The Three Damosels / Vera Chapman

 

The Three Damosels by Vera Chapman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Halloween Bingo 2021

This collection of three short novels are intertwined, all examinations of the King Arthur legend. When I was in my teens (more years ago than I can believe), I read the third novel, King Arthur's Daughter. It was my first brush with Arthur and it started me on a lifelong reading pattern, trying out the many versions of Arthurian fiction. I was excited when I found a used copy of this anthology for a reasonable price and I nabbed it.

It was a treat to finally read the first two books, but I was shocked when I made it to my remembered favourite and very little was familiar. It has been a long, long time. But I see very clearly why Vera Chapman's fiction inspired me so much. She features the women of Arthur's court: Vivian, Lynette, and Ursulet—the three damosels of the anthology title. Despite the limitations on femininity, they forge roles for themselves and are crucial to the tales. Also, Chapman includes magic unapologetically. Morgan le Fay is a dark rival to Merlin, another prominent female presence.

Chapman rejigs some of the genealogy of these mythic figures, but as she notes in a foreword, that has been a tradition by bards and jongleurs for centuries. From that time period, daughters are insignificant and Chapman gives Arthur a daughter, Ursulet, who could easily be left out of the official history. Chapman tells a very compressed version, in fact, using legendary characters to populate the story and relying on their iconic status to tell the reader what to expect. The action is unceasing and there is little effort spent on setting or fleshing out the plot. I found myself using descriptions of court life from other books to help me envisage the surroundings.

These works are a combination of the mythic and historical detail, obviously a patriotic work, showing why the British people can believe themselves to be exceptional. Chapman states very clearly that the blood of Arthur infuses them and one day Arthur will come again, dare I say it, to make Britain great again. I'm very glad to have revisited the third novel and to have finally read the first two. I certainly see why it appealed to my romantic teenage notions of history especially since Canada was still strongly linked to Britain when I was first exposed to Chapman's writing. I still enjoyed it a great deal, but I'm much less nostalgic now. I will hang on to this volume, I think, and read it again in the future.




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