Florida!!! ... and medieval England?
Hello friends,
I just got back from a fabulous long weekend in Pensacola, celebrating the marriage of 2 dear old friends. I haven’t spent much time in Florida; my grasp of the state’s geography is shaky at best. Lauren Groff, one of my favorite authors, is opening a bookstore in Gainesville, but that’s nowhere near Pensacola. Also, “Florida!!!” is one of the best songs on the new Taylor Swift album. That’s all the Florida-related content I have, moving on…
My favorite of Lauren Groff’s novels is Matrix. Set in 12th-century France, it fictionalizes the real-life figure Marie de France, imagining her as the abbess of a deteriorating abbey. Matrix was a guiding light while I was writing Ordinary Devotion, half of which takes place in 14th-century England, when 12-year-old Elinor is sent to live with the anchoress Adela at Wenlock Abbey.
I’m not religious, & I took exactly 1 class on medieval literature in college. So why this plot?
I can’t remember when & where I first learned about anchoresses (or, if men, anchorites), who were deeply religious Christians who agreed to be locked in cells (usually, a single room attached to a church) for their entire lives. I found anchoresses so strange & strangely compelling that I kept reading about them, & I stumbled across this tidbit: Hildgard of Bingen, a 12th-century abbess & mystic, might have been enclosed as a child with an anchoress, to serve & assist her.
What if a young girl, on the cusp of womanhood, found herself locked in a room with a religious zealot—possibly for the rest of her life?
The novelist & memoirist Julie Chibbaro once said, in a writing class I took with her, “You don’t only have to ‘write what you know.’ You can also write what you want to know about.” I wanted to know more about the (to my modern mind) bizarre decision to become an anchoress. But I didn’t want to write a standard historical novel; I was more interested in seeing if I could somehow unspool this ancient thread & weave it together with a more contemporary story, too. Next month, I’ll explain how Elinor’s story interweaves with that of Ordinary Devotion’s other main character: Liz, a 32-year-old adjunct professor of medieval studies in upstate New York.
Until next time, friends!
Kristen
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