100 Books, #14: Catherine, Called Birdy
Jan. 13th, 2013 12:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerHere is one obvious effect that reading Karen Cushman's Catherine, Called Birdy had on me: ever since I read this book when I was elevenish - actually, let me qualify this; ever since I read this book, and spend the rest of the week doing nothing but rereading my favorite bits over and over - I automatically assume that all heroines named Catherine are amazing.
Catherine is the daughter of a small-time medieval knight. At the urging of her brother Edward the monk, she keeps a diary, in which she records the doings of the manor and the progress of her quest to find the perfect swear phrase. She finally settles on God’s thumbs, which she cries whenever she is vexed, and Catherine is vexed a lot.
Aside from writing, Catherine’s hobbies include painting pictures on the walls of her bed chamber, keeping lots and lots of birds, tossing her embroidery down the privy (it was the nineties, all self-respecting heroines had to hate needlework), and fending off unwanted suitors. Catherine’s schemes are a hoot - and usually successful, to boot.
But there’s more to her than feistiness: she’s also intensely curious, in a way that makes her a good guide to her world. There’s depth and strangeness to the medieval world of the book, a sense that its mental geography is different than our own: each day is consecrated to a saint, the Crusades are simultaneously a current event and an almost mythological undertaking, and Catherine’s crusader uncle brings her a orange from the Orient, which Catherine treasures, long-withered and inedible as it is.
That sense of strangeness grows greater as the book goes on, as Catherine learns more about her world. But the story remains perfectly accessible, growing even more engrossing as Catherine gets stuck with a suitor she just can’t shake.
Children’s authors especially seem to find the idea of using history to teach a moral lesson, generally of the “People were bad in the past! Things are better today!” variety. The arranged marriage plotline in Catherine, Called Birdy would lend itself to such a treatment, and certainly it could be interpreted that way: Catherine’s increasingly desperate struggles to escape an impending marriage she doesn’t want imply a critique of medieval society.
But the important word here is imply. The narrative never hits us over the head and screams “LOOK HOW BAD THIS IS, KIDS” (I read a lot of historical fiction as a child. I may still be a little bitter about the more heavy-handed variety...). It shows us Catherine’s troubles, and trusts readers to follow their own sympathies.
An eminently satisfying book: perfect for sitting by the fire with a mug of hot cocoa on a winter’s day. Or sitting on a breezy veranda on a summer day. Sitting, in any case, long enough to finish the book in one go: because once you start, you won't want to put it down.
Catherine is the daughter of a small-time medieval knight. At the urging of her brother Edward the monk, she keeps a diary, in which she records the doings of the manor and the progress of her quest to find the perfect swear phrase. She finally settles on God’s thumbs, which she cries whenever she is vexed, and Catherine is vexed a lot.
Aside from writing, Catherine’s hobbies include painting pictures on the walls of her bed chamber, keeping lots and lots of birds, tossing her embroidery down the privy (it was the nineties, all self-respecting heroines had to hate needlework), and fending off unwanted suitors. Catherine’s schemes are a hoot - and usually successful, to boot.
But there’s more to her than feistiness: she’s also intensely curious, in a way that makes her a good guide to her world. There’s depth and strangeness to the medieval world of the book, a sense that its mental geography is different than our own: each day is consecrated to a saint, the Crusades are simultaneously a current event and an almost mythological undertaking, and Catherine’s crusader uncle brings her a orange from the Orient, which Catherine treasures, long-withered and inedible as it is.
That sense of strangeness grows greater as the book goes on, as Catherine learns more about her world. But the story remains perfectly accessible, growing even more engrossing as Catherine gets stuck with a suitor she just can’t shake.
Children’s authors especially seem to find the idea of using history to teach a moral lesson, generally of the “People were bad in the past! Things are better today!” variety. The arranged marriage plotline in Catherine, Called Birdy would lend itself to such a treatment, and certainly it could be interpreted that way: Catherine’s increasingly desperate struggles to escape an impending marriage she doesn’t want imply a critique of medieval society.
But the important word here is imply. The narrative never hits us over the head and screams “LOOK HOW BAD THIS IS, KIDS” (I read a lot of historical fiction as a child. I may still be a little bitter about the more heavy-handed variety...). It shows us Catherine’s troubles, and trusts readers to follow their own sympathies.
An eminently satisfying book: perfect for sitting by the fire with a mug of hot cocoa on a winter’s day. Or sitting on a breezy veranda on a summer day. Sitting, in any case, long enough to finish the book in one go: because once you start, you won't want to put it down.
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no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 06:55 am (UTC)There’s depth and strangeness to the medieval world of the book, a sense that its mental geography is different than our own
Yesssss, this is what I love about Cushman, although I feel like all her other heroines (at least in the books I read) were pale imitations of Catherine.
(I also liked the ending of the arranged marriage plot--yeah, in some ways I guess you could say it's a cop-out, but in other ways I felt like it did well at showing how even rebellious Catherine's mindset isn't quite the same as that of modern western kids who haven't been raised with arranged marriages as a commonplace thing.)
I am kind of tempted to ask for CCB fic for Yuletide next year, if I can remember to do so....
no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 02:50 pm (UTC)I thought the arranged marriage plot worked out well: it's such a relief that she doesn't have to marry Shaggy Beard that having her arranged to marry someone else (someone who sends her brooches with birds on them!) becomes acceptable to the reader, when maybe it wouldn't be otherwise.
And of course it's never arranged marriage per se that Catherine objected to: it's arranged marriage to these unacceptable suitors.
What kind of CCB fic would you ask for?
no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 04:54 pm (UTC)I think I'd probably ask...well, more. Especially if it's a glimpse into her life down the line a little, because I love seeing how characters evolve and change. It might be hilarious to see how new nonawful!fiance reacts to her, or her being the most awesome mother ever (for a given value of awesome, haha--I bet her children are amaaaaazing).
no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 12:28 pm (UTC)The parts I remember best now--weirdly, perhaps--were how horrified I was by the ordeal of her mother having her baby (they baptised the top of the kid's head in case it didn't survive being born! I didn't know how to deal with that) and hoping that the ending turned out as well as Catherine hoped it would, with the new younger suitor with better teeth. Also the lists of things for the dowries.
But yeah, even though I was horrified by the childbearing bit, I never came away going, "OH MY GOD EVERYTHING WAS SO BAD." I related to Catherine and her world easily, and never got a sense that I was being told how to feel (OH MY GOD AREN'T YOU GLAD YOU LIVE IN THE 90's) or being instilled with a value judgment about her time. Good book. I should get a copy for my sister.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 02:53 pm (UTC)(I would have just let the poor bear waste away and die rather than accept the dowry and thus the suitor. This is why I am not the heroine of a children's novel and Catherine is.)
no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-23 04:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-23 05:05 am (UTC)Alternative story idea: Stephen gets called away, and Catherine has to defend the castle against a neighboring lord. You just know she would be an amazing castle defender. It could be an epistolary fic, so there would be both Catherine-defends-the-castle adventures and Cathering and Stephen relationship goodness.