A Quiet Tide
by Marianne Lee (New Island Books, €14.95)
Felix M. Larkin
Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815) is described in the Dictionary of Irish Biography as “one of the earliest Irish women scientists…an avid collector of plants, especially the mosses, bryophytes, fungi and lichens around the family home on Bantry Bay”.
Though she never published anything herself, she corresponded with and shared the fruits of her collecting with many of the leading male botanists of her time, and her achievements were recognised and duly acknowledged in their work.
This debut novel by Marianne Lee is based on Ellen’s life, starting from when she left school and went to live at the Dublin home of Dr Whitley Stokes – a friend of her eldest brother, Emanuel.
Under Stokes’ influence, she became interested in botany. He tutored her and equipped her to pursue what became the passion of her life after she returned to West Cork. She spent the last ten years of her life there, dying just before her thirtieth birthday.
Virgin territory
Being then a remote and fairly inaccessible corner of the world, West Cork was virgin territory for a botanist and Ellen was able to discover many plants not previously known or recorded – preserving samples, and drawing and painting them. She is introduced to us in the prologue to the novel as “the plant lady from Ballylickey”, the location of her family home.
Her return home after her sojourn in Dublin is depicted in the novel as involuntary. She is ordered back home by Emanuel, the head of the family since their father’s death, in order to care for their aging mother and crippled brother who are the only family members now living there. He tells her: “It’s my decision to make, Ellen, and I’ve done so.” She accepts that it is her duty to obey her brother.
At least today women’s voices are being heard loud and clear”
Such was the fate of women in the early 19th Century, even one with the unusual ability of Ellen Hutchins – whose “name was noted beyond the confines of place”, to again quote from the novel. They had to be “adaptable” to the wishes – the whims – of their men folk; “women usually have little choice to be otherwise”, Ellen is told by Whitley Stokes’ wife.
Her crippled brother describes womanhood as “an affliction” comparable to his physical infirmity, and she tells him: “I wasn’t allowed your freedom, being a girl.”
Her school-friend, married off by her father to a much older man, writes to Ellen that she hopes one day “to feel less like a piece of muslin, to be blown here and there without direction or influence”.
Early in the novel, Ellen wonders: “What will become of me? My place in the world.” This question is answered later when Ellen muses upon how she manages to juggle her domestic responsibilities with her botanical endeavours. She thinks: “…with one hand I hold a knife, a paintbrush, I adjust the microscope lens. With the other I wipe my brother’s face, help my mother to the chamber pot, darn moth holes and feel for the pulse of a newly laid egg.”
Fine novel
This novel inevitably prompts us to consider how much real progress women have made in finding a “place in the world” in the 200 years since Ellen Hutchins lived and died.
No doubt the author feels not enough, but at least today women’s voices are being heard loud and clear. Unlike her near-namesake Mary Ann Evans, the novelist George Eliot, Ms Lee does not have to adopt a male pseudonym in order to have her work taken seriously.
A Quiet Tide is a fine novel, thoroughly researched and beautifully written; and the publishers, New Island, are to be commended on a very attractive production – with a well designed cover.