REVIEW: Matrix by Lauren Groff

 

Matrix by Lauren Groff

Historical fiction from the 1200s, Marie de France is sent from Eleanor of Aquataine's court to a destitute abbey at seventeen where she spends the rest of her life. Marie is smart and takes over the abbey due to her leadership abilities. She maintains contact with Eleanor who is a powerful ally. Monastary life which is often portrayed as being sent away and locked up actually provided women throughout history with a viable option for a life of learning and leadership away from the patriarchy.

I had a grand-aunt who joined the convent at sixteen, basically as soon as she could get away from her home when her widowed father remarried and began having a second family. She went to university, and taught, and then eventually earned a PhD in Education and taught at Boston College. She wrote books, travelling the world to do research. She had opportunities, despite a vow of poverty, that her sister (my grandmother) who married at eighteen and had seven children, did not. The book also portrays the wonderful community of women that a monestary is, and that was also what I saw visiting my aunt.

Maybe knowing a nun added to my enjoyment of the book. They are just people with jealousies (my aunt was pissed another nun horned in on my baptism, as she wasn't related but showed up) and bad habits (my aunt developed a slight Casino gambling habit in the last years of her life - everyone gave her tokens for Christmas). But they have a mutual goal in their life and they work together towards it, with women-power.

Marie brings her abbey to prominence and wealth by using her nuns to their best abilities, and keeping contact with the Queen. There are plenty of 'close' friendships as one should expect in a house full of women. I quite enjoyed this book and the look at a different time and life.