Embodied Mystic

Matrix a novel by Lauren Groff.  Riverhead Books.  257 pp.  $18.00  *****

There is a moment late in Matrix in which Lauren Groff transcends her already deep understanding of mystical theology and gets to the place where all religions meet.  Marie de France—the novel’s protagonist—is an old woman at that point but is remembering a moment early in her stay at the nunnery when a calf had been separated from its mother because that was the only way the nuns would have access to milk and other dairy products.  And yet (though less sensitive people wouldn’t have noticed such a thing), they were doing harm to the mother-child bond, and the cow was grieving like any other mother robbed of her child.  Marie went to visit her.  This passage follows:

“The cow’s suffering was immense and powerful, a wave, and in it the suffering that Marie herself felt was swept away.  She went into the paddock and found the mother, and touched her on the flank for comfort.  But the cow shuffled her body so her head was facing Marie, and she tucked her broad rough crown against Marie’s chest and stomach, and Marie put her arms around the heavy jaw, feeling the mother’s grief for her lost calf rushing through her, and like this she lost the outlines of herself in the suffering of the other.  And later, as the bells for Matins sounded in the dark and she walked back in the darkness as though blind, she wondered if in fact this had been the closest she had been to god—not in fact invisible parent, not sun warming the earth and coaxing the seeds from the soil—but the nothing at the center of the self.  Not the Word, because speaking the Word limits the greatness of the infinite; but the silence beyond the Word in which there lives infinity.”

That passage confirmed what I’d already sensed: this author deeply understands mystical spirituality, true religion, in a way that few people do.  But I don’t know how.  She doesn’t speak anywhere of religious practice, or of religion being an important part of her life.

Matrix tells the story of Marie de France, a 12^th century nun who lived most of her life in England and is credited with being the first woman to write verse in French.  Little is known of her life, so Groff had free range to invent.  Groff had a longtime interest in her poetry (talk about esoteric subjects) and was midway through another novel, The Vaster Wilds, when she heard a lecture about Benedictine women in medieval monasteries and had a sudden vision of this novel, as if all it once.  So she sat down to write it (Groff has mentioned in various places that she writes many drafts but writes quite quickly, and works on several projects at once).  I find this whole idea astounding.  An author is working on one complicated novel (which she recently published, and considers her best) suddenly takes a break to write another novel, as if it were a trifle.  But it’s no trifle.  Matrix is a substantial work.

For much of the way, I hadn’t thought of Matrix as being so much about religion as about power and a utopian vision.  The Marie that Groff portrays is a large, somewhat gangly, quite physical and not apparently attractive woman (a lover toward the end of the book says she has always thought of her as ugly).  Yet she is a force of nature, and by her very energy attracts people.  Her half sibling (though Marie herself was illegitimate), Eleanor of Aquitaine, senses this power and ships her off to the monastery as if to rid herself of a rival.  Marie had not up to then led a religious life and felt stifled at first.  That was the last place she wanted to be.

The monastery in question was a poor one in a poor area, people suffering from near-famine, and the nuns, though they cared for each other and for the people around them, didn’t know how to lift themselves from this condition.  Marie, who was a religious novice but also prioress of the nunnery (I don’t understand such distinctions) turns out to be brilliant at manipulating her benefactors to get what she wants, and eventually turns the nunnery into a prosperous place that supports the community.  Soon they’re living high off the hog, though more often it’s a cow or a lamb.  The physical health of the women, and their spirits, improve.

One controversial aspect of the story is that the women are sexual with one another, bother overtly and secretly (I’ve written of that elsewhere).  Traditional Catholics, I’m sure, will be scandalized at this novel by a non-Catholic, but Groff is creating a utopia of women, and that utopia cannot include men in any way.  Marie tried letting them be around as servants, but that didn’t work.  Young women in the community—though not the nuns—were turning up pregnant.  So Marie banished men, and showed the women that they could do anything necessary to support themselves.  That included a massive project to create a labyrinth so that curious townspeople couldn’t find their way in.  That project, and a subsequent one to conserve water, nearly backfired—Marie wasn’t perfect, and was tempted by her own power—but she always saw her flaws and recovered in time.  The place eventually embodied her vision.

The truth is that this fictional Marie actually loved Eleanor—her early verse was a series of poems expressing that love—and Eleanor had a love/hate relationship with her, admiring her power and skill but seeing her as a rival.  The women eventually helped each other even when that wasn’t their intention.  They don’t wind up being together, which Marie might have hoped, but look back with contentment on the lives they’ve lived.

I found this a stunning novel, briefer and less complex than Fates and Furies but no less impressive.  I’m amazed at the range of Groff’s writing: who else writes a novel about contemporary marriage followed by another about a twelfth century nun?  I’m amazed by her ability to inhabit a wide range of characters.  I look forward to more.