Shakespeare’s only son at age 11 as its inspiration. It’s generally thought that this bereavement was the impetus behind Hamlet. But Hamnet Shakespeare had a mother too, and she is the focus of the novel:

“Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicentre, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns. This moment is the absent mother’s: the boy, the empty house, the deserted yard, the unheard cry. […] It will lie at her very core, for the rest of her life.”

The plot moves back and forth between the present illness and then death of Hamnet, and the life of his mother Agnes Hathaway (as named in her father’s will although historical discussions usually refer to her as Anne). She is a misfit in late sixteenth-century Stratford society. She has a dowry, but her behaviour – flying hawks, understanding the healing powers of herbs, taking long walks – is problematic.

“She grows up feeling wrong, out of place, too dark, too tall, too unruly, too opinionated, too silent, too strange. She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she is to be married.”

She doesn’t have to crush herself down though, because the local Latin tutor finds her fascinating and doesn’t ask her to change.

“He is, he prides himself, adept at dissembling, at reading the thoughts of others, at guessing which way they will jump, what they will do next. Life with a quick-tempered parent will hone these skills at an early age.”

And Agnes marries into this unhappy home without quite knowing what she is getting into. She finds a way for her (never named) husband and her to survive her father-in-law’s temper and raise their three children. Like her husband, she sees and understands more than most people, although her skills come from a different source, an innate and psychic knowledge.

“They are women, mostly, and she seats them by the fire, in the good chair, while she takes their hands and holds them in her own, while she grinds some roots, some plant leaves, a sprinkling of petals. They leave with a cloth parcel or a tiny bottle, stoppered with paper and beeswax, their face is easier, lightened.”

Reading Hamnet was an interesting experience for me. I kept thinking: ‘Is this overwritten? Am I enjoying this or not?’ and for quite a while I wasn’t sure. Ultimately I decided it was overwritten but that I was still enjoying it 😀 I think this was because the overwritten aspects seemed to be an enthusiasm by O’Farrell to immerse the reader in the historical setting, rather than prove how clever she was and delight in her own brilliance. The scenes after Hamnet dies I found truly moving.

Agnes is a wonderful character, strong and fully realised. Anne Hathaway tends to be somewhat disregarded – the wife who stayed at home while her brilliant husband gallivanted around the City writing poems to dark ladies and fair youths. Hamnet makes Agnes a formidable woman while not rewriting history.

I liked the portrayal of Shakespeare too – limited contemporary accounts suggest he was good fun when he did go to the tavern, but these occasions were rare. That he was quiet and gentle, and very frugal, focussed on setting up financial security in Stratford. This is who O’Farrell has portrayed here.

What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

The marriage in Hamnet is not always happy but it is always grounded in a deep love for one another. It is a marriage between two strongly individual people who endure tragedy and their very different ways of managing it.

Agnes doesn’t lose herself when she becomes wife. She doesn’t lose her identity within that of being Mrs Shakespeare, even though she’s married to a writer whose wider adoration is so extensive it has its own noun. Agnes is definitely not one for Bardolatry, grounded as she is by the demands of domestic family life and her own work.

Agnes marries for love the man of her choosing. Within a society that restricts women’s roles and where her skills in particular could be quite a danger for her, she perseveres along her own path. She shows how wives can be the lynchpin of a family, and the importance of unconditional love.

“What she desires is for him to stay at her side, for his hand to remain in hers. For him to be there, in the house, when she brings this baby into the world. For them to be together. What she desires, though, does not matter. He is going. She is, however secretly, sending him away.”

To end, the RSC is currently staging an adaptation of Hamnet and I enjoyed seeing the posters all over the tube as I sat there reading the book:

“From the end spring new beginnings.” (Pliny the Elder)

October 23, 2013 / madamebibilophile / 2 Comments

This week I thought I’d look at the endings of novels, as a companion piece to my last blog post, which looked at beginnings. Doing this without giving away huge spoilers may be a bit of a challenge but I’ll do my best!

Firstly, Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx (4^th Estate, 1999). I’m going to assume a certain amount of knowledge here as there was a hugely successful film made of this short story, but I’ll still try not to tell you exactly what happens. The ending is this:

“There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve just got to stand it.”

This is from the point of view of Ennis, a cowboy in 1960s America, who falls in love with his co-worker, Jack, when they are ranchers on the titular mountain. The two of them are emotionally illiterate, they have no words with which to try and understand their experience. This end line is just perfect for their story; Proulx’s sparse writing style with simple imagery like “open space” portrays their terse love affair (conducted mainly outdoors)and Ennis’ contained character exactly. The language is all the more powerful for its simplicity “you’ve just got to stand it” capturing the heart-breaking stoicism of someone who ultimately feels powerless to lead an authentic life, to close that gap between what he knows and what he tries to believe.

It’s a story of a romance, but it’s determinedly unromantic:

“The room stank of semen and smoke and sweat and whiskey, of old carpet and sour hay, saddle leather, shit and cheap soap. Ennis lay spread-eagled, spent and wet, breathing deep, still half tumescent, Jack blowing forceful cigarette clouds like whale spouts…”

Reading Proulx is often like this, a multi-sensory, unflinching experience. She also has a great ear for dialogue, adding to the sense of her stories’ authenticity. Proulx has spoken about how highly she values the short story form, and so what you get in Brokeback Mountain is a perfectly crafted gem, where not one word is wasted.

Proulx has spoken warmly of the film adaptation of the story, particularly Heath Ledger’s portrayal of Ennis. Here is how that ending was interpreted in Ang Lee’s sensitive 2005 film version of the story:

Secondly, The Hand that First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell. I read this fairly recently, and I found the last lines quite moving, so I thought I’d include them here. They are:

“ “Keep going, El,” he says, “keep going.”

And so she does.”

These simple phrases capture a lot. The story is one of families, the secrets and lies that can make up the relationships people hold with their nearest and dearest. It’s a dual narrative, telling the story of Lexie Sinclair who leaves home to be with the worldly Innes Kent in London in the 1950s, and Elina, living in contemporary London, trying to hold on to a sense of self in the disorienting aftermath of having a baby:

“Elina jerks awake. She is puzzled by the darkness, by the way her heart is fluttering in her chest. She seems to be standing, leaning against a wall of surprising softness. Her feet feel a long way away from her. Her mouth is dry, her tongue stuck to her palate. She has no memory at all of what she is doing here , standing in the dark, dozing like this against a wall. Her mind is blank, like a ream of unmarked paper. She turns her head suddenly, with a great heaving, everything swerves on its axis because she sees the window, she sees Ted next to her, she sees that she is not in fact standing. She is lying. On her back, hands clasped over her chest, a stone lady on a tomb.”

Elina’s partner is Ted, and as Elina finds her way back into the world it gradually emerges that Ted’s parents have not told him the whole truth about his life. As Elina and Ted attempt to unravel the mystery, the two narratives converge.

I don’t want to say too much more for fear of spoilers, but what I will say is that THTFHM is a highly readable examination of the absolute havoc families can wreak on each other; of how powerful the truth can be, and its forceful drive towards exposure no matter what. All the pain and turmoil often sits alongside love, and in the end all we can do is keep going. The last few lines are an understated, realistic and hopeful ending. The novel details the complexities of the ties that bind within a well-paced plot that ensures the reader keeps going until the last line.