Book review: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Title: The Marriage Portrait
Author: Maggie O’Farrell
Genre: Historical fiction
Publisher: Penguin Random House Knopf Canada
Publication Date: 2022
Page count: 339

Rating:

I don’t typically read a lot of historical fiction, but I’d heard some really great things about The Marriage Portrait. The story follows Lucrezia de Medici, the third daughter of the Grand Duke of Florence in the 1550s-1560s and her short, tumultuous marriage to the Duke of Ferrara before her untimely death at just 16 years old.

The story itself, and O’Farrell’s adaptation of the events surrounding Lucrezia’s demise, was a wonderfully compelling narrative. She built a fantastic, memorable, gorgeously flawed female main character in Lucrezia and created a perfectly twisted set of circumstances and characters to place her in that helped her to shine even further.

The execution of the story felt a little long to me, and O’Farrell’s writing style was exceptionally detailed, which pulled me out of the narrative at times. That said, I absolutely get why so many people felt this book was great literature. For me, it was enjoyable, but the detail detracted a little from the overall pull of the story.

Fair warning: spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t read this or the other books in this series.

Book Review: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

The book begins with what will be the central point of tension throughout the entire story: Lucrezia de Medici is out on a ride with her husband, who she believes is planning to kill her. It’s an exhilarating start, throwing you immediately into the core of the conflict without any context or warning. The book then alternates between past and present, slowly uncoiling the relevant details that help you to understand why, exactly, the Duke is going to murder his young wife, and how she knows it so unfailingly.  

The stage for who Lucrezia is as a character is set before she’s even born through her mother Eleonora. Eleonora details the events of Lucrezia’s conception, describing a scene in which she’s ambitiously plotting on behalf of her husband’s estate. She determines that this ambition, and her distraction towards it at the time of Lucrezia’s conception, are what are to blame for what she believes is a failure among her children. She’s proud of the well-behaved, well-mannered, smart, sophisticated children she’s raised, but Lucrezia, from day one, is different from her siblings. She’s stubborn and single-minded, she’s inconsolable and irrational, she’s consumed by her own thoughts and marches to the beat of her own drum, none of which are qualities that are admired in young girls at this point in history. Her mother disassociates from Lucrezia from a very young age and quickly, so does the rest of the household. She’s raised mostly by servants and maids, and always kept at arms length from the other children of the household.

As Lucrezia grows up and shares her perspective, it becomes clear that the impacts of her detached upbringing only drive her further into the differences that she holds from her family. While her siblings are able to play with each other, Lucrezia, constantly excluded, instead spends her time alone, wandering the halls of her family’s great estate. She spends her time eavesdropping on conversations adults are having, spying on family members and courtiers, and absorbing every facet of her surroundings.

Lucrezia is a supremely visual learner and observer, translating her environment and feelings into visuals such as paintings and drawings. Her artwork becomes the one silver lining of her disposition in the eyes of her parents and teachers, who acknowledge, albeit begrudgingly, that her gift for perspective and visual arts is astounding. They never seem to fully grasp that this is because this is how she interprets the world around her, and that no one has ever been willing to see her in the way she craves to be seen.

When Lucrezia is just twelve years old, her older sister Maria dies suddenly, and her entire life is changed. Until now, she has been largely ignored and left to her own devices, but with Maria gone she is forced to take her sister’s place in an arranged marriage with the to-be Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso, a man more than twice her age. The marriage is of a strategic advantage to her father, who will now have claim over another massive territory in Italy, so despite Lucrezia’s begging, he will not concede to allow his child out of the arrangement. Lucrezia is given a couple of years to reach womanhood before she is forced to marry the duke, regardless of her feelings about the situation.

From here, the story pivots to focus on Lucrezia and Alfonso. After an extravagant wedding celebrated in Lucrezia’s home of Florence, Alfonso quickly sweeps Lucrezia away to journey towards her new home in Ferrara. Alfonso initially comes across as caring and sweet, but his personality quickly splinters. Before long, it’s clear that the young duke has something to prove and that there is little he won’t do to maintain an iron grip on his control of everything and everyone around him.

Lucrezia, who by virtue of being ignored her whole life, is herself an independent person, struggles to maintain the demure, reticent complicity required of a wife during this age, and every time this struggle becomes noticeable, Alfonso takes significant offense. The kind, loving man that she believed she had met at her wedding disappears altogether and as they arrive at court, it becomes clear that not only will Alfonso not tolerate anything except absolute servitude; he’s also willing to place the blame for his own shortcomings squarely on Lucrezia’s shoulders. As the story unfolds, we see why Alfonso would want Lucrezia dead and how willing he is to make it happen.

Lucrezia was a wonderfully depicted character. She’s a woman who thinks in visual terms, who seems to have varying degrees of mental illness, and who persistently struggles to articulate her thoughts and feelings in the conventional way that those around her demand. She was not meant for the environment into which she finds herself thrust. She makes every effort to be the dutiful wife, to make her family proud, to do what the Duke asks of her, but there’s a degree of defiance in her that can’t be tamed. One of my favourite lines of the book demonstrates this as she prepares for her wedding to Alfonso:

“She curls up her toes insider her slippers and repeats to herself Sofia’s advice on the matter of her wedding night: let the man do what he will, don’t fight or struggle, breathe deeply, and it will soon be over. But it is not, she had wanted to say to Sofia, in my nature to acquiesce, to submit.”

No matter how much Lucrezia tries to simply be the mold of the woman that she needs to be, she finds that she cannot, and in the end, that acceptance becomes core to her survival.

The historical context around the events of the story was also deeply fascinating. The politics of the time, and the way families, and in particular, women, were used as brokerage tools between men of power and influence was equal parts interesting and infuriating. I felt like the story of Lucrezia was a thought-provoking look into how little control women had over themselves and ultimately, how little they really mattered. They were pawns to be used in a man’s game, and that was the only sense in which they had value. The fate of Emilia, a servant for Lucrezia from her home of Florence, served as a devastating testament to how a woman with no stature had no value at all. Her entire life was devoted to Lucrezia, and in the end, even  Lucrezia doesn’t think twice about leaving her to slaughter. And the irony that the Duke can’t even tell them apart? That the two women that he spends an inordinate amount of time around look exactly the same to him? It’s mind-boggling and somehow also unsurprising.

The actual writing was the only challenge I had with this book. While I really enjoyed aspects of the plot and characters, O’Farrell is an incredibly descriptive writer. At times, it felt like the book was dragging on as a descriptive element was flushed out beyond reproach and it pulled me out of the enjoyment of the actual story. That said, I know many felt that this aspect was what set this book apart in a great way, so to each their own.

The story of Lucrezia was a fascinating one, and I absolutely loved the ending she got through O’Farrell’s interpretation. This was an enjoyable read that for the last ¼ had me turning pages pretty quickly trying to see how it would all unfold. While it went on a bit in some parts, I still felt like it was a solid story worth the investment.