Robyn Cadwallader
Autor de The Anchoress
Sobre El Autor
Robyn Cadwallader is an Australian writer based in Canberra, Australia. She taught creative writing and English Literature at university. Her PhD thesis was published as Three Methods for Reading the Thirteenth-Century Seinte Marherete. She gave up teaching to focus on writing. She has published mostrar más prize-winning short stories and reviews. Her work also includes a book of poetry entitled I Paint Unafraid and a short play entitled Artemisia. Her novel The Anchoress won the Varuna LitLink NSW Byron Bay Unpublished Manuscript Award in 2010. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Créditos de la imagen: Author website
Obras de Robyn Cadwallader
We Are Better Than This: Essays and Poems on Australian Asylum Seeker Policy (2015) — Editor — 6 copias
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1950
- Género
- female
- Nacionalidad
- Australia
- Lugares de residencia
- ACT, Australia
- Ocupaciones
- Lecturer
Editor - Biografía breve
- Robyn Cadwallader has published numerous, prize-winning short stories and reviews, as well as a book of poetry and a non-fiction book based on her PhD thesis concerning attitudes to virginity and women in the Middle Ages. She lives among vineyards outside Canberra when not travelling to England for research, visiting ancient archaeological sites along the way.
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Estadísticas
- Obras
- 5
- Miembros
- 307
- Popularidad
- #76,700
- Valoración
- 3.8
- Reseñas
- 15
- ISBNs
- 50
- Idiomas
- 1
Readers of The Anchoress (2015) will remember Eleanor, the child who is taught to read and write by Sarah, the anchoress. Twenty years later in The Fire and the Rose, the orphaned Eleanor is working as a housemaid for a wool merchant in 13th century Lincoln. She has hopes of getting more satisfying work as a scribe, refusing a patronising offer from marriage from Jevon, a man who tells her he's prepared to overlook the birthmark on her face.
Unsurprisingly, Eleanor decided she was better without a man at all.
But then there's Asher, a Jewish spice merchant...
Initially, Eleanor shares some of the prejudices she hears all around her, but her regular visits to buy spice piques her interest in the Hebrew script. He's intrigued that she can read and write, and despite the prohibitions — social and legal — a covert relationship eventually results in the awkwardness of a pregnancy. When her pregnancy is known, her employer sends her packing, leaving Eleanor without an income or a home.
The friendship of other women supports Eleanor through this difficult time. Because I take an interest in the way that older women are represented in fiction, I particularly liked the dynamic characterisation of Marchota, an older Jewish businesswoman reviled for her alleged part in the kidnapping and torture of a boy called Luke. Her dignity and resilience in the face of persecution is impressive, and she becomes Eleanor's mainstay despite her own troubles. During the real-time chronology of this novel, there were mass imprisonments of Jews, arbitrary executions, punishing taxation and the humiliating requirement forcing Jews to wear a yellow badge, and these statutes affect the Jewish characters at different times.
Asher, Marchota, Chera and Milla are all impacted by restrictions on how they can make a living, measures intended to pressure them into conversion. The looming forced expulsion of all Jews from England forces Eleanor to consider whether she should convert so that they can marry and leave England together. But Cadwallader doesn't romanticise things...
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/05/03/the-fire-and-the-rose-2023-by-robyn-cadwalla...… (más)