Learwife
J. R. Thorp’s debut novel, Learwife (2021) is a lyrical, internal monologue of King Lear’s widow during some undefined point in British medieval history. The novel opens as news of Lear’s death, and that of his three daughters, reaches a convent in northern England. Here, amidst the stone walls and industrious lives of the nuns, resides the estranged wife of King Lear who slowly unravels her story while she grieves the family she had already lost. Thus, Thorp’s Learwife begins where Shakespeare’s tragic King Lear concludes and provides the missing queen’s perspective through her memories and her grief.
Thorp’s hidden queen is strong and fierce, even as she has lost her teeth and totters into relative old age. She is one-part historical fiction, living amidst nuns and abbess, where she has been concealed for fifteen years. The cause of her banishment is unclear even to her; all-knowing as she attempted to be, she was somehow betrayed shortly after giving birth to her youngest daughter, Cordelia. Thorp’s queen is at once human, bound to a body and physical suffering, and also legend; she is a literary ghost infused by Shakespeare’s lines. Thorp’s novel, then, creates its own genre somewhere between historical fiction and the familiar experiences and perspectives of a modern woman presented in lyrically poignant prose. Precise and succinct, Thorp’s writing is both moving and a wildly compulsive read.
Nameless, Lear’s widow wishes to leave the abbey and go to the graves her dead daughters and husband, to mourn them, to tend their resting places. Perhaps, she considers, she may rejoin the world as the royal she is. But even the plans of a queen cannot avoid nature’s plans. Soon after news of these deaths reach the abbey, its inhabitants face illness and quarantine as winter descends. Learwife, then provides another example of contemporary fiction reminding readers that pandemic and quarantine have long been bound to human experience. Even after Lear’s death, his prison for her remains a prison as she is unable to leave until the illness has run its course. Yet, her role transforms as she emerges from her seclusion amidst the nuns after fifteen years and finds her place in its community.
Thorp has written libretto for modern operas, and Learwife is a long, beautiful rendition of poetic prose. At times agonizing, at others raw, this is the story of a woman hidden away, trying to piece her life back together, in a first-person lyrical ramble. As she relays and explores the periods of her life—youth, early marriage, motherhood, and middle age—Thorp’s nameless queen begins to share her stories and reclaim her role as a royal to be honored among the nuns. In reexamining her life stories, the past and the present begin to blur and blend as Lear’s widow shares her memories and holds a sort of court among the nuns during another difficult season.
As anyone familiar with Shakespeare’s King Lear might expect, themes of betrayal and madness surface time and time again in Learwife. I found the poetic first-person narrative as tragic as it is beautiful. Learwife provides a brilliant sequel to Shakespeare, bringing the barely mentioned queen out of the shadows and giving her a voice that seems to arch across ages as she speaks of longing, maternity, and leadership in ways that are hauntingly familiar to modern readers. It is, however, also a stirring treatment of grief, aging, and the necessary reckoning that awaits as death draws near and long-ignored questions loom larger and more pronounced. Learwife explores the internal life of an elderly woman reflecting on the intimate and brutal, cherished and disdained moments of her life as everything she built and birthed rots. Her perspectives are shocking and honest, disturbing and at times transcendent. While Learwife is not a gentle read (how can it follow the bloody ruins of Shakespeare’s tragedy and be gentle?), it is certainly a worthwhile one. Its form and voice are utterly unique and moving, and like Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet did for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, this novel provides a feminist perspective through which to experience the story of mad King Lear.
Bibliography:
Thorp, J. R. Learwife. Pegasus Books: 2021.
A Few Great Quotes:
“Habit sews us into sanity like a cloth” (14).
“Pain is endless renewal. Pain is discovery at every fresh breath: oh! Here is agony again. I had forgotten. Breathe: oh! Here it is, once more” (21).
“What was our own language, then, Lear’s and mine? Snarl and whistle. Teeth and snap. Oh, for his nuzzle along my flank, oh for the warmth of him in the mornings when the sheets cracked with the frost! I am here; I speak; and yet, I am unheard, except by useless women. How poor a fate it is to be a woman finally without a loving tongue” (137).
“Grief is plundering me; it is burning down the walls. They crack, and hardheld things spill through my fingers. Many things may come rattling free. The morning light after a storm is always the most honest” (242).
