{"id":48495,"date":"2021-08-17T11:12:29","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T15:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=48495"},"modified":"2021-08-16T12:19:18","modified_gmt":"2021-08-16T16:19:18","slug":"matrix-by-lauren-groff-in-shelf-awareness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/matrix-by-lauren-groff-in-shelf-awareness\/","title":{"rendered":"Matrix by Lauren Groff [in Shelf Awareness]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Lauren Groff has built a significant career crafting novels and stories featuring sharp observations by and about modern women. In a surprising feat of time travel, the two-time National Book Award finalist (for Fates and Furies\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Florida<\/em><\/a>) leaps back to 12th-century England in\u00a0Matrix\u00a0<\/em>and fictionalizes the life of Marie de France, believed to be the first woman to write poetry in French. Groff finds narrative inspiration in one of Marie’s possible identities: Marie, Abbess of Shaftesbury, who was also King Henry II’s half-sister. From minimal details, Groff produces a sublime examination of a woman’s subversive refusal \u2013 almost a millennium ago \u2013 to be constrained by what society deemed forbidden.<\/p>\n

In 1158, 17-year-old “poor illegitimate Marie from nowhere in Le Maine had at last been made prioress of a royal abbey.” Marie was born in France to a 15-year-old raped by a royal, and purged from her home after surviving two years without family following her mother’s death. She presents herself to Empress Matilda, wife of her rapist father, who sends Marie to be civilized “across the channel to her legitimate half-sibling’s royal court at Westminster.” Yet Queen Eleanor, the half-sister-in-law for whom Marie will always yearn, deems Marie “three heads too tall … a creature absent of beauty” and “anyone with eyes could see she had always been meant for holy virginity.” Marie needs no man: she’s already proven herself capable of running her family estate as a tetra-lingual polyglot with accounting skills. Marie finds religion “vaguely foolish,” even “senseless,” but can’t escape “the desire of both god and the queen.” At the royal abbey, Marie is confronted with poverty and plague, yet she will miraculously multiply her community, their wealth, their power, their joy.<\/p>\n

Groff’s imagined Marie is a “giantess” in accomplishments, who creates a scriptorium filled with literate women; elevates “the daughter of her spirit” as public bailiffess; engineers a labyrinth of secret passages for protection from outsiders; feminizes verbs and nouns in missals and psalters when she can’t sleep; and dares to preside over Mass. In an environment of suffocating control, Marie \u2013 and her “always underestimated” sisters \u2013 continuously assert themselves. Groff, like Marie, adapts her language in repeated acts of empowerment. She reclaims her title word from the Latin \u2013 mater\/matr for mother, -(t)rix for feminizing \u2013 and builds her sorority with cantrix, infirmatrix, cellatrix, scrutatrix. Beauty, Marie realizes, would have damned her to marriage, childbirth, anonymity, and early death. Instead, through Groff’s glorious imagination, Marie is forever “made great … the holiest of holy women on the island, venerated and beloved.”<\/p>\n

Shelf Talker<\/strong>:\u00a0Lauren Groff hauntingly, brilliantly imagines the life of 12th-century Marie de France, who subversively led a royal abbey in England from poverty and plague to vast wealth and power.<\/p>\n

Review<\/strong>: Shelf Awareness Pro<\/em>, August 16, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren Groff has built a significant career crafting novels and stories featuring sharp observations by and about modern women. In a surprising feat of time travel, the two-time National Book Award finalist (for Fates and Furies\u00a0and\u00a0Florida) leaps back to 12th-century England in\u00a0Matrix\u00a0and fictionalizes the life…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,114,23,6,9513,60,6535],"tags":[84,6608,10,149,24,51,265,8281,13,9878,129,39,55,41,6872,9474],"class_list":["post-48495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-british","category-european","category-fiction","category-french","category-nonethnic-specific","category-repost","tag-betrayal","tag-bookdragon","tag-family","tag-gender-inequality","tag-historical","tag-identity","tag-lauren-groff","tag-lbgtqia","tag-love","tag-matrix","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-religious-differences","tag-royalty","tag-shelf-awareness","tag-shelf-awareness-pro"],"yoast_head":"\nMatrix by Lauren Groff [in Shelf Awareness] - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/matrix-by-lauren-groff-in-shelf-awareness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Matrix by Lauren Groff [in Shelf Awareness] - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lauren Groff has built a significant career crafting novels and stories featuring sharp observations by and about modern women. In a surprising feat of time travel, the two-time National Book Award finalist (for Fates and Furies\u00a0and\u00a0Florida) leaps back to 12th-century England in\u00a0Matrix\u00a0and fictionalizes the life...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/matrix-by-lauren-groff-in-shelf-awareness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-08-17T15:12:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-08-16T16:19:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2021\/08\/Matrix-Lauren-Groff-BookDraagon.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"679\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Matrix by Lauren Groff [in Shelf Awareness] - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/matrix-by-lauren-groff-in-shelf-awareness\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Matrix by Lauren Groff [in Shelf Awareness] - BookDragon","og_description":"Lauren Groff has built a significant career crafting novels and stories featuring sharp observations by and about modern women. 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