Answering questions from readers
I had a really great session recently with a book club, all of who had read the novel, so we were able to go into a lot of detail about how I put it together, and why I made some of the decisions I did. So if you’ve read the novel already, you might be interested in reading the answers to these questions, but if not, WARNING! There are SPOILERS in here! And a big thank you to Charlotte, whose questions many of these are.
1. How much input did you have to the reading group questions in the back? Why do they focus so much on Austen’s novel and not on yours?
I confess, I wrote those questions myself! I agree there’s quite a lot of reference to Mansfield Park, but I suppose I assumed that a lot of reading groups would read the two books in tandem, so I wanted to help start off a discussion that could compare the two.
2. Austen only ever really lets her readers in on her main protagonist’s inner thoughts, whereas in yours we get both Mary’s, and later Maddox’s. Was this deliberate?
This is a really perceptive question, and yes, it was quite deliberate. I wanted to establish the book, at least at the beginning, as being very much in the same narrative tradition as Austen, but after the murder, the story becomes more ‘my own’, as well as moving into a new genre. That meant I could have fun with interweaving what Mary knows and feels, with what Maddox knows and feels, which coincide in some areas, but not – crucially in others. I think that helped make it a more satisfying mystery, as well as giving us an interesting insight into the two main characters.
3. In Maddox’s thought patterns and attitudes we see an uncanny reflection of Mary’s – the same observation, the same analysis, the same ability to detach from what is happening. But Mary struggles with it more than he does. Is it just that she has less practice at it than Maddox?
That’s definitely part of it – after all, detection is Maddox’s trade, and he is very good at it. But I think it also reflects the difference in their perspective – not just their gender (though that would have made a far bigger difference then than now), but their upbringing and social class. Also, I hope it indicates that despite her many moral misgivings about Maddox, there are some very deep-seated intellectual similarities between them, which is one reason why she is so tempted by his proposal at the end.
4 In my view, the only critical difference between Mary and Maddox is the question of morality, particularly over the rough handling of one of the servants. For me, Maddox and Mary’s respective reflection on this made it the most fascinating theme in the book – more so than the murder in many ways, making it the real moral/ethical drama of the novel. Was that intentional?
Absolutely – and again, a very insightful question. The relationship between Mary and Maddox is in many ways the most important one in the book, even if it isn’t the ‘love story’ in the traditional Austenesque sense of the term. One of the delights of writing a book set in 1811 in 2008 was that I could look at issues like this through a ‘double lens’ – both as the Regency would have seen them, and as we see them now. In that sense Maddox is more a man of his time, and Mary more a reflection of modern sensibilities. But crucially it’s never quite as black and white as that – if Maddox hadn’t done what he did, an innocent person might have hanged for the crime. And Mary has the luxury of disapproving, without the responsibility of having to make such a decision herself – the difference if you like, between theoretical principles, and harsh reality. So the episode raises a lot of questions that don’t have easy answers – either for the characters or the reader, or indeed, for me.
5. Mary says at one point that she would be ‘half-afraid’ of him if she married him. Is that true in the literal sense, or is she more afraid of becoming more like him in a moral sense?
I think it’s a little of both. I doubt she really feels he would treat her as he does the maidservant – not least because she is a resourceful and forceful personality, and their relationship would be on a far more equal footing. I definitely wanted Mary to be terribly tempted by the life Maddox offers her, but I wanted her final choice to be very finely balanced – to be one where there were both advantages and serious disadvantages whichever option she chose. In that sense the ‘happy ending’ is a much more chequered affair than anything you find in Austen.
6. Did Henry commit the earlier murder? And is the fact that Mary does not suspect him just proof that she has a serious blind spot where he is concerned, despite the acuteness of her observation and analysis of other people?
The short answer to the first question is that I don’t know! I deliberately left it open for my readers to decide what they think happened in Enfield, though I can certainly see how the train of circumstances described in the novel might have led Henry inexorably to the point where he definitely could have done it. The second question is much more interesting, and is tied up, in part, with the difference between the male and female spheres at that time. Mary is no fool, and she would know, in theory, that gentlemen took mistresses, but I think she genuinely doesn’t believe Henry capable of doing anything remotely like that. You have to remember how close these two are – how early they lost their parents, and how much they have relied on one another since then. Up to the point when the book starts, Henry has been Mary’s whole world, so small wonder she wants to believe the best of him.
7. Henry treats Mary as his devoted country-mouse little sister. Mary treats him as her unimpeachable soul-mate and confidante. I think both end up being illusions. What did you intend?
I think this is a little harsh on Henry. Yes, he does rely on her, and yes, he probably asks too much. But I don’t think that her love and support for him is an illusion – I think he draws strength from it, even at his lowest point. Mary, on the other hand, may indeed be living an illusion where he is concerned, but even at the end of the novel that illusion has not been shattered. It’s part of the poignancy I wanted the novel to close with, that Maddox chooses not to tell her what he knows, leaving her to be as happy, if she can, with Edmund.
And finally a more technical question someone asked me at the Buxton festival.
Why is it Mary who lays out the corpse – would that really have happened at the time?
This is, I admit, a bit of a grey area. There were no undertakers at the time, so the task would definitely have fallen to a woman, especially where the deceased was also a woman. When someone died of an illness it would normally have been their nurse, but otherwise it would have been either a member of the family or – more likely in an upper class household like Mansfield Park – a trusted and senior family servant. But friends could also step in and help if needs be – there’s a useful precedent here (as in so much else) in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa: when she dies in her London lodgings it’s the landlady and her friends who lay out the body, rather than the servants. So while the Bertrams probably would never have actually asked Mary to do it, I make it clear that she does it voluntarily, as a way of helping Edmund, given that both the ladies of the family and Mrs Baddeley are incapable of taking on such a gruesome task. It’s also another example of Mary’s highly ambivalent status in the house – Mrs Norris constantly tries to treat her as if she was little better than a servant, and yet here we see her voluntarily taking on a role that arguably puts her in just such a subordinate position, but doing it for her own private reasons.