On Hilary Mantel's novel An experiment in love: an argument

On Hilary Mantel’s Novel An Experiment in Love*. An Argument

Olga Spachil

Kuban State University and Karen Hewitt

Oxford University

• Part 1    by Olga Spachil

As a reader I am really spoiled. British literature for me has always been an epitome of good taste and whenever I was asked I would always readily say that it was one of my favorite. I absolutely love - Evelyn Waugh, Graham Green, C.S. Lewis,

J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton. It is easy to see that I embrace the authors who know where they are taking their readers and as a reader I trust them and learn from them. After getting acquainted with the collection generously given to English Language Department of Kuban State University by the Oxford - Russia Fund I will give the matter a more careful consideration before I say I like present day English authors.

I was attracted by Hillary Mantel’s red cover and the title “An Experiment in Love” (London: Fourth Estate, 2010) and encouraged my students to read it. The narrator of the story is an angry frustrated girl who becomes more and more bitter as she grows up. Why on earth is everyone in the book so angry? Following Carmel through her life experiences I was appalled by what she had to go through and I could very easily see that it was her choice. She purposefully chose to be ugly about anything and everything she came across with. Difficult to imagine a four-year-old who would be packed with anger and hatred to the brim:

‘Normally if anybody hits me I hit back. I poke their eyes out. I am four and I am famous as a good fighter. Kick them in the kidneys, Grandad says, they’ll not take much of that. I know kidneys: I have seen them on a plate’ [Mantel 2010: 33-357].

As the protagonist grows the world of her dreams becomes even more disgusting:

“I imagined myself leaning forward - as in primary school days - and taking hold of a handful of the woman’s denatured hair; then leaning back, firm and leisurely, until a part of her scalp was in my hand and her desk was awash and her notes were bobbing in a sea of blood. The wine-dark sea” [79].

Of course menstrual cramps are not fun, but they are neither Dante’s hell! Everything in the following passage is too much, blown out of any reasonable proportion:

‘I felt as if a big bird - one of the ravens, perhaps, from the Tower of London - has got its claws in my lower back and was rending it apart, prizing flesh from spine. Later the pain moved and I felt as if the dissection were being performed more urgently, surgically; I thought of the skinned corpses of animals hanging in butcher’s shops, neatly split down the mid-line. <...> So here it is. The women’s realm’ [140].

There is certainly an unhealthy obsession with sexual intercourse. Carmel definitely hates virginity - why? I could not figure it out.

T punched holes in paper, and stacked another file, White sheets, virgins. The punched-out dots... [38]. “As a career move I should have lost my burdensome virginity at thirteen or fourteen... ’ [145]

The way the characters talk to each other is very rude - is this the way anyone would talk to each other in Great Britain?

All the literary allusions make everything sound even worse. So, all these young ladies know the names of Marx and Leonard Cohen and Hermann Hesse, poetry of T.S. Eliot, the characters have read (or at least heard) about Jane Eyre and Juliet - be like Juliet and madly play with our forefather’s joints [38]. Why should a skull be the dead centre [38] of the room where young students reside? So all these wonderful books have not taught them anything. Why then bother and read them, right?

The message of the book is clear - it was the Catholic church and its teaching which ruined Carmel’s life in addition to problems in British economy. Immature people always find someone to blame. It is OK to share your frustrations in a journal and have your psychiatrist read it but why publish it... I would think twice.

Very much like Karina who would pass comment on and spoil [11]. Hilary Mantel has created a character who spoils and defiles everything she touches, thinks or talks about - be it food or relationships. I have never read anything which would be so physically averting. The writer certainly has a gift but there were people in Hitler’s concentration camps who came up with beautiful lampshades made out of people’s skin. Would you want to keep one in your home? I would not.

The book jacket has a quote from Sunday Times:

‘.. .this is a book to be treasured, for the sheer quality of its writing... ’

- tastes certainly differ, but if one treasures a narration like that he or she should be ready for the bloody tragedy which crowns the story.

It is very obvious where Mantel's characters are heading - the sexless (neither male nor female, but some kind of third gender, unisex - see, the newspeak word is already here!), loveless totalitarian dystopian 'heaven' so well described by Evgeniy Zamiatin (We) and George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm). And the best way to take people there is to teach them self-censorship and self-hatred. You would not even need to introduce thought police - or any other form of outside control.

There are only so many books one is able to read over the lifetime and I am for the high moral quality of what we use in the classroom. If my students choose to read Mantel in their free time - that is up to them, but I am not going to recommend it for their pleasure reading. I hear your objections - that in Russia we read books from the dusty archives. I think that it is a shame that what should have been cherished as treasure is covered with dust! The mere fact that An Experiment in Love was first published in 1995 is not an argument to be taken into consideration. Some books reveal the symptoms and the printing date does not automatically make them a thing of art - literature in this particular case.

• Part 2    by Karen Hewitt

If you or I began to read An Experiment In Love, what would we first notice?

Perhaps, that this is a story told in the first-person by a narrator who is a distinctive and troubled person. On the first page she discusses the puzzling torments of those who refuse to eat; on the second page she defines the year when she went to university as the year after Chappaquiddick, that scandal of a would-be Presidential candidate allowing someone to drown. [If you don’t know this story, it is explained in the commentary to the novel. It is not a chance reference, for nothing in this short novel is chance.] We might notice that the startling sentence at the end of the first brief section is also about a kind of drowning - of a fish dragged on to dry land. A fish out of water.

We will probably get involved in the pages about Carmel’s arrival at the university hostel. She evokes all the feelings of being unsure of herself but anxious to make the right decisions that most girls starting university will feel, especially those who do not live at home. She is asked whether she wants to share a room with either of the two girls she was at school with; she chooses Julianne because she cannot imagine Julianne sharing with Karina.

We might ask, ‘Well, why is thatyoz/r problem?’ The next few pages suggest some answers. Carmel comes from a struggling family in a poor town. When she is six, at the local Catholic primary school, the boys seem to her to be ugly and shapeless, and the girls jeer at her colourful decorated dress. Karina, by contrast, wears a yellow fluffy cardigan and a complacent sunlike smile. This is the girl with whom she will share a difficult relationship for the next twelve years. The last pages of this first chapter show us a self-assured Julianne who is obviously (to a British reader) from a privileged background. Carmel tries to stiffen herself against the world. So, swiftly and economically, we are faced with a triangular problem: Carmel’s childhood with Karina and her anxieties about Julianne who is horrified by

Karina. Relationships among these three and, later, Lynette, are central to the book; Carmel’s choices, such as her gradual refusal to eat, are grounded in painful and complex emotions about friends.

Now for a few comments on Dr Spachil’s objections to the novel, exemplified by some excellent quotations.

Normally if anybody hits me I hit back. I poke their eyes out. I am Jour and I am famous as a good fighter. Kick them in the kidneys, Grandad says, they’ll not take much of that. I know kidneys: I have seen them on a plate"

This is not a declaration by a small child ‘packed with anger and hatred’. It is comic - look at the last phrase. Carmel knows that to survive in the tough playground you either avoid trouble, as most girls do, or you go out and fight, like knights and those of great spirit. But on this occasion we note that Carmel does not fight back. Even at four, she knows she has done something wrong. The small child’s picture of ‘killing Karina’s baby’ haunts the novel. Guilt and remorse are re-examined.

Since the main story is about a group of eighteen-year-old girls, sex is an ever-present preoccupation, but I don’t see why it is unhealthy. All sorts of views are discussed among the girls, as surely they should be. The new problem for them is not sex but pregnancy. They were the first generation to have reliable cheap contraception readily available and newly-legal abortion. That should have simplified relationships, but in fact it seems to add to their moral dilemmas. Read the arguments between Claire and Julia, Carmel and Lynette. How should love and sex and pregnancy and new life interact with each other? The plot revolves around an examination of precisely this question. At least the girls rise above the reductive and fashionably contemptuous views of the woman doctor who, in effect, tells Carmel that she is ‘too young to love a man, but old enough for screwing’ (p. 78-9). Yes, Carmel’s dreams do get vicious here, but I think many readers will understand her fury.

As for /A a career move I should have lost my burdensome virginity at thirteen or fourteen - out of context this may sound shocking; but in context, Carmel is reflecting on how as adolescents we confuse love, sexual desire and the desperate need for someone to love us. Her image of herself at sixteen in her first sexual experience is honest and touching.

The skull which worries Dr Spachil is part of the skeleton Julianne has acquired to help her with her anatomy studies. Not everyone wants a skull in their hostel room, but Goth enthusiasts, of whom there are many in Russia, would love to get their hands on one. Carmel and Julianne joke and fool around, although Mantel warns the careful reader that the skull is also a dark symbol. (Read pp. 55-59 - and re-read when you have finished the novel.)

I disagree with Dr Spachil that ‘the message of the book is clear’. Good literature does not usually give us a ‘clear message’ because it bears witness to the complexity of life. It is true that Carmel criticises the education provided by the Catholic church, though she refutes some myths about nuns. It is also true that she confronts real poverty when she is a student: in Russia as in Britain that has been a serious matter for many students. One of the reasons I love this book is that it is honest at so many levels. For example, how should we react to Carmel’s anorexia? Is she motivated by poverty? Or unhappiness about her boyfriend? Or difficulties with her parents? Or a reaction to Catholic teaching? All these influences contribute to her inability to eat, but bearing down on her are the daily pressures of specific relationships^-, with Karina, a friendship historically shaped by guilt and resentment; with Julianne who is mocking, witty, and coldly protective; and with Lynette whom Carmel loves for her beauty and generosity. Sorting out relationships among intelligent ambitious eighteen-year-olds is confusing enough. I do not see how it can give us a ‘clear message’.

Towards the end of the novel Carmel ruminates on ‘Who then, in law, is my neighbour?’ [169], a question that will resonate with every educated English reader as a reference to Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Claire and Carmel discuss two answers, one about limited responsibility, one about courage and kindness. This is not an idle conversation; it bears directly upon the plot and then, later, upon the beautiful meditative paragraphs that bring the story to a conclusion.

In a short novel it is impossible to do justice to the complexity and variety of life unless the writer has great gifts. Mantel is perhaps more gifted than any other contemporary English writer. From page 1 onwards, the words spring, surprising and precise, the images are astonishing (she opened her lips to speak, and shards of glass fell out - of the then Minister for Education, Mrs Thatcher), the short dialogues painfully comic or wittily disconcerting. (Quite casually Julianne quotes Juliet imagining the horror of the tomb where she would "madly play with my forefather’s joints' as a cure for boredom. It is comic - but then again, it is not comic at all. That is how literary references add to our understanding of fiction.)

You have to read this novel. I understand why some readers do not like it. It does not affirm or coincide with their beliefs and prejudices. It certainly does not coincide with mine! But we should not always read books for reassurance; literature asks more of us. The novel undoubtedly exudes anger as it takes us into difficult areas, but why is this so bad? Students who read should not be treated as children. Is there not much in life to be angry about? An Experiment in Love guides us through those areas with honesty, intelligence and compassion.

On Hilary Mantel’s Novel An Experiment in Love*.An Argument

There a discussion on the meaning and values of the novel, An Experiment in Love, by Hilary Mantel in two parts of the publication.