She Has Built Walls: Matrix by Lauren Groff
The oldest meaning of the word “matrix” in the Oxford English Dictionary is womb. Groff’s newest novel is about a particular kind of mother: a mother superior. Her protagonist is a 12th century nun at the head of an abbey, an abbess, by the name of Marie de France. Marie is a half-blood noble described as ugly, queer, and headstrong.
Marie de France was, in fact, a real person. She is considered the first francophone poet. Yes, you read that right: THE FIRST. POET. TO WRITE IN FRENCH. (Or what we could call proto-French.) Her writings are considered foundational to the genre of chivalric romance, which of course is more popularly known as “that knights-of-the-round-table stuff.” Kind of a big deal?
I do not pretend to be the strongest in the area of medieval lit — not by a long shot — but I did spend a summer in college as a research assistant for a medievalist studying Margery Kempe. Kempe, like Marie de France, is identified as a “mystic.” A couple centuries after de France, Kempe wrote what is considered the first autobiography in English. THE FIRST. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. IN ENGLISH. Actually, Kempe had an amanuensis (try pronouncing that) who scribed her life story for her. But the point is that Kempe was such a big deal (today she’d be called an influencer, and she’d be at, like, Glennon Doyle levels of influence) that some man took dictation from her, immortalizing the stories of her experiences. Like Marie de France, Margery’s legacy was words, and they were some of the founding words of the literary tradition in her language.
What I loved about Margery when I met her that summer was just how absurd her mystical stories were: epic visions of breastfeeding from the Virgin Mary, of cleaning the wounds of the crucified Jesus, of Jesus telling her to become chaste for him. In her visions, she is both savior and saved.
Contemporary scholars of Kempe’s book understand her as a genius and an entrepreneur. Forbidden from learning to read, Margery instead likely memorized the Bible from her time spent in mass. She then recited verbatim, detailed scenes from scripture, blowing the minds of the priests who couldn’t imagine any other explanation except that, wow, she must be some kind of prophetess. (Better than witch.) The other thing contemporary readers of Kempe’s book speculate is that she suffered from severe postpartum depression, and maybe even a kind of psychosis. I wonder if you would, too, if you’d had fourteen children? And after those fourteen children, when you started having visions of Jesus calling you his wife, would he also start telling you that he wants you to give up “earthly pursuits”? (Guessing mine would.)
Margery Kempe is known for her demonstrative weeping sessions, which would accompany her mystical visions/recitations. When she would weep uncontrollably in the town square at the “sight” of Jesus’ oppression, recounting the scene for gathering crowd as if it were happening right before them, people ate that shit up. They loved imagining that they were communing with someone who was communing with God. Today, some venture capitalist would’ve helped Margery to “scale” or “monetize” her business. Back then, she had to do all that herself. And she did. After using her visions to negotiate for more freedom from her domestic duties (like childrearing and sleeping with her husband — sorry, Jesus said I had to stop!), she eventually got to go on pilgrimages and do other very freeing, very special activities that almost no women got to do.
Lauren Groff’s novel about Marie de France resides in this feminist tradition of rereading women mystics as humans negotiating for agency in oppressive societies. Fictionalizing Marie, Groff explores invisible counter-histories of patriarchy in the time period we often call “the dark ages.” The truth is, we don’t fully know just how anti-patriarchal — even how matriarchal — our global world has been in the dark corners of our past. Indeed, one of patriarchy’s ravages has been the destruction of any traces of knowledge that would help us to carry on a matriarchal cultural or political lineage. In Virginia Woolf’s canonical feminist speech known as “A Room of One’s Own,” she imagines if Shakespeare had had a sister. She calls her Judith. What would’ve come of a literary and theatrical genius like Judith? Even if she had managed to learn to read and write, even if she’d had a chance to perform on stage, she would’ve had so many barriers to the survival of her body, let alone her mind.
And then if there’d been a manuscript of any of her works — because, of course, there would’ve likely only been one copy — how easy would it have been to erase the evidence of this genius’ existence? At the end of Matrix, a character close to Marie de France makes a decision that will jeopardize her legacy — a legacy she has spent the whole novel building. Groff intervenes to remind us of the stakes of such a decision: “How strong the final flowering of good intentions can be, the poisonous full bloom taking place centuries beyond the scope of the original life.”
The Marie de France that Groff conjures is a plausible one, although as I mentioned, this version is fictional. The intricacies of the world Groff builds are characteristically delectable to live inside of during this novel, and are definitely better experienced firsthand, so I won’t try to summarize them. Instead, if you permit me, I’d like to provide a modern, analogous Marie, based on Groff’s character, to help you hook you into the themes of this story, which transcend the Middle Ages:
Imagine Marie as a French girl whose extended family (on one side) has a lot of generational wealth and status. This status means Marie has a comfortable, cloistered childhood and adolescence. She is protected and sheltered and educated. She is allowed a good deal of freedom, as long as she doesn’t step out of bounds in a way that jeopardizes her family’s money and reputation. The other thing about Marie is that she’s considered ugly: too tall, too rugged, “big-boned.” None of the delicate femininity that is a marker of upperclass-ness. Not only that, but she is not attracted to men, and men are not attracted to her.
When Marie is around the age of majority, her most powerful family member, finding Marie burdensome and even somewhat repulsive given her half-blood, unmarriageable vibes, tells Marie that if she wants to keep enjoying the privileges of their family name, she will need to work for it by taking over a branch of the family business. She’s essentially given a franchise to run, but it’s not a good deal. First of all, it’s located in another country, a colony of her homeland. Worse, it’s a super rundown franchise, full of floundering, disgruntled employees who make a shoddy product. (Plus they don’t even speak French.) Marie deeply resents her family for putting her out like this. She just wants to chillax at the family estate with her hot servant girlfriend and the amenities of rich girl life.
How do you think this story will turn out? On the one hand, Marie seems like a spoiled and strange person, probably incapable of running a business. On the other, she is filled with bitterness at her family, and she wants to prove herself. Not only that, but she’s sure she does not want to do the marriage and kids thing, even with a woman. Hell no.
All of what I’ve just laid out is based on the first fifteen pages of the novel. Instead of the family business, Groff’s 12th century Marie is given a post at an abbey in her royal family’s jurisdiction. This queer, awkward girl is sent to a nunnery.
Given our own knowledge of patriarchy, few of us would bet on Marie -- not in our time period, and definitely not in the 12th century. But Groff does.
Remember, Marie grows up to be a poet. All that survives of real Marie’s legacy are these confounding and beautiful narrative poems called lais, which were “bestsellers” of her time. Posthumously, she was discovered to have done translations of famous fables and perhaps some other works as well. How does a mysterious, erstwhile aristocrat become an influential writer — and not only a writer, but a visionary?
Groff’s book may seem to be about the late 1100s in “Angleterre.” It may appear to be about nuns (whose devotional lives might cause you to mistake them for boring). But to me, this novel is first and foremost about what it takes to be a woman artist. What does Marie need in order to foster and manifest her vision?
What she needs is a matrix. Not a womb, but a womb-like environment: safe, secure, fortressed, nourishing. She needs a network. She needs just enough protection -- not too much, not too little -- to be free to bring into fruition her ideas, ideas that are far ahead of her time and that need room to breathe. She needs a network of people who believe in her, and who will act as a bulwark against the patriarchy, ever threatened by power in female form.
In Groff’s telling, the mysticism for which the real Marie is known is not the true vision she brought forth. Sure, there’s that. But Groff devotes many, many more pages to the labor of building a world -- building that matrix. It takes ruthlessness. Savviness. Strength. Fierce, fierce protectiveness.
Marie learns early on in her time at the abbey that womanhood does not have to be a hindrance if she plays her cards right. She remembers Eleanor, the Queen and her idol, the very family member who cast her off, but for whom Marie also harbored the deepest attraction and admiration. In my favorite passage of the entire book, Marie has a vision for how she must construct her matrix: how, that is, she will protect herself and the other nuns from corrupt outside forces so that they can make something of themselves. “Women in this world are vulnerable,” Marie thinks. “...Only reputation can keep them from being crushed.”
“Marie sees the outline of Eleanor now, the way that she has built walls and walls around herself, walls of wealth and blood and marriages, friends and spies and advisers, and the outermost is her reputation, which she spends a great deal of money to maintain. A woman’s power exists only as far as she is allowed; wise Eleanor understands that she must find her freedom only within such unbreachable form. … [Marie] will build around herself walls of wealth and friends and good clear reputation, she will make her frail sisters safe within.”
Some of Marie’s walls will be literal ones, built of forests and stone and quartz and water and every medieval security system she can dream of. But most of her walls will be made of words. Stories. It will be stories of her greatness, of her generosity, of her closeness to God, and of her mystical visions of the Virgin Mary that will serve as impenetrable ramparts against every imaginable form of destruction that powerful women face. “And the outermost [wall] is her reputation,” Groff writes, for in a world where it is so very easy to poison a woman’s name, what then is a more powerful accomplishment than a “good clear reputation,” built of shining and glorious stories?
Maybe, Groff teaches us, we’ve had the counter-histories of patriarchy with us all along: in our imaginations.
P.S. I deserve an award for Most Restraint Shown, for not naming this post “A Womb of One’s Own.” Thank you.
