The Butcher's Daughter: A Novel
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15
Ratings1
Average rating4
"The atmospheric novel set during the Tudor era of a young woman's struggle to define herself in a world of uncertainty, intrigue, and danger in a period of great upheaval In 1535, England is hardly a wellspring of gender equality; it is a grim and oppressive age where women--even the privileged few who can read and write--have little independence. In The Butcher's Daughter, it is this milieu that mandates Agnes Peppin, daughter of a simple country butcher, to leave her family home in disgrace and live out her days cloistered behind the walls of the Shaftesbury Abbey. But with her great intellect, she becomes the assistant to the Abbess and as a result integrates herself into the unstable royal landscape of King Henry VIII. As Agnes grapples with the complex rules and hierarchies of her new life, King Henry VIII has proclaimed himself the new head of the Church. Religious houses are being formally subjugated and monasteries dissolved, and the great Abbey is no exception to the purge. The cosseted world in which Agnes has carved out for herself a sliver of liberty is shattered. Now, free at last to be the master of her own fate, she descends into a world she knows little about, using her wits and testing her moral convictions against her need to survive by any means necessary... The Butcher's Daughter is the riveting story of a young woman facing head-on the obstacles carefully constructed against her sex. This dark and affecting novel intricately depicts the lives of women in the sixteenth century in a world dominated by men"--
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It's not an excess of religious zeal that drives Agnes Peppin to enter an abbey in Victoria Glendinning's historical fiction novel The Butcher's Daughter. Though she's not an unbeliever, she doesn't have particularly deep convictions. Rather, teenage Agnes arrives at Shaftesbury Abbey because she fell pregnant with the child of a neighbor, Peter, in her small village. Peter's sister had recently lost a child of her own, so when Agnes's baby is born, he's given to Peter's family and Agnes is sent to the Abbey to join the sisters there. She comes to find some measure of contentment and a role for herself in the community, but it's not a great time to have joined a Catholic order. You see, Agnes lives in the time of Henry VIII, and his religious reforms threaten the Abbey's continued existence.
In her childhood, Agnes had learned to read and write and these skills land her a position as the Abbess's personal assistant. So she's right there as the Abbess tries desperately to save their way of life, but ultimately fails. It's about halfway through the book that the women are finally turned out of their homes and sent into the world, and Agnes has to figure out what's next. Going off with a fellow sister? A return to home? To the big city of London to find her fortune? She ends up exploring all of these paths and more while contemplating what it really is she wants out of the rest of her life.
Victoria Glendinning has written several biographies, and while skill sets don't always transfer over neatly (and I've never read any of her bios, so I can't speak to their level of execution), I think it really helped her make Agnes a well-realized, compelling character. Agnes is not your typical historical fiction heroine...I feel like many authors in the genre default to making their protagonists read like modern spunky young women to appeal to their intended audience of, well, modern women. Agnes, however, is clearly an introvert and spends a lot of time thinking things that she doesn't say. She breaks with the gender conventions of her time gently, without raging about the restrictions upon her as a woman in a man's world. Since the book is deeply centered on her experience of the world, a character that feels real is crucial, and Glendinning pulls it off very well.
It was also refreshing to get a historical fiction perspective that wasn't from the top of the social hierarchy. We've all read (and I've personally enjoyed) books about the court of Henry VIII, but this book shines a light on people further down, for whom Henry's marriages and divorces are background noise to the actual living of their lives. It wasn't just the people actually living in the dissolved monasteries who were impacted, it was the people who depended on services that religious houses provided, and this book shone a light on that. That being said, there were a few things that kept this from being even better for me. The biggest issue I had with the book was that it felt like Agnes' path was a little too easy. She drifts into one thing, and then into the next, in a way that seems improbably fortunate. The resolution of the plotline of a side character, Elinor, also felt a little off and I wished that it had been cut. Those quibbles aside, though, this is an interesting, unusual take on the genre and time period and I'd recommend it for people who'd like to broaden their reading in the historical fiction realm.
