The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier

A tale surrounding the creation of innovative tapestries for an advisor to the king in 15th century Paris and Brussels, The Lady and The Unicorn exposes the gender, social and sexual politics that govern the lives of the people who commission and create the tapestries. From the initial idea to the tapestries' unveiling, the novel charts a world governed by rules which people are desperate to break.

The novel begins with nobleman Jean Le Viste's commission of the tapestries by painter Nicolas des Innocents. An aloof, proud and patriarchal man, Le Viste wants a scene of battle and bloodshed, enforcing his masculinity and power. Le Viste's obssession with status is quickly revealed by his demands for the family coat of arms to be prevalent on the soldiers' shields throughout the imagined scene. But Nicolas' encounter with Le Viste's wife Genevive sets the tapestries on an entirely different course: she wants them to tell the tale of a lady and a unicorn. By lying to La Viste and preying on his obssession with status, Nicolas convinces him to change the tapestries' theme.

This beginning establishes a number of key themes in the novel. Instantly the reader is shown that Le Viste believes only his ideas stand when in fact he is being influenced by his wife from afar. Like a puppeteer, she is manipulating him from behind the scenes. This is a central strand to the novel. Women are consistently marginalised, feminised and underestimated by men who do not realise their worth. Although they formally have no way of expressing their voice, feelings and opinions, their influence finds its way through and dupes men. Nicolas believes Marie-Celeste, the Le Viste family maid who lost her job after he made her pregnant, wants to sleep with him again and follows her to her new household; in fact it is a trap and he is beaten to a pulp by her friend. Jean Le Viste believes he has sent his daughter Claude to the convent to mark her impending marriage; in fact it is her mother's plot to keep her away from the man she truly loves. In Brussels, weaver Georges de la Chapelle believes his daughter Ailenor has been made pregnant by Phillipe; in fact she fell pregnant to Nicolas, her plot to save herself from a marriage to Jacques Le Bouef, a man she despises. The novel shows that while women may not appear to have power socially and in their households, they are able to use men as pawns carrying out the plots they aren't allowed to master.

From the novel's outset, the nobility are set up as the people everyone aspires to be. They have power, status, respect, money and time at their leisure. In fact, that couldn't be further from the truth, especially for the women. Jean Le Viste's every decision is in fact influenced by his advisor Leon Le Vieux. And when his wife Genevive asks for the tapestries' themes to be changed, the reader is given a glimmer of lack of respect for the Le Viste family. She explains to Nicolas that a battle scene would enrage the soldiers who fought in the battle and their relatives as her husband had been holed up away from the battlefield. Here we see that Jean's appearance of power and authority may just be an illusion.

For noblewomen, their plight is all the more miserable. Genevive is desperately alone and unhappy, a woman who has failed her husband by not producing a male heir. Sexually rejected by her husband and jealous of her eldest daughter Claude's blooming sexuality, she wants to embrace the antithesis of a sexualised woman: she wants to become a nun. She tries to convince her priest to ask her husband's permission for her to go, knowing he will refuse if she puts in the request herself. When he refuses, she is trapped. She cannot have the one thing she so desperately desires. This fate also befalls her daughter Claude. Infactuated with Nicolas from the moment she meets him, she is desperate to consummate their relationship. When Genevive learns of her daughter's wishes - and the threat this would pose to her "valuable maidenhead" - she does everything in her power to ensure it can never happen. She surrounds Claude with maids, ordering them to never leave her side, and later sends her to the convent she herself is so desperate to join, banishing Claude from male contact until she marries the man chosen for her. Her cruel treatment of her daughter, and sexual jealousy, is complete when she invites Nicolas to the announcement of Claude's engagement, proof that she has won and snatched away her daughter's chance of happiness.

The mother/daughter relationship is similarly marred by betrayal between weaver's wife Christine and her daughter Ailenor in Brussels. As Ailenor is blind, Christine and her husband George have only one suitor offering to marry her - smelly, repulsive wood-dyer Jacques Le Bouef. Ailenor despises Le Bouef, recoiling at the sheer smell of him and hiding from him at every opportunity. Despite Ailenor's disgust, Christine secretly plots her marriage to Le Bouef with her husband, never telling Ailenor. When Ailenor learns of the plan, she has the opportunity to take her fate into her own hands unlike Claude. She sleeps with Nicolas and falls pregnant, meaning she can never marry Le Bouef. Painter Phillippe, who has always loved her, claims parentage and marries her, saving her from a life as an unmarried mother. Unlike Claude, who is constrained and cooped up as a noblewoman, weaver's daughter Ailenor has enough freedom to plan her escape from a loveless marriage, earning herself a happier fate with a man who loves and cares for her.

Aside from social and gender politics, senses are key to the tapestries and to the novel. Each tapestry surrounds a different sense: sound, taste, sight, touch and smell. These senses are woven into the novel as they are woven into the tapestries. Nicolas and Claude's first meeting is filled with the senses, Claude sucking on a clove to allieviate toothache. Touch and sound are key to the novel's sexual themes and is at its pinnacle when Ailenor sleeps with Nicolas. As she is blind, Ailenor relies on touch and sound for her first sexual experience. When she asks Nicolas what she is missing by having no sight, he tells her touch is all she needs. It is here that Ailenor feels most free from being blind; it is finally an experience she can feel wholly without her sight. Nicolas plays with this fact in the tapestry for sight, adding Ailenor's face to represent the sense.

A novel pulling together multiple narratives of people involved in the arduous process of creating tapestries, The Lady and The Unicorn is a lyrical novel which uses the tapestries as a backdrop to expose the very different lives of the nobility and the masses in the 15th century. Rich, evocative and quietly tragic, it shows that status can be built on illusions and that the lives of nobility weren't really anything to envy at all.

My next read: The People's Act of Love by James Meek