Robin Cadwallader
HarperCollins
Otago Daily Times, May 2nd 2015
From the lofty heights of the 21st Century it is hard to imagine what life must have been like even 100 years ago, let alone during the Middle Ages. We can piece a picture together from the archaeological remains and writings of the period, but it is one thing to know examine this world at an intellectual level and quite another to experience it in the emotional sense. So when historian Robyn Cadwallader learned about a group of religious women who volunteered to be permanently enclosed in tiny cells within church walls, she wrote The Anchoress in an attempt to understand how and why somebody could make and live with such a choice.
Set in the 13th Century, the novel tells the story of 17 year old Sarah, a cloth merchant’s daughter whose decision to be thus confined is driven both by her love of God and a desire for sanctuary from the attentions of men. The story opens with her entombment and follows her struggles to live up to her own and the church’s expectations that she renounce the desires and temptations of the flesh. But in the end the greatest danger comes not from within but without, in the form her patron, Sir Thomas, the man whose unwelcome attentions spurred her to seek the safety of the anchorhold in the first place and whose disregard for legal and religious strictures threaten both Sarah and the village itself.
Although told largely through Sarah’s voice, interspersed with short sections from her confessor, Brother Ranaulf, the novel still manages to convey much about life outside her cell. The thickest of walls cannot keep the external world entirely at bay, and the unseen village makes itself known through her other senses and through the lives of the women who come to her for council. We also learn of the fear and loss that led to her decision to renounce the earthly world, and the small ways in which she defies Church rules in order to uphold her most important vow of all; to remain enclosed for the rest of her natural life.
At times I had to struggle to control my anger at a society and a religion that treated women with such disregard, not to mention Sarah’s internalised shame for events beyond her control. However the novel ends on a note of quiet defiance that allows her to reconcile her spiritual duties with her physical and emotional needs, and left me with a sense that she, at least, will survive. I do not think I could have make such a choice myself,but I can see that for Sarah and others like her, such sacrifice may have offered a freedom that could not be found any other way.
https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/defiant-story-confinement
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