Lauren Groff brings readers back to the Middle Ages in her new novel, Matrix, a fiction loosely created around the life of the twelfth century nun and poet, Marie de France. In Groff’s novel, Marie is an 17 year old orphan, deemed unfit for marriage because she is a “great clumsy lunk” with a “giant bony body”. She is banished from Eleanor of Aquitaine’s court and exiled to a convent in the English countryside to live out the rest of her days. When Marie arrives at the convent, it’s in desolate condition, populated by a few starving women who are unable to protect themselves from famine or harsh English winters. Marie laments her exile and composes a series of poems to Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom Groff imagines to be Marie’s unrequited love. These poems are the only surviving testament of the real Marie de France, around which Groff builds her tale of a lovelorn poet who becomes animated with ambition, growing into a capable and savvy prioress devoted to building a thriving feminist utopia around herself and her sisters.
When Marie arrives at the convent she is not particularly spiritual, and resents her newfound captivity with these pious women who are dedicated to a life of subservience and submission. But she quickly realizes that Eleanor has given her an opportunity, a community full of capable and talented women who are able to be fully self-sufficient. Marie soon revolutionizes the convent, creating a scriptorium where the sisters can be paid to copy texts (at a fraction of the going rate), she begins collecting rent from tenants of the land who had been living for free, and she plants viable crops, all of which turn the convent into the bustling economic center of the community. The membership grows, and soon the convent is full of healthy young women with a myriad of abilities, who look to Marie to guide them. Then one day, Marie has a vision of the Virgin Mary, who instructs her to build a labyrinth around the convent, to make it inaccessible to those who would do it harm, i.e. men. While some of the sister’s begin to question Marie’s authority—she boldly performs masses and rituals usually reserved only for priests—Marie continues to rule with a grace and cunning that extends her feminist empire until her dying days.
Groff writes with a deeply poetic sensibility that fits Marie’s character so brilliantly. She gives this pragmatic and diligent woman a romanticism and joie de vivre that makes her a most compelling heroine. Marie, in her role as prioress, becomes deeply spiritual in a very non-traditional way. Marie’s faith is not guided simply by scripture or ruled by strict tenants, but instead the wellspring of her faith seems to be her devotion to sisterhood and community. Marie’s trajectory is in many ways a rejection of the traditional female virtues that are celebrated at courts such as Eleanor’s, where submission and soft femininity are a crucial survival mechanism. Marie’s faith often comes into tension with her ambition, her erotic desire, and her financial savvy, making her a target for the more traditional sisters in her community. And Marie is not ignorant of this, but instead builds her life around it: she does not pretend to be a perfect selfless servant of god, but is a sort of christ-like warrior for the many women who find themselves in her protection.
This novel is a meticulously assembled and gorgeously rendered piece of historical fiction, that blends elements of feminist separatism, queer desire, and myth-like heroism. Marie is an unforgettable heroine that Groff has pieced together, full of lively contradictions, desires, and ambitions. Matrix explores a landscape that is totally dominated by female ambition and cunning, full of deep and meaningful relationships between women of different ages and backgrounds. The novel is not a banal and uncomplicated celebration of an all-female utopia, but rather a nuanced and inquisitive portrait of female ambition and power that asks what women can do when given space and adequate resources. With Matrix, Groff has written one of the most unique and striking pieces of historical fiction in recent memory, asserting the importance of creating a new cannon of female history.
Further Reading: Groff’s other novel, The Fates and The Furies is also excellent, as are her short story collections, Florida and Delicate Edible Birds.