REREAD: Catherine, Named Birdy
Sep. 6th, 2022 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllCatherine, Called Birdy: Karen Cushman (Macmillan Children’s Books, 1996)
I recently saw a trailer for a film (or it could be a TV series) called ‘Catherine, Called Birdy’ written and directed by Lena Dunham, which reminded me I owned and had read this book from which it’s adapted. The trailer made me laugh and promisingly suggested that the adaptation catches the spirit and the humour of the book. I don’t know if I’ll be able to see it as it’s an Amazon production, but I could and did reread the book.
Catherine is twelve, the youngest child and only daughter of Rollo, a knight of the manor of Stonebridge in Lincolnshire in the year 1289 and his wife the lady Aelinn. She’s probably gained her nickname Little Bird or Birdy for her love of birds, but before you get any idea of a sweet, soft-hearted heroine, let me clarify that she’s feisty and a rebel. (Think ‘Maid Marian and Her Merry Men’ if that rings a bell.)
In something of a useful stretch, Birdy has learned to read and write from her brother Edward, a scholar and monk. It’s striking because her two other brothers, who serve the king, aren’t as learned. Edward has urged Birdy to keep a diary in the hope of helping her to grow up. For she is childish, she sulks and calls her oldest brother the abominable Robert, and her father a beast. She’s honest enough to admit that she’s got some of her spirit and temper from said beast.
This year is an important one for her, because she’s certainly started puberty and so her father takes it into his head to marry her off. Before she’s turned 13. Before she’s gone through her menarche. It is medieval England (in an afterword, the author tries to set out the mentality of that time and place), and it is the custom for the upper classes to use ther children to make profitable alliances.
But Birdy is horrified, and uses all the tricks she can think of to put off any and all suitors, most of whom are adult men. Her father roars and usually beats her before finding someone else to marry her off to. The modern reader is squarely on her side, especially when, despite her best worst efforts, it is settled that she is to marry a man she has dubbed Shaggy Beard, who she abhors for rough treatment of a dog and who is old enough to have fathered a son who’s a little older than Birdy. She does not consent, but nobody is seeking her consent.
This is perfectly normal behaviour in Birdy’s world. She and best friend Perkin, a goat boy who wants to be a scholar, are aberrations. Birdy is constantly told to stop beating her wings against an unyielding cage by older women (a slightly too on-the-nose metaphor). But as women and girls all around her get pregnant, miscarry or die giving birth, Birdy is consumed by the desire to live the simpler, freer (she thinks) life of a villager, or to go to the Crusades as her dazzling Uncle George did, or anything, really. She has no truck with what she calls ‘lady lessons’, no aptitude for hemming, spinning or embroidery, although interestingly doctoring was the responsibility of the ladies of the manor, and Birdy takes on her full share of that role. A scary amount of her ‘remedies’ involve goose grease or some kind of dung. It is worth remembering that people died younger then.
Birdy is an entertaining diarist. I shouted with laughter a lot, especially at the briefest entries, which read like updates, where she can be pithily petty. Very quickly into the book, she acquires a book of saints, and so dutifully notes the patron saint for whichever day she’s writing on, and some of the descriptions about why they are saints are very peculiar. The book is obviously well researched when it comes to the foods, customs and beliefs of the time. I also liked the sense of the intersection of cultures, the upper classes are clearly mainly Normans, but there are Saxon and Welsh names, and even a Spanish doctor. Would all the things that happen to Birdy and the people in her life have happened to one girl in the space of a year? Probably not, but the accidents and mishaps, the ale heads and brawls in the manor hall and the village, yes. Birdy is prone to wonderings, some of which are screamingly funny, some of which are more poignant. I was willing to suspend my disbelief because Birdy is such a vibrant, compelling creation, a riot grrrl who kicks and runs and farts, but grows up just a little. The book ends on a hopeful note. I hope the adaptation leads more people, especially girls, to read it.
I recently saw a trailer for a film (or it could be a TV series) called ‘Catherine, Called Birdy’ written and directed by Lena Dunham, which reminded me I owned and had read this book from which it’s adapted. The trailer made me laugh and promisingly suggested that the adaptation catches the spirit and the humour of the book. I don’t know if I’ll be able to see it as it’s an Amazon production, but I could and did reread the book.
Catherine is twelve, the youngest child and only daughter of Rollo, a knight of the manor of Stonebridge in Lincolnshire in the year 1289 and his wife the lady Aelinn. She’s probably gained her nickname Little Bird or Birdy for her love of birds, but before you get any idea of a sweet, soft-hearted heroine, let me clarify that she’s feisty and a rebel. (Think ‘Maid Marian and Her Merry Men’ if that rings a bell.)
In something of a useful stretch, Birdy has learned to read and write from her brother Edward, a scholar and monk. It’s striking because her two other brothers, who serve the king, aren’t as learned. Edward has urged Birdy to keep a diary in the hope of helping her to grow up. For she is childish, she sulks and calls her oldest brother the abominable Robert, and her father a beast. She’s honest enough to admit that she’s got some of her spirit and temper from said beast.
This year is an important one for her, because she’s certainly started puberty and so her father takes it into his head to marry her off. Before she’s turned 13. Before she’s gone through her menarche. It is medieval England (in an afterword, the author tries to set out the mentality of that time and place), and it is the custom for the upper classes to use ther children to make profitable alliances.
But Birdy is horrified, and uses all the tricks she can think of to put off any and all suitors, most of whom are adult men. Her father roars and usually beats her before finding someone else to marry her off to. The modern reader is squarely on her side, especially when, despite her best worst efforts, it is settled that she is to marry a man she has dubbed Shaggy Beard, who she abhors for rough treatment of a dog and who is old enough to have fathered a son who’s a little older than Birdy. She does not consent, but nobody is seeking her consent.
This is perfectly normal behaviour in Birdy’s world. She and best friend Perkin, a goat boy who wants to be a scholar, are aberrations. Birdy is constantly told to stop beating her wings against an unyielding cage by older women (a slightly too on-the-nose metaphor). But as women and girls all around her get pregnant, miscarry or die giving birth, Birdy is consumed by the desire to live the simpler, freer (she thinks) life of a villager, or to go to the Crusades as her dazzling Uncle George did, or anything, really. She has no truck with what she calls ‘lady lessons’, no aptitude for hemming, spinning or embroidery, although interestingly doctoring was the responsibility of the ladies of the manor, and Birdy takes on her full share of that role. A scary amount of her ‘remedies’ involve goose grease or some kind of dung. It is worth remembering that people died younger then.
Birdy is an entertaining diarist. I shouted with laughter a lot, especially at the briefest entries, which read like updates, where she can be pithily petty. Very quickly into the book, she acquires a book of saints, and so dutifully notes the patron saint for whichever day she’s writing on, and some of the descriptions about why they are saints are very peculiar. The book is obviously well researched when it comes to the foods, customs and beliefs of the time. I also liked the sense of the intersection of cultures, the upper classes are clearly mainly Normans, but there are Saxon and Welsh names, and even a Spanish doctor. Would all the things that happen to Birdy and the people in her life have happened to one girl in the space of a year? Probably not, but the accidents and mishaps, the ale heads and brawls in the manor hall and the village, yes. Birdy is prone to wonderings, some of which are screamingly funny, some of which are more poignant. I was willing to suspend my disbelief because Birdy is such a vibrant, compelling creation, a riot grrrl who kicks and runs and farts, but grows up just a little. The book ends on a hopeful note. I hope the adaptation leads more people, especially girls, to read it.
