Customer Reviews

The Wayward Muse: A Novel

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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.

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."

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

After reading Elizabeth Hickey's novel "The Wayward Muse," I decided that I did not find that her main character Jane Burden Morris possessed many redeeming qualities other than the fact that she was born with an interesting face that artists in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood could not help but incorporate in their canvases intended to invoke the detail, colors, and compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.

As in Hickey's other fiction based on the lives of Emilie Floge and her famous artist companion Gustav Klimt, she is forced by history to implement an already etched-in-concrete timeline to guide her story. However authentic her historical facts, her characters' attempt to immerge as flesh and blood people at times fail to fully engage the reader.

Written in third person narrative with a focus on Jane Burden, the so-called "plainest girl on Holywell Street," "Muse" takes us to an Oxford and its environs of the mid-19th century where Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his friends, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones struggle to bring the art world back from the conventionalism of techniques standardized by Raphael and other Mannerists. Influenced by Romanticism, they look at freedom and responsibility as inseparable qualities with a particular emphasis on all things medieval. In particular, Rossetti paints and writes poetry about the personifications of ideal womanhood as depicted in the personages of the likes of Guinevere, Dante's Beatrice and mythology's Persephone. Upon laying eyes upon the dark and moody unconventional beauty of Jane Burden, he pursues the bewildered seventeen-year old until she agrees to model for him with the pressured consent of her mother intent on capitalizing on Jane's newfound ability to procure a better status through marriage to one of these artistic gentlemen. Hickey creates an admirable portrait of a young girl overwhelmed by the passionate administrations of the poetic Rossetti and her ensuing disappointment when her dreams regarding him do not come to fruition.

The reader becomes acutely aware that Jane's immature heart belongs to Rossetti from the get go and pragmatically understands why she considers and accepts the attentions of Topsy (Morris), Rossetti's less flamboyant associate. However, at this point in the novel, the characters of Rossetti, Morris, and Burden seem mere outlines rather than the passionately involved creatures these human beings most likely were. The emotional intensity expected is never fully realized in Hickey's manuscript. Instead, we read page after page, following the progression of documented events: Morris and Burden's marriage, Rossetti's marriage to the laudanum-addicted Elizabeth Siddel, the Morris' family life at Red House, his founding of a lucrative home décor firm, Rossetti's reemergence in Jane's life, their subsequent affair and the pain it brings to Morris. Jane endures it all like a deer in the headlights. What does she feel? When Rossetti turns to alcohol and chloral abuse, his addiction seems sudden and without real motivation. Jane's response borders on a wilted and tired ambivalence rather than a tortured and gut-wrenching anguish. Perhaps, Hickey's intent is to sweep Jane away on course that has no recourse. The poor girl simply gravitates towards Rossetti no matter the consequence or the repercussions with all the lifeless considerations of a zombie controlled by a Voodoo sorcerer. Even her Paris Hilton-esque fame, as reported by newspapers of the time, depicting her uncanny fashion and fad setting style comes off as unexciting and without thought. Wouldn't a girl from Oxford's slums be thrilled to be so noteworthy? Initial puzzlement would soon wax creative but Hickey's portrait wrings Burden so dry of emotion and color concentration, that the Pre-Raphaelites themselves would be saddened by her portrayal of their mysterious muse. Instead of bright, Hickey washes Jane with a coat of ignorance that immunizes her to any outside influence. The result for her audience? A ho hum reading experience.

Bottom Line? In "The Wayward Muse," Elizabeth Hickey tells the story of Pre-Raphaelite muse, Jane Burden Morris, with a lack of intensity that however true to a historical timeline hardly registers on a Richter scale measuring the emotions and passions of unconventional characters that deserve more depth. Hickey's depiction of William Morris certainly requires more detail; his curious relationship with his wife should be nuanced with more pain and desperation to better capture a discerning reader's attention. Recommended only if you love novels that conjure up a great artist's time, place and intention.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"

(Historical fiction)

The artiste world of 19th Century London is shown in lush colors, the brush strokes of Dante Gabriel Rosetti and his muse, a poor Oxford girl who is tall, willowy and plain according to her drunken mother. Rosetti discovers Jane Burden, and with the promise of payment, she becomes his model for a painting of Guinevere. His vision is that of Lancelot and the Holy Grail, the knights Galahad, Bors, and Percival receiving the precious Grail and Sir Lancelot in the Queen's chambers.

Rosetti becomes enamored of Burden and takes her virginity while on the scaffolding in the Debating Hall. He proclaims his love and Burden thinks she shall marry him, but he leaves Oxford the next day for London because his first love is ill with consumption. This leaves William Morris to finish the paintings in Oxford. Morris is overweight, but Burden's mother, a town gossip, finds out he is wealthy and receives an allowance from copper mines. Morris falls deeply in love with Burden, but her muse-like powers exert themselves over him poetically. He begs for her hand in marriage and her mother gives her an ultimatum, marry Morris or you will be kicked out of the house.

Still longing for her dark horse, Rosetti, she marries Morris hoping she will eventually love him. After two years they move to "Red House," a stunning brick home that Morris has built for his wife. Her life is full of artists of all persuasions: painters, tapestry makers, poets and others. Burden is the talk of London, designing her own clothes for her figure, and she often sits for Rosetti and his paintings. They begin an illicit affair that whispers its way through their circle of friends and those that find them interesting. But Burden is happiest in the company of Rosetti. As he falls into the throes of mental illness, Burden goes back to her husband, Morris, and takes care of her two children, maintaining a life-long friendship with Rosetti.

A must read for the voluptuousness of Hickey's writing and the casualties of love and desire.

Armchair Interviews says: A richly descriptive book of the life and times of the mid to late 1800s.

This is kind of a historical novel and it was fair. Was not familiar with the characters before reading the book so it probably wasn't as interesting to me as it could have been if I were more familiar with the background.

The characters were pretty well drawn and the plot was a little short to me but againt hat might have been my fault for not knowing more about the historical basis of the book.

Some undoubtedly will enjoy this short book.

J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"

Unlike perhaps every other reviewer here, I never heard of the pre-Raphaelites or any other characters in The Wayward Muse. I didn't even know the book was based on real life people/events until halfway into my reading of it. So unlike the others, my opinion is unbiased by any knowledge of the story from sources other than the book.

It's a good read. Granted there are, as others have mentioned, a few silly anecdotes thrown in (e.g. the deflowering on the ceiling), but overall not enough to ruin the story. Not having any foreknowledge of the characters and events didn't hamper my read except that initially I wasn't able to place the time period of the story. If, like me, you never heard of these people, you wouldn't know from the narrative that the story takes place in the latter half of the nineteenth century until several chapters in.

The Wayward Muse is better than a typical run of the mill pulp romace novel. And unlike that stuff, this book will introduce you, as it did me, to a very interesting factual story that I look forward to learning more about.

It is not "high" literature; it is not pulp. Trying to follow "The Painted Kiss" with something different, she succeeded in creating a brief escapist read.

Elizabeth Hickey's "The Wayward Muse" imagines the secret longings of Jane Burden, wife of British designer and socialist William Morris. As the novel begins, we're plunged into the squalid poverty of Jane's rough home life, where she's regularly starved for lack of food (it goes to her father and brother, who spend all day drinking) and hit by her mother. One day Jane and her sister Bessie happen upon a mysterious, well-dressed gentleman who turns out to be Dante Gabriel Rossetti, preeminent Pre-Raphaelite. Rossetti is intrigued by Jane's long neck and unusual looks, and begs her to model for him. Despite her mother's initial suspicions, Jane models for him and has a brief, passionate affair with Rossetti before he leaves.

Rossetti's friend William Morris is struggling to find his artistic niche; he lacks a painter's eye, but he's quite good at coming up with designs for wallpaper, furniture, and tapestries. He's plodding and dull, but he offers Jane the chance to escape her wretched poverty and to live the life of a lady (his family made their fortune in mining). Jane is torn between her fierce sexual attraction to Rossetti and William's (dull) promise of stability, but she must think of her future. As an added insult, William's mother insists that Jane attend finishing school to teach her how to run a household and the manners that a high-born lady needs to function in society.

Jane becomes a dutiful wife and mother even as William becomes increasingly distant and absorbed in his work. Luckily for Jane, his bedroom visits are mercifully few and far between (if anything, Morris's character is frankly asexual). However, Rossetti continues to haunt her, insisting on continuing to paint Jane even as the two start up a not-so-secret affair. The remainder of the novel traces the falling-out from their affair and Rossetti's increasing dependence on chloral, alcohol, and his bizarre behavior.

Hickey paints a bleak portrait of 19th-century Oxford slums that magically takes on the softness of the English countryside as Jane is given a second chance. Richly textured with medieval legends of King Arthur and his court, the various tapestries, wallpapers, and patterns truly come alive, as do Jane's marvelously daring outfits that she creates herself. Some reviewers who are intimately familiar with art history and Victorian England complain about the artistic liberties taken with dates and fact, but as a casual reader, I found this to be poetic and touching. Jane is a spirited narrator who's torn between her duty and newfound station, and her heart's true passion; a woman forced to make an impossible choice for a life of passionless stability over one with a penniless, exotic artist with the soul of a poet. Her inner struggle to reconcile her own passions with her unending weariness at caring for a large home and several children will instantly resonate with today's overworked working mothers. It's a magical read that fans of historical art fiction will surely enjoy.

I really enjoyed this book - I felt it was particularly haunting at the end when I realized it was based on a true story (afraid I never took art appreciation). To me the story was appealing partly due to the "Ugly Duckling" beauty is in the eye of the beholder theme but tragic at the end in a sort of Gone with the Wind way too. I felt that the story was believable and interesting at the same time. I noticed that the cover art didn't match the content but just goes to show you once again that you can't judge a book by its cover.