It’s amazing what you can find, trawling through
second-hand bookstores. I found a swashbuckling, historical yarn, starring a
tomboyish lesbian, in a loving relationship, written in the 1980s – which doesn’t
end in misery.
During the reigns of Elizabeth and James I,
when women weren’t at their most emancipated, a dashing thief-tress stole her
way through England: Moll Cutpurse. We follow her from her start as her parent’s
problem child, to her managing a pick-pocket academy, to her bambooziling a
shanghai-ing ship captain, and beyond. Throughout her life, Moll has one
constant, her apothecary girlfriend Bridget.
The cover calls this a ‘Novel by Ellen
Galford,’ but I don’t think ‘novel’ is the right term. A novel implies an overarching
narrative. The blurb reads: ‘[Moll] pits her wits against Puritans and
tricksters, travels with the gypsies, rescues a near-victim of anti-witchcraft
hysteria, and cheats the wealthy out of their ill-gotten gains’. You’d think
these were adventures she has on her way to a larger goal. But, no, in Moll Cutpurse these adventures are
distinct episodes, building to no grand narrative. Some episodes are no more
than incidents, like when Moll argues with Thomas Middleton and then battles a
misogynistic swordsman. This is not a mark against the book. Even if the
episodic structure leads to a looser overall product than I’d like, the
episodes themselves entertain well enough.
The book’s breezy style prevents these
episodes getting stale. We see Moll evolve from problem child to serving girl
to cross-dressing actor in a mere sixteen pages. The prose refuses to bog down
in details of environment or character.
Your liking of this novel will depend on
your liking of Moll. Like Holmes or Jeeves, Moll stands above average humanity.
We want to see how this singular individual swash-buckles her way through it. There
are certainly less interesting characters than a butch lesbian in the Elizabethan
Era, always up for a fight, and ready to defend her sex against a man’s chauvinist
word.
If the novel has any arc, it is Moll’s
growing past her internalised misogyny, and into a defender of women. We first
meet Moll barging into Bridget’s apothecary’s. She demands a potion to ‘turn
[her] into a man’. But this book is not a pioneering work of transgender
adventure fiction. Her desire to become a man comes not from believing herself a
man, but from believing what men say about women. Around her, she sees women
denied opportunity, treated as their husband’s chattel. She wants more for
herself than that, and becoming a man seems her only way out. With some words
from Bridget, though, she realises female suffering does not originate in womanhood,
but in societal oppression. Unfortunately (or fortunately, from the perspective
of the characters), Moll realises this only fifty pages into the novel,
completing her arc. From then on, Moll versus misogyny is just sort of a
running theme, which gets centre-stage in the climax.
Moll
Cutpurse is not a character study. ‘Her True
History’ does not cover Moll’s growth as a person (beyond the first fifty
pages). It does not even track a grand desire she has. She is a static
character, like Holmes or Jeeves. And like Holmes and Jeeves, we get Moll’s
tale toldthrough a third-party.
Moll’s Watson is Bridget, her lover. On
paper the book is told through Bridget’s eyes, but I question how necessary her
perspective is. I know the common wisdom: Sherlock Holmes stands so far above
us mere mortals that we need an everyman’s POV from Watson to relate to. But in
Moll Cutpurse, Moll does tell most of her story. We’ll be in
Bridget’s head, only for Moll to turn up and say, ‘Well, here’s what I’ve been
up to.’ From there, we get Moll’s first-person recollections, showing we don’t
need Bridget’s narration. What’s more If we stuck to Moll’s POV, there might be
added tension. Given Moll recounts her dangerous exploits to another person, we
know she gets out alright.
I suppose, interspersing Moll’s narration into
Bridget’s varies up the book. If we didn’t take a break from Moll, her
swashbuckling would become a dull baseline. But even without Bridget, we have
characters other than Moll give their tales, which would be spice enough for
the book. These tales range from unintentional treason to escaping an abusive
husband. Bridget’s life story is nowhere near as interesting. Yes, she is a lesbian
small-business owner in the Elizabethan Era, but she has no beginning, middle
and end. Spare an episode in the second quarter of the book, all sections told
from Bridget’s perspective just feel like dull digressions.
But though I can’t stir much affection for
Moll’s lover, I appreciate that in this novel from the 80s, the worst I can say
about a lesbian lover is that she’s boring. There’s no ‘bury your gays’ here.
The novel has a sense of innocence. Not love, nor sex, nor same-sex love, nor
same-sex sex is shameful. The work glances at society’s bigotry, but only as
caricatures for Moll to bat away with the back of her sword.
Moll
Cutpurse is a loose novel, a series of entertaining episodes amounting to no grand
product. It follows a main character who may not have depth or much growth, but
she is entertaining to watch (even when she is watched through her less entertaining
lover’s eyes). If you’re in the market for a historical romp, give Moll Cutpurse a try.
Quotes taken from Firebrand Books' 1985 printing.
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