A series where my guests are female writers
talking about their female characters
(and yes, I'll be doing the chaps next!)
Today:
Sarah Kennedy
And
My Catherine
My main character in The Cross and the Crown, a fictional series set in Tudor England, is Catherine Havens. Strong female protagonists are not that uncommon in historical fiction these days, and when I created Catherine for the first novel, The Altarpiece, I knew that I wanted to make her different in some way. I didn’t want to focus on a real historical person, as some historical novelists do, and I didn’t want her to be a traditional noblewoman. I had been interested in women mystics and other religious figures from the medieval period for a long time, and Catherine came into being on her own—she appeared, looking down the road from the porch of a church, in my imagination, and she seemed to be asking, as many nuns of the period did, simply to live.
But I also didn’t want to write a, well, conventional nun, as most lead characters in convent fiction are. And I wanted to think about the larger issues of Tudor England, one of my favorite places and periods, and the ordinary people who lived through the massive religious and political changes of the sixteenth century.
In this first novel, my Catherine is still a very young woman—a novice rather than a nun—and she has lived her whole life in the convent, under the control of the prioress, Christina, and the oldest nun, Veronica. Catherine’s life, then, is woman-centered, and this was, for me, a way of rethinking the roles of women in Renaissance England. Catherine is devout, but she’s not very orthodox, and the changes in England after Henry VIII’s break from Rome have thrown her into circumstances she never expected.
There are few records of what happened to nuns after the convents were closed, though more scholarship has been done since I began writing my series, and I wanted to “make history” with my novel instead of retelling the history we already have. Most Early Modern women were governed by their fathers and husbands, but life in the convent could be the exception. We sometimes think of convent life as constrained, and of course it was restricted and demanding. But in addition to providing (1) an escape from unwanted marriage, (2) some safety from contagious disease, (3) an opportunity for education beyond the traditional female accomplishments of sewing and music, and (4) positions of real power, nunneries made the mother the primary parent.
The Father was still present, but God the Father was in heaven rather than the next room. Every convent required the services of at least one priest, but he neither lived within their walls nor oversaw much of the daily administration. The Husband of these “brides of Christ” was also in Heaven and was always perfect, mild, and loving.
But the Mother? The second parent in the secular world, she was dominant in the convent in the figure of the abbess or the prioress. In Heaven, the Mother of God was a compassionate and accessible figure. If God dealt punishment to sinners, Mary might be petitioned to intervene on behalf of His suffering children. Even Jesus was seen as a mother, most famously by the mystic Julian of Norwich. In my convent, the titular altarpiece features an image of Mary, and this would not have been unusual. Catherine has, as she says, “prayed under Her eyes” all of her life. It should be no surprise, then, that Catherine believes that she can make decisions about her beliefs and her desires without consulting a father.
The critic Joan Kelly, back in 1977, provocatively asked whether women had a Renaissance. She concluded that while men were exploring the “new learning,” Protestant women were relegated to secondary positions—with no respectable alternative. Husbands were recast as domestic religious authorities in the place of priests. Unmarried women were condemned, as Shakespeare’s Beatrice says, to “lead apes in hell.”
And this is, in part, why the notion of the Mother is so important to my Catherine, even after she is evicted from the convent. She also has a devoted friend, Ann Smith, who gives her advice (sometimes in a rather grumpy way) and defends her, even when she makes disastrous mistakes.
So: an intelligent, devout Renaissance woman who wants to use her wits in the world and who also has a weakness for handsome men. A friendship between women that is not dependent on family connections or their marriages. An overbearing king who discards wives he no longer wants—and who has two healthy daughters. This is the world I’m exploring. What might have happened?
In the second novel, Catherine tries to recreate a “City of Ladies” (she has gotten a copy of Christine de Pizan’s book as a gift) by taking in former nuns. It sounds like a fine idea, but the consequences are unhappy, primarily because she has married a Protestant. And in the third novel, The King’s Sisters, Catherine finds herself working in the household of Anne of Cleves, now divorced by Henry VIII and quite bitter about it.
Where will Catherine go from here? Well, she still hopes for the success of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, though even as smart as she is, Catherine cannot foresee that they will become queens in their own right. But they will, and Catherine may think that the world has come her way, with a woman on the throne—and Mary a Catholic, at that. It will be her dream come true. Then again, it may become her worst nightmare.
Excerpt: The King’s Sisters by Sarah Kennedy
The Queen of
England had been condemned to die. Another queen. Another charge of whoredom,
and this time the evidence had been unmistakable. At Hampton Court Palace,
where Henry VIII was hidden away, all the reveling, the feasts and dancing, the
flirtations and love-making, had ended, once again, and the king had disappeared
into his inner rooms after signing the death warrant. This time, it was
Catherine Howard, once upon a time a carefree girl, then a queen, and now a
wretch waiting upon an axe. A cousin, it was said, of Anne Boleyn. This one
hadn’t even made it to twenty years of age.
Watching from among the viewers who waited for the execution was
another Catherine—Catherine Overton, once Catherine Havens. Once upon a time, a
novice at Mount Grace convent in Yorkshire, then a married lady, with two
children, in her own right. Now a widow, this Catherine oversaw the kitchens at
Richmond Palace and she had been ordered to witness the death and provide the
details of the queen’s demise to Lady Anne of Cleves, once also the wife of the
king, now divorced and demoted to The King’s Beloved Sister. Catherine could
hardly believe, at first, that it could happen a second time, that Henry would
kill another wife. But the laws were his, and Catherine had obeyed Lady Anne.
Here she stood, doing her duty. But she was tired of death, and afraid.
And now Catherine Howard, the pretty royal girl, took her place in
front of her former subjects on a bitter winter morning, staring up at her
executioner like a child preparing to be corrected.
Why now, of all times, thought Catherine, to be forced to watch a
queen die for being a whore? At the very time Catherine Overton suspected—no,
she knew—that she, without a husband to her name, was carrying a child. Her
stomach rebelled at the sight of the girl up there, preparing herself to die,
and Catherine clutched her fur cloak tight, though her own belly was still as
flat as any proper widow’s. Like the queen, she’d allowed the court’s frivolous
mood go to her head. Now I will be found
out for a whore, too, Catherine thought, and my family will be ruined.
Full Guest List
What a gripping excerpt, Sarah. Love your style of writing. Catherine is not just a great character, but a fascinating woman of her times. Thank you for sharing her with us here.
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