I am the queen of two crowns, banished fifteen years, the famed and gilded woman, bad-luck baleful girl, mother of three small animals, now gone. I am fifty-five years old. I am Lear’s wife. I am here. History has not taken my body, not yet.
I do love retellings of classic works that focus on the women sidelined in male-centric stories (see: Circe, Lavinia, The Silence of the Girls), and as the story of a queen barely mentioned in Shakespeare’s account, Learwife is a thoroughly satisfying companion piece to the play. As Lear’s banished queen learns of the death of her family and looks back over her life and marriage(s), author J. R. Thorp creates a credible and affecting tale that goes a long way toward explaining the scheming machinations of the daughters Goneril and Regan. Other than weirdly deciding to make frail old King Lear a man of fifty, I loved everything about this plot, and it must be noted that Thorp’s language is lush and poetic — but also a bit stilted and stuttering; this is not a smooth and easy read, but my pleasure wasn’t too too strained by the effort. I would happily read Thorp again.
Fifteen years earlier, in the dead of night and without explanation, Lear’s queen was banished to a convent, taking along only what she could quickly pack and one dull-witted maidservant. When a messenger arrives at the Abbey to deliver the news that Lear and his daughters have all died, the queen appears for the first time among the common nuns, assuming she will finally be allowed to leave the grounds in order to attend her family’s funerals. When a pestilence arrives that puts the Abbey under quarantine, the queen accepts that she must stay where she is for now — but as she interacts with the women of the convent for the first time, and is asked to play a decisive role in their lives, she finds herself flooded with memories and visited by ghosts; highly Shakespearean stuff.
I don’t know if it was necessary to her backstory to have the queen married to another young king before Lear — a marriage barely consummated and childless — but I suppose it explains why she would be so worldly and cunning in courtly affairs; able to quickly fashion her twenty-year-old ruffian into a warrior king to be feared. I appreciated the backstory of her young childhood (with an icy mother who sent her to a convent to be raised) that made the queen aspire to be a more hands-on mother herself; and I appreciated even moreso how the queen’s well-intended interventions turned her daughters into nemeses.
Thorp's language is gorgeous; perhaps distractingly so. Lovely turns of phrase may be picked out on nearly every page, but I was always aware of the artistry (which is a complaint, even while enjoying it). In particular, I couldn’t help but notice how many things Thorp described as “green”: “green fingers of sky”, “green waves that baffled the breeze”, “irritable, that green womanish emotion”. In a climactic scene, over the course of one page, Thorp writes: “I appeal to Jesus on His statue above the altar, but His green mouth remains pale, unspeaking…the ghastly green fire that comes of burning wet things…we can hear them before we see them, screams in the green dark,” and it was undeniably distracting to me.
There is some tension in the plot (as we hope to learn why the queen had been banished and to see what she will do next), but this is primarily a narrative of memory; of putting the queen back into the known events of King Lear, and a mighty presence she was. I loved this.
Dead and dead and dead. Under the crack of this grief I feel myself slipping out into other forms: animal, vegetal, sea-spill foam, winter wind, a boar roaring blue in the dark. Then at least I would fit the tales: story-woman, death’s head, corrupting flesh at the touch. Oh, I know them, every ghost has good ears.
Fifteen years earlier, in the dead of night and without explanation, Lear’s queen was banished to a convent, taking along only what she could quickly pack and one dull-witted maidservant. When a messenger arrives at the Abbey to deliver the news that Lear and his daughters have all died, the queen appears for the first time among the common nuns, assuming she will finally be allowed to leave the grounds in order to attend her family’s funerals. When a pestilence arrives that puts the Abbey under quarantine, the queen accepts that she must stay where she is for now — but as she interacts with the women of the convent for the first time, and is asked to play a decisive role in their lives, she finds herself flooded with memories and visited by ghosts; highly Shakespearean stuff.
I don’t know if it was necessary to her backstory to have the queen married to another young king before Lear — a marriage barely consummated and childless — but I suppose it explains why she would be so worldly and cunning in courtly affairs; able to quickly fashion her twenty-year-old ruffian into a warrior king to be feared. I appreciated the backstory of her young childhood (with an icy mother who sent her to a convent to be raised) that made the queen aspire to be a more hands-on mother herself; and I appreciated even moreso how the queen’s well-intended interventions turned her daughters into nemeses.
Thorp's language is gorgeous; perhaps distractingly so. Lovely turns of phrase may be picked out on nearly every page, but I was always aware of the artistry (which is a complaint, even while enjoying it). In particular, I couldn’t help but notice how many things Thorp described as “green”: “green fingers of sky”, “green waves that baffled the breeze”, “irritable, that green womanish emotion”. In a climactic scene, over the course of one page, Thorp writes: “I appeal to Jesus on His statue above the altar, but His green mouth remains pale, unspeaking…the ghastly green fire that comes of burning wet things…we can hear them before we see them, screams in the green dark,” and it was undeniably distracting to me.
Pleasure. Queens live lives entirely made of pleasure, a girl said in my childhood convent. As if power were never discomfiting, as if luxury were always simple. And yet I had luck: it laid its pollen on my skull; I was a blessed woman. I had my children and none died in the cradle. I had two husbands and I lived past their span. I was imprisoned and frequently thwarted but still there is this, the golden cake, the beginning rain.
There is some tension in the plot (as we hope to learn why the queen had been banished and to see what she will do next), but this is primarily a narrative of memory; of putting the queen back into the known events of King Lear, and a mighty presence she was. I loved this.
