Lauren Groff continues to make a name for herself as an author of unusual and engrossing fiction. This time she brings us a fast-paced tale of an unconventional nun in Medieval England, only a few years after the island emerged from the post-Norman period known as The Anarchy in the mid-twelfth century.
Marie is based on the mystical poet Marie de France. She is a bastard child, the product of the rape of her teenage mother by a high noble in the House of Plantagenet and is also rumored to have faeries or perhaps devils in her lineage. She accompanied her mother and aunt on the disastrous Second Crusade that never reached Jerusalem, and after her mother died of what sounds like breast cancer, the adolescent Marie ran the family’s estate on her own for a few years before the Crown discovered her deception. Huge, strong, rawboned and perceived as ugly and ambitious, and therefore not marriageable, Marie is packed off to a nunnery by no less than Eleanor of Aquitaine, to whom she is related by marriage.
She is sent not to any old abbey but to the most impoverished one in Angleterre, because of her experience illicitly running her own family estate; and not just as any old novice, but as the Abbess, at the tender (well, maybe not) age of 17. Filled with grief and rage and lust for her own sex, but without any sort of conventional faith in god or church, she pretty soon realizes she must indeed take over and whip the place into shape if she doesn’t want to starve or freeze to death or wither away from sickness of body or spirit. In short order she cows her timid elders, wins the affections of the younger or timid or free-spirited among the nuns, and within a few years the place is a going concern. Apiaries, flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, a brewery and winery, and much produce such as cold damp England can succor, all bring good health and prosperity. And power.
This has the makings of a conventional romance, and it is indeed a fantasy of female empowerment, but in Groff’s skilled hands it becomes much more. And more than one thing. That very fact is reflected by the title Matrix. It’s a term with multiple meanings, the main one in this context being the seal matrix, an engraved bit of metal used to stamp one’s sigil onto the seal of a document or envelope. A wonderful British website called Museum Crush has this explanation of seals and matrices:
Seals were a common part of everyday life of Medieval England. They were used by a variety of social classes to authenticate documents such as land agreements, business exchanges, official court documents or charters, which needed a proof of identity or a royal seal of approval. They could also simply be used to keep a document or letter sealed or closed.
Therefore owners of businesses, merchants, farmers, members of the clergy, government officials and kings all used seals, which they would imprint using their own unique seal matrix.
The word itself derives from the Latin mater, for mother, and of course Marie is what we’d now call the Mother Superior of her Abbey. But there are numerous other definitions of matrix, including:
- An environment or material in which something develops, a surrounding medium or structure;
- A mass of fine-grained rock in which gems, crystals, or fossils are embedded.
- A fine material used to bind together the coarser particles of a composite like gravel.
- And an organizational structure in which two or more lines of command, responsibility, or communication converse in one individual.
All of these can be metaphors for Marie and her Abbey. Marie has a matrix seal which she uses in her many communications with the outside world. She keeps in touch with Eleanor, who was her first and most lasting unrequited love, and she has her eyes and ears in villages, cities, estates and churches throughout England and France. And she writes down her own mystical visions, which become ever wilder as she ages, and her interpretations of them lead her to ever more radical beliefs and practices. Will her pride and hubris bring her down? How long will the patriarchies of church and state allow this estate full of women continue to grow in riches and power?
Matrix can be read as a fairly simple historical novel, albeit one with unique characters and situations. But like a matrix of crystaline structures or an intricately engraved seal pressed into hot wax, the closer you look at it, the more depth you see. Groff’s book deserved its place on the National Book Awards 2021 short list, and Matrix deserves a place on your reading list.
(Riverhead, 2021)
