`VICTORIAN LITERATURE & LOONEY TUNES'
Canadian author still enjoys Jane Eyre and the enduring cartoons
I love what I think Darwin described as the inextricable web of infinities. That web is what describes Victorian narrative — when you pull one thread of the story that will lead you to others. Ann-marie Macdonald
Fayne Ann-marie Macdonald Knopf Canada
It began with an image in Ann-marie Macdonald's mind — an image that she would then turn into a simple pen-and-paper drawing. It was the first step toward the creation of a 720-page novel called Fayne, a book that would fuse the grand old Victorian tradition of storytelling with issues of contemporary relevance.
“The starting point for most of my books has been a picture that I draw,” the much-honoured Montreal writer says. “I'm no great shakes as a visual artist, but for me to draw and find out ...” Her voice trails off and then: “My psyche seems to want to tell me something.”
Macdonald remembers wanting answers. “Who are these people? What are they wearing? Where are they?” Gradually things became more clear.
“OK — I now know what part of the world I'm in. I know there's a spooky old mansion in the background. I know I'll be going to one of my favourite places, which is the late 19th century and a landscape that is ravishingly beautiful, which is the moor. I know there are secrets there, and I'm going to have a lot of fun with that because I know I'll be telling a very contemporary story in a gothic setting.”
And what about the young person at the centre of her imaginings? Initially, Macdonald couldn't quite determine whether it was a man or woman — and that's significant because that would set her on her way to using 19th century conventions to explore crucial issues of identity and freedom.
Enter a young woman named Charlotte Bell who has grown up at Fayne House, a lonely estate that straddles the border between England and Scotland.
The fact that it's a mysterious place that doesn't really belong to either country is an indicator of what was on Macdonald's mind in writing this novel.
Charlotte is an irresistible creation — spirited, precocious, something of a tomboy, a child of insatiable curiosity and ambition. But she has had a secluded upbringing. Her loving and caring father, Lord Henry Bell, has kept her from the world because she suffers from a “mysterious condition.” And as she presses forward to fulfil her dreams (Charlotte wants, perhaps unrealistically, to gain a medical degree), she discovers a personal history shaped by secrets and lies.
In true Victorian tradition, Fayne is driven by cunning plot twists and some hefty narrative shocks. Chatting on the phone now, Macdonald is understandably cautious about giving too much away. But she is forthright in saying that her fourth novel tackles issues pertaining to gender fluidity.
“One secret which you're very welcome to write about is the truth of Charlotte's body,” Macdonald says cheerfully. “It's the fact that she has what is now referred to in many quarters as an `intersex trait.' The reader finds that out quite early on and through Charlotte's point of view of having a perfectly normal body. Yet she will find out that the world considers it anything but normal.”
Macdonald, 63, is a multi-faceted talent — a bestselling novelist, playwright, actor, teacher and television personality. Her latest play, Hamlet-911, is running at the Stratford Festival. A stage version of her debut novel, Fall On Your Knees, will have its world première in 2023. But when she was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2019, it was in recognition not only of her contribution to the arts but her LGBTQ2SI+ activism.
“We're still living in a world where Charlotte's body would be considered abnormal,” Macdonald points out. “To this day, the `surgeries' described in this book are performed on babies with the consent of worried parents. So I was very deliberate in welcoming * the reader to her reality. This kid doesn't yet know that the world doesn't see her the way she sees herself.”
In bountiful 19th century tradition, Fayne overflows with richly realized characters. There's Charlotte's troubled father, Henry: “He is a loving father and that's the heartbreak of it,” Macdonald notes.
There's Henry's malignant sister, Clarissa, obsessed with upholding patriarchal traditions and capable of wreaking misery on the lives of others. “She absolutely is villainous and dangerous — there's no question.” As for Mae, the mother Charlotte doesn't really remember, she's “the happy-go-lucky girl pleased to be rich and marrying a lord” and for whom things will go dreadfully wrong.
These and the many other characters who take possession of Macdonald's fictional tapestry are evidence of how greatly the lure of Victorian fiction has drawn her into its embrace. Yet the resulting book also speaks to the present
“I probably read my first Victorian novel when I was around 10 years old, and that was Jane Eyre,” she says. “I was also into Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny. That has not changed — I'm still into Victorian literature and Looney Tunes.”
So what does the Victorian novel have to offer?
“I love what I think Darwin described as the inextricable web of infinities. That web is what describes Victorian narrative — when you pull one thread of the story that will lead you to others. Everybody is connected, and for me that is my own point of view. The interconnectedness of the classic Victorian novel is a beautiful metaphor for the truth of how connected we all are.”
Beyond that, she finds astonishing links to our present.
“All our very modern ideas — impressionism and cubism, quantum physics and feminism and sexual liberation — all date back to an era which may seem to be very straitlaced.”
In writing Fayne, Macdonald was able to indulge her love of research.
“I spent two months in the Mcgill University Library, wearing gloves in a temperature-controlled room researching the history of medicine,” she says. And she was initially at a loss when it came to those symbols of Victorian confinement — a woman's gown and undergarments. “I had to find out more about what they were wearing back then,” she laughs. “I wanted readers to be immersed in that kind of delicious `miniseries' feeling.”
As always with her writings, there are aspects of Macdonald herself in Fayne. She sees that as part of her responsibility as an artist — “to put myself and all the cells of my being within the service of the narrative.”
She vividly remembers her teenage years when she seemed to be questioning all received wisdom.
“I remember at 14 when my whole Catholic faith just disintegrated around me — that's also when I was realizing how deeply `wrong ' it was to know that I was a lesbian and to hope to God it wasn't true ...”
It took her a while before she felt it safe to even “come out to myself.”
Her life story may differ from that of Charlotte “but like her I was very driven and ambitious.”
And her thoughts on now having told Charlotte's own unique story? “I have this feeling that my heart has opened a little bit more.”