History gets in the way of Queen Elizabeth tale
The Virgin’s Lover, By Philippa Gregory, Touchstone, 442 pp., $24.95
British novelist Philippa Gregory has carved a niche for herself by giving historical fiction some of its liveliest female characters. By creating spunky female protagonists and setting them in thoroughly researched, wonderfully realized settings, she can make a period come alive -- and give readers heroines they can identify with.
In two of her recent books, "The Queen's Fool" and "The Other Boleyn Girl," the heroines are based on actual but little-known figures. This obscurity serves a purpose, giving Gregory the leeway to invent much of her heroines' everyday lives. In addition, because these characters are not stuck in major historical roles, their lives have some malleability. Like modern heroines, and with Gregory's contemporary sensibilities, they are allowed to influence if not control their fates and thus win reader cheers and sympathy.
In her latest historical novel, however, Gregory has abandoned her winning formula. In "The Virgin's Lover," she focuses on two very public figures: Queen Elizabeth and Lady Amy Dudley, the wife of Elizabeth's favorite, Sir Robert Dudley. Set in the first year of Elizabeth's reign, during which Robert Dudley was rumored to be the queen's lover, and culminating in Amy Dudley's suspicious death, this hefty new novel confines itself largely to what was known, or at least suspected, of the young queen and her courtier.
This hinders Gregory on two levels. For starters, neither of her two leading females has much choice about the role she must play. Lip service is paid to Elizabeth's earlier years, when she was frequently imprisoned or fearing for her life and had to plot and struggle simply to survive. But "The Virgin's Lover" opens with bells pealing to announce that Queen Mary has died, and that the Protestant Elizabeth will assume the throne. Some action is promised, since that throne is threatened by various plots, but basically, she's queen and that's that.
Nor is Amy allowed much movement. Although her courtship with the young Robert is recalled in detail and the match is described repeatedly as one of love rather than policy, their marriage is virtually over as the book starts. Robert is off at court while Amy waits at home, and from the first page she is hounded by jealousy over the beautiful young queen's hold over her handsome spouse. "God strike her dead," says Amy on hearing the bells for Elizabeth. "Let her die lonely and alone. Deserted, like me." Well, anyone who has heard the story knows how this will turn out.
Perhaps more damning for Gregory's venture is that these characters were all very much in the public eye. Although the mystery of Amy's death has never been solved, almost every day leading up to it is a matter of public record. Elizabeth's reign has been even more completely chronicled, leaving little room for Gregory to weave her usual spells. Instead of drawing from her research, she's pulled down by it, as characters are forced to be one place or another, and Gregory must fit her behind-the-scenes illicit love story to the record. Even the physical details hurt her work. Small descriptions obviously culled from histories of the time -- such as the ragged state of the queen's cuticles -- are repeated too many times when a few ingenious inventions would have better served the story.
Stuck in their roles and pinned down by the facts, these women never emerge as appealing heroines. Elizabeth in particular is portrayed as having a serious lack of spunk. When her counselor William Cecil shows his prejudice -- thinking "the temperament of a woman, especially this one, was not strong enough to take decisions" -- it feels like a setup: Elizabeth must be about to prove him wrong.
But throughout this novel, she fails to, instead acting more like a besotted teenager than a young monarch. Worrying herself into illness (and those raw cuticles), she leans on Robert for everything, at least until her vanity is threatened. Amy, meanwhile, has more interesting character development as she relapses into her now seditious Catholic beliefs for comfort and support. But even as the betrayed wife tries to grow a spine, she relents. "If he comes back to me . . . I can't even imagine how happy I would be," she thinks, moments before her death. What is there for the contemporary reader to identify with in either of these women? Their fates were written, and written better, before Gregory ever met them.
