Jess Wells

So thrilled to be part of the podcast series run by Anita Kelly. Here we chat about historical fiction, my own love of research, feminist fiction and the writer's life. 

 

Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGdJHeHmJt8

 

I'm very pleased to say that A Slender Tether, a novel in linked stories, is now available as an audio book in a number of places, including the free library site Hoopla. In celebration, I thought I would outline the ways that the tethers in our lives, ties that bind us or secure us and the threads between us, appear in the book and what they say about the human condition.

 

In "Raptor Among Bluebirds"

A connection about to break: In "Raptor Among Bluebirds" the father of Christine de Pizan is confronted with his own pending death and remarks that "unable to heal her husband on his deathbed, a wife will sew a leather tie, a slender tether, on his doublet" as a futile attempt to reinforce a connection that is about to break.

 

A tether to prosperity or the strings of puppets: Christine's mother her mother sends granddaughter away to a convent with the princess. "I've done us a great service!" Tessa insisted. She strode around the room, gesturing with expansive arms, and Christine heard snatches of logic that it would tie them to the court and position them well, but to Christine her mother was engaged in her profession, bartering with the lives of others." Pg. 63

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On International Women's Day, we're honoring our pioneers to whom we owe a great debt, and Christine de Pizan is one of our earliest and most eloquent pioneers.

 

She defended the moral character of women during the viciously sexist Romance of the Rose debates. She penned more than 20 volumes of work at a time when no lay woman wrote at all. She wrote the only poem championing Joan of Arc during her lifetime. Her writing is still taught in universities as one of the great voices of the Middle Ages.

 

Ambition as a Drug

 

Genuine people, however, are multi-dimensional and the faceted sides of the human psyche give us an opportunity to examine the truth behind each side of the story of Christine de Pizan, in this case the addictive and conflicted nature of ambition.

For example, all pioneers waffle between the inculcated lessons of the status quo (giving rise to self-loathing) and their determined, brilliant will to move forward. Pioneers know their position as an out-cast, as Christine does when she acknowledges that she is a raptor (ferocious and potentially deadly) amid a court of decorative and powerless blue-bird women. She sometimes feels reptilian in her alienation.
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History books often described women as being "relegated" to spinning or embroidery, and one thinks of a woman in a fussy dress wasting time with an embroidery hoop. Elizabeth Wayland Barber in her book Women's Work: the First 20,000 Years, however, describes in great detail a world where the work of women – and trading skills of women -- ran the world economy, producing the world's most coveted, sold, and plundered product.

 

Cloth Drove the Global Economy

You have to remember that until recently, with the invention of plastic and the availability of metals, everything was made of either fabric or wood. Objects were wrapped in cloth, carried in a sack, and even wooden boxes were frequently lined with fabric.  Read More 

The phrase "well-behaved women never make history" was actually coined (as 'seldom make history') by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich  and can now be seen on T-shirts, bumper stickers and buttons all over the world. Here are some of the gems on unwed mothers, fighting women, unsung authors of the 1600s and other women you'll want to know from her book Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History (Alfred Knopf, 2007). 

 

Unwed Mothers and Women in Court

"Although a quarter of English brides were pregnant at marriage, very few babies – roughly 2 – 3% – were born to unwed mothers. In most cases, a combination of social pressure and the threat of legal action forced people to marry. When they didn't, the law insisted  Read More 

I'm always very excited to find in history courses references to Christine de Pizan, a woman in the 1300s who was the world's first feminist and first professional writer. IMHO, she is under-heralded and too frequently overlooked. My novel A Slender Tether (Fireship Press, 2013), dramatizes her difficult early years that were filled with grief, poverty, and thwarted ambition.

 

I'm drawn to her because of her hunger to write (which I feel in my gut), her struggle with ambition (a love-hate relationship I know well) and her feeling that she is a "raptor among bluebirds", socially unacceptable for her ferocity (a more autobiographical idea than anything I've ever written before.)

 

So when The Great Courses Plus included her in their (excellent) course  Read More 

Your story, no matter how short or long, isn't a recounting of a series of events (even a love affair, or a war) but a commentary on the human condition. Your work becomes art when you have something to say* about life, about people.

Let's call it theme: to me, theme is the overall concept of the piece, which then turns a story into art. Here are some tips re: theme: Read More 

Description of the book: Amid the violent weather of Europe’s Little Ice Age, A Slender Tether offers three compelling tales of self-discovery, woven into a rich tapestry of 14th century France. Christine de Pizan, daughter of a disgraced court physician and astrologer, grapples with her ambition to be the first woman writer of France. A doctor finds an unusual way to cope with the death of his wife. And opportunity alternates with disasters in the life of four commoners, yoked by necessity: a papermaker struggling to keep his business, a falconer with a mysterious past, a merchant’s daughter frantic to avoid an arranged marriage, and a down-on-his-luck musician with a broken guitar and the voice of an angel.

Discussion Questions:

“Raptor Among the Bluebirds”

1. Christine de Pizan works in the library where there was not a single volume written by women. How do you imagine she would feel as a result? Have you ever felt alienation at this level or exclusion?

2. It has been documented that Christine’s father was more supportive of her scholarship and desire to write than her mother. What do you think the mother’s motivation

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Q: Tell us about Christine and what you’re trying to convey here.
JW: I was drawn to write about Christine de Pizan because of her courage and determination. She wrote more than 20 volumes of work across a wide range of disciplines and was the first to argue for the political and social equality of women during the time. Today, there are thousands of professors and students who study her as a seminal voice of the Middle Ages. I was particularly compelled, though, by the desire to dramatize the struggle of a pioneer. It’s particularly important to me as we write stories of women of the past that we don’t fall into the trap of thinking them to be one-dimensional super-heroes. I teach writing historical fiction and I tell my students that despite our bumper stickers that say ‘Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History’ we seem to create female characters that are unblemished. In fact, many of our pioneers are really dreadfully broken people. Anyone who faces down the status quo is fueled by desire, but plagued by self-doubt as well. It’s impossible to not internalize some of the teaching of the status quo that things can’t be done or shouldn’t be done. It’s also true that ambition is a desire that can become an obsession, a hunger that, like any drug, can never really be satisfied. I also wanted to look at the flip side of ambition -- disillusionment – and look at the pain that arrives when one realizes that all ambition is a chimera. I think everyone hits a point, especially in mid-life, and I think it holds true in the Middle Ages as well as now, where one wakes up to the brass in the gold ring, so to speak. It’s a difficult time in life and I hope I’ve added something to the conversation on this with my rendering of Gilles.

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Fiction is a great form, but so is the essay, and I find I want to explain the theme of ambition and its reversal -- disillusionment -- which underlies my story of Christine de Pizan, “The Raptor Among Blue-Birds” in my new book, A Slender Tether.

We owe our pioneers a great debt, and Christine de Pizan is one of our earliest and most eloquent pioneers. Genuine people, however, are multi-dimensional and the faceted sides of the human psyche give us an opportunity to examine the truth behind each side of the story, in this case the addictive and conflicted nature of ambition.

For example, all pioneers waffle between the inculcated lessons of the status quo (giving rise to self-loathing) and their determined, brilliant will to move forward. Pioneers know their position as an out-cast, as Christine does when she acknowledges that she is a raptor (ferocious and potentially deadly) amid a court of decorative and powerless blue-bird women. She sometimes feels reptilian in her alienation.

Her mother had her own form of ambition. It’s historical fact that  Read More