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vaznettiOh hey, it's Wednesday, and I have a working laptop again! And I read a book about which I have something to say (apparently, a lot to say.)
This was The House with the Golden Door, by Elodie Harper, the sequel to The Wolf Den, which I wrote about here. I need to tell you all up front that I did actually like this book, because I am about to complain about it a lot, mostly for not being the book I wanted it to be. What I wanted (and at one early point in the narrative, thought I was getting) was a book about Amara's trauma and her difficultly in accepting and understanding her new status as a freedwoman, and the way in which that trauma and that difficulty lead her to make increasingly poor decisions. What I got was a book about her romance with an enslaved man. What I don't like is that I'm not sure which of these two books Harper thought she was writing.
I can kind of see the outline of the book I wanted here, particularly in the way Amara tries to recreate her lost friendship with Dido with Victoria and Britannica, in her inability to extricate herself from her relationship (whatever it is) with Felix, and in the ambiguity of her relationship with Rufus, who tries his best to keep her dependent on him. And of course most of all in her pervasive fear that she will be re-enslaved.
So in the book, Amara has two reasons for her fear: the second, which is only introduced late in the narrative, is the most straightforward, that if she is caught in her relationship with Philos, she could be re-enslaved. That's absolutely the law. The question here is, would it affect her daughter Rufina's status? Arguably by allowing the child to be named after him Rufus is acknowledging his paternity, and that's all the law cares about, since the Romans were not well-acquainted with the science of genetics. Moreover, Rufina has at least potentially a powerful patron in Amara's actual patron, Pliny, who might not want to be deprived of Rufina even if he has to lose Amara. So although intellectually and emotionally I understood Amara's panic, the unnecessary weirdness about the way in which she was freed kept undercutting that part of the narrative for me. And this also undercuts the other reason for Rufina's fear, which is that written into her manumission is a contract according to which she will lose her freedom if she is unfaithful to Rufus (until he ends the relationship.)
I don't actually know if this is something that really happened -- I can't recall ever seeing anything like it. It was the case that if a man freed a woman in order to marry her, that woman was not allowed to initiate a divorce, and I can see something like this following on from that. And you really can't put anything past the Romans when it comes to contracts. But again the difficulty here is in the role of Pliny as Amara's actual patron: at the end of The Wolf Den Amara is freed, but for some reason Rufus' father refuses to purchase and free her himself, apparently because he doesn't want a courtesan with his nomen doing business in Pompeii. This is super weird to me, and the one historical inaccuracy that really bothers me in the narrative, because it creates so many problems. For one thing, even in this book Amara knows courtesans named Julia and Drusilla, which are obviously much more significant names than Hortensia (leaving aside the issue of whether historically either woman would have used these names -- probably not, just to avoid confusion with the hundreds of other descendants of imperial freedpeople in Pompeii and elsewhere all over the Bay of Naples. You probably couldn't throw a rock in Pompeii without hitting a Julius or Claudius (or Julia or Claudia), all of them descended from people owned by the former imperial family.)
The thing is, historically speaking, members of the Roman elite liked to have lots and lots of freed people bearing their name. It's not even about them being useful, because a lot of enslaved people are freed in the wills of their owners: it's all about status. And this also affects the first threat to Amara's status, the contract about her manumission: the guy whose opinion actually counts here is Pliny, not Rufus or his father. They have given up their power over Amara for reasons that are not sufficiently motivated to me. So when Rufus throws a fit about Amara spending a couple of weeks with Pliny, it makes sense for him as a character but the historian in me wonders what on earth he expected? As her patron, Pliny can absolutely demand a few weeks of Amara's time every year, and frankly, contract or no contract, if Pliny wanted her to come live with him instead there is nothing Rufus or his father could do about it.
OK, that was a ridiculously long digression about why that element of the narrative failed to land as well as it could have, for me as a reader.
The other issue I had is that, the more the love affair takes over, the less interesting Amara is as a protagonist. All the other characters seem to have a lot more going on, most of which Amara is totally ignorant of, because she is totally wrapped up in her own concerns. And I get that the surprise of what Victoria has been up to has to be held back, but I don't see why we couldn't have more of Britannica or Martha's stories foregrounded in the text. Amara's lack of interest in the other women in her life -- at least, the ones who are of lower status than her -- turns out to be her undoing. But is that what Harper intended to write? I'm just not sure, because elsewhere in the text Amara seems to be untouched by her own decisions: she doesn't seem to see herself as doing anything dubious in her money-lending business even though she sees clearly the problems when Felix does the same thing. I do think that Harper did intend to write a story in which Amara's character flaws are foregrounded, but it doesn't quite come together for me.
There was actually a point early on in the story when I was suddenly reminded of Scarlet O'Hara, another character whose ignorance and inability to recognise her own trauma (or that of anyone else around her) creates her own destruction -- just, sadly, a better-written one. I mean, I am relatively sure that Harper did not have Gone with the Wind in the back of her head when she was writing this book, because this is a book about the horrors of slavery, and GWTW is a book about how slavery was really not that bad and only bad people had a problem with it. But Scarlett O'Hara is a woman who destroys her own life and does her level best to destroy the lives of everyone around her, and every now and then in this book I think the same is true of Amara, or would be if Harper had meant to write that story. In the end Amara does destroy her relationship with Philos, just as she destroyed her relationship with Menander before it could even begin, because of her desire for security. But I never get the sense that the narrative wants me to see her as an anti-heroine: it ultimately has too much sympathy for her. But once that intertext was lodged in my brain, I felt uncertain about how, exactly, I was meant to read Amara. And not in a trendy indeterminacy way, just in a "this doesn't all add up well" way. Margaret Mitchell was, I assume from her book, a racist p.o.s., but she did know how to keep the narrative firmly in her main character's point of view while making it clear that her main character was a self-destructive, self-centered asshole. Amara has a great deal more cause to be self-centered and self-destructive, so I expect the narrative to have more sympathy for her -- but she does wreck lives, including her own, and she does treat other people with disregard, and it's all understandable, and yet...
I think as I write all this up I am almost arguing myself around to seeing Amara as the antiheroine I almost thought she was. I am certainly interested to see what will happen to her in the next book, given that she is going to Rome as the companion of an imperial freedman: will that affect the way she sees herself as a free person? The way she treats other freed and enslaved people? Or will there be more love story and a torrid reunion as Vesuvius does its thing in the background and Pompeii burns? I did in fact like the book well enough to want to read the next one to find out.
This was The House with the Golden Door, by Elodie Harper, the sequel to The Wolf Den, which I wrote about here. I need to tell you all up front that I did actually like this book, because I am about to complain about it a lot, mostly for not being the book I wanted it to be. What I wanted (and at one early point in the narrative, thought I was getting) was a book about Amara's trauma and her difficultly in accepting and understanding her new status as a freedwoman, and the way in which that trauma and that difficulty lead her to make increasingly poor decisions. What I got was a book about her romance with an enslaved man. What I don't like is that I'm not sure which of these two books Harper thought she was writing.
I can kind of see the outline of the book I wanted here, particularly in the way Amara tries to recreate her lost friendship with Dido with Victoria and Britannica, in her inability to extricate herself from her relationship (whatever it is) with Felix, and in the ambiguity of her relationship with Rufus, who tries his best to keep her dependent on him. And of course most of all in her pervasive fear that she will be re-enslaved.
So in the book, Amara has two reasons for her fear: the second, which is only introduced late in the narrative, is the most straightforward, that if she is caught in her relationship with Philos, she could be re-enslaved. That's absolutely the law. The question here is, would it affect her daughter Rufina's status? Arguably by allowing the child to be named after him Rufus is acknowledging his paternity, and that's all the law cares about, since the Romans were not well-acquainted with the science of genetics. Moreover, Rufina has at least potentially a powerful patron in Amara's actual patron, Pliny, who might not want to be deprived of Rufina even if he has to lose Amara. So although intellectually and emotionally I understood Amara's panic, the unnecessary weirdness about the way in which she was freed kept undercutting that part of the narrative for me. And this also undercuts the other reason for Rufina's fear, which is that written into her manumission is a contract according to which she will lose her freedom if she is unfaithful to Rufus (until he ends the relationship.)
I don't actually know if this is something that really happened -- I can't recall ever seeing anything like it. It was the case that if a man freed a woman in order to marry her, that woman was not allowed to initiate a divorce, and I can see something like this following on from that. And you really can't put anything past the Romans when it comes to contracts. But again the difficulty here is in the role of Pliny as Amara's actual patron: at the end of The Wolf Den Amara is freed, but for some reason Rufus' father refuses to purchase and free her himself, apparently because he doesn't want a courtesan with his nomen doing business in Pompeii. This is super weird to me, and the one historical inaccuracy that really bothers me in the narrative, because it creates so many problems. For one thing, even in this book Amara knows courtesans named Julia and Drusilla, which are obviously much more significant names than Hortensia (leaving aside the issue of whether historically either woman would have used these names -- probably not, just to avoid confusion with the hundreds of other descendants of imperial freedpeople in Pompeii and elsewhere all over the Bay of Naples. You probably couldn't throw a rock in Pompeii without hitting a Julius or Claudius (or Julia or Claudia), all of them descended from people owned by the former imperial family.)
The thing is, historically speaking, members of the Roman elite liked to have lots and lots of freed people bearing their name. It's not even about them being useful, because a lot of enslaved people are freed in the wills of their owners: it's all about status. And this also affects the first threat to Amara's status, the contract about her manumission: the guy whose opinion actually counts here is Pliny, not Rufus or his father. They have given up their power over Amara for reasons that are not sufficiently motivated to me. So when Rufus throws a fit about Amara spending a couple of weeks with Pliny, it makes sense for him as a character but the historian in me wonders what on earth he expected? As her patron, Pliny can absolutely demand a few weeks of Amara's time every year, and frankly, contract or no contract, if Pliny wanted her to come live with him instead there is nothing Rufus or his father could do about it.
OK, that was a ridiculously long digression about why that element of the narrative failed to land as well as it could have, for me as a reader.
The other issue I had is that, the more the love affair takes over, the less interesting Amara is as a protagonist. All the other characters seem to have a lot more going on, most of which Amara is totally ignorant of, because she is totally wrapped up in her own concerns. And I get that the surprise of what Victoria has been up to has to be held back, but I don't see why we couldn't have more of Britannica or Martha's stories foregrounded in the text. Amara's lack of interest in the other women in her life -- at least, the ones who are of lower status than her -- turns out to be her undoing. But is that what Harper intended to write? I'm just not sure, because elsewhere in the text Amara seems to be untouched by her own decisions: she doesn't seem to see herself as doing anything dubious in her money-lending business even though she sees clearly the problems when Felix does the same thing. I do think that Harper did intend to write a story in which Amara's character flaws are foregrounded, but it doesn't quite come together for me.
There was actually a point early on in the story when I was suddenly reminded of Scarlet O'Hara, another character whose ignorance and inability to recognise her own trauma (or that of anyone else around her) creates her own destruction -- just, sadly, a better-written one. I mean, I am relatively sure that Harper did not have Gone with the Wind in the back of her head when she was writing this book, because this is a book about the horrors of slavery, and GWTW is a book about how slavery was really not that bad and only bad people had a problem with it. But Scarlett O'Hara is a woman who destroys her own life and does her level best to destroy the lives of everyone around her, and every now and then in this book I think the same is true of Amara, or would be if Harper had meant to write that story. In the end Amara does destroy her relationship with Philos, just as she destroyed her relationship with Menander before it could even begin, because of her desire for security. But I never get the sense that the narrative wants me to see her as an anti-heroine: it ultimately has too much sympathy for her. But once that intertext was lodged in my brain, I felt uncertain about how, exactly, I was meant to read Amara. And not in a trendy indeterminacy way, just in a "this doesn't all add up well" way. Margaret Mitchell was, I assume from her book, a racist p.o.s., but she did know how to keep the narrative firmly in her main character's point of view while making it clear that her main character was a self-destructive, self-centered asshole. Amara has a great deal more cause to be self-centered and self-destructive, so I expect the narrative to have more sympathy for her -- but she does wreck lives, including her own, and she does treat other people with disregard, and it's all understandable, and yet...
I think as I write all this up I am almost arguing myself around to seeing Amara as the antiheroine I almost thought she was. I am certainly interested to see what will happen to her in the next book, given that she is going to Rome as the companion of an imperial freedman: will that affect the way she sees herself as a free person? The way she treats other freed and enslaved people? Or will there be more love story and a torrid reunion as Vesuvius does its thing in the background and Pompeii burns? I did in fact like the book well enough to want to read the next one to find out.
