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cimoreneI continue rereading the mediæval-eclectic quest novels of my guy William Morris, founder of the Arts & Crafts movement, socialist, and arguably the greatest wallpaper designer in history (although Morris didn't really like wallpaper; he considered it a sad necessity because most people could not afford to cover their walls with tapestry, the perfect wallcovering. In Morris's ideal world, every object would be the lovingly decorated creation of an artisan who delighted in making it beautiful. When his friend designed a house for him shortly after his marriage, he invited all his pre-Raphaelite artist friends over and they had painting parties, hand painting the walls and furniture. But I digress).
This is Morris's last novel, published a year after his death. It's one of his most memorable plots, in my view. In the words of the introduction on Standard Ebooks, where you can download a nicely formatted edition:
The New Woman was the progressive or modern female ideal in the Victorian era, a precursor to feminist discourse - associated, for example, with women's suffrage and the Rational Dress movement (which is often remembered for its campaigns against the corset and for the early history of bloomers). For many women, and for socialists like Morris, a central feature of the New Woman was the rejection of female middle class idleness in favor of useful work (see the paper which looks at Dracula through the lens of New Woman writers which I talked about in this post). Women's education and the ability of middle class women to earn their own living were topics of popular debate at this time. Morris's socialism, however, looks to an idealized medieval past, and his ideal society is a peaceful agrarian one peopled by artisans and craftspeople, so his New Woman, as aptly summarized by Standard Ebooks above, differs by doing hard physical labor - cutting wood, hunting and fishing, growing crops and tending goats - in addition to her more genteel skilled work (embroidery, sewing, calligraphy) rather than teaching school, taking shorthand, and typing like Bram Stoker's Mina Murray.
The Water of the Wondrous Isles is a deliberately allegorical story; the heroine's very name, Birdalone, is a term for the last surviving child in a family as well as an expression meaning simply "all alone" (and apparently has never been a name). The characters include two nameless witches as well as three color-coded pairs of knights and maidens: Aurea (golden, fem., Italian), Viridis (green, neut., Latin), and Atra (dark or black, fem., Italian), and their suitors the Golden Knight, the Green Knight, and the Black Squire (so-called, but actually a knight), though the suitors, unlike the ladies, also have ordinary given names. On the other hand, Birdalone meets such ordinary people as Laurence, Gerard, Roger, Jacobus, and Audrey, in presumably less symbolic portions of the story.
Also, I love the weird little departures from what might be considered good storytelling and how they reveal the author's character. Five years are elided in the middle, and not even at the beginning or end of a chapter: in the midst of one it's suddenly like 'and five years went by like that, but then...'. It's also very funny that several scenes and a bunch of details are devoted to making sure we know that Birdalone is learning calligraphy and illumination from a priest, and then when she sets out to earn her fortune she's like 'I have two crafts that I could earn my living in, calligraphy and embroidery!' and then the calligraphy (or indeed, books at all) are never mentioned again. Morris just wanted us to know that he also stans calligraphy because it's very cool and obviously the coolest heroine has to be amazing at it, but he didn't have time to fit it into the plot anymore.
Anyway, here's my detailed summary:
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from this book:
This is Morris's last novel, published a year after his death. It's one of his most memorable plots, in my view. In the words of the introduction on Standard Ebooks, where you can download a nicely formatted edition:
[T]he novel follows Birdalone, a young girl who is stolen as a baby by a witch who takes her to serve in the woods of Evilshaw. After she encounters a wood fairy [who] helps her escape the witch's clutches, Birdalone embarks on a series of adventures across the titular Wondrous Isles. These isles are used by Morris both as parables for contemporary Britain and as vehicles for investigating his radical socialist beliefs. As Birdalone travels through the isles she slowly evolves into the embodiment of [Morris's progressive version of] the Victorian "[N]ew [W]oman," embracing hard physical labor, healthy exercise, higher education, socialist values, and financial freedom, while rejecting sexual exploitation, physical abuse of both women and children, and the restrictive sexual mores of the era. This makes her unique in the fantasy fiction of the era as one of the genre's first examples of a strong female hero.
The New Woman was the progressive or modern female ideal in the Victorian era, a precursor to feminist discourse - associated, for example, with women's suffrage and the Rational Dress movement (which is often remembered for its campaigns against the corset and for the early history of bloomers). For many women, and for socialists like Morris, a central feature of the New Woman was the rejection of female middle class idleness in favor of useful work (see the paper which looks at Dracula through the lens of New Woman writers which I talked about in this post). Women's education and the ability of middle class women to earn their own living were topics of popular debate at this time. Morris's socialism, however, looks to an idealized medieval past, and his ideal society is a peaceful agrarian one peopled by artisans and craftspeople, so his New Woman, as aptly summarized by Standard Ebooks above, differs by doing hard physical labor - cutting wood, hunting and fishing, growing crops and tending goats - in addition to her more genteel skilled work (embroidery, sewing, calligraphy) rather than teaching school, taking shorthand, and typing like Bram Stoker's Mina Murray.
The Water of the Wondrous Isles is a deliberately allegorical story; the heroine's very name, Birdalone, is a term for the last surviving child in a family as well as an expression meaning simply "all alone" (and apparently has never been a name). The characters include two nameless witches as well as three color-coded pairs of knights and maidens: Aurea (golden, fem., Italian), Viridis (green, neut., Latin), and Atra (dark or black, fem., Italian), and their suitors the Golden Knight, the Green Knight, and the Black Squire (so-called, but actually a knight), though the suitors, unlike the ladies, also have ordinary given names. On the other hand, Birdalone meets such ordinary people as Laurence, Gerard, Roger, Jacobus, and Audrey, in presumably less symbolic portions of the story.
Also, I love the weird little departures from what might be considered good storytelling and how they reveal the author's character. Five years are elided in the middle, and not even at the beginning or end of a chapter: in the midst of one it's suddenly like 'and five years went by like that, but then...'. It's also very funny that several scenes and a bunch of details are devoted to making sure we know that Birdalone is learning calligraphy and illumination from a priest, and then when she sets out to earn her fortune she's like 'I have two crafts that I could earn my living in, calligraphy and embroidery!' and then the calligraphy (or indeed, books at all) are never mentioned again. Morris just wanted us to know that he also stans calligraphy because it's very cool and obviously the coolest heroine has to be amazing at it, but he didn't have time to fit it into the plot anymore.
Anyway, here's my detailed summary:
I. Background and childhood
Birdalone is abducted as a toddler by the evil witch who takes her to live on a small homestead on the banks of a large lake in the midst of a magic forest, guaranteeing her isolation from all human contact.
Birdalone is raised by the witch as a slave, and is made to do as much as possible of the physical labour of growing grain and vegetables, hunting in the woods, fishing in the lake, tending a small herd of goats for milk/cheese/butter. Apart from this she is allowed to play in the woods, where she prefers to hide from the witch, befriends all the animals, and is adopted by a fairy called the wood wife or wood mother who teaches her assorted earth lore and gives her advice.
With the advice of the wood wife, Birdalone is able to steal a magic boat to escape once she is about 19 years old, although the witch steals all her clothes at the last second and she has to escape naked. The boat sails into the lake, destination unknown.
II. The Wondrous Isles
The Isle of Increase Unsought: The next isle is ruled by the sister of Birdalone's witch mistress. She lives in a palace and is kept unaging by magic. She is tended by three beautiful young women who, like Birdalone, are captive slaves, who were kidnapped by Birdalone's witch mistress for her sister from a tourney where they had gone to watch their suitors. Unlike Birdalone, though, they are (unwilling) ladies in waiting, not laborers. Crops grow untended and magically become food there, where the witch's magic obviates all physical labor. The three maidens are able to help Birdalone escape, and they each lend her one item of clothing (gown, smock - a chemise/undergarment - and shoes), in exchange for asking her to send their suitors to their rescue.
The Isle of the Queens contains a grand hall arrayed for banquet and crowded with richly dressed ladies attended by serving women, all dead and frozen in place like mannequins. At the head of the room is a king laid out for burial on a bier, with a bloody sword clasped to his chest, and a queen kneeling by his head in an attitude of lament. The ghostly sounds of women weeping and eating can be heard at night. Birdalone investigates and departs.
The Isle of the Kings contains a fortified castle, the great hall filled with men in armor at a council of war, the walls covered with gruesome depictions of battle, the head table occupied by three kings with unsheathed swords on their knees and three old men with long white beards. Again, everyone is dead and motionless but perfectly preserved, although again, the isle is haunted by the sounds of battle at night. Birdalone investigates and departs.
The Isle of the Young and the Old: This island is occupied by an extremely old man and two young children, a boy and a girl, none of whom ever age, all enchanted so that they don't remember the past clearly. They are supported by some goats and some grain for making their food.
The Isle of Nothing: This island seems to be deserted, but the middle of it is haunted by a dense magical fog that you can get lost forever in. Birdalone is rescued from starvation by magical communication with her wood mother.
III. The Castle of the Quest
The castle she reaches is occupied jointly by her friends' suitors while they search the world for signs of them. They welcome her and listen to her story, then set off to rescue the three maidens armed with what she has told them. (The Black Squire has also fallen in love with Birdalone and is guilty and agonized about it and so is she. They haven't talked about it at all, they just can each tell the other is also guilty and miserable by eye contact.) They leave her in the Castle of the Quest with their armsmen, cautioned to stay in because in the neighborhood lies the Red Keep, held by the evil Red Knight and his evil forces who live by plundering, pillaging, and abducting women, with no honor or morals.
Birdalone, distressed by how long the rescue is taking, sneaks out alone at night to visit a valley where magic stones might grant wishes, and in the valley is immediately found by a sinister dark knight who insists on traveling with her. They spend the day together and eat, and he falls in love with her, so he tells her he was sent there by the Red Knight to capture her, but now wants to rescue her instead.
The questing knights return with the rescued maidens on the very day Birdalone runs away, and are able to set out immediately looking for her. They run into the Red Knight immediately after he kills the dark knight and captures Birdalone, and they kill him and rescue her, but the Red Knight also kills the Golden Knight in the fight.
The two knights and four maidens regroup in the Castle of the Quest and share their stories:
Birdalone's friends the maidens were caught after her escape and chained in the hall of the palace, but made invisible so their suitors would not know they were there. When the knights arrived, the lady claimed the three maidens had run away. The knights stayed as her guests for some weeks, sleuthing, and in this time, she coerced the Black Squire to become her lover. When she tried to summon the Green Knight instead, he defied her, and in the confusion stole what turned out to be the witch's magic potion. Without it she weakened in the space of a day, and once the knights took sips of it they were able to see the maidens and break their chains, and the palace collapsed into dust, evidently killing the witch.
However, Atra was able to detect in the Black Squire's face that he was in love with Birdalone, and gave his ring back to him right away. Birdalone apologizes to her. Atra is both grieving and embittered, and though she assures Birdalone that she doesn't hate her she also asks her to swear that if she has an opportunity in the future she will make a sacrifice for Atra's benefit.
The Green Knight and the Black Squire immediately contact the nearby good knights and cities to plan to conquer the Red Keep while its men are confused by their leader's demise. In their absence, Birdalone decides that the service she can do for Atra is to disappear so that her friends will not know where to find her in future. She departs with plenty of money.
IV. The Years of Absence
At the next good-sized town Birdalone hires a retired soldier and his two adult sons who are happy to go with her because they want to return to their hometown and she is going in that direction. She tells them that she wants to settle and earn her living in a good-sized mercantile town in [vague geographical direction] and they help her to choose a destination. They guide her to the City of the Five Crafts, where she visits the head of the embroiderers' guild and show him some examples of her embroidery, which is incredibly good. He rents her a house in Embroidery Street and recommends another embroiderer to Birdalone because her style is similar, and says that if they work together they could take official apprentices and train more people in their style. The 'other embroiderer' turns out to be Birdalone's long-lost mother, and they figure this out by telling each other their life stories and identifying Birdalone's earliest memories. They take apprentices and prosper.
Five years pass, and then Birdalone's mother and also the kindly guildsman both die in a wave of illness. Birdalone, while grieving, dreams that her wood mother tells her it's time to find her friends again. She offers to leave all her possessions and her school to the three armsmen, but they instead return to their hometown. She leaves the house and her wealth to her pupils (who are never named and never get any dialogue) and, dressed as a young male knight, journeys back towards the Castle of the Quest.
V. The Return
Birdalone learns on the way that the Red Keep has been defeated and the Castle of the Quest is empty. The Black Squire is missing, while the Green Knight and three ladies have left for the Green Knight's homeland. She determines to visit her wood mother for help.
She sails back through the wondrous isles on the magic boat and finds them all changed. The Isle of Nothing has no more fog. The Isle of the Young and Old has no old man anymore; it is populated by a bunch of children who have formed their own happy socialist society and are doing fine. The Isle of the Kings is occupied by lascivious scantily-clad ladies who mistake Birdalone for a knight and try to lure her after them, and then when they see she's a woman get angry and try to attack her. The Isle of the Queens is occupied by roving packs of men and a skeevy old guy tries to verbally intimidate her, then physically grab her, but is fought off by a young man who helps her escape. The Isle of Increase Unsought is abandoned, but the magic boat disappears from there and she has to swim the last bit with the magical assistance of the wood mother.
She approaches the cottage, terrified of the witch but determined to confront her anyway, but finds that the witch has just spontaneously and naturally died. Birdalone buries her.
The wood wife is able to lead her to the Black Squire, her love, who is a little out of his mind and living in her woods like a wild man, and they heal him together. Then she sends some fairy knights to help Birdalone and the Black Knight rescue their friends from a band of roving evildoers from the Red Keep (their friends were traveling in search of them). Then she sends some more fairy knights to help the Green Knight fetch his children and devoted retainers from his own land, and together the two knights and four ladies formally approach the town closest to the woods where Birdalone was born and ask to live there. The Black Squire and Green Knight are joyfully accepted as captains of the city guard, Aurea marries one of Birdalone's menservants from her exile, Atra becomes a wise woman and the pupil of the wood fairy, and they all live happily ever after.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from this book:
- so she arose and thrust her grief back into her heart,
- And now, if thou canst, be a little merrier, and come and sit with me, and let us eat our meat, for I hunger.
- Then he gave her a horn, drawing it from out of the basket of victual, which he now set down on the ground; and he said: If thou shouldst deem thee hard bestead, then wind this horn, and we shall know its voice up there and come to help thee.
- and now she saw the riding-reek go up into the clear air,
- They have gone forth with some of our lads to gather venison, or it may be beeves and muttons for our victualling,
- Whereas ye must wot that the said Hold hath this long while been a very treasure-house of woes and a coffer of lamentations; for merciless was the tyrant thereof, and merciless all his folk. Now another time, when ye are stronger in heart than now ye be, I may tell you tales thereof closer and more nicely of those who did his will; as of his innermost band of men-at-arms, called the Millers; and of his fellow-worker in wizardry and venoms, called the Apothecary; and the three hags, called the Furies; and the three young women, called the Graces; and his hounds that love man’s flesh; and the like tales, as evil as nightmares turned into deeds of the day.
- till at last for pure weariness of his folly she gave way unto him,
- Forsooth ye wot that not unseldom do women use the custom of going arrayed like men, when they would journey with hidden head; and ye may happen upon such gear as hath been made for such a woman rather than any man; but thou shalt get me also a short bow and a quiver of arrows, for verily these be my proper weapons that I can deal with deftly.
- they had talked a while, but ever from the teeth out,
- she thought his eyes were deep, and his face sober and fair of aspect, but that his nose turned down at the end, and was over thin at the bridge, and moreover his lips looked over-sweet and licorous.
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