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Trios may pose trouble, but they are also endlessly appealing to writers
Cressida Connolly considers compelling trios in literature
Two’s company, but three’s a crowd: we all know that. You could be newly in love or simply flirting. About to share a secret, or trying to get someone to tell you theirs. You might be attempting to console a sad friend, or to steal a kiss. Wherever privacy is sought, there’s nothing more awkward than a third party butting in. Writers and playwrights know this instinctively: one is a monologue, two a dialogue; but three is a drama. With three characters, the possibility of tension is born and with tension comes the complex and interesting situations that make all the best stories. This is why triads have appeared in books and stories and plays since time began. Think of fairy tales, and how often the motif turns up: three wishes, three godmothers, three princes. In ancient Greek mythology, too, the Three Fates represent the inescapable destiny that shadows every mortal; while Aphrodite’s retinue, the Three Graces, bring joy to the hearts of men.
When the three are also closely related to one another, the seeds of tragedy are sown; trios of sisters are an enduring trope throughout history. The Three Graces were sisters, the daughters of Zeus. Although they were considered to be benign forces, the goddesses of gratitude, it was believed that their mother was Lethe (aka oblivion). Their tragedy – still relevant today – is that gratitude is so quickly forgotten. Three sisters may have conflicting characters, each representing a different force. Traditionally these were thought, action and emotion. The three Crawley sisters in Downton Abbey correspond with this archetype (and their story is further complicated by their father’s desire for a male heir).
Most stories featuring three sisters have envy as their driving force. The perfect love between Eros and Psyche, in classical mythology, is destroyed by the jealousy of innocent Psyche’s two older sisters. In Cinderella, too, the ugly sisters are so begrudging of their stepsister’s beauty that they plot to keep her hidden away as their slave. More recently, psychoanalysts and authors such as Marie-Louise von Franz, Bruno Bettelheim, Marina Warner and Adam Phillips have brought elucidation to such fairy tales and what they might mean for us today.
Where there are three, two can gang up against one. King Lear’s three daughters follow this pattern, the older two scheming together, while the youngest is all sweetness and purity. The American novelist Jane Smiley transposed Lear to a farm in Iowa in her retelling, A Thousand Acres, but other writers of the modern era have tended to treat the theme of three sisters in less traditional ways.
Little Women is really a story about three sisters, with the everailing Beth more of a poster-girl for Christian sacrifice than a real character. Their number allows for a variety of aspirations: the three surviving siblings represent domesticity, work, true love. Here, as in Chekhov’s play Three Sisters, the young women all yearn for adventure. But where the March girls’ dreams are realised, in Chekhov’s drama – inevitably – the sisters are thwarted, doomed never to get back to the bright lights of Moscow that they so long for.
When I came to write my novel After the Party, all of this was in my mind. I’d also read Anne de Courcy’s brilliant biographical study The Viceroy’s Daughters, about the three Curzon sisters. One of the Curzons – she died young – was the first wife of Oswald Mosley, under whose influence the three sisters in my novel fall, to varying degrees. Writing about the rise of the Right in the 1930s was, of course, a way of looking at what is happening in the world today. The sisters in my novel lead each other into darkness, both politically and personally. Ultimately, a series of betrayals threatens their closeness. Where there are three sisters, things never go smoothly. In stories at least, that’s no bad thing.
‘After the Party’ by Cressida Connolly (£14.99, Viking) is out on 7 June.