The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters

A love story of sorts set between the wars, the overwhelming feeling of this novel is one of constraint. 

     As the story opens, there is the burden of financial constraint, as Frances Wray and her mother, robbed of husband and sons by the war enter into the spinsterish twilight of genteel poverty together. In an attempt to make ends meet in their now-too-grand house, they take in lodgers, Mr and Mrs Barber, whom they squeamishly refer to as ‘paying guests’. The Wrays and their paying guests comprise a taut, repressed household of things left unsaid: mother and daughter, husband and wife, never tell it like it is.

     There is the social constraint of living in close proximity to people who are strangers, and over whom you have no control. As expressed by the consternation caused by Mrs Barber choosing to have a bath at mid morning, requiring heroic bangings and knockings from the ancient geyser, a gas-gobbling water heater that the two resident ladies dare not use for the expense. They are of course too polite to mention it.

     As Frances and Lilian’s (Mrs Barber) love affair begins to take shape, there is the constraint of hiding in plain sight: whispering on the stairs, snatched meetings in the scullery and outings to the park. This building pressure can have no good outcome, and it is not sexual but emotional frustration that finally seizes the day.

     For fans of Sarah waters, there is constraint in the plot also. There is a twist at the end; but not perhaps the knockout sort we’ve come to expect from this master of the genre. Much of the engagement of the reader is in actively looking for a twist that never comes. Ah…we think, I’ve got it… but Waters turns our expectations back upon ourselves. Perhaps this is her true skill. In our wish to inhabit a world that eludes us, to walk alongside the author and see drama where there is none. In Fingersmith, Tipping the velvet et al, Waters has written masterly novels to entertain a demanding audience. This one she seems to have written for herself: it is we who are the paying guests…

The King's Curse, Philippa Gregory

  

‘Margaret Pole was going to be a victim, but instead as I learnt more it became the story of a vendetta.’ So says Philippa Gregory of her latest novel, ‘The King’s Curse’, about the last Plantagenet princess, Margaret Pole, who lived a long life at the Tudor court but whose luck finally ran out ending in a brutal death. The more Gregory researched, the more she became intrigued by the dynamic between Margaret and the Tudors. ‘It became a darker book. Really, it is about a king whose power increased immeasurably until he became a tyrant. Finally she was a victim of his paranoia.’ The King of course, is Henry VIII. She laughs, ‘I’ve spent the past twelve years with Henry, which is more than most of his wives.’

Why ‘The King’s Curse’?

'It was going to be called ‘The Last Rose'There is a legend that the Tudors are cursed. After all, they bring the ‘sweat’ to England and they cannot get an heir. In the White Queen series I fictionalised a scene with Elizabeth Woodville cursing the murderer of her sons, the princes in the tower. Now a real 'curse' has come to light.'

What is this curse?

‘New medical research shows that Henry VIII is likely to have had Kells disease, which is hereditary. It is carried down the female line. It can cause miscarriages, stillbirths and infant deaths.’

Who was Margaret Pole?

'Margaret was entrusted with the care of prince Arthur at Ludlow. She was also one of Catherine of Aragon’s ladies, and governess to princess Elizabeth. But so little survives of her because I believe she was plotting against Henry and therefore she probably destroyed everything she wrote.'

Have you ever been tempted to write non-fiction?

‘There’s something about writing fiction which is infinitely superior to writing history. You can write a truth, which is not a fact. I look at the events and what people did and speculate. I can tell you the colour of Margaret Pole’s dress when she came to court, because we have the wardrobe records, but no one can tell you her thoughts.’

How much research is enough?

'The more I write, the more I understand what you have to leave out. Just because I have spent months learning something doesn’t mean you are damn well going to know it too. A novel cannot be a thinly disguised history lesson; it has to have drama of its own, a great story.'

How do you create such strong female characters?

‘I write about people very like us in a society very unlike ours. You have to remind readers, at that time all your property belonged to your husband, he was entitled to beat you as long as he used a stick no thicker than his thumb. Women wouldn’t have behaved as we do now.’

What is your writing routine?

'I write anywhere and at any time. I have a laptop with me on my book tour. But I never write more than four hours a day; otherwise I begin to dream in character. That way madness lies.’

Did you study history?

‘No. I got an E in A-level history. So, I became a local journalist, then went to university having worked a few years, where I picked up history again as an extra course.’

If you could go back in time, when would it be?

‘I wouldn’t be anything other than a modern woman. If you are a woman before 1834 all your property will belong to your husband. If you are a woman before 1918 you will have no vote, and if you are a woman before 1960 no contraception. Of course, you can be a rich man at any time in history.’

PHILIPPA GREGORY WAS SPEAKING AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, KEW. THE KING'S CURSE IS OUT 14TH AUGUST 2014.

Domestic drudge department this way…

According to a new campaign, Let Books Be Books, we’re taking the gender out of books by preventing them being stuck on shelves labelled ‘for boys’ and ‘for girls’. Is it really that simple? What about the content? Are we also going to remove all those saccharine fairies, magical ponies, unicorns, mermaids and so forth…

A study by Florida University in 2011, tells us that 57% of children’s books have male central characters while only 31% are female. Likewise for young children, 23% are male animal characters, while only 7.5% are female animals.

‘The imagination has no gender’, said author Bel Mooney recently. I’m not so sure. As a parent observing boys and girls at play I would have said that they inhabit quite different imaginative worlds. Girls tend to be exclusive - I can’t play with you because I’m playing with her and this is a game for only two people. Whereas boys tend to be inclusive – the more aliens, cowboys, agents, monsters or footballers the better. I’ve never yet heard a boy say - ‘you can’t play with me cos I’m playing with him and we only need two aliens to take over the world…’

We’re told this is an offshoot of the ‘Let Toys Be Toys’ campaign. Toys are no longer to be served up in boys/girls categories, but all mixed up and gender free. A worthy aim perhaps, but again I don’t think the problem is packaging so much as genuine choice.

When my children were younger, I nicknamed the girl’s aisles in our local Toy MegaStore the domestic drudge department: an endless landscape of household chores, mini ironing boards, washing machines, buggies, cookers, and nappy bins, all served up as play. Surely the problem is not whether you package these toys in pink boxes, or stick them on certain shelves, but the sheer tedium of what they represent. Bad enough when you have to do it all for real…

I remember my disbelief when my daughter bought a Barbie dog, to discover that the plastic pooch popped out tiny poo-pellets which had to be swept up into a mini poop-bin. Perhaps if Mattel had managed to make it fart as well, we would have had a genuine gender-equality toy.

But of course, this gender argument is nothing new. The biggest row my brother and I ever had, way back when, was whether his action man was a doll or not. I didn’t hold it against him, but I was determined to win the academic argument (tis not!…tis too!..tis not…) Standing firmly on his seven-year-old dignity, big bro maintained action man couldn’t possibly be a doll because he moved too much, hence the action in action man.

In a way this encapsulates the whole argument – GirlyDoll is defined as a doll not just because she has a gazillion outfits to put on and off, but because she is rendered passive by her limited mobility. Action man can appear to leap, run, climb… most booby-dolls can only raise their arms or legs at shoulder or hips in a stiffly passive way (a sort of heil bimbo) just enough to squeeze that frock on. I used to wonder, why doesn’t someone market a Lara-croft style action girl doll? One that can run and climb, and kick-box and generally kick ass.

Despite all this: isn’t it what children choose to do with their toys that count. I don’t ever remember my son spending hours debating whether action man should wear the blue shirt or the commando-Tee, and which would be better for his upcoming party… but I do remember him being hilariously entertained by a book character called Captain Underpants, who’s daft behaviour, bottom jokes and farting antics, left my daughter completely unmoved. And trust me, putting the Captain in a pink sparkly cover wouldn’t have changed anything…

Which brings us back to books. Now my children are older, unicorns and dragons have fallen by the wayside. But what takes their place? For example, is it the packaging of the Twilight series that makes it gender specific or the content?

Not sure many guys are going to work their way through the Twilight novels, with their formula love triangle. As my late-teens son said one day ‘How can anyone compete with… Edwaaard… he’s made of diamonds for chrissakes.’ Doesn’t matter how you package it, the character of Bella is desperately passive, drops all her friends to build her life entirely around her boyfriend, and as a consequence falls spectacularly apart when he dumps her. Having spent years trying to work out ways to help my daughter value herself, I was horrified by this female role model.

Clearly there are gender differences, whether in children’s or YA literature, but is the answer to homogenise everything? We could, I suppose, serve fiction up in neutral grey covers to avoid gender-tagging, but until writers create more fantastic characters that speak to both genders, what will change? Can’t we just accept that at certain ages girls and boys have different interests, and celebrate our differences.

What next? Should we abandon commercial women’s fiction despite the fact that a lot of women get enjoyment from it because, well geez, it’s for women and that’s wrong isn’t it?