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What led you to set a novel in 18th century England?
I always loved the satire and bawdiness of that period and in fact it became
my major in graduate school. I was fascinated by the contrasts of
Enlightenment England—lofty philosophy vs. abysmal poverty, democratic
ideals vs. the slave trade, the Rights of Man vs the oppression of women. It
seemed ripe for satire. In many ways , it predicted our own contradictory
world. The eighteenth century gave birth to American democracy. All the
hypocrisies of our time are foreshadowed in eighteenth century England. By
writing about an eighteenth century wench, I could also write about women
today.
Why did you feel the need to imitate eighteenth century diction?
I loved the language of the eighteenth century and the language became part
of the story. W. H. Auden says that the poet has to woo not only her own muse
but "Dame Philology". When I did riffs about "Flip-Flaps, Lollipops,
Picklocks, and Love-Darts," I was bewitched by the sound of the eighteenth
century words. I wanted this novel to be fun, and the language is a great
part of the fun.
In many ways the slaving voyage in Fanny predicts some of the concerns of
African American fiction and nonfiction in the 80s and 90s. Were you aware
of that?
The love story in Fanny is a triangle between a woman who rejects her
subservient role, a Black man born to slavery who is trained as a Latin
scholar, and an aristocratic white man who identifies with the poor. Fanny,
Horatio, and Lancelot all reject the roles into which they were born. That's
one of the reasons they come together. I am always drawn to transgressive
heroes and heroines. All the most interesting people in this novel are
revolutionaries.
Some critics have noticed that you gave birth to a daughter in the middle
of writing this book. Does that account for the preoccupation with midwifery
and childbirth?
I immersed myself in research about childbirth in the eighteenth century to
make Fanny's accouchement realistic. There really was a notorious Dr.
Smellie in eighteenth century England and he really did dismember breach
babies with fearful instruments. Some of the facts about the history of
gynecology are more horrific than any satire could create. My pregnancy
brought that history home to me. I was well aware that if I were Fanny's
contemporary, I might not have survived childbirth. The baby would have been
imperiled too. Then there was the irony of giving birth to a red-headed baby
while impersonating a red-headed heroine. Books do impact lives in more
ways than you expect.
The witches in Fanny seem to be worshippers of ancient pagan rites.
They see the Deity as female, and they live in a woman-centered world. They
are clearly not Satan worshippers. What was your intention here?
I always assumed that pagan worship continued under the cloak of
Christianity, as it does even today. I imagined my witches as proto-feminists
who initiated Fanny into a sacred cult of female power. But I didn't want to
be boringly doctrinaire about this. I hope Joan and Isobel are also amusing.
They bicker like an old married couple. When the thugs appear, we assume
that most of the witches are murdered but Isabel makes a comeback later to
reveal that she is Fanny's birth mother. Her survival was important. She
passes her hard-won wisdom along to Fanny and Belinda. But she barely escapes
the fate of her sister witches. Of all the scenes I've ever written, the
slaughter of the witches was probably the most upsetting.
Why is the wet-nurse, Pru Feral, such an important character in the
book?
The whole plot turns on her kidnapping of Belinda. She kidnaps Belinda
because she disapproves of what today we would call Fanny's "lifestyle." She
represents all those puritanical people who think women must choose between
being mothers and being sexual. In the end, she is shown to be a fanatic like
Dr. Smellie. Fanny's survival, on the other hand, depends on her
flexibility. She can't afford fanaticism. Nor can we.
Supposedly the occasion for Fanny writing her autobiography is to tell
her daughter the truth about her life after she has been slandered by John
Cleland in Memoirs of a Women of Pleasure, or Fanny Hill. Could you
expand on that?
Rebellious and unconventional women have always been slandered ,and usually
the slander takes the form of being accused of whoredom. Where John Cleland
sees only a whore with a heart of gold, I see a complex woman with many
thwarted ambitions—to write, to lead revolutions, to nurture her family.
I'm really poking fun at the reductive way women's lives have often been
treated in the historical record.
Why have you alternated between writing historical novels and contemporary
novels?
I've grown fascinated with certain alternate worlds and wanted to set novels
in them in order to show the universality of the problems women face. The
crux of my concern has been to investigate the ways in which women fulfill
all the various parts of their natures in societies that are not very
hospitable to their needs.
There were important heroines in the eighteenth century novel, Pamela,
Clarissa, to name just two. Why did you feel you had to invent a new one?
Richardson's heroines are completely trapped in the confines that the
eighteenth century created for women. Pamela uses her sexuality as a snare
and Clarissa is done in by a rake. Neither one of them has a life beyond that
of sex object. Fanny may not always succeed but she certainly has the
ambition to be an explorer, adventurer, poet, philosopher. She inhabits a
wider universe, and while she doesn't always overcome the limitations of
women in the eighteenth century, at least she has high aspirations.
In some ways, Fanny seems very far from your own life. Is this an
illusion or is it true?
One of the fascinating things about setting a story in a different time is
that it forces you to look at what parts of your experience are universal,
and what part of your experiences are particular to the world in which you
grew up. This really stimulates a philosophical perspective. Here is Fanny,
trying to be a woman in a world that believes "the proper study of mankind
is man." It's the world that gave birth to our modern revolutions, yet it
oppresses the poor, the Black, the female. How can such a world be the font
of all our liberties? Setting a novel in eighteenth century England gave me
the opportunity to reflect on these paradoxes. Fanny holds a mirror up to
the hypocrisies of our own time.
Why is the eighteenth century important to the history of feminism?
Feminism really begins in the eighteenth century with Mary
Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. From then on,
feminism ebbs and flows, pushing forward in some periods and retrenching in
others. We are all heirs to these eighteenth century liberation movements,
and in many ways we are still fighting their battles.
Do you think Fanny has anything in common with your most famous
novel, Fear of Flying?
They're both novels about women with literary ambitions, women who are
survivors, women who use their humor as a survival tool. They're both
picaresque adventure stories. I've always believed that novelists have a
kind of ur-plot embedded in their unconscious minds. My ur-plot is clearly
picaresque. I also think that both Fanny and Isadora are fighting for the
right to be brains as well as bodies, to integrate their lives. This
integration still doesn't come easily for women.
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