Historical novel | Beauty is a Sleeping Cat

The Princess of Montpensier

I’m not a re-reader but I have read Mme de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves at least four times. It is my favourite novel. For its style as well as for the story. There is something in the way Mme de Lafyette describes feelings that touches me profoundly. She wasn’t a very prolific writer. Before publishing La Princesse de Clèves (1678) she published La Princesse de Montpensier (1662) anonymously and later La Comtesse de Tende. Zaïde (1670/71) was published shortly after La Princesse de Montpensier. Although Zaïde was published under a pseudonym, it seems to be sure that it was also written by Mme de Lafayette.

Generally I’m not so much into the literature of the 19th century, I often feel that earlier writers, especially some of the French ones, are far more modern and original. This is certainly the case of Mme de Lafayette. Until a few days ago I had not read anything else by her but I bought a book called Nouvelles galantes du XVIIè siècle (it contains stories by Mme de Lafayette, Saint-Réal, Du Plaisir and Catherine Bernard) and finally read La Princesse de Montpensier.

It is a short novella but it’s as wonderful and as astonishing as her masterpiece. Her style is flawless, it is pure perfection. I particularly like her use of the passé simple and the indirect speech. The language is as fresh as a newly cut rose, it hasn’t aged one day.

Mme de Lafayette was an innovator. Before her most of the baroque novels, like d’Urfés L’Astrée, were thousands of pages long. To be this concise and precise like she was, was unheard of before. She was also one of the first to write historical fiction. The people in her books did exist, however the story is invented.

La Princesse de Montpensier is set during a very tumultuous period of French history. It starts 1566, during the civil war in which Catholics and Protestants fought a bloody battle, and ends in 1572 at the time of the horrible massacre of the Nuit de La Saint-Barthélemy or The St.-Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

La Princesse de Montpensier and the Duc the Guise are secretly in love with each other. They are very young and hope to get married but for political reasons her family decides otherwise and marries her to the Prince de Montpensier. This is a great tragedy for the princess. She doesn’t love her husband and when conflict breaks out she is glad to see him go to war. Montpensier leaves the Comte the Chabannes with her, not knowing how much in love the Comte already is with the princess as well.

This is a time in which women do hardly ever choose their husbands and adultery is very common. The princess is an extremely beautiful woman and it isn’t surprising that there are many men falling for her. She fights them all off until the day when she sees the Duc de Guise again. A qui pro quo and the intense jealousy of her husband accelerate the story. The end is somewhat unexpected and tragic.

I was thinking of Kleist while reading this novella and saw once more how much German changed while French has pretty much stayed the same since the 17th Century. La Princess de Montpensier is 150 years older than Kleist’s The Duel but it feels so much more modern.

I really loved this story and will soon read La Comtesse de Tende as well. I cannot believe that this was only 50 pages long, it feels as if I had read a novel, it is so rich. The five main protagonists are all equally well developed. All five of them are hurt and we feel for all of them. We know the society is to blame for their tragedy but Mme de Lafayette wouldn’t be Mme de Lafayette if she didn’t pick one particular person and blame her.

Still, if you have never read anything by her, I would recommend to start with The Princesse de Clèves but this little book is very beautiful as well.

I would love to watch Bertrand Tavernier’s movie La Princesse de Montpensier. Has anyone seen it?

Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights era. Blending fact and fiction, Glorious is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and ultimately revival offers a candid and true portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.

What an entertaining and well written book! I always say that I don’t like historical novels but I really liked this one a great deal. I had a feeling I had only just started when it was already finished.

Glorious tells the story of the fictitious Harlem Renaissance writer E.V. Gibbs whose maiden name was Easter Venetta Bartlett.

Easter’s story is a blend of fact and fiction and from what I can judge McFadden put a lot of effort into the research of her topic and manages to weave it artfully into the story.

I was drawn into the book from the first pages on. In the prologue we read about the tragic beginning of Easter’s story. I liked the way McFadden did this in adding a long list of sentences and paragraphs all starting with “If….” It exemplifies something that is on my mind a lot, namely the one single instance or occurrence in which a fatal or happy series of events is triggered, the one crucial point that determines the course a life will take.

If her father hadn’t won a boxing match, Easter’s sister wouldn’t have been raped. If that hadn’t happened her father wouldn’t have had an affair and her mother wouldn’t have died. If her mother hadn’t died, Easter wouldn’t have left her hometown and if….

But it did happen and Easter leaves. First she stays with relatives in the Jim Crow South until she witnesses a lynching. She escapes and joins a travelling circus where she meets the charismatic, lesbian Rain. Easter will not stay very long with the circus and moves on. After some more trials and tribulations she arrives in New York.

She settles down in New York, finds a job that pays he bills, meets a man from the Caribbean and gets married.

Since her early days Easter has always written stories. In New York, after having met Rain again and been introduced to Meredith Tomas, the rich wife of a Cuban plantation owner, she is discovered as the great hidden talent she is. All the prominent people of the Harlem Renaissance like her writing and she is very influential.

Chance however is not on her side. Her husband who attempts to murder Marcus Garvey, dies soon after her talent has been discovered and Meredith, consumed by envy of her talent, steals Easter’s novel.

The last chapters fast forward some 4o years and we see what has become of Easter who is now an elderly woman working as a maid in her hometown.

As I said, this book is based on a lot of facts and I’m pretty sure, that it is to a large extent inspired by Nella Larsen’s biography whose career did also end with an accusation of plagiarism.

The beginning in the Jim Crow South is maybe the best part of the novel. The descriptions are very powerful and almost cinematographic. What a monstrosity the South of those days was. It made me think of the song Strange Fruit. I have been collecting versions of it for years now.

Glorious will not be my last Bernice McFadden novel. She really is a very talented writer and it was a highly entertaining read. I already got her first novel Sugar here.

I’m amazed that she hasn’t been translated into German. If there is one market for which her novel would be perfect, it is the German one.

I wouldn’t have read this book if it hadn’t been for a comment by Anna (Diary of an Eccentric) who mentioned it on my first Nella Larsen post.

Here is the link to Anna’s review and to my first Nella Larsen post on Quicksand and to the second on Passing.

Last but not least here is the link to Bernice McFadden’s Blog.

I couldn’t resist and have attached one of my favourite Strange Fruit versions sung by Nina Simone. The video is worth watching as well. It’s very shocking.