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March 2011 Book of the Month: The Raven's Bride by Lenore Hart

A monthly discussion on varying themes guided by our members. (Book of the Month discussions through December 2011 can be found in this section too.)
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boswellbaxter
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March 2011 Book of the Month: The Raven's Bride by Lenore Hart

Post by boswellbaxter » Tue March 1st, 2011, 6:04 am

Discuss The Raven's Bride by Lenore Hart here.
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Margaret
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Post by Margaret » Tue March 1st, 2011, 7:08 am

Although I found this novel disappointing (see review), there were some aspects of it that I did find interesting. Most interesting to me was the way Hart presented the afterlife. She's obviously read accounts of near-death experiences and, although she doesn't stick to the most classic type of account, the way Virginia's dead brother meets her to bring her into the realm of spirit feels similar. There's a contrast between Virginia, who believes in an afterlife, and Eddy, whose beliefs about both life and death are more despairing, shaped by his experiences of loss as a child and young man. It might have been interesting if the novel had explored this contrast a little more deeply, perhaps by including some scenes from Poe's point of view.

It did seem to me that the novel would have been more effective if Virginia's childhood had been treated less exhaustively. Two-thirds of the novel (which is not short) deals with her life between ages 8 and 13, and this part tends to read like a novel for children (and not necessarily one of the more exciting ones, I thought). It was enlightening to start reading Elizabeth Chadwick's To Defy a King immediately after finishing The Raven's Bride. The central character of the latter novel, Mahelt Marshal, is ten years old when To Defy a King opens, and she, too, marries at age 13. But I found the latter novel riveting from the beginning (see review). Perhaps the difference is that Mahelt was a child with a zesty, exhuberant and not particularly obedient approach to life, whereas Viriginia Clemm, as portrayed in The Raven's Bride seemed quite cowed by her upbringing. Another difference is that The Raven's Bride is almost claustrophobic in its focus on Virginia's domestic life, while To Defy a King brings in the politics of King John's reign, using Mahelt to enlighten the reader on some of the intense human drama behind the Magna Carta.
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Post by Divia » Tue March 1st, 2011, 11:07 am

I enjoyed it, but I see what you are saying with the focus on her childhood. I'm wondering if the author did that because she didn't have a lot to write about during adulthood? Or she didn't feel comfortable.

I did think the author did a great job of making Poe crazy, yet someone likable, but somewhat not at times. To be fair I've never been a huge Poe fan.


I would love to hear from those who read the frist book and this one. Are they very similar?
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Post by Undine » Tue March 1st, 2011, 12:53 pm

Your comments illustrated the main problems with writing a novel centered around Virginia:

A. Surprisingly little is known about her life.

B. She didn't really have much of a life. So far as we know, she led a quiet, domestic existence centered around her mother and her husband, who were the only two people to ever really get close to her. At nineteen, she became an invalid. At twenty-four, she died.

This doesn't make for exciting literature. I think this paucity of interesting information is why Hart poached "The Very Young Mrs. Poe" (which was itself a pretty dull read)--she couldn't come up with anything to write about on her own!

Incidentally, as an amateur Poe researcher and blogger, I found Hart's depiction of Poe's opinion of the afterlife really annoying. It doesn't represent his true views at all. If you read his more metaphysical works, such as "Eureka," he makes it completely clear that he saw our physical bodies as prisons, and earthly death as just the gateway to the higher world of the spirit. He did not see death or the afterlife in a negative sense at all.

I honestly believe that Hart did not do a lick of research for this book, other than reading Cothburn O'Neal's novel. I don't believe she even actually read any of Poe's works, or if she did, she clearly did not understand them.

What I'm trying to get at is--please, everyone who's reading this novel, do not take any of it as verifiable biographical fact! (Incidentally, it's a long story that I won't go into here, but the business about their marriage not being consummated for two years--and on "Muddy's" orders, yet!--is hardly proven

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Post by Ash » Tue March 1st, 2011, 1:38 pm

Ergg - Borders canceled my order, and I can't get one from my indie till Friday; probably be the weekend before I can post...(and I'm not reading any posts, so no problems with spoilers!)

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Post by Margaret » Tue March 1st, 2011, 6:30 pm

Incidentally, as an amateur Poe researcher and blogger, I found Hart's depiction of Poe's opinion of the afterlife really annoying. It doesn't represent his true views at all.
It's been many years - decades, really - since I read any Poe. I used to enjoy his spooky stories, one reason why I was looking forward to reading this novel. I was sorry not to find more about Poe himself in the novel - as Hart tells the story, it seemed as though Virginia really didn't know him very well, and so, since everything is given from her perspective, the reader only gets a surface impression of him. That may be just as well, if his views are misrepresented.
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Post by Divia » Wed March 2nd, 2011, 2:26 am

To be fair most women's lives in 19cent were domestic and therefore dull to most modern readers.

I also think Poe was doing his wife. Being a Victorian Era freak, I am well aware that it wasn't all that weird(despite what we think) that cousins marry. And yes, first cousins did too. So I can get past that. What I think a lot of people can't get past is the age difference. No one wants to think that 20 something Poe was doing his 15 year old cousin, but then again, we see that everyday too.

Either way you shake it I think he was having relations with the girl.
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Margaret
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Post by Margaret » Wed March 2nd, 2011, 2:42 am

Either way you shake it I think he was having relations with the girl.
It's possible that he wasn't, but not as likely, I think. It would have been a more interesting story if they were. It's really not that unusual, even today, for men in their 20s (and older) to be attracted to teenage girls. We don't like to think that, but so many of the actresses men like to watch onscreen do look quite young (often younger than they actually are). Our modern taboo on older men getting involved with teen girls is a good thing, I think, but it doesn't necessarily come naturally.

I felt like Hart was bending over backwards to make everyone in the story as admirable as possible. They could have had more flaws and still been sympathetic. The story would have been more engaging to me then, because it would have had more tension and realism.
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Post by Divia » Wed March 2nd, 2011, 11:02 am

[quote=""Margaret""]
I felt like Hart was bending over backwards to make everyone in the story as admirable as possible. They could have had more flaws and still been sympathetic. The story would have been more engaging to me then, because it would have had more tension and realism.[/quote]

That is very true. I agree. She wanted to make Poe crazy, or a drunk, but she wouldn't dare make him a sexual creature. He was like a big brother. She scratched the surface of his personality, but didn't dive into it.
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Post by Undine » Wed March 2nd, 2011, 1:02 pm

Well, as far as their "intimate" life goes, we'll never know for sure, of course. (As they were childless, some biographers have even asserted that Poe was impotent!) Nowadays, we feel pretty queasy about a 27-year-old man and his 13-year-old first cousin as husband and wife--most of us would be calling the police if it happened next door--but I think that's projecting modern attitudes onto people of a different era. I can tell you that none of Poe's contemporaries, so far as is recorded, thought anything of their age difference. (I found Hart's imagining that Virginia was herself self-conscious of her youth quite anachronistic, and completely lacking in evidence.) The only criticism he received for his marriage arose from his "folly" or "imprudence" in marrying someone as penniless as he was! (The inference is that if he had married a rich teenager for her money, that would have been great...)

Hart has them not consummating their marriage immediately partly, I think, because she shared that modern queasiness, but also because someone in 1848 quoted Poe as saying that he and Virginia were celebate for two years after their marriage because they thought of each other as "brother and sister." (Bizarrely, he was also quoted as saying that they married because unnamed "friends" urged them to--??!!) As Poe was fond of telling wild tall tales about himself in order to hoax his listeners, his biographers have never decided if this was one of them, or if he was telling something approximating the truth.

I vote for the former. One of the weaknesses of "Raven's Bride" is that her scenario--that "Muddy" allowed them to marry, only on the condition that "nothing happens" (even though they're both depicted as wanting "something to happen...") makes little sense. If this was the case, why bother getting married then at all?

On that matter, I can only quote the words of Poe's biographer William Bittner: "Since they were living in a boardinghouse, there was no question of propriety in Edgar's supporting a nubile cousin and her mother, and in that day and place of 'kissing cousins,' the exchange of platonic affection would have seemed perfectly natural. The only reason they could have had for getting married was that they wanted to go to bed together."

Incidentally, I agree completely with the complaint that we get so little of Poe himself in the book. There were many places in RB where I really wanted to know what he was thinking, and Hart gave us no idea. Frustrating.

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