Life Mask
In Life Mask, Emma Donoghue continues to stake her literary claim on the eighteenth century. This time around, we find ourselves in the 1780s and 1790s, in the company of the actress Eliza Farren, her lovelorn paramour the Earl of Derby, and the sculptor Anne Damer. Derby woos the sternly virtuous Eliza, although his repudiated life remains alive (if not well). Eliza, whose stern virtue is not so much grounded in morality as it is in a pragmatic desire for public reputation, finds herself accused of having a lesbian relationship with Anne. And Anne, initially infatuated with Eliza, finally finds happiness with the younger Mary Berry. Meanwhile, inconvenient things happen in France, Whigs try to gain power in England, and Derby attends cockfights and horse races.
As one might expect from the title, the novel draws its governing metaphors from theater and masquerade. Eliza is an actress, but, we're reminded, Parliamentary politics also involve a good deal of theatrical skill. (Richard Brinsley Sheridan offers a useful historical connection between the spheres of politics and performance.) Upper-class characters stage amateur theatricals in which they play at being lower-class characters. Eliza plays at being a gentlewoman. Anne tries to conceal the nature of her true feelings for women from everyone, herself included, while (in an over-telegraphed parallel) Horace Walpole hints at what lay behind his public admission of love for Anne's father, Conway. Characters constantly see themselves reflected in paintings, caricatures, and political satires. This is very much a world of mirrors and false faces, in which the "performers" are constantly forced to reshape their self-image in the light of public commentary.
This exercise is less ambitious than Donoghue's Slammerkin, adhering as it does to the conventions of the classical historical romance. Donoghue's interest lies primarily with the passionate entanglements of her principal characters, which means, in practice, that the "historical" part of the "romance" fails to integrate successfully with the private plots. Too many 3x5 cards fly by. Famous names do walk-ons or get mentioned in passing (Hannah More, William Beckford, Thomas Lawrence, the Prince of Wales, William Wilberforce); other famous names get tweaked a bit (Sarah Siddons, Dora Jordan, Hester Lynch Piozzi, Sheridan); we learn about eighteenth-century sports, theatre management, changing fashions, and the like. Specialists in the period will recognize the speculations about Walpole's and Pitt's sexual preferences. Etcetera. Part of the problem with the bric-a-brac is that the "big names" all remain two-dimensional. Thus, we're told repeatedly that everybody loves Charles James Fox, but Donoghue's Fox completely lacks charisma and conversational fire; the same goes for the purportedly witty Sheridan. (Donoghue does get off some good lines on occasion: "'What, you've got money in the bank?' asked Fox, aghast. 'What's it doing there?'" [221]) Moreover, the third-person narrator has a habit of supplying information--this person's gambling habits, that person's personality quirks--that ought to have been brought out in the characterization itself. At the same time, there are some real missed opportunities when it comes to the novel's performance theme, most of them deriving from the restricted POV. For example, we're told about the botched treason trials against John Horne Tooke and others, which featured some virtuoso acts of legal defense, but Donoghue doesn't dramatize them.
This is a good novel for late-night relaxation. It's a zippy 639 pages (I knocked it off last evening); it's not particularly demanding; and it features plenty of romantic intrigue. But it's not really in the same league as Slammerkin or, for that matter, Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White and Sarah Waters' neo-Victorian Gothics.