Not a Tame Calling
Susanna Clarke delicately explores the strangeness of saints and those who love them.
Review by Liv Ross
Saints are strange people, people who always seem to stand a little to the left of things. In the hagiographies, there is a particular breed of saints that achieve spiritual unity and unity with the wild places of the world at the cost of becoming severely misaligned with cities, civilizations, the church, and even their loved ones. Yet the stories of the saints inspire and encourage us. In some traditions, we talk to the saints and ask them to pray for us. We love them and are loved by them, and so we sometimes forget how strange saints truly are. The Wood at Midwinter, Susanna Clarke’s poetic and beautifully illustrated little book, considers both the difficulty inherent in being a saint, and the difficulty in loving one.
The Wood at Midwinter sits at just 48 pages, not including the Afterword, and much of the page space is dedicated to Victoria Sawdon’s beautiful illustrations. These illustrations do not take away from the story, but elevate it in way of all the best fairy tale pictures. They are simple, black and white, and hold enough detail for long contemplation, but do not distract or detract. The beautiful brevity makes this book an easy afternoon read, but this story is far from an airy nothing.
Like all the best fairy tales, this story is hard to strictly pin down. It is part saint story that could fit into The Golden Legend and part beast fable similar to those found in Aesop or The Brothers Grimm. The tale begins with sisters Ysolde and Merowdis Scot stopping in a snowy wood. Merowdis, as her sister observes, is only happy in a church or in a wood, but a young woman wandering alone under the trees is considered dangerous, and forbidden. Ysolde alone understands her sister’s need for the forest and solitude, so she occasionally invents social outings for them to take together.
Accompanying the sisters on this particular trip are two dogs named Pretty and Amandier and a pig named Apple. Much like in the beast fables, the animals are given dialogue, although it’s unclear if their speech is actual or imagined. Merowdis, at least, seems sensitive to it and understands their wants and needs. She seems to have an affinity for all beasts, as a litany of all of her pets reveals. Their number and variety, which include even the spiders which spin webs in her bedroom, is just another of her strangenesses that her family struggles to understand and live with. This connection puts me in mind of many of the saints’ stories that include their love for and partnership with animals, from Kevin and his blackbird, to Melangell and her hare, to Hubert and his stag.
Indeed, Merowdis’s strange habits bring her sister to think of her as a saint, even if Merowdis herself has no notion of it. This is part of the reason Ysolde risks family conflict to allow Merowdis time in the forest, against their parents’ wishes.
Saints are strange people who follow strange ways.
After her sister drops her off at the gate of the wood, Merowdis walks and seems to talk with her animal companions. It becomes clear that this trip is not merely one for enjoyment. Merowdis has found herself caught between two choices. As a young woman, she can choose to marry a young man her family approves of and live a life that they approve of, but one she has no heart for. Or she can choose to become a nun and take up religious orders. She has tried to explore this path, but fears she has no aptitude for it either. In a dangerous world, she can find shelter in a marriage, or shelter in a convent. There seems to be no third way forward.
While Merowdis ponders her dilemma, and the three domestic animals try to comfort her, Wildness arrives in the form of a sly Fox, a watchful Blackbird, and a listening Wood. The dogs and pig urge Merowdis to return to the forest gate, meet Ysolde, and return home. However, the wild creatures seem to hear and understand what Merowdis longs for in a way that her gentler friends do not. In a vision, the Wood presents Merowdis with a third way, at last. It is a wild and dangerous way. A dark, lonely, even bloody way that will take Merowdis far from her home and her beloved family, but its promise is life and generativity that only she can bring, and only if she sees it through.
The easy way to interpret this story is as a conflict of light against darkness. Such a reading would mean that there is a good path and a bad path set before Merowdis. The three domestic animals are set against three wild entities. Both sets have Merowdis’s ear and heart, and there is a sense that they are vying for possession of her. In many fairy tales, the Woods, Blackbirds, and Foxes are dark, ill-omened things. It is easy to see them as a corrupting influence, while Pretty, Amandier, and good-hearted Apple are symbols of light, home, and plenty. While it isn’t an unfair interpretation, I think it would be a mistake. I read it, rather, as the choice between safety and wildness.
At the outset, Merowdis’s choices are marriage or a convent, until the Wood gives her the vision. Susanna Clarke does not present any of these paths as evil, but it is clear that only one is right for her, even if that one comes with a great cost. In accepting her calling into the Wood, in following it to become one of the wild saints, she must reject the possibilities of a life as nun or a wife. She will necessarily be separated from the tame, civilized world and its protections. And because her beloved sister and animals live in that world, she will be separated from them as well. It is not easy to love a saint. It is not easy to let them go where you cannot follow. I think of St. Lucy, who refused marriage because of her commitment to a celibate and religious life, even though it set her against her family and her town. I think of St. Patrick, who left his family to return to minister to the people who had stolen him away and enslaved him. I think of Christ, and the sword that pierced Mary’s heart because of him. Saints are strange people who follow strange ways.
When Ysolde returns to take Merowdis home, she listens as her sister elatedly explains her vision. Merowdis makes Ysolde promise not to be afraid when the time comes. Ysolde makes the promise, even though she doesn’t understand what it actually means or what it is she shouldn’t fear. Ultimately, it will not be Merowdis who will be tested, but the ones who know her and love her and who must let her go.
We love to tell inspiring stories about saints, but are we prepared to love them when they are our own sisters and brothers, and we do not understand, and are afraid?
Liv Ross is an urban monk, a poet, a birder, and a student of Christian Spirituality. She has been published in Loft Books, The Blue Daisies Journal, The Way Back To Ourselves, Silence and Starsong, Vessels of Light and VoeglinView.
The Wood at Midwinter was published by Bloomsbury Publishing on November 10, 2024. You can purchase your own copy from the publisher here.
