Rewritings and Unwriting: A Conversation with JR Thorpe
Photo Credit: Tristan Hutchinson
“The logic of the story appears to be that the queen's absence contributes to a general dangerous dynamic between father and daughters, but I began to wonder if perhaps she had a more active role – and off the idea went, galloping and developing legs of its own.”
What drew you to Lear’s wife and where did the motivation to write her story come from?
It began as a tiny little thought scratching at the back of my mind: where was this woman? Where had she gone? I have a deep love of rewritings and unwritings and general investigations of hidden viewpoints, so her absence in the play moved from an empty space into a possibility quite quickly.
What experience did you have with King Lear before you began writing, and when did you begin to take stock of the absence of the queen?
Like many people, I studied King Lear at school, in a fascinating unit that showed us the many ways in which the play could be staged: as a family drama, a broadside against royalty, a sympathetic portrait of madness, a kind of chess game, and so on. I also saw Ian McKellen as King Lear after waiting outside the RSC in Stratford-Upon-Avon for tickets at five in the morning – so it has always been a play I adored.
The absence of the queen, funnily enough, lodged in my mind as a teenager thanks to a throwaway line in an Agatha Christie story, in which a young woman with terrible parents muses on why Regan and Goneril are ‘like that’, and how they might have become that way. We first meet them as full-grown adults, but they’re women with histories. Once I began to look into the play’s major source, the History of Geoffrey of Monmouth, I realised that the queen had vanished there, too. The logic of the story appears to be that the queen's absence contributes to a general dangerous dynamic between father and daughters, but I began to wonder if perhaps she had a more active role – and off the idea went, galloping and developing legs of its own.
I’ve always seen the literary canon as a series of choices privileging various viewpoints, with interesting gaps and holes, so the fact that the queen wasn’t visible – except for a W.S. Merwin poem in which he essentially gives her an ‘I told you so’ role – didn’t strike me as unusual. But it did seem like a beautiful opportunity.
At what point did you begin to develop the character of the queen and how did you get to the final representation?
Her final form in adulthood – selfish, power-hungry, tender, blind to her own role in her family, devoted to being in control – was very clear immediately – I had a reference photo of an older Joan Crawford with a spectacular imperious expression on her face, which always anchored me in the character. It was her younger self that required development: how did she become the person we meet in the abbey? I pulled events from the lives of various medieval queens, like multiple previous marriages, highly pious king husbands, and desperate attempts to produce sons, and created a structure that would make psychological sense.
You seem to fully inhabit the queen’s voice in the novel and adopt it so authentically, but how easily did this voice come to you?
Frankly, the fact that the queen is so self-obsessed and has such an intensely strong character was a help, there. She knew exactly what she wanted, which was why it was so hard, in a way, to write her gradually devolving into confusion.
In the novel, we see Lear's wife as a vastly complex character, full of contradictions – how important was it to develop a three-dimensional character?
Powerful women are so often written to be one-dimensional, and it was very important to me to make it clear that the queen possessed hugely attractive qualities as well as horribly destructive ones. Her love for Lear and her children in particular is very real and connects the reader much more intensely to her than if she were simply playing a political game. It’s the same with the other women in the abbey and her servant, Ruth. She bonds with them while being unable to see how far her will wreaks havoc on their lives. Relationships can be full of love and devotion, but still produce terrible dynamics; it’s one of the more intricate parts of human life and is very hard to depict accurately.
How important was it to write this female character into literary history? What were the challenges and opportunities in doing so?
I think the idea of Lear’s wife has been left alone for so long because she’s not seen as terribly relevant. The play is built around the concept of a selfish king with very little to restrain him; Kent, his only truth-telling friend, is banished, and the only child who says No is sent away too. So, there was the challenge that I was creating something that wasn’t completely necessary – that the play as it is functions perfectly well without her. And it does, but what an interesting thing to think about: that she’s been written out deliberately for her own sins, rather than disposed of as a literary encumbrance.
Goneril and Regan are two very prominent women from Shakespeare, and in Learwife we get a sense of their backstory – was this a particularly compelling aspect of the novel for you?
By the time Goneril and Regan appear in Learwife they’re married adults who’ve had to deal with Lear for an incredibly long time – and, notably, with no children of their own. Their childhood, and the ways in which it was shaped and distorted by the brutal and competitive relationship of their parents, was in a way the anchor of the queen’s past. She can’t see how her actions contributed to their adult forms, but the audience certainly can.
As mother-daughter relationships are central to social and cultural history, how intriguing was it to fashion such complex relationships?
It was very good fun, particularly the need to make sure that Regan and Goneril had distinct personalities and journeys. Every mother-daughter connection is different, and it’s clear from the play that neither of the sisters is a shrinking violet; each plays their own game, but in their own way. How did they learn this from their mother? What united and separated them as they grew up? And why was Cordelia different? That’s what I set out to discover.
Was it as important to draw on the similarities and parallels between Learwife and King Lear as it was to develop the differences between the two texts?
Learwife is very much about the seeds of King Lear, about where many of the things we see in the play originated, which is why it was important to make sure they echoed properly. Tracing various lines, ideas, and thoughts back to the queen was crucial to show how important she had been in the shaping of Lear’s life and those of his daughters.
The book is set in a nunnery, in a very female-centric world – how important was this setting in terms of exploring female power, dynamics and identity?
Nunneries in the medieval period were little courts of their own, and it’s also where a lot of powerful women were sent when they were exiled or seen to have outlived their usefulness – or where they went to hide. The idea of an enclosed all-female space in which the queen could wreak havoc and play out her own ideas of competition for love, was fundamental to the book. It’s one thing to try and dominate a patriarchal court; it’s another to have free rein among other women and move to be queen.
The novel explores female power, positive and negative, as well as both the presence and absence of it: how was this experience as a woman writing in the twenty-first century?
I was in the early stages of writing the book as Hillary Clinton held her campaign to be President of the US, and the viciousness with which people responded to the mildest things – her tone of voice, her pantsuits, her hair – kept chiming as an interesting parallel. The idea of a woman wanting power and working towards it actively without any pretense is still a very challenging thing. In a way, it was very freeing to inhabit a character who nakedly wants power in every circumstance and is completely open about how much she deserves it, even if her reasoning and methods can be difficult to love. She has absolutely no doubts.
In this edition of NB, we’re exploring family, and here we have perhaps one of the most troubled families of all. What were the key aspects of Lear’s family that interested you most?
The first scene in King Lear is likely not the first time the daughters have been asked to compete to declare their overwhelming love for their father. Growing up in that environment, and acquiescing to its requirements to survive, was an extraordinary thing to think about. All families have their own strange angles and narratives, but the force of familial corruption in King Lear is infamous, and really roots the monstrosity of individuals in their relationships. Who taught Lear that this was a good way to treat daughters? Who taught the daughters how to manipulate him? The queen’s character rears her head to understand the situation, at least in part. Competing, even as an adult, to achieve the love of a parent is a deeply universal experience, even without interjections from a Fool or random French princes.
Could you share a little of your journey to being an author?
I wrote a first novel as part of my PhD which was deeply experimental and weird, and still sits in a cupboard looking charmingly demented. It was rejected kindly by a bunch of agents who doubtless wondered if I was possessed. After that, I began drafting Learwife in my spare time, on evenings, weekends and in snatched afternoons. I had no agent, no contract, nothing but a good idea and bloody-minded stubbornness. Eventually, after five years of writing, editing, sending to trusted writer friends, and editing more, my brilliant composer friend Toby Young, who works with me on musical projects, told me to enter it into the Curtis Brown First Novel Prize in 2019. It made the longlist, which kick-started the agent-finding process (thanks, Toby!) Claire Conrad at Janklow & Nesbit, who is stupendous beyond words, took it on and promptly sold it to Canongate, much to my utter delight. I feel oddly as if I’m walking in some kind of halo of luck, even though I’m bringing it out in a pandemic.
And finally, are there any other female characters written out of literature or on the edges that you would like to know more about?
We’re in a beautiful moment of literary rediscovery at the moment, as people like Madeline Miller and Pat Barker re-orient classical stories to unearth lost voices. I wrote an opera of Beowulf a little while ago in which the monstrous Grendel’s mother is given a lovely aria – I think she’s overdue some time in the spotlight, to be honest.
Interview featured in Family Issue
