The Marriage Portrait (2023)

Why this one?

I’m currently dipping into some tempting titles from the 2023 Women’s Prize Longlist. This one was a fairly inevitable one, given that it seems to be getting love from all corners, and there’s of course the interesting question of whether O’Farrell could become the first two-time winner of the Women’s Prize, following the success of Hamnet in 2020. As an introductory note: unlike most people in the reading world, I have not yet read Hamnet, though it’s obviously upcoming on my Women’s Prize winners readthrough…

Maggie O'Farrell (1972- ; active 2000- ) was born in Coleraine in County Derry/Londonderry in Northern Ireland, but grew up in Wales and Scotland. She studied English Literature at the University of Cambridge, before working as a journalist, including a stint as deputy literary editor of The Independent. She lives in Edinburgh with her husband, the English novelist William Sutcliffe, with whom she has three children.

Her nine novels to date have been widely acclaimed and awarded, from her first novel After You'd Gone (2000) which took the Betty Trask Award for young debut novelists, through the Costa-winning The Hand That First Held Mine (2010), Instructions for a Heatwave (2014), which was shortlisted for the Costa, right up to her most recent novel Hamnet which won the National Book Critics Circle award in addition to the aforementioned Women's Prize. She has also written two children's books, published a memoir (I Am, I Am, I Am) in 2017, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2021

Thoughts, etc.

The Marriage Portrait is a heavily fictionalised version of the short life of Lucrezia de' Medici, a sixteenth century member of the renowned aristocratic House of Medici in Italy. As the novel's introductory note explains, she was betrothed to Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara at very young age, and died fairly soon after their marriage, with persistant (though unproven) rumours alleging that she was poisoned. O'Farrell's interest in the subject was spurred on by seeing a surviving portrait of Lucrezia, attributed to Bronzino, and Robert Browning's poem My Last Duchess, which covers the same subject matter.

We read much of the novel in full knowledge of her apparent fate, meaning there is a certain fatalistic mood hanging over the whole thing. This is smartly dealt with by O'Farrell, who builds an addictive narrative from this seeming foregone conclusion by taking us back and forth in time, between her final days, her youth and major events in between.

Her youth is memorably rendered: the red-headed black sheep and youngest daughter of the otherwise austere Medici family, she is raised in her early years by the house's serving staff, develops a fascination for the exotic animals her father keeps in the basement of their palace, and is identified as having a prodigious talent for the creative arts.

Other flashbacks give tantalising hints that her arranged marriage may not be the disaster we assume it will be, with her early encounters with Alfonso, and particularly the quirky painting he gives as a proposal gift, suggesting that real affinity may exist between the two. This, however, is shattered in the months following their marriage as the Duke makes it abundantly clear that his priority for her is solely for her to bear him a male heir, and that her opinions on any other matters are most definitely not welcome. At the same time, a culture of violence and brutality around the Ferrara palace unnerves Lucrezia, and she is denied both her connection to nature and creativity and ultimately her freedom as Alfonso and his entourage conspire to try to encourage her fertility. When it becomes clear that she is unlikely to produce the desire heir, her fate is seemingly sealed and the portrait Alfonso has commissioned of her takes on a doom-laden sense of finality.

At a really basic level, The Marriage Portrait is a cracking read. It's brilliantly structured, and really difficult to put down as a result. The childhood section in particular is redolent of the best of classic (Victorian-esque) fiction and is at once familiar in its depection of the wayward child of a grand family and also still seductive in its minor departures from convention.

Its central character is easy to root for and sympathise with as she is subjected to the grim reality of her role in the Ferrera world. It reflects realities of arranged marriage (and indeed other kinds of forced relationships) that are depressingly still relevant in far too much of our modern world, despite its historical setting, and her inner monologue will be sadly all too relatable for many women. The characters in the Ferrara world are universally monstrous, whatever their initial appearances, and the locations are evocative, largely in their dark and oppressive depictions.

There's a surprise ending which provides some catharsis, but is also perhaps a little too much of a credibility-stretcher and left me slightly unsure of my overall thoughts on the book. I suppose it's a twist that unlines what's somewhat obvious throughout the novel but O'Farrell's realistic world-building has blinded you to a little: this is a fantasy. Faced with ambiguous history and a subsequent history of storytelling that has thusfar given Lucrezia an unambiguously doom-filled ending, why not humour a fantasy of what could have been, however improbable?

Score

9

I just found this a really enjoyable read, rendering fairy grim historical subject matter engaging through superbly crafted storytelling. Is it prizewinner material? I’m not entirely sure, but it would be hard to argue with its inclusion on any shortlist.

Next up

Sheena Patel’s I’m a Fan, another longlist entry that seems to have been attracting a lot of attention.