Essay Questions

The protagonist of the novel, Marie de France, was a real historical figure, but how much of the story is true?

While the protagonist is based on a woman actually lived, the reality is that outside of the literature which is credited to her, very little is actually known about it. In fact, even the name Marie de France is really just the equivalent of a pen name. The real name of Marie is as much a mystery as most of her life. So the answer to the question of how much of the novel is true is trickier than usual. One can assert that almost nothing that happens in the novel is based on historical fact and therefore the novel should be considered almost completely a work of imagination, but that assertion leaves out one very important fact. Since the actual biographical details of the woman known as Marie are themselves almost completely unknown this raises an interesting conundrum: what, exactly, is the true story of this enigmatic woman?

Who is Eleanor?

The character of Eleanor—the queen whom Marie is in love with but who treats her with vicious lack of empathy—is also based on an actual historical figure, but one about whom much more is known than Marie. This Eleanor is none other than Eleanor of Aquitaine, the woman who was married to both a king of France and a king of England. This is the same character for which Katherine Hepburn won her third Best Actress Oscar playing in The Lion in Winter. Eleanor also routinely shows up as character in movies about Robin Hood and is one of the few British queen consorts outside of Henry VIII’s infamous string of wives to become recognizable merely by name. Although, of course, that fame is the result of usually being referred to as Eleanor of Aquitaine rather than just her name alone.

Why does Abbess Tilde burn decide to toss Marie’s book of visions into the fire?

It is true that Tilde has deep reservations about the authenticity of Marie’s visions which Marie claims were brought to her by the Virgin Mary. Her distrust and suspicion of Marie’s motives indicate a motivation based on simple lack of faith, as it were. It is equally true that Tilde is personally offended by such content in the visions as a kiss taking place between Eve and the Virgin Mary and an image which portrays a feminine god in the form of a hen laying the eggs of the world. Ultimately, however, it is not Tilde’s own person reservations about either Marie or the visions which stimulate her desire to destroy the book forever so that it can never reach the world outside the abbey. The impulsive decision to toss the book into the flames comes down to simple self-preservation. Had Marie’s visions ever become known to the world outside the abbey, she thinks, there would have been burnings of heretics at the stake, all the sisters would have been removed, and all the work that gone into the successful transformation from privation to self-sustain economics would have disappeared into the pockets of others in a flash.