The Dutch Maiden
Marente de Moor
World Editions, £11.99
Review by Alastair Mabbott
Although, for this reader at least, the appeal of fencing continues to remain elusive, Marente de Moor has written a captivating novel around the sport, in which so much else is going on that it scarcely seems to matter. It’s 1936, and Janna, an 18-year-old Dutch girl, is a dedicated fencer. Her father sends her from their Maastricht home to a country estate in Germany, where she is to be tutored by a man he knew in the First World War, the aristocratic Egon von Botticher. There is unfinished business between the two men, and the visit from Janna, bearing a letter, is presumably an attempt at a rapprochement between them.
Germany is well into its Nazi phase by this time, with an industrialised military machine gearing up for another war, but von Botticher is stuck in an earlier era when men fought each other one-to-one, with swords, following codes of honour and gallantry. “Herr Hitler has never been party to a duel. Bismarck fought 22, no less,” sums up his studied indifference to the Nazis and their leader, a dangerous opinion to hold in those times. He hosts events, witnessed by Janna, at which young fencing students are expected to incur facial scars as badges of courage.
Not long after her arrival, Janna is already deeply in love with this man, who is not much younger than her father. She gives herself to him at night, but uses her access to his bedroom to read the letters her father sent him, and the replies von Botticher wrote but never posted. Conscious that she’s a pawn in their relationship, she nonetheless endeavours to take as much control as she can over her circumstances.
It’s a fascinating read: a gothic romance transplanted to 1930s Germany. De Moor has lined up all the essential gothic elements – powerful currents of sexuality, a rambling old house, a possibly treacherous servant, a dark and brooding man whose true affinity is with the wildness of nature – and sent them on a collision course with concepts that come from somewhere else entirely. The quixotic Von Botticher is an obsessive recluse pursuing an idea of fencing that is akin to human geometry, and the discovery of an old manuscript refines the art to such mathematical abstraction that his pupils are bound to ultimately reject it. Meanwhile, two Aryan twins compete for Janna’s affections, though their real love is for each other. It’s as though Peter Greenaway had been let loose all over Wuthering Heights or Rebecca.
Such a fertile clash of ideas, and they’re all shaping Janna’s explorations of her hitherto dormant sexuality. She’s a girl when she arrives, a woman by the time she leaves – but this weird initiation into adulthood is something quite unique and incomparable. It’s not hard to see why this novel was awarded the 2014 European Union Prize for Literature. It’s a story of dark and dangerous passions, beautifully and dramatically bringing to life the very different inner journeys of its two main characters.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here