For your first two points, I completely agree. It's the same principle that makes the author of that awful new book on women in the Revolution (Lucy Moore, I think her name is) spend 150 pages (I approximate, since I don't have the book with me) excoriating Mme Roland, only to turn her into some kind of sainted martyr the second she's imprisoned.
Mantel's portrayal is rather the apex of these narratives. Indeed.
No wonder she claimed to go into the novel loving Camille and to come out loving Robespierre. Ironically, in a completely different set of circumstances, the same thing could have happened from a political standpoint. After all, their ideas were pretty similar for most of their careers. In Mantel's case, on the other hand, it seems like she's basing her love of the real historical figures on her own constructions of their personalities, which, in PoGS, share an extreme vulnerability not, so far as I know, attested historically. I can't help but find it a rather bizarre.
I phrased that badly. I meant to express how with in the novel political events are rarely represented as having political causes. Take what is probably the most significant political event in the novel (though certainly not in the Revolution), the arrest, trial, and execution of the Dantonistes. Politics is completely sucked out of it. It's all about the personal relationships between Robespierre and Danton, Robespierre and Camille, Camille and Danton, Camille and Saint-Just, Robespierre and Saint-Just, Robespierre and the Duplays, the Duplays and the Dantonistes, etc.
As to Mantel's real-life politics, you're probably right, though I know little enough about British politics, so I couldn't say for sure.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-02-16 10:17 pm (UTC)Mantel's portrayal is rather the apex of these narratives.
Indeed.
No wonder she claimed to go into the novel loving Camille and to come out loving Robespierre.
Ironically, in a completely different set of circumstances, the same thing could have happened from a political standpoint. After all, their ideas were pretty similar for most of their careers. In Mantel's case, on the other hand, it seems like she's basing her love of the real historical figures on her own constructions of their personalities, which, in PoGS, share an extreme vulnerability not, so far as I know, attested historically. I can't help but find it a rather bizarre.
I phrased that badly. I meant to express how with in the novel political events are rarely represented as having political causes. Take what is probably the most significant political event in the novel (though certainly not in the Revolution), the arrest, trial, and execution of the Dantonistes. Politics is completely sucked out of it. It's all about the personal relationships between Robespierre and Danton, Robespierre and Camille, Camille and Danton, Camille and Saint-Just, Robespierre and Saint-Just, Robespierre and the Duplays, the Duplays and the Dantonistes, etc.
As to Mantel's real-life politics, you're probably right, though I know little enough about British politics, so I couldn't say for sure.