Tag Archives: feminism

How and why I wrote my novel ‘Wrecker’

Close up of women wreckers

My novel ‘Wrecker’ came out in paperback last week, so this seems a good moment to explain why and how I came to write the story. 

So what’s ‘Wrecker’ about?

‘Wrecker’ is a wild and stormy tale, dark and gothic, full of dramatic incident and intensity. It  tells the story of Mary Blight, a feisty young woman who refuses to stay in her place and risks all to get what she wants.

At the beginning of the story, we don’t see her in the best light as she pilfers from corpses washed up on the beach after a shipwreck. But Mary is desperately poor, grinding out an existence in a remote village on the Cornish coast and grasping at any little luxury within her reach – coins, trinkets or clothes.  

Mary’s life is turned upside down after she rescues a stranger who washes ashore, strapped to a barrel. Gideon Stone is a charismatic Methodist preacher, who decides to build a chapel in Mary’s village, Porthmorvoren.  

Mary becomes obsessed with Gideon and this turns her neighbours against her and brings her misdeeds to the attention of the great and the good, ultimately putting her in mortal danger.

Where is the story set?

The action takes place in the fictitious village of Porthmorvoren in Penwith, West Cornwall. It is located somewhere between Newlyn and Land’s End, but you won’t find it on any map. Porthmorvoren is an amalgam of several villages I visited on Cornish holidays, including Mousehole, Port Issac, St Ives and Newlyn. The haunting atmosphere of the ruined and deserted village of Port Quin on the north Cornish coast was also an inspiration.

What gave me the idea of writing a book set in historic Cornwall?

On holiday in Cornwall I saw a picture on the cover of a book called ‘Lost Cornwall’ by Joanna Thomas. It showed a young girl carrying pails of water down a lane in gritty nineteenth century Newlyn. As I read about Cornwall’s past, the remote setting, the pagan superstition and wild Cornish coastline all convinced me to begin a story about wrecking, poverty and betrayal.

I didn’t want to portray a corny picture-postcard version of Cornwall, as I explained in an article in Historia magazine. The Cornwall of ‘Wrecker’ is dark, gritty and gothic.

In a way the most important character in the novel is Cornwall itself – the heroine Mary Blight is a kind of spirit of historical Cornwall, embodying its characteristics, for example, distrust of ‘uplongers’ (outsiders), rugged individualism, a sense of closeness to the land, and what has been described as Cornish ‘fire and urgency of soul’.

Belatedly, I discovered ‘Wrecker’ belongs to a tradition of fiction set in Cornwall – Winston Graham’s Poldark novels, and numerous mass market fiction writers, notably Rosamunde Pilcher who sold more than 60 million copies of her romances.

While I was researching the novel, I also discovered that Wrecker’ is a belated example of a 19th and early 20th century literary subgenre of books about Cornish wreckers and Methodists.

Is ‘Wrecker’ based on real events?

All of the events happened somewhere at some time in Cornwall, but the story is entirely original.

For example:

Mary Blight discovers a dead woman, a shipwreck victim, has had her ear lobes chewed off. This was inspired by a documented incident in the Scilly isles where a woman chewed off a woman’s ear lobes to steal her earrings.

A man is washed ashore lashed to a barrel. This is based on an event in Port Isaac in the early twentieth century. A fisherman who couldn’t swim was saved by his workmates in this way when his boat began to sink. Sadly, his mates all perished. 

Two characters are stitched together by a seamstress during a Methodist chapel meeting to expose them as adulterers. This is based on a documented incident in the 19th century when a woman sewed two young people together to punish them for flirting during a service. 

Mary Blight – what are you like?

Anyone who feels constricted in their life, and sees others enjoying luxuries and freedoms that are out of their reach, should be able to relate to Mary. She is:

  • Based on an archetype of a headstrong, proud, impulsive young woman;
  • True to herself – not a hypocrite;
  • Someone who baulks against poverty, and also struggles against social and gender constraints;
  • Wily and resourceful;
  • A woman who speaks her mind and has a sharp tongue, which makes her enemies;
  • Transgressive, sexually assertive, a seductress;
  • A pagan at heart, who sees the world through different eyes to us, believing in pagan superstitions and using charms.

During the story Mary changes. She is ‘born again’ under the influence of Gideon Stone, and her conscience is pinched about her past misdeeds in the same way her toes are pinched in the boots she has stolen from a corpse.

What were my influences?

Surprisingly perhaps, I wasn’t influenced by Daphne Du Maurier, as I had not read any of her novels. Perhaps I should have read ‘Jamaica Inn’ and ‘Frenchman’s Creek’ but I didn’t get around to it. After ‘Wrecker’ was published in hardback, I read ‘Rebecca’ and was hugely impressed with it, especially the way Du Maurier draws us into complicity with the unnamed narrator.

The main influence for ‘Wrecker’ was Thomas Hardy’s novels, especially ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ and ‘Jude the Obscure’.

What gave me the idea I could write a novel from a woman’s point of view? 

I did not set out to tell the story from Mary’s point of view. However, Mary’s voice was too compelling to ignore and telling the story from her point of view helped to focus the narrative.  

Many male writers have written convincingly about female characters and vice versa. They include Flaubert, Tolstoy, Henry James and Jeffrey Eugenides, and I have written and an article about this.

Ideas about gender are currently being hotly debated. Perhaps Simone de Beauvoir’s famous quote should have the last word: ‘One is not born but, rather, becomes a woman.’ 

Does ‘Wrecker’ resonate with today’s world?

The novel touches on the position of women in society, social justice, crime and religion. Mary is caught in a toxic melting pot of stifling conformity, social injustice, increasing class distinctions, the rising consumer society.

The context of the British empire and the morally questionable basis of its wealth and power remains relevant to today’s Britain, convulsed by arguments about Brexit driven in large part by myths about our national history and nationalistic ideology.

What are the themes of ‘Wrecker?’

The title ‘Wrecker’ is metaphorical as well as literal, inviting the reader to ponder who or what is the real ‘wrecker’ in the story. Is it Mary Blight or Gideon Stone, or is the wrecker an abstract notion such as love, injustice or even stifling and repressive conformity?

Love is clearly a theme – the story is largely driven by Mary’s attempt to get Gideon to acknowledge his unconscious feelings for her. There are other competing forms of love in the story too, the  ‘perfect love’ offered to the faithful in the life to come, and love of kin.

While most historical fiction tells the story of the great and the good, I wanted to tell the untold story of a poor person, a face in the crowd, putting her actions in the context of the time in which she lived. The novel imagines how poverty can drive people to dark deeds, and shows the double standards between the better off and the poor.

Religion is another theme in the novel. I aimed to give a balanced view of the impact of Methodism in Cornwall. On the one hand, the novel shows Methodism as a positive force, for example in helping to allow women a social role outside the home, and helping the poor aspire to a better life. On the other hand, Methodism can be seen as an instrument to keep the poor in order, sober, self-reliant and firmly in their place. Another theme is the danger of religious certainty. Gideon Stone’s fundamentalism and messianic zeal make him blind to his own underlying motives and reluctant to take account of the flaws in his character.

‘Wrecker’ is sympathetic to women who want to raise their social station and assert their independence, and it shows women helping each other. However, the story also shows women can compete against and hinder each other, especially in their traditional role policing the morals of small communities and shaming offenders to comply – sometimes in very nasty ways.

How historically accurate is the story?

I avoided the clichéd myths about wrecking such as ‘false lights’ and the drowning of survivors for which there is no documentary evidence. Wrecker also shows the other side of the story, how the forerunners of today’s lifeboat service tried to rescue people, usually at great risk to themselves.

Mary Blight’s actions may resonate with modern women, but I tried to make her a woman of her own time in the 1820s. People think of the 19th century as the Victorian era but Victoria came to the throne in 1837. In Mary’s time, pre-marital sex was common and women were often pregnant when they married. The preoccupation with ‘fallen women’ came about later in the century.

How did I research the book?

I used many books and websites to research Cornish social history, but three formed the bedrock of my research:

‘Wrecker’ is published by Harper Collins HQ and available in Waterstones, WH Smith, independent bookshops and online in print, audio and digital formats.  

Can male novelists create convincing female protagonists?

Madame Bovary cover 3My article on ten female protagonists created by male authors was published by Readers Digest last week. I was asked to write it because the protagonist in my debut novel Wrecker, also published last week (by HQ (Harper Collins), is female.

Wrecker is told from the point of view of Mary Blight, a poor young woman in early nineteenth century Cornwall who we first meet pulling a pair of boots from a corpse after a shipwreck.  That wasn’t my original intention. Earlier drafts were told from several different points of view, including that of a man. The decision to put Mary’s voice to the fore was made to focus the story.

It would be interesting to round up ten male protagonists created by female authors. Any suggestions?

When I began researching the article I immediately came across a thread on Twitter where a male author who boasted about his abilities to channel his inner woman was lampooned by women. This is clearly not a step to take lightly.

When I submitted my novel to agents the man who ultimately came to represent me  didn’t know the gender of the author and assumed the book was written by a woman. When he then sent the book out to prospective editors (most of whom were women) they too assumed the novel had a female author. So I seem to have got away with it.

I take the view that a writer has the right to write about whoever they want, regardless of whether they share our gender or any of the other ‘protected characteristics’ in the UK Equality Act (2010). If we get it wrong, then readers, critics and other writers have a right to point that out.

Below are the ten novels I chose with female protagonists which are written by men and where the authors are generally judged to have got it right To find out why I chose them, check out the article in the Readers Digest.  (I slightly bent the rules in one or two instances where the female character was the most memorable even if not technically the protagonist).

Which authors and novels would you put on your list? And if we turned the tables and looked at male protagonists created by female authors, which novels would you choose?

  • Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert (1856)
  • Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (1875-77)
  • Tess of the d’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy (1891)
  • The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James (1880-81)
  • Atonement, by Ian McEwan (2001)
  • The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber (2002)
  • The Story of Lucy Gault, by William Trevor (2002)
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson (2005)
  • Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín (2009)
  • The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides (2011)
Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue

Review: Slammerkin, by Emma Donoghue

Warning: contains plot spoilers

This novel is a great literary antidote to the sugar-coated escapism of much historical fiction aimed at women.  I was attracted to it because I’m currently working on a novel set about fifty years after this one takes place.

Slammerkin narrates the misadventures of Mary Saunders, an 18th century teenage prostitute, in London and Monmouth, and is based loosely on a real person. Emma Donoghue uses Mary’s downfall to dramatise themes of inequality, double standards and the exploitation of women.  And she’s prepared to go to the darkest places here, as she did in her best known novel Room,  shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2010.

Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue

Slammerkin

The edition I read (published by Virago) is packaged with a picture of a woman in a scarlet period dress, her body  cropped at the neck so her face isn’t visible (which seems to be ‘the look’  in today’s  romantic historical  fiction).  But anyone lured by the cover into expectations of an anachronistic bodice ripper is in for a nasty surprise. The world of Slammerkin is sulphurous and visceral, revealing the heroine’s sordid sexual transactions as she plays for increasingly higher stakes – risking not only  her personal and moral safety but her life too.

Donoghue skillfully drips historical detail  into the narrative rather than hold the story up with lengthy description. The details are specific and evocative, and often charged with thematic resonance. Specialist historical facts about dress making, for example,  help convince you of the authenticity of the setting (it presumably helps that Donoghue is a historian).

The clothes aren’t just there for decoration, however. The novel’s imagery is skillfully sewn into its thematic and narrative texture. The central symbol  of a ‘slammerkin’ ,  meaning a loose dress or a loose woman,  plays a part in the climactic sequence, and in the course of the novel represents the tawdriness and delusional nature of Mary’s aspirations as well as her vulnerability.

Mary’s fantasy of a better life and fine clothes begins when as a child she is captivated by the sight of a beautiful prostitute wearing a red ribbon. Mary’s desire to own one like it leads to her downfall. At fear of her life, she tries leave behind her dangerous existence pulling ‘cullies’ on the London back streets by escaping to Monmouth to become an apprentice seamstress. But her work conditions would count as slavery in our own times, embroidering lavish dresses for rich patrons who endlessly delay paying their bills.  

It’s a brilliant irony that a dress should be the central symbol of a book about a child’s descent into degradation in pursuit of a gaudy frock, bearing in mind that the appeal of commercial historical novels centres on fantasies about ladies in fancy period  costumes. Slammerkin  may not appeal to every fan of women’s historical fiction but it will be of interest to readers who enjoy Sarah Waters’ earlier novels, or Michel Faber’s ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’, which has some similarities to Slammerkin.

Donoghue challenges us to think about women’s freedoms and rights then and now. Her heroine makes the point that selling her vagina is only the extreme end of a spectrum in the use and abuse of women’s bodies. Another character, (the bitter pious hypocrite Mrs Ash) sells her breasts as a wet nurse while the respectable occupation of seamstress is in reality sweated labour leading to blindness and repetitive strain injury. Even Mary’s mistress, Jane Jones, admits  that being a wife makes her a kind of servant. We are shown that Mary is cleverer and more resourceful than her master but she has no opportunity to put her talents to use.

Slammerkin is a warning that we cannot take for granted the comparative gender equality of today (at least in richer countries). On the day I finished reading the novel (7 January 2014) there was a story in the news about two Twitter ‘trolls’ who admitted sending rape and murder threats to Caroline Criado-Perez (a literary reference, because Criado-Perez angered the trolls by campaigning to keep Jane Austen on the ten pound note). On the same day there was another story about the Metropolitan police promising to take the claims of alleged rape victims more seriously in future.

I can see only one two areas where Slammerkin might be improved. My wife, the writer Sally O’Reilly,  felt that Mary Saunders fell into prostitution too quickly, and she thought it would have been more credible if she  at least considered other options, given her native intelligence and resourcefulness. I was more willing to go along with the story, so it would be interesting to hear other opinions on this (or indeed any other aspects of the novel). Mary’s fall is certainly credible in historical terms; for example,  Ben Wilson in ‘Decency and Disorder 1789-1837’ (published in 2007) explains that there were thousands of prostitutes working in the area of Saint Giles in London at that time, many of them under thirteen.

While Slammerkin is perhaps not as assured as ‘Room’ it shows the potential for historical fiction to tackle big themes and invite the reader to look at both the past and the present in a new light.  The final harrowing chapter is unforgettable. I hope that the success of Room helps Slammerkin find a wide audience.