11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Very British Menage a Trois, March 15, 2007
Before we dig into "The Wayward Muse," Elizabeth Hickey's novel about the artists William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and their model, Jane Burden, here's an anecdote about Mark Twain. Twain was a first-class cusser, as comfortable with an obscenity as he was with a joke. One day, his wife tried to cure him of the habit by feeding him his own medicine. After listening to her rattle off a string, he shook his head sadly and said, "Olivia, them's the words, but that ain't the music."
In a similar fashion, "The Wayward Muse" has the words, but the music is missing. The problem lies in the way the story is told: swift-flowing and over all too soon.
Jane Burden's beauty lifted her from life in an Oxford slum, to become an icon of the pre-Raphaelites and, eventually, Morris' wife. She wasn't conventionally pretty. Her nose was too long, her eyebrows heavy and her hair was massive, wavy and dark. But she was an arresting figure, and when Morris and Rossetti spotted her attending the theater, they asked her to model for them. She fell in love with Rossetti, but he was already attached. She married Morris, and continued modeling for Rossetti and other artists in the group. Later in life, after Rossetti's wife died, she became his mistress with Morris' acquiescence, even taking a lease on Kelmscott Manor in the country. When Morris spent the summer in Iceland researching Norse poetry, Rossetti moved in with the family. Their relationship continued off and on for years until Rossetti broke down from alcohol and drug abuse.
In little more than 280 pages, Hickey takes us from Jane's harrowing life in the slums to her final break with Rossetti, but only occasionally are there passages where the reader can feel something for Jane, mostly in the beginning when she's faced with a lifetime of poverty, babies and marriage to an unsuitable man, and at the end, during the summer at Kelmscott. The rest of the time, the book consists of a series of brisk, declarative sentences, strung like beads: bright but connected only by a thread.
"The Wayward Muse" is part history and part fiction, but there seems to be too few facts to please those who want to learn more about the pre-Raphaelites, and not enough fiction to flesh out a menage a trois that, in its oppressively practical arrangements, was very, very British.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Wayward novelist, May 19, 2007
Perhaps because the actual lives of the Pre-Raphaelites were so over the top, most attempts to create their lives in fiction have been failures. Nonetheless, having spent decades of my academic career teaching Victorian literature and art, I ordinarily welcome any attempt to give fictional life to Rossetti and his circle. I had thought that Nerina Shute's "A Victorian Love Story" was destined to be the nadir of these failures, but Hickey here out-nerinas Nerina. "The Wayward Muse" reads like the worst of romance novels. The situations Hickey sets up are ludicrous: Rossetti deflowers Jane high up on the scaffolding in the Oxford Union, in full sight of the other painters; Morris in bed doesn't know where to put "it" and pokes around for awhile before finding Jane's "most sensitive part"; George Eliot asks about Morris's table manners. I find no evidence that Hickey read the many, many, many available primary sources (not to mention such secondary sources as Violet Hunt and Hall Caine): they might have helped her better plot this silly novel. Hickey additionally messes with the facts. For instance, she screws up the exhumation of Lizzie's body. One of Hickey's basic problems is that she doesn't seem to know who her audience is. She drops surnames with neither first names nor identification. She hints at the founding of the Kelmscott Press and meanders around the highlands of Scotland with Ruskin and the Millais'. For better use of your time read "The French Lieutenant's Woman" or watch Ken Russell's "Dante's Inferno."
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
terrific historical biographical tale, April 28, 2007
Jane Burden knows she is ugly having heard that from her mother as well as family, friends, and neighbors. She is too tall, with a freakishly long neck, arms and legs that belong on someone even taller, which leads to clumsiness and dresses that just never fit right. Adding to her being considered the ugliest female in the Oxford slums is that at seventeen she has no breasts. She expects to wed physically abusive Tom Barnstable as her mother reminds her that he is the best she will ever have.
Everything abruptly changes when noted artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti sees Jane and thinks she is a rare beauty he must paint as his Guinevere in a mural. Her mother agrees to allow her to pose because of the fee Rossetti provides. Jane enjoys her short time each week with the painter and his colleagues. She soon realizes she loves Rosetti, but is heartbroken when he weds his ailing fiancée Lizzie. Jane accepts wealthy William Morris' proposal mostly because he as Rossetti's friend and protégé will enable her to remain near her true love. Over the next few years Jane gives birth to two children, but when Lizzie dies, Rossetti makes it clear how he feels about his Guinevere, which upsets her spouse William, who has always known he was a second choice.
The key to this terrific historical biographical tale is the ability of Elizabeth Hickey to bring to life four real people from the latter half of the nineteenth century. The story line is driven mostly by the heroine who thanks to the artist turns from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan considered the ideal of pre-Raphaelite beauty and the muse for her spouse and the artist. Fans of period pieces will enjoy this deep rich Victorian Era tale starring real persona.
Harriet Klausner
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