Heloise and Abelard, or Love in the Time of Covid19

We are in the middle of a strange and unsettling time, with Covid19 forcing us to work from home, and stay away from workplaces, friends, and family.  Having some annual leave now seems odd, but it's been booked for a while, and because of how crazy busy the crisis has made work, it's actually perfect timing to step away from the inbox and video calls, and do some catch-up reading.  This weekend, therefore, I tackled two historical novels that both tell the story of the twelfth-century scholars and lovers, Heloise and Abelard:  Peter Abelard, by Helen Waddell, and Love Without End, by Melvyn Bragg.

I'd bought the Bragg a few weeks ago in Toppings in Ely, -- historical fiction, medieval, beautiful cover, irresistible! -- but the Waddell was a coincidental find, via a friend and Victorian specialist, Lizzie Ludlow, who had recommended it to me, describing it in such glowing terms that I sourced a lovely old Pan edition from Ebay, and read it this Sunday, after finishing Love Without End on Saturday.  Reading them together made for a rewarding experience, and because they approach the lovers in such different ways, this opened up the history, making the perspectives shed light on what's known about their lives so that a deeper appreciation of what they endured -- and what they achieved -- could be appreciated.

It has also, as I think Lizzie expected it would, made me fascinated with Helen Waddell.  From previous posts you'll know I've been looking at women writers, especially women historical writers, from the first part of the twentieth century, and Helen Waddell is certainly someone who should be better known.  She does have champions:  Kate Mosse did a documentary about her for the BBC in 2018 , saying that "Helen Waddell was a pioneer in the now flourishing world of historical fiction, yet today she is barely remembered," and an article in The Irish Times in 2014 describes how she was "an Irish literary superstar" of her time, adding that as an academic, her lectures at Oxford "drew audiences that today would almost compare with rock-star status."  She came late to academia, having had to care for her ill step-mother; when she died in 1920, Helen was able to go to Oxford, to Somerville College.  Her first academic book, The Wandering Scholars, was published in 1927, by Constable.

This was a book looking at medieval Latin lyric poetry, with many translations done by Waddell herself:  it was an academic bestseller, and she was the first woman to be awarded the A. C. Benson Foundation Silver Medal from the Royal Society of Literature for her achievement.  Peter Abelard, also published by Constable, came out in 1933, and was a great commercial and critical success (I will check this out with more research once I can get access to archives again).  As Constance J. Mews points out, Waddell and Heloise had a great deal in common: "they were both educated women, gifted with an acute literary sensibility [and] neither could easily find their way in a world in which academic opportunities were largely controlled by men." ('Helen Waddell and Heloise: The Continuity of a Learned Tradition', in Jennifer Fitzgerald, ed., Helen Waddell Reassessed:  New Readings, Peter Lang, 2013, pp. 21-39). 

And yet, in Waddell's novel, it is Peter Abelard who gets star billing, and from whose perspective most of the novel is given, not Heloise.  Melvyn Bragg weaves the twelfth century with a twenty-first century one, using the vehicle of an author writing about the lovers, in Paris, and talking about his book with his daughter, to bring out some of the challenges of the story to contemporary readers.  The writer's daughter, Julia, is incensed first by Abelard's actions, and then Heloise's acceptance of her future at Abelard's direction.  Bragg uses the voice of Arthur, the writer, to explain how the historical and theological contexts the lovers lived in means that it is impossible to judge them on today's standards.  Although this technique is not always effective -- there are several points when the exposition feels awkward and patronising -- Bragg does succeed in telling a story, as he has Arthur insists he is writing, "about Heloise and Abelard.  . . not a pound of Heloise and a ton of Abelard" (p.215).  Waddell's novel is more detailed, historically, but leaves the lives of Heloise and Abelard well before they end (there is a hint that Waddell intended to write more books about the pair, and never managed it, which would make sense of where Peter Abelard finishes): it also leaves Heloise the more shadowy, contained character.  Without giving out too many spoilers for either fictional retelling, what both succeed in doing is underline the remarkable talents of the couple, in a time when the Church held power over people, and when an intellectual woman, or a woman with any education at all, was a rare thing. 


Both novels have sparked a deeper interest in learning about Waddell, and about Heloise and Peter Abelard; in inspiring not only that, but the desire to pick up my blog again and record these reading experiences, both books have helped me to switch off from the news, and from work, and for that respite I am very grateful.  Thanks to Lizzie for the nudge to discover Waddell, and, during this time of isolation, to Toppings in Ely, who are helping to further this new-found curiosity by posting out the Penguin Letters of Abelard to Eloise to me, so I can keep reading!