Double Standards
Maestra trilogy author Lisa ‘LS’ Hilton says the sex and violence in her latest novel Ultima isn’t explicit – rather it promotes sex-positive feminism. Stephen Jewell writes from London.
‘It’s all anyone wants to talk about,” laughs Lisa “LS” Hilton. “But I don’t think it’s explicit at all.”
Despite opening her latest novel Ultima – the third instalment in her Maestra trilogy – with a rather vigorous sex scene, it seems that the only person who isn’t even slightly taken aback by the graphic detail and salty language is the author herself.
“I’m actually quite surprised that people find it shocking,” she admits. “We’re living in the age of Tinder, sexting and online hook-ups and there are millions of women as we speak sending nude videos of themselves to perfect strangers, so why do we find it shocking to use certain words on the printed page?”
With Maestra arriving just as 50 Shades of Grey was reaching the peak of its popularity, it was perhaps inevitable that it was compared to EL James’ bestselling trilogy. Now the advent of movements such as #MeToo and the increased criticism about how women are depicted in the media, Ultima has emerged in what are now considerably more conservative times.
“We perceive ourselves as living in a far more liberal society, and yet we seem to be far more puritanical about things that the 19th century had no problem with,” says Hilton, who maintains that there is nevertheless still a place for a sexually adventurous and forthright female character like Judith.“One thing that has come out of #MeToo is this thing called sex-positive feminism. We have to remember that sex is not just a nasty thing that is done to women. The book is very much in tune with that, and is forward thinking in that respect.”
However, the 43-year-old believes that there are double standards when the literary depiction of sex is compared to the crime genre’s frequent and often brutal violence. “What I find a paradox is that you can do all sorts of things to a woman’s body in a thriller,” she says. “You can flay it and bind it and subject it to the most grotesque humiliations, and that is seen as acceptable. But to show a woman who enjoys her body is seen as shocking, and I find that extraordinary.” In truth, there’s a lot of both sex and violence in
Ultima as glamorous art thief and mass murderer Judith Rashleigh becomes embroiled with an organised crime cartel. After adding to her already not inconsiderable body count, she soon finds herself out of her depth, although she at least still believes that she is in charge of her own destiny. “Judith is unapologetic about getting whatever she wants and enjoys, and she’s not ashamed to get it,” says Hilton, who describes Ultima not only as the darkest but also the funniest of the three books to date.
“It’s darker because it’s actually more violent, and funnier because the jokes are on the rest of the characters more,” she explains. “I also think Judith is really funny, as she’s not entirely earnest all of the time.”
Sitting in her publisher’s Marylebone offices in London, we’re actually only a short distance from the exclusive galleries of New Bond St where Judith first learnt her trade as a lowly assistant art-dealer before graduating to forgery and other crimes. “We’re quite close to her origins, which feels quite appropriate,” says Hilton, who worked for a short time as an intern at Christie’s auction house, and wrote several historical non-fiction and fiction books before adopting her abbreviated nom-deplume for Maestra and last year’s follow-up, Domina.
“Art has always been a great passion of mine, and in terms of the character, it’s the only thing that Judith can really feel emotional about,” she says. “Also her power as a protagonist is to use her ability to exploit the gap between what people think they see and what is actually happening. The books are very much about perception. Judith really takes advantage of that, especially in this third book, which is about the arrogance and conceit of art buyers, and also why it’s possible to fake great art and why people want to believe that what they have in their hands is a Rembrandt, when what they actually have is a door.”
After focusing on Artemesia Gentileschi in
Maestra and Caravaggio in Domina, Ultima takes its lead from the work of Paul Gaugin. Known for his paintings of the native population during the decade that he lived in French Polynesia, the 19th century French Post-Impressionist comes with his own controversies that now seem very timely in the wake of #MeToo.
“There’s been this reappraisal about what kind of art should be hung, which is one of the themes of the book,” says Hilton. “There’s a character who thinks that Gaugin shouldn’t be sold or exhibited because he was a colonist paedophile, who exploited his models and his representations of the women of Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands were a terrible form of sexual appropriation. People are debating right now about how an artist’s life and behaviour should affect our perception of their work, and what is correct and incorrect subject matter. I find that slightly absurd myself, but it just happened to come out in the book, so maybe I was a little prescient there.”
Hilton’s novels have also had a beneficial impact, encouraging one Kiwi reader and his wife to take up a new hobby, which they enjoy. “I had a letter from one gentleman from New Zealand, who said that after reading Maestra, he’d looked up a few of the pictures online,” she says. “He and his wife had never been to an art gallery before, and now they had found this new hobby. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s fantastic!’ I’ve had so many messages from readers saying that they’ve started to explore looking at art, so if the books have made even one person go to an art gallery then I feel very happy about that.” Q