Allison and Busby
Featuring: Charlotte-Rose de la Force; Margherita; Selena Leonelli
544 pages ISBN: 0749032286 EAN: 9780749032289 Hardcover (reprint) Add to Wish List
The Rapunzel fairytale is retold and brought back to its origins in France and Italy. Kate Forsyth has reissued in 2025 her Renaissance tapestry, BITTER GREENS, which has already made many friends.
This story is, like most Renaissance-era stories, one about the oppression of women. While traders profited hugely and cities trembled at the rumours of plagues and purges, the wives and daughters were locked away, the poor women exploited, and the romantically available women were adored until they fell out of favour. This life lies behind many novels, plays and folktales, but here it is upfront and frankly, merciless.
The author has found the origins of Rapunzel, a girl locked in a high tower and made to let down her hair for her jailer to climb. Petrosinella by Giambattisa Basile was published in 1634, in Italian. But Persinette (both names referring to parsley) was written in French in 1698 by a lady, a similar tale with a gentler ending. Charlotte-Rose de la Force penned folk tales while confined in a nunnery. She had been the daughter of a wealthy landowner, in France. But the family were Huguenots or Protestants, and Charlotte’s time at the court of Versailles was cut short by the Sun King, Louis XIV. Louis decided to imprison or kill all of her faith, so as to seize their goods. Charlotte had no personal wealth and made frantic efforts to marry, but we see Louis cast her aside. Charlotte thinks the King, her cousin, will release her soon. Then she realises that he had sent his mistresses to convents when he tired of them. She’s not getting out. Talking to Sister Seraphina, the herbalist in the garden and beekeeper, Charlotte hears the Rapunzel tale from an earlier time.
Margherita is a little girl with red-gold hair, who is selected by rich courtesan Selena Leonelli during her Renaissance life in Venice. Her parents unknowingly traded their loved child for winter herbs, including parsley and rapunzel (a name for rampion). Stolen from her parents aged seven and handed to an orphanage school, the child shows us the usual life for unwanted little girls. Luckily, she survives. The courtesan then removes her at a later date and treats her as a servant. But Selena has gathered powers of witchcraft, and she intends to lock Margherita away as a tool to prevent aging.
The tale is odd to read as we keep on going back to the beginning of another character’s story, or to an episode in Charlotte’s extravagant past. She was quite a lady. For a reader who wants to go forward and see how young Margherita is going to get out of the next sticky situation, it can feel annoying to have a different woman start telling us about her terrible childhood memories. Bear with Charlotte. She brings everything to a satisfying, deftly woven, romantic conclusion.
Kate Forsyth has created a masterful, feminist read for adults with BITTER GREENS, reminding us that the good old days really were not so good, especially for women and children. Those ladies who took a measure of control over their lives were few, and I was delighted to learn about Charlotte-Rose de la Force, an inspiring storyteller.
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