A Conversation with Flora Carr
Flora Carr at Loch Leven
What was it about Mary Queen of Scots’ story that drew you to her as a character?
Firstly, I knew about Mary Queen of Scots’ long captivity in England, that’s well documented, but I hadn’t ever heard about this period of time when she was in captivity in Scotland at Loch Levan. It was such an action-packed period of her life and also, such an incredible setting – this island fortress in the middle of a Loch. I found it extraordinary that there hadn’t been a stand-alone story told about that period of her life. Secondly, for a long time, Mary’s story has been defined by the men in her life, or else by her relationship with Elizabeth I, who she never actually met in real life. Mary Queen of Scots was this extraordinary figure who was incredibly charismatic, and she inspired incredible levels of devotion in men, yes, but also women. The real-life women who were devoted to her in her lifetime, like Lady Mary Seton, the woman who followed her from France to Scotland to England for decades, have been left out of Mary’s story and I really wanted to redress that when I was writing The Tower.
One of the engaging things about the novel is that because it features multiple narrative perspectives, the reader is presented with juxtaposing interpretations of Queen Mary. Mary, the celestial royal archetype is contrasted with a more vulnerable flesh-and-blood Mary, slave to bodily functions as much as any human. What was your desired effect on the reader in including these myriad representations of such a mythologised woman?
With Mary Queen of Scots, either she is presented as the Jezebel to Elizabeth I or she’s romanticised as a doomed, captive Queen. Having done my research into Mary, I don’t think either of those things really fit, so I wanted to portray her in a way that captured some of her lightning-in-a-bottle charisma. She was very much a person of contradictions – both brave and cunning – she had various interests and passions and she suffered from depressive episodes. In terms of the bodily stuff, I certainly wanted to play with these ideas about the royal body and what it must have meant to be a chambermaid like Cuckoo or Jane who wouldn’t normally have that much access to Mary’s body. During that period, just the hem of the Queen’s cloak was believed to have healing powers. The chambermaids have these ideas about the royal body, but then they come up against the visceral reality of Mary’s body. I think in terms of bodily fluids, The Tower sits within a rising trend of people being more comfortable in presenting the grotesque and the disgusting in relation to women’s bodies. For a long time, women’s bodies were either hidden away or romanticised. Only now, with a film like Poor Things for example, we’re coming to a place where writers and filmmakers are more comfortable with portraying women more authentically and portraying normal bodily functions.
The female body in The Tower is presented in multiple ways – as an instrument for pleasure, a vessel for desire, a burden, and also as a way to seduce and manipulate men. Although the novel doesn’t shy away from the very real physical threat of men, there is also a powerful gendered inverse where women use men as tools in their escape plans. Could you tell us a little bit more about this power play?
I definitely wanted to portray women’s bodies in a multitude of ways, and I also wanted to portray the many faces of femininity. One of my favourite scenes to write was the flashback scene to Mary and Lady Seton cross-dressing. I found it really important that they’re both women and they have all these physical realities and yet they have these differing visceral reactions to wearing men’s clothes. Mary prefers having the physical protection of the big, wide hooped skirts – she likes the support of the corset – but Mary Seton feels freed when she’s wearing men’s clothes. Neither of these reactions is right or wrong, I just wanted to use that scene to portray the different aspects of femininity and different ways of being a woman.
Often, historical novels focus chiefly on battle scenes, assassination plots and courtroom dramas, which take place in very masculine spaces. What’s interesting about The Tower is that it’s mainly set in a domestic space, albeit a prison, and the main source of action is the internal battles of these women. What inspired you to write like that?
You’re totally right. I was re-reading Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility last year and I find the ways in which she writes domestic space as the battleground for women fascinating. If you read Eleanor Dashwood’s conversations with Lucy Steele, it’s extraordinary the way everything is under the surface. Also, the miscarriage scene was a really difficult scene for me to write and I was very anxious about it. I felt a lot of responsibility writing that scene but, equally, I felt that, during that period, women faced a great deal of danger when it came to childbirth, and I wanted to pay tribute to that.
Although the book takes place in such a confined setting, within such a tiny slice of history, you have managed to include a rich array of female characters with complex relationships and oscillating power dynamics. How did you come up with such complex interrelationships?
Obviously, the four key female characters are imprisoned within this physical prison, but in certain ways Agnes and Margaret Erskin, the women’s jailers, are also imprisoned – particularly someone like Agnes who is just there to breed, essentially. I really found it interesting not only looking at the dynamics of the four key women in the tower, but looking at the dynamics they had with Agnes and Margaret. I know other readers will come for Mary Stuart, but I really do think the book is an ensemble piece, not just with Mary and her three attendants, but with six key characters including Agnes and Margaret. I enjoyed writing the different dynamics between all of them.
There are so many references to birds in the text. What does this imagery symbolise?
I did include a lot of bird imagery, particularly references to sirens as the half-woman, half-bird sirens of Greek myth. That’s definitely a recurring motif, as they symbolise the idea of freedom and the soul and self-expression. I also include references to mermaids and sirens more broadly in order to explore feminine monstrosity. Mermaids, for example, represent sex and death combined in one form and I wanted to play with that idea in the book, particularly in relation to Mary.
Did you do your research first and then write the novel or did you fuse the two aspects together?
I did my research for the book first. I did months of research. I’m not a historian, and I owe a huge debt to historians whose work I absolutely devoured during my research process. I read really widely, and I listened to a lot of academic podcasts and documentaries because, at the time, I was working a full-time job and planning a wedding. I had to squeeze as much research as I could into spare moments, like the commute to work. I also visited physical places; I went to Holyrood Palace, and I visited Loch Levan twice, and I looked at objects from the sixteenth century, such as paintings and embroideries from Mary Queen of Scots’ captivity in England. I’m really glad that I did a lot of research before I started writing. I think that if I’d just looked on Wikipedia to get a rough idea and then written a scene, I’d end up coming back to it and realising that I’d have to re-write it. It was much more efficient to do as much research as possible before putting pen to paper.
How was it visiting the actual tower at Loch Levan?
The first time I went there, there were still pandemic restrictions in place, so I wasn’t able to cross the water to get to the actual island where the castle is. I was just pacing all the way around the length of the Loch, desperately making as many notes as possible and getting a feel for the atmosphere of the place. When restrictions lifted a little, I was able to go back. You have to get there by boat from the jetty on the mainland and the boat that was in use that day was called Mary Seton! That was such an amazing twist of fate.
Have you always been interested in that period of history?
Yeah, I have. I studied English Literature at university and specialised in early modern literature – John Donne, Milton, Aphra Behn. It hasn’t always been the case, but now universities encourage you to understand the context in which those texts were written, so that you understand a bit of the history. So, even though I didn’t study history at university level, the early modern department at my university were amazing in terms of teaching me the basics of that period. I wasn’t starting at zero when I started researching The Tower, but I did have a lot to learn, certainly.
You were a journalist before writing this novel. What was your transition like from a journalistic to a creative writing career?
I became a novelist in an unconventional way because I had this huge love of writing and of history, but I saw journalism as the only realistic way of being able to write and have a career. Long story short, I don’t think my writing style was suited to journalism, but when I started researching for The Tower, I found that a lot of the training that I had done during my investigative journalism MA, like really in-depth research, trawling through newspaper archives, and exhausting all avenues to find out one tiny little nugget of information, was really useful when it came to researching the book.
Do you prefer creative writing to journalistic writing?
Oh, 100%! Even when I was doing journalism, I was still writing short stories and entering competitions and things. I never fully gave it up, and I’m so glad I didn’t because it was through being highly commended for the Harper’s Bazaar short story contest that I found my agent. She actually read my story in the magazine.
Which writers inspire you stylistically?
My reading taste is quite broad. Writers I really admire are Elizabeth Strout, Pat Barker, and Colm Toibin. I’m a huge fan of Toibin’s The Testament of Mary which I think is hugely underrated. I also loved Maggie O Farrel’s Hamnet.
Any plans for what you’re doing next?
Nothing concrete yet, but definitely historical fiction again and definitely women’s stories. For a long time, women’s stories and LGBTQ stories have been overlooked or forgotten in the history books and I think fiction is an amazing tool in terms of imagining those stories.
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