Wakenhyrst – Book Review – Beyond The Spine Reviews

Long read, essay style with spoilers throughout.

I have long been a fan of gothic novels, so when I saw Michelle Paver’s name on the seductively covered Wakenhyrst in my local bookshop, I couldn’t not buy it immediately.

Like many 20-something-year-olds, I know Paver from her Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. It’s a series that I have never re-read, but I think about it often, and after Wakenhyrst I’m bound to pick it up again soon. Paver has a talent for realising the wild fantasies that young people fail to suppress, and as an adult reading her work, I’m reminded that I still long for those easy, natural freedoms that her characters yearn for—only that I suppress those wants with the rest of my adult life’s business.

A Gothic Novel – Wakenhyrst

Released in 2019, Wakenhyrst is a contemporary gothic novel, written by one who has a clear love for the gothic genre and its many trappings.

It’s set in the early 20^th century when the tensions between the upper and lower classes were still strong. Those tensions are close to the heart of Wakenhyrst which is set in a regal, country estate, and peopled by a troubled nobility and their grumpy serving staff.

There’s also a clash between Christianity and the local superstitions tied up in the class struggles, with the ruling classes shunning the cultures (superstitions and beliefs) of the lower classes. Again, a common trope in Gothic fiction, but this time it is told through the eyes of a logical young girl who still longs to dream. She understands that superstition isn’t real, but she engages in it because she finds joy there, unlike her father who is haunted by the horrors of Christianity and folklore both.

Another common struggle in gothic narratives occurs between nature and civilisation. I doubt that it was a coincidence that Paver named our protagonist’s paternal grandfather ‘Algernon’, after the real gothic writer Algernon Blackwood who I have previously mentioned in my review of The Call of Cthulhu. One of Algernon Blackwood’s preoccupations was in writing of the potential horror that can be felt towards nature’s awesomeness, and this style is channelled by Paver into her descriptions of the fen. While some of Wakenhyrst’s characters recognise the fen as a dangerous provider of life, others fear its wild and untamed beauty, instead seeking refuge in the Wakenhyrst estate. Which leads me on the topic of the battle of the sexes.

Gender Struggles in Wakenhyrst

Much like the fen, the women of Wakenhyrst are wild and untamed beauties that cause the educated men of this book some sense of horror. This is nothing new to the gothic genre, but when told through the words of a rational young woman—as opposed to the hysteria common to the women written in gothic—the dangers these men present is all too real, yet somehow pitiful at the same time.

Their inability to converse with the feminine richness that surrounds them is a tragedy, though understandably more so for the women who suffer resultingly. Paver seems to place this blame specifically on the educated men, as Clem, Jubal, and the head gardener are all able to perceive Maud as a human being capable of interesting conversation. It is only her father, Mr. Broadstairs, and the doctor who suspect Maud of hysteria, as they are likely threatened by her sharp intelligence.

While Maud is far from hysterical, the frame story casts some wonder over whether the tragedy of Wakenhyrst was because of witchcraft enacted by Maud, which encourages the reader to perceive her as an unreliable narrator. The unresolved mysteries of the text, such as the waterweed on Edmund’s pillow, also give cause for the reader to wonder whether Maud’s innocent, unbelieving and yet still hopeful prayers to the fen secretly had a note of accidental witchery about them.

However, I think that to believe this would be missing the point of the book. Maud is constantly second guessed and refused by the educated yet paranoid men of this tale. By continuing to suspect her after the end of the tale, or by believing too strongly in the power of the fen, the reader becomes Edmund Stearne to a small degree. And none of us want to be Edmund Stearne, I should hope.

As an aside, one of my faults with this book is that Maud constantly seems to feel in competition with her brothers. She perceives them as drawing her parents’ love and affection, but when she begins to snoop on her father’s diary, we find very little mention of Edmund or Felix. Indeed, although the reader should know and understand that female jealousy for the status and power of men in this era is common and completely understandable, Maud’s particular resentment towards her brothers feels out of place. I would perhaps have liked to have seen them causing more disturbances for her, or attracting their father’s respect to a greater degree.

The Gothic Mother

Like Maud, I too harbour a deep fear towards pregnancy, and it was incredibly refreshing to see someone else describe it in the same way it appears to me; as a sickness. Perhaps this contrasts with the novel’s love and admiration for all that is nature, but it’s hatred of pregnancy, labour, and menses is an aspect that immediately endeared me to Wakenhyrst.

Maud is tortured by Dorothy’s (her mother) struggles through pregnancy. In an effort to defend herself, Dorothy flouts the rules of God and men alike by consulting the local well woman to prevent further pregnancies. Unfortunately, her attempts fail, and inevitably she dies in labour—but not before Maud is completely traumatised by the thought of pregnancy and the horrors it can contain.

Maud rejects pregnancy in the same way that she rejects the unnecessary sufferings of Christianity, as it is represented within the book. She cries to Mrs. Broadstairs, the rector’s daughter, ‘Hasn’t it ever struck you as horrible, that the symbol of our religion is an instrument of torture?’ which leads me to wonder whether the symbol of woman is similar in that the female body is viewed in law and society by its ability to reproduce. Either way, Maud strings the two together quickly in her next line to make the comparison clearer; ‘How can blood wash away sin? […] My mother’s blood [when she died in her final pregnancy] didn’t wash away my father’s sin!’ (p.127).

Pregnancy, like religion, seems to be filled with unnecessary suffering, and Maud is having none of it.

Despite this, Maud seems haunted by her own abortion. There is an easily drawn comparison between the two women lost to the fen. Edmund Stearne condemns his sister to a watery death by failing to get help when she needed it. Maud, by contrast, aborts her fetus into the fen but imagines it was a girl. Both shy away from the truth of what they’ve done, with Edmund refusing to remember or accept blame, though Maud’s own reaction is harder to place.

Within the narrative, Maud first suggests that it’s simply menses that she gives to the fen. It isn’t until the final pages of the book that a much older Maud Stearne confesses to herself that it was her stillborn child. Where Edmund Stearne demanded that the windows of Wakenhyrst be kept shut to keep the fen out—and thus his sin of drowning his sister there—Maud keeps her windows open, to maintain her connection with the dead fetus she ‘buried’ there.

I think that through this, we can ascertain that Maud feels a great deal of emotion towards what happened with her own abortion, but she doesn’t perceive her actions as sinful. For her, the dream of the child can live on for as long as the fen remains, which perhaps shows us her real incentive for preventing her father from draining the fen.

Perhaps it is no healthier that while Edmund hears the screams of his dead sister on the fen winds, Maud imagines the soul of her dead child. However, Maud never went on to murder anyone as far as the text tells, and her methods for processing her grief certainly seem less guilty.

The Haunted House Trope

In gothic narratives, it is extremely common for the room, house, estate, or castle to have an incredible sense of character about them. This is taken to the extreme in creations such as Gormenghast and House of Leaves, but generally the house is perceived by its inhabitants as an oppressive, maddening force.

Wakenhyrst approaches this a little differently. There are suspicions that the parish as a whole suffers some form of curse, but the house of Wakenhyrst itself is both victim and complicit to the curse.

Through Maud’s eyes, Wakenhyrst is her familial home. It is her connection to the fen, her mother, and her home. Wakenhyrst hides no secrets from Maud, and she mourns how her father abuses it when he orders the cloak of ivy to be removed, for fear that it is housing devils.

In the diary entries of Edmund Stearne, however, the house is far from a home; it is a poor barricade against the devil and its windows seem to open by themselves to let the devil in. By failing to protect him, the house seems almost complicit in Edmund’s mental torture. In this way, the house appears both victim and transgressor.

This duality is important, because it tells the reader how the interpretation of a situation can so easily shift depending on the individual’s approach to it. It begs the reader to question other gothic narratives where the house has appeared haunted (such as The Yellow Wallpaper, and The Turn of The Screw), and to instead question the individual who failed to believe in the logic of the real world.

There is a hope within this that we can apply this thinking to our own lives and situations. Sometimes, our fears are unfounded, and simply talking (and listening) to another person with a fresh perspective can help us to see that ‘the house’ is not really out to get us. There is a danger in suffering alone, as Edmund Stearne suffers.

The Magic of Wakenhyrst

And the mystery of the waterweed…

I’ve read a lot of reviews and critics of this novel since beginning my writing of this post, and one item I see recurring is that many are finding the magic of Wakenhyrst harder to believe in than in Paver’s other gothic titles.

I have not read Paver’s other gothic titles, so I am free of the expectations that her other readers had, which may be why I find myself at odds with them.

I have previously written in this blog that I feel the purpose of the book is to test your ability to read it rationally and not end up like poor, deluded Edmund. However, if one were so willing to dip their toes into the make believe, there is plenty of witchcraft on Maud’s part that could lead you to believe in the fen’s raw power. She prays to the fen to stop the babies, and her mother dies which does stop the babies. She prays for Clem’s heart there, for her father’s downfall, and offers meaningful blood sacrifices to it. By the end of the book, she even confesses that she has found it difficult NOT to believe that the fen has some kind of power. Particularly regarding the waterweed on Edmund’s pillow which continues to confound Maud at the end of the book.

I have seen various reviewers pin the blame of the waterweed on Maud. Believing that she simply didn’t mention it, but this makes no sense. She came clean about so much worse; why hold back on a childish prank?

Because it wasn’t her, and the devil that haunted Edmund Stearne was in fact young Felix. There is proof of it within the pages, though obviously, Felix is no devil. He is simply a very young child seeking his father’s affections in strange ways.

To her surprise he [Felix] seemed fascinated by the waterweed in the Lode. He gazed in rapt silence, breathing through his mouth. […] Poor little scrap. None of this was his fault. (p.186)
It was a strand of waterweed; slimy and soft like drowned skin. (p.205)
Quieting syrup [regularly fed to Felix] is a mixture of treacle and opium (p.246)
Nearer and nearer it came, with a stealthy yet unhurried purpose that I found indescribably horrifying. […] Then I heard a single harsh breath, violently expelled. (p.206)
Something was on the bottom step. […] I saw the shadowy form at the foot of the stairs begin to crawl towards me. Two eyes stared up at me. (p.206-207)

Now, this is far from condemning evidence that little Felix is the child opening his father’s window and leaving him gifts of waterweed, but I think it’s a fairly logical conclusion. Felix, like the devil that haunts Edmund, is short and likely prone to crawling about while sneaking.

If you remember how young Maud behaved, then young children crawling about Wakenhyrst in the dead of night is nothing out of the ordinary. And perhaps Felix’s aren’t quite so strange when you consider that the poor child is being plied with opium. Having grown up without a mother, is it any surprise that he tries to connect with his distant and abusive father only when said father can not hurt him? As Edmund sleeps?

We never see Felix’s point of view, so I’ll never know for sure, but it seems like too much of a coincidence for Maud to remember Felix’s fascination with the waterweed, for it then to reappear a mere twenty pages later… what do you think?

My Favourite Quotes from Wakenhyrst

Every year, Maman got the same illness and it often ended in a baby. (p.19)
He was nice to her. That was all it took. (p.81)
She did not for one moment believe that this would have any real effect, but for the first time in her life she understood how wisewomen felt. And witches. (p.131)
It was the first time she had admitted this to herself and she felt no guilt; merely satisfaction and a sense of strength (p. 163)
Clem’s arms tightened about her so that she couldn’t breathe, and for a moment she was frightened. But only for a moment. (p.193)
It came to Maud suddenly that this was all an act; that he was straining every sinew to appear normal. (p.297)
Death freezes everything. (p.325)

My Dislikes in Wakenhyrst

I really loved this book, enough to rate it 5* on Goodreads, however, I must say that I found Edmund’s diary entries a little overbearing. I was ecstatic on learning that Maud believed he would write no more, and that portion of the book was over, and disappointed when she found the secret hidden ledger which returned us to that deeply disturbed mind.

I think my issue with those entries was that I rarely gleaned new information from them. Each entry seemed designed to paint Edmund in the same dreary tones of despicable. Aside from the final crescendo where we try to figure out who his final victim will be, his earlier entries all felt much the same. I feel like he might have been a more imposing figure had those entries been more succinct and fewer.

Fortunately, that wasn’t enough to weigh the book down for me!