Ill-fated Marriages in Literature

I often think that my favourite novels do not depict marriages in a happy light. This, of course, allows the writer to explore tensions and create jeopardy in the story. It permits the writer to be forgiving. I have selected a few of those ill-fated marriages where I think the author does this well- all rate highly amongst my favourite books.



Handfasting

The marriage between Thea and Vladimir of Kiev in The Betrothed Sister was not easy but this couple come through difficulties and threats together to discover happiness in their lives. The marriage between Gunnhild and Alan of Richmond in The Swan-Daughter does not work out as she might have foreseen as she falls in love with another and he already loved another. That between Edith Swan-Neck and King Harold in The Handfasted Wife, whilst a love match was handfasted and he set her aside for another when he was crowned King of England. However somehow before his death on Senlac Hill they do find peace together and after his death she remembers him as her only true love.

George Eliot

Here are several ill-fated marriages in a few of the novels that I have enjoyed reading -

Dorothea Brooke and Edward Casaubon from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Well worth reading!

Dorothea Brooke, idealistic, young and beautiful, passionate, orphaned and intent on making something purposeful of her life accepts the offer of marriage from a fossilized, idealistic clergyman, Edward Casaubon. She plans to dedicate herself to this great man who spends his years  writing a key to all mythologies. The couple are clearly unsuited as is illustrated early in the novel on their ill-fated honeymoon. Dorothea had expected to be overcome by a food of feeling at what she saw in Italy but her husband reflects that his 'stream of affection' has turned out to be 'exceedingly shallow'. He has sensed that his new wife is not a protection against his sense of inadequacy but a perpetual threat and reproach. I like this novel's enduring subtlety and humanity. The other pairings in Eliot's novel are filled with traps as sticky as spider webs.


Lara and Yuri from Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak



The Cossacks attack demonstrators in Doctor Zhivago 

Although this pair never actually married, they were an ill-fated couple. The story takes place at the time of the Russian Revolution. They are both married to others but come together briefly and subsequently are parted as political events overtake their lives. They have hidden from the world in Yuri's country retreat in the Urals. It is a poignant time as it is so short and because Tonya, Yuri's wife loves him and he has conflicted loyalties. In Doctor Zhivago the personal story is set against a sweeping political background. It is a passionate story with depth and understanding. This is one of my five favourite novels, beautifully and sympathetically written.


Tristram and Iseult told by Matthew Arnold



Image from Wikipedia

There is an emphasis in the tale of Tristram that love can be so extreme it ends up leading to death of the partners. Arnold's retelling of the story displays simple family concerns where Iseult of Brittany is an abandoned wife with two small children. Arnold suggests a retreat into the imagination and immoral love as an escape from reality. It is a classic historical romance with many twists, turns and stories within stories but it is one with an unfortunate ending. It is a most influential medieval love story and is on the surface a love triangle story between the hero, his uncle's wife and the uncle. A love potion was mistakenly given to Iseult on her wedding night and the tale's events follow consequences from this chance mistake. Tristram eventually marries another Iseult in this version but he cannot consummate the marriage because of his love for his original Iseult. He searches for her but dies of grief before she, too, searching for the love of her life reaches him. Soon after this, Iseult dies of a broken heart. The story has many different tellings, but whichever telling, it remains the classic story of an ill-fated relationship and, moreover, it illustrates very well how obstacles can inhabit a good story to thwart the successful conclusion of love between hero and heroine. 

Caroline and Faraday in The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

One of my favourite novels

In this tale, Faraday is a country doctor called to Hundred's Hall, a faded 18thC estate. He strikes up a friendship with Caroline Ayres, the unmarried daughter of the family. After a young girl is mauled by Caroline's previously gentle Labrador it seems that the house contains a malevolent energy. The relationship between Faraday and Caroline wavers between romance and friendship. They, none the less, plan to marry. On the night of their wedding disaster strikes. The haunting narrative in this novel and its constant tension plays out through the story. This story addresses insanity, poltergeists, and family secrets. The romance is haunted by a sense of developing dread and this I love! Gothic.

Claire and Henry in The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The author dyed her hair red to say goodbye to Claire and Henry

A man and woman meet in a Chicago library and in due course they marry. However, Henry is a time traveller and is whisked away just before the ceremony. An older Henry falls back through the years to take his place. The writer uses Henry's time travel to illustrate a sense of slippage in a long term relationship, in that each partner views the relationship differently. I felt a sense that their lives were mapped out to the extent that the time of their deaths are told. It is a poignant novel exquisitely told and one can not help but feel sad for both Henry and Clare.  

  

The Street in late medieval London- Trades and Noise

When did the medieval period in London begin and end? We assume that the medieval period began in England when the Romans departed circa 410 AD. However for the previous one hundred years the Romans had been withdrawing from England and they were using Saxon mercenaries to supplement the Roman army's reduced presence. The country continued to trade with the Empire. There was not a particular moment of change but the beginning of a reversion gradually to life as it had been prior to Roman occupation. This was the beginning of medieval England.

Roman London

Society did not suddenly change in 1485 when the first Tudor king, Henry VII succeeded to the throne after The Battle of Bosworth. Nothing much actually changed until the mid 1530s when the monasteries were dissolved and the English Church was reformed. These were events that did cause great social upheavals. This was the end of medieval England.

Medieval London was contained within a semi circular wall that was interrupted by in order west to east, Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Moorgate, Bishopgate and Aldgate just north of The Tower of London. The River Thames ran from east to west completing the semi circle. 

Fourteenth Century Tower of London

My latest novel The Woman in the Shadows is set in London between 1514 and 1525. London is still a medieval city throughout the scope of this novel. London, itself, was a city of churches. It contained a greater number than any other city in Europe. There were more than a hundred churches within the walls of the old city. Sixteen of them were devoted to St Mary. The Church remained the single most disciplined and authoritative director of London's affairs until the Reformation. Church administrators were the biggest landlords and employers within and without the city walls. The city's saint was a seventh century monk who had ruled as bishop of London, Erkenwald. Even in the early sixteenth century the shrine of St Erkenwald was an object of pilgrimage to the successful lawyers of London. When they were nominated as serjeants of law they would walk in procession to St Paul's to venerate the saint.

Medieval London Bridge with shops, businesses and churches

 Daily life was marked by the ringing of bells that rang from the churches and monasteries marking the religious offices. The most important bells were the Angelus Bells. The Angelus was associated with the worship of the Virgin Mary. The bell was struck to remind busy citizens to pause their work at midday to repeat the angelus, a triple hail Mary beginning with the words 'Angelus Domini Nunavit Mariae', 'The Angel of the Lord said to Mary.' In fact, the Angelus became the best way to tell the time because it rang at Prime, six o'clock, midday which was Sext and six in the evening for Compline. It was different to other bells because it tolled nine strokes at three times keeping the space of The Lord's Prayer, the Pater, and an Ave between each tolling. So if you lived on a late medieval London Street you would constantly hear bells ringing. The bells of the church tolled the end of each trading day. There was a bell that rang at dawn so the city gates would be opened and one that rang around six in the evening in winter and ten in the summer for the curfew to begin. After curfew Londoners had to carry a lighted torch or they could be arrested and incarcerated until dawn.

Religion in Medieval London

All over the city. my characters would hear a constant din from the different crafts that were practised. The noisiest were metalworkers; the blacksmiths, farriers, pewterers, silver and goldsmiths, cutlers and bell founder all used hammers and contributed to the general clamour. I can only compare the activity to that of busy streets in an Indian city or in cities of the Far East.

Late Medieval London

In London there were two hundred fraternities in which craft regulation and religious observation were mingled. Guilds had acquired enormous economic power within the city by the end of the medieval period. The growth of craft guilds in medieval London cannot be distinguished from the parish guilds of the same neighbourhood. thus tanners who worked along the banks of The River Fleet for instance would meet at their fraternity in the Carmelite house in Fleet Street. According to Peter Ackroyd in his book London, three fraternities were recorded at in the church of St Stephen, Coleman Street during the late thirteenth century. By the early fourteenth century only citizens could belong to a trade guild. Aliens were not only foreigners but those who were not London's citizens.

Many tradesmen met for business in the church. Religious and social constraints emphasized the importance of honesty and good behaviour. The guilds had their rules. Good names must be protected and the guilds condemned those who broke public peace. It was as if the act of quarreling or being involved in disputes might be construed as sinful.

The Baker's Apprentice

Young people entered apprenticeships in late medieval London able to read and write. They were expected to be honest and to have learned manners. They were to be straight-limbed and free-born. And by the mid fifteenth century the children had to be born in England. Well-born recruits were preferred and parents of apprentices had to have properties bringing in 20s a year. The Lord's daughter, the baker's son, the children of London mercers, vintners or fishmongers were not raised at home for long. All of them were either apprenticed or they became attendants or servants in someone else's household. The best upbringing for a child was to send him out of the family to learn the ways  of the world and to be educated elsewhere. Young women were usually apprenticed to silkwomen, dressmakers or embroiderers. There are instances too of girls being apprenticed to butchers, bakers, cordwainers, drapers, grocers, apothecaries and surgeons. They could either remain single and practise as femme soles under London law after they married  and actually having a skill was an advantage in the marriage market. The apprentice term would end if marriage were offered and often the apprenticeship was only for four years, not seven, in practise although it was not legal. What a woman's apprenticeship was not, was as a stepping stone to an independent life as a citizen of London.

Medieval Silk women