Tracy Chadlier

     Finding the Story in the Painting

Tracy Chevalier has vivid imagination. Her writing is a lucid blend of history and creativity. She is an American living in England, churning out stories that have caught the attention of the literary world. Her latest autumn release last year is ‘The Last Runaway’, a period piece on American pre – civil war. ‘Girl with the Pearl Earring’ earlier had catapulted her onto the global writing arena.  She is clever to dwell upon icons in the past(so much so that  literary archaeological  study too has minimal material to really bring them to life) that have been elusive.  She makes full use of the lacuna, and impregnates her characters and plot with her fictionalized versions. It’s  a treat to listen to her on her TED talk ( http://www.ted.com/talks/tracy_chevalier).  Her winging imagination gleefully  constructs a dramatic  story around Jean-Siméon Chardin's early masterpiece,  Boy Building a House of Cards.   She lived with Johannes Vermeer’s painting ‘Girl with a pearl Earring’ for sixteen years, and finally weaved a story around the enigmatic look of the girl in the painting. The unknown maid from 17^th century delft becomes his muse and through her the reader gets into the studio of Vermeer, the machinations of his work and thought process, a sole private world. The book sold 4 million copies, got translated into many languages and was adapted into a film. Tracy succeeded in taping into the mainstream consciousness with a dramatized story, based on the life of a reclusive genius artist. 

The book ‘Burning Bright, is similar writing, based on the mystic, revolutionary poet, William Blake. Tracy depicts the seamy side of England in the 1750s. Blake’s seminal work, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience forms a backbone for the changing city and lives of Jem Kellaway, Maisie Kellaway, and Maggie Butterfield in their pre-teens. The title Burning Bright is again a tribute to his poem ‘Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright’. Quotes from ‘London’ in the story lend significance to real time London - the slums of St. Giles, murder, molestation,  unwanted pregnancies, and a funeral cortege through the streets of the city. The book is full of action and drama portraying circus feats, fires, showdowns, difficult neighbours, swindlers, and patronizing owners. William Blake is a gracious presence in the neighbourhood where the children live, and it is through interactions with them that the reader is led through the story of printing and engraving. Though Blake is a sure presence through the entire book yet he remains a shadow. The effects of a revolution gone sour across the country in France, and Blake’s so called treason is hinted upon in the book yet  his ideas of inspirations for his poems,  mysticism, and he as a genius visionary does not really fructify in the book and the attempt remains weak and illusionary.

The Last Runaway, the latest book is steeped in the spirit of freedom. A desire for freedom by the victim and those who help him achieve freedom. It is the story of slavery and the resistance movement interwoven with the abolitionists, English Quakers, cultural contexts of North and South America and the English. Art of quilting by women is explored through different communities, patching, embroidering paths of healing, empowerment and freedom. Honor Bright is an emigrant to America in 1850, caught in the throes of the slave movement. The story moves from Ohio to Oberlin, prominent on the map of the Underground Railroad. The profiles of women like Judith Haymaker and Belle Mill, and Abigail are colourful and multifaceted. Defiant women who help salvage the spirit of slaves by helping them escape through their clandestine network of safe houses, food depots and rail lines. In contrast Donovan is a stereotypical character, who is a slave catcher, a rogue, and ducks being redeemed. Honor Bright with her strong Quaker principles, champions’ equality, inner light and silent meditation. She decides to undertake the freedom of slaves at the cost of personal safety. But her condescending righteousness and English superiority over the locals makes her fall short of a rounded character.

Art remains Tracy’s inspiration to weave stories around. If there are paintings which triggered her earlier; later mystic poets, medieval tapestries and quilt- making seems to have impressed upon her to continue her journey of storytelling. She candidly admits that she suffers from art fatigue whenever she visits art galleries, and to relive herself of the guilt she beelines to an art piece which beckons her. Her mind then goes into an overdrive to concoct a story around the piece of art in no time!  

Bard's Sonnets

The Bard at 450

The Bard is alive and with us at 450. The dawn of 2014 is special for that very reason, for the world shall sway to the strains of the Bard. The celebrations  shall continue till  man exists and the word lives on, and  we shall relive his works a thousand times over.  A mortal immortalized by his art of literature, ‘not of an age, but for all times.’ We shall begin the year of celebration of the Bard in this space by revisiting the Shakespearian Sonnets.

Revisiting  the 154 Sonnets of the Bard meticulously, helps  unearth the  technique which one  always disregards  in lieu of the theme of poems. It  acquires a color of its own and lures  one to assimilate sonnets in a completely new light. The better for the exercise on the writing of it;   which one can accomplish with finesse, with the comprehension of the origin, types, and structure of sonnets. After meditation on the outline frame of the sonnet, you are astonished to discover the immense space within the confines, structured structure of a sonnet to experiment on flowing verse. 

The Shakespearean Sonnet is a 14-line lyric poem consisting of 3 quatrains (3 stanzas of four lines each) of alternating rhyme and a couplet: a b a b c d c d e f e f g g . Each quatrain dwells on an idea, different from the other quatrains, but related to the overall theme of the sonnet. The couplet at the end resolves the juxtaposition of ideas, events, images in the quatrains, by possibly resolving or just revealing the tensions created and operative between them. Line 9, the beginning of the third quatrain, is the turn or volta which turns the preceding argument to a different image and then the culminating couplet settles the complete picture. Each line is of 10 syllables, with five feet, an iambic pentameter; a Shakespearean signature. 

Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership, but they came into the public domain when they were first published in 1609. His sonnets are divided into 3 categories, viz. those addressed to a fair young man whom he loves, then to a dark married lady, and lastly on myriad themes of life. The Sonnets are a profound meditation on the nature of love,  sexual passion, procreation, death and time.

Perhaps the most famous sonnet is Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?         a
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:      b
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,  a
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:  b
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,   c
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,    d
And every fair from fair sometime declines,   c
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:  d
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,  e                                  
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,  f
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,  e
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,  f
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,  g
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.   g

A typical English sonnet, with a typical Shakespearian rhyme scheme (indicated at the end of each line). The turn occurs at line 9, But thy eternal summer shall not fade. The Bard immortalized the beauty of the fair young man, through his words which reaches us 450 years hence.  

Sonnet 116, which is sung at all weddings worldwide, and is a celebration of the sacred bond of love in marriage:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
  If this be error and upon me proved,
  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

Sonnet 73 is one of his most beautiful sonnets. He suggests that his lover will love him more with the passing years, and declining beauty, because the physical aging reminds the lover of the ephemeral nature of things and that death is not far behind.

 To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d,
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d:
For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

In Sonnet 104, The Bard expresses profound love for his lover who remains as beautiful and vibrant as she was on the first day that he saw her. The passing time has not marked her in his eyes. But he knows that time is fleeting and though his eyes are full of love and the lovely picture of his beloved, time is moving on, and beauty is moving forward deceiving his eyes. In the end, he remarks,  ‘In consideration of that, listen, you unborn generations: the height of beauty was dead before you were born.’

Watch this space for further interludes with the Bard through the year!  In love with literature we are: ‘WE ARE BECAUSE HE IS!’

 

 

 

 

Feisty Heroines in Literature

Feisty Heroines in Literature

Women’s Day’ celebrations are ongoing this month. I am celebrating by revisiting my friends and confidantes in Literature. Wispy creations of imagination and ink, these women characters have acquired definite personas and distinctive voices, and have stepped out of print to live in my mindscape like close, intimate companions. Women characters have evolved in books to make it to the elite list of feisty heroines of literature. They broke the shackles of tradition and patriarchy, treading untraveled trails to set precedents for others to follow in fiction and real life situations.

‘Alice in Wonderland’ directed by Tim Burton did not bag laurels just for the colorful portrayal of the Mad Hatter, but a complete reworking of the character of Alice. A well mannered, soft spoken, delicate darling Alice made it to the gumption list of the contemporary heroines. She takes on the evil queen in a fight and refuses to marry the prince. ManjulaPadmnabhan’s ‘Unprincess’ is a maverick girl who takes on her own battles and knows her mind. A far cry from the Marys and andBeths of the Enid Blyton fame who were docile, gentle and well mannered. Heroines of the yesteryears were about sacrifice, eternal love and duty. They were not supposed to flirt, throw a tantrum to acquire their heart’s desire or eye their friend’s suitor. Even if such human feelings surfaced in them they were to camouflage their true spirit under a garb of politeness and sweetness. No doubt women are always scheming and plotting – because they could never be forthright and open about themselves and their desires. Certainly not supposed to be assertive, let the whole world know whom they loved and be selfish and ruthless in pursuit of their goals in life. We would have heavily frowned upon such heroines and we did exactly that down the ages. Madame Bovary, Hester Prynne, and Scarlet o’ Hara were read with censure rather than admiration and sympathy.

But now the tables have turned and when we read Scarlet O ‘ Hara we see her as a brave woman who survives the civil war with hard work and a no nonsense attitude to the whole scene of war. We view her more realistically and admit that the reason Rhett Butler is attracted to her in the first place is because of her forthright attitude and outspokenness. A force to reckon with, she cooked and plotted scenes and was relentless in her love pursuits but that is what makes her human and not just a doll with plastic well- rehearsed answers and expectations.

‘Well behaved women do not make history’ said Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Creations of writing and imagination, literature has created legendary heroines who in retrospect rank high on the list of FIESTY HEROINES. Who are these heroines who compete for a place in the elite list? They don’t need to wrestle with stalkers, or kick sick men in their asses,  they just need to conform to being smart, confident, gutsy, vivacious, articulate and very clear to know their minds and make unhindered choices; female protagonists, whom we have read and who have stepped out of print and become our close companions and confidantes.

Shakespeare’s Cleopatra has been objectified, declared a temptress, a “whore” and an enchantress who made Antony “the noble ruin of her magic.” This threat has much to do with Cleopatra’s beauty and expressive sexuality.  Cleopatra is self-involved and a narcissist. The dichotomy of a manipulative seductress versus an able leader will always stay with her image as 19^th century artists painted her with the asp applied to her breast rather than the arm where it bit her – clearly indicating the fact that she was more an object of desire than a strong woman   ; nevertheless, her charisma, strength, and indomitable will makes her one of Shakespeare’s strongest, most awe-inspiring female characters.

Hester Prynne in ‘The Scarlet Letter’ wears the scarlet letter on her bosom with gumption and lives with her daughter in the same place that ostracized her. She also never breathes out the name of the father of her child.Shamed and alienated from the rest of the community, Hester becomes contemplative. She speculates on human nature, social control, and larger moral questions. Hester’s tribulations also lead her to be stoic and a freethinker.

Elizabeth Bennet is never intimidated in ‘Pride and Prejudice’. Jane Austen thought her ‘as delightful a character as ever appeared in print’; a woman who is delightful for reasons other than those of beauty alone. She is characterized by wit, independence and a courageous ability to admit her mistakes. She wants to be seen as a rational and autonomous human being in the same way as men are. She tells Mr. Collin as much.

Jo March, the rebel and tomboy of ‘Little Women,’ beseechingly asks her mother why she cannot be content to sew, cook and look after babies like her sisters. The restlessness and adventurous spirit drives her to travel and finally she falls in love with her writing and the professor. Her struggle to blend family life and responsibilities with a creative profession could be a precursor to the choices women make today.

Catherine’s wildness in ‘Wuthering Heights’ is the rejection of her gender identity as defined by a bourgeois society. The heliographic on the walls of her room at Wuthering Heights is the symbolic remnant of her struggle – Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff and then again Catherine Linton. Her practicality makes her choose to be a lady over her wild passion for Heathcliff, which is her real self. Catherine is a women’s anguished voice which revolts; a haunting presence, always to remind of that which is denied to her – of what she actually wanted to be.

 In Anna Karenina the theme is one of adultery, a romance which shakes the foundation of a society steeped in hypocrisy. Anna is unforgettable for her refusal to observe the proprieties exacted in such a liaison  - remember she adamantly argues with Vronsky and goes and attends the opera in her regal attire.

Growing up I admired  Anne Shirley of Green Gables – the red head with a definite mind of her own. She questions religious faith and hypocritical rituals. Her pride hath a fall, but she is quick to redeem herself. If now we are talking of young spunky girls, not to mention PippiLongstocking would be sacrilege. The most independent of characters, battles day to day encounters with superhuman strength. And Matilda  of Roald Dhal fame , a child prodigy – who has devoured each and every book in the adult section before she is ten. 

If we were to shift the narrative from fictional to real life women who live in our societies and create such colossal feminine characters then Maya Angelo, Alice Walker, Anita Desai would take the lead. Anita Desai is unique in portraying a wide gamut of Indian women in her novels. What really struck me was that in one of her interviews, she candidly admitted that she loved her writing passion and would yearn for time to herself away from her responsibilities of family life and children – to return to her first love – WRITING ; very akin to Virginia Woolf’s – a room of one’s own.

If you are attracted to some people and characters, it is an indication of the fact that you harbor some of their characteristics and aspire to be even more like them. Well, if that holds true and you admire these maverick heroines, come be part of the book reading workshop ‘Feisty Heroines in Literature’ conducted at ICG on 15^thMarch, 2012. The workshop entails book readings, movie excerpts, power point presentation and thought provoking questions on evolution of women to feisty characters.

These are those special, colossal women from print who can never be replaced, replicated or reworked. They have acquired larger than life images, and become legends in themselves. When we hail them we hail the feistiness in women!