Ophelia's Fan Reading Group Notes

ALLEN&UNWIN

READING GROUP NOTES Contents: About Christine Balint (2) On writing Ophelia’s Fan (2) Reviews (2) Some suggested points for discussion (7) Further reading (8) About Christine Balint

Christine Balint is the author of the highly praised novel, Salt Letters. Shortlisted in The Australian/Vogel Literary award in 1998, Salt Letters was published by Allen & Unwin in 1999. It was subsequently published by W.W. Norton, New York and translated into Italian and German.

Christine has a PhD in Creative Writing from Melbourne University and teaches in the MA Creative Writing Program at RMIT.

On writing Ophelia’s Fan—Christine Balint

Ophelia’s Fan began with my own experience of hearing Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique along with its rarely performed sequel Lélio or The Return to Life. Both of these orchestral works by the Romantic French composer were inspired by the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson. Seeing her on stage in Paris in 1827, Berlioz fell in love. I sat in the audience in Melbourne watching an actor playing a young Romantic artist with long hair, lolling about on the grand piano and raving about Ophelia, Juliet, and Shakespeare. As I listened, I began to wonder what it would be like to be Harriet, hearing the work she inspired for the first time. The subject of Harriet and Berlioz and the symphony is rich with possibility. It has allowed me to work with many subjects that have interested me for some time: music, Shakespeare, theatre, and nineteenth-century history. The research process took me from the Bishop’s Palace in Ennis, County Clare, to the Freemason’s records in Dublin, to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. I visited Drumcliffe cemetery where Father Barrett, Harriet’s childhood guardian, is reportedly buried, only to find unreadable headstones and a herd of dairy cows. I learned the almost-forgotten theatrical art of gesture in a course for actors and opera singers. My concluding performance was Ophelia’s ‘mad scene’ in a flowing white dress. It has been a fascinating journey for me re-creating the life and voice of such a talented woman who has been immortalised by music yet overlooked by history.

Reviews Australian Book Review—Carolyn Tétaz Repeat performances

‘Christine Balint’s first novel, The Salt Letters (1999), was a thoroughly researched fictional account of a young unmarried woman’s journey from England to Australian in 1857, structured as a series of letters home. Shortlisted for the 1998 Vogel Literary Award, it was an evocative narrative, skillfully told. For her second novel, Balint has written a fictional account of the life of the actress Harriet Smithson, best known as Hector Berlioz’s muse . . .

Ophelia’s Fan is Smithson’s memoir written for her only child, Louis, explaining ‘the lands and journeys that made [me]’. Balint is an able novelist, and this book showcases her skills. Her detailed and extensive research never reads like a history lesson or a display of knowledge. The narrative is complex, moving between third and first person, shifting between past and present, divided into four parts and interrupted by four first-person interpretations of the roles that

Reading Group Notes Ophelia’s Fan 2 made Smithson famous: Ophelia, Desdemona, Juliet and Jane Shore. Yet Balint carries the reader along effortlessly, and creates a portrait of Smithson and her world that is always engaging and convincing.

The front cover of Ophelia’s Fan announces it is ‘a story about dreams, Shakespeare and love’. It is, rather, a story about ambition, art and family. Balint presents Smithson as a pragmatic, independent woman, caught between the mutually exclusive longing for private comfort and the desire for public achievement . . .

While Shakespeare is a catalyst in this story, Balint’s focus is broader, presenting an insightful examination of the combination of background, experience and circumstance that make a great theatrical performance. Love is a strong theme in this work, but more in terms of its absence. Smithson’s obligation to her widowed mother and crippled sister shape her life. While she has offers of ‘protection’ from wealthy suitors, Smithson recognises her need for a marriage to secure her family’s finances. Smithson’s relationship with Berlioz is portrayed as confused and awkward, rather than a grand passion.

Balint has written a marvellous portrait of Smithson, as a child, an artist and an unmarried woman in the 1800s; has delivered a fascinating study of the theatrical world of the 1800s; and has created a terrific cast of characters, in particular Smithson’s nervous mother, her bitter sister Anne, the enigmatic Father Barrett and a self-absorbed Berlioz.’

Bulletin with Newsweek

‘Gushingly subtitled ‘a story about dreams, Shakespeare and love’, Christine Balint’s novel, Ophelia’s Fan, is, in fact, a taut and intelligent historical romance. . . Balint recreates a gritty professional world as well, beginning with Harriet’s father’s struggling theatrical troupe that tours provincial Ireland. Poverty, boarding houses, keeping up genteel appearances, competing for roles once a chance at London theatre has come: this is the background from which Harriet resiliently, if not altogether triumphantly, emerges. Balint’s is an unsentimental tale of the optimism on which love and art depend.’

Sydney Morning Herald—Andrew Riemer Many voices tell story of theatrical passion

‘. . . Balint’s novel alludes to the years of that difficult marriage by means of letters from Smithson to her son Louis. This provides a reasonably effective way of framing the main part of the narrative, though there is something a trifle second-hand about such literary devices.

Balint is one of the many recent novelists who seem unable to follow the advice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: ‘Begin at the beginning, and go on ‘til you come to the end: then stop.’ There is too much chopping and changing between Ireland and London, London and Paris, from Smithson’s childhood in Ireland to her years on the London and Paris stage and so on.

The jerkiness of the narrative is further highlighted by a number of interpolated monologues by Shakespearean heroines—Juliet, Desdemona, Anne Boleyn (from Henry VIII) and Ophelia—and by the central character of Jane Shore by the now-forgotten playwright Nicholas Rowe. They tell their stories in early 19th century voices. Authors of historical novels need to take great care with minutiae and nuances. Balint has obviously looked into early 19th century theatrical

Reading Group Notes Ophelia’s Fan 3 lore with some care, but there is a degree of sloppiness as well. For example, on several occasions Smithson talks about her ‘siblings’, a word not in currency before 1897.

My main misgiving about Ophelia’s Fan concerns the rather pedestrian way it deals with what lies at the centre of Balint’s preoccupations. Her novel is filled with information about the Shakespearean frenzy that swept Paris, a frenzy that provoked Berlioz’s infatuation with the Irish actress and the composition of the heady—and for its time scandalously innovative—Symphonie Fantastique. Yet these characters’ pulses do not race. For all their romantic ardour, all of them, even Berlioz, are a tad tame and suburbian.’

The Age—Thuy On A shining actress in her own soft light

‘. . . In Ophelia’s Fan, Christine Balint rescues her [Harriet Smithson] from the shadows and shines a spotlight on her. Like her first novel, The Salt Letters, which charted a young girl’s journey from England to Australia, Balint’s second work is another historical fiction set in the 19th century . . .

Ladies of the stage were then regarded as fallen women, half-despised by upper-class gentry because of a fear they would ‘perform our way into the hearts and trousers of better men’. Fortunately for her, but not necessarily the book, Harriet does not disgrace herself because of a solid education in ‘sound knowledge and moral principles’.

Though born into a family of theatre practitioners who encouraged her dramatic flair, Harriet is ambivalent about her calling. The book follows the gradual ascent of her career. . . After an unsatisfactory liaison with a duke who merely wants her to be his trophy mistress, emotional and financial salvation finally arrives for Harriet in the form of the pas- sionate Berlioz.

For some inexplicable reason, the novel jumps all over the place without any adherence to chronology.’

New Zealand Herald —Margie Thomson

‘Turning history into fiction can be a clumsy process, yet this imagining of the life of the 19th century Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson is as graceful and yet as steely as the grande dame herself.

Smithson was born in Ireland in 1800, daughter of impoverished theatre people, and brought up by a Catholic priest. Always destined for the theatrical life of rough magic, though, she eventually made her way to the famous theatre at Drury Lane in London, and then, in 1827, on to Paris with Charles Kemble’s acting troupe to introduce Shakespeare to the French. As Ophelia in particular, Smithson found the recognition and financial security that she’d always craved.

Tragedy strikes in the form of love—a Shakespearean irony if ever there was one —when wild Hector Berlioz becomes infatuated with her, using her as the inspiration behind his Symphonie Fantastique, but then manipulating her and casting her aside.

Reading Group Notes Ophelia’s Fan 4 The book is strangely structured, moving back and forwards between Smithson’s childhood and her adult trials and successes, and including imaginative chapters whose narrators are some of the characters Smithson made her own: Juliet, Desdemona, Ophelia. The childhood scenes are whimsical and unnecessarily oblique, but Smithson as an adult is a wonderful, strong, engaging character, perfectly placed in the theatrical demi-monde to stand slightly outside mainstream society, and yet always threatened by its prejudices and ruthless social structures.

A woman of astonishing sense, courage, intelligence and imagination, she refuses to become the mistress of wealthy admirers, and refuses to have intimacy before marriage, even though Berlioz, rejected, spits at her in disbelief: ‘But you are an actrice!’

Gently compelling, Balint’s Smithson will capture your heart.’

Publishers Weekly

‘In her atmospheric second novel, Balint (The Salt Letters) fictionalises the meteoric rise of Harriet Smithson, a real 19th-century actress who, like her parents, was ‘called’ to the stage from an early age . . . Balint’s research is painstaking, and she delicately recreates the theater world of London and Paris in the early 19th century. In a lesser novelist’s hands, the fragmented narrative and frequent time shifts might have felt choppy, but instead they add delicious tension to this portrait of the difficult relationship between Berlioz and his erstwhile muse.’

Booklist —Margaret Flanagan

‘Nineteenth-century Irish actress Harriet Smithson is primarily remembered as muse to renowned French composer Hector Berlioz. In this fictional reworking of Smithson’s life, Balint recalls the performer who took Paris by storm with her fiery interpretation of Ophelia in 1827. From her unconventional childhood as the daughter of itinerant players to her phenomenal success on the London stage, a portrait of Harriet as a sublimely interesting character caught in the throes of her own personal drama is created. Drawing parallels between the actress and some of her most famous roles, the author is able to reconstruct the vibrantly intoxicating atmosphere of the theatrical world in the early nineteenth century. A lavishly romantic fictional biography of an overlooked cultural icon.’

Eureka Street—Kirsty Sangster With true love showers

‘ . . . Beautifully written, Balint’s novel has captured well the life of the Irish actress Harriet Smithson and in particular gives the reader a vivid sense of what it must have been like to be a woman of the stage in 19th-century England and France. We see the whole precarious nature of the theatre, its fickleness and cruelty, and how rapidly the fortunes of the actors can rise and then fall. As working women, female actors were associated in the public mind as being almost dangerous and akin to prostitutes. Men often treated them as such, and Harriet Smithson had to fight hard to preserve her ‘honour’. She must deal with a series of suitors, who want her not for a wife but as a mistress.

Reading Group Notes Ophelia’s Fan 5 The choice of a non-linear narrative style has allowed Balint to move seamlessly in and out of Harriet’s life as a child and as an adult . . . The past and the present merge and what is dream, reality, fact or fiction in Harriet Smithson’s difficult life becomes hard to discern.

Balint’s lyrical and sensitive prose also awakens us to the near hysteria of the burgeoning Romantic movement in 19th-century Paris . . .

The role of beautiful women as muse for the male artist is not a particularly appealing one. Berlioz wears down Harriet Smithson’s lack of interest in him by sheer force of will and attentiveness. Yet he very quickly loses interest in her once she has finally agreed to marry him. A muse must remain unattainable. Once attained she can be discarded like one of Ophelia’s dead flowers. Berlioz went on to marry several times over.

In this novel, Christine Balint has skillfully recreated the life and voice of Smithson, who was lauded as one of the most accomplished Shakespearean actresses of her time. With a high degree of historical accuracy, Balint has coloured in the background to Smithson’s life and exposed the poverty and degradation that lay beneath the Romantic façade. Harriet Smithson may have been the muse who inspired Berlioz’s most celebrated symphony but she herself dies in obscurity and misery. She goes the way of many women who have been courted and captured by artistic genius.’

Reading Group Notes Ophelia’s Fan 6 Some suggested points for discussion

! Harriet’s parents make the seemingly unconventional decision to leave her with Father Barrett, an elderly Catholic priest, to raise. Do you think that Harriet has a better childhood because of being brought up in Father Barrett’s household or would she have been better off with her travelling parents? How do her parents ultimately feel about their decision? How does this make Harriet a different person?

! Harriet’s family is Protestant and County Clare is heavily Catholic, particularly in Ennis, where Harriet grows up. How do Catholic–Protestant relations in Ennis affect the story? How do Catholicism and religion figure in Harriet’s life?

! What is the effect of reading about Harriet’s childhood in the third person? (‘She’ rather than ‘I’ is used in the narrative.) Why would Balint use this more distancing voice for only the childhood sections?

! Do you think the Castle Coote family could have helped Harriet in other ways after Father Barrett’s death? If so, why do you think they did not?

! What does Harriet learn from Eliza O’Neill? How does their friendship shape Harriet’s personality and her desires?

! Why do you think other actresses were more popular in London? Is it the theatre world that makes them stars or is it something in Harriet that keeps her from reaching the top strata?

! Given Harriet’s upbringing, what were her choices in life? Given the times—and you can think about Jane Austen novels for background—what is allowable for women of Harriet’s class and profession?

! Balint interweaves characters, mostly from Shakespeare, that Harriet played, speaking directly to the reader. Why would she want to include the voices of Juliet, Desdemona, Ophelia, and others? How does Harriet feel about the women she portrays on stage?

! Do you think Harriet is in love with her childhood friend Charles Castle Coote? Why does she react to his proposition by turning him away? Is there any man in Ophelia’s Fan who could have made her genuinely happy?

! Harriet finds that she can use her natural Irish accent when on the stage in Paris, which she cannot do when in England. In what other ways is France a relief after living in London? Why is Harriet more successful in Paris than in London? Why does she decide to settle in France? What would have made her later life in France easier?

! Character is created in the theatre by the use of makeup and props. For her pivotal role as Ophelia in Hamlet, Harriet plaits straw in her hair but also uses a fan, which gives the title to Balint’s novel. What does ‘Ophelia’s fan’ symbolise and why would Balint want to focus the reader’s attention on it? Are there other symbols in the book that evoke the story?

! How would you describe Harriet’s acting style? How does it fit, or seem in opposition to, her intimate self?

! How does Berlioz first attract Harriet’s attention? Why do they have such a complicated and explosive courtship?

Reading Group Notes Ophelia’s Fan 7 ! Harriet’s younger sister, Anne, is an invalid. How does that colour her relationship with Harriet? How does Anne react to Berlioz’s wooing of Harriet? Why?

! What are Harriet’s mother’s ambitions for her daughter and for herself? Why doesn’t Mrs Smithson want her daughter to marry a composer?

! The Juliet in the novel says, ‘For suddenly I understood the meaning of marriage and that this marriage was more important to me than my own life.’ Is this how Harriet feels about Berlioz? Why does she marry him?

! Why do you think Balint chose to write a nonlinear narrative, moving around in time, rather than telling the story chronologically from beginning to end? Why does she choose to use Father Barrett’s philosophy for the titles of the part sections?