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The Handfasted Wife

de Carol McGrath

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Fiction. Thriller. Historical Fiction. HTML:

'Moving, and vastly informative, a real page turner of a historical novel.' Fay Weldon

The Handfasted Wife is the story of the Norman Conquest from the perspective of Edith (Elditha) Swanneck, Harold's common-law wife. She is set aside for a political marriage when Harold becomes king in 1066. Determined to protect her children's destinies and control her economic future, she is taken to William's camp when her estate is sacked on the eve of the Battle of Hastings. She later identifies Harold's body on the battlefield and her youngest son becomes a Norman hostage.

Elditha avoids an arranged marriage with a Breton knight by which her son might or might not be given into his care. She makes her own choice and sets out through strife-torn England to seek help from her sons in Dublin. However, events again overtake her.

Harold's mother, Gytha, holds up in her city of Exeter with other aristocratic women, including Elditha's eldest daughter. The girl is at risk, drawing Elditha back to Exeter and resistance. Initially supported by Exeter's burghers the women withstand William's siege. However, after three horrific weeks they negotiate exile and the removal of their treasure. Elditha takes sanctuary in a convent where eventually she is reunited with her hostage son. This is an adventure story of love, loss, survival and reconciliation. 

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Exibindo 5 de 5
It took me a long time to get through this despite being an undemanding read. This book offered an interesting premise, and the bones of a good story based on solid research and a well-painted view of the period of the Norman Conquest, but it was let down for me by the rather leaden prose and stilted dialogue throughout. Unfortunately the story was all tell and no show, with the same voice and pace used to describe a room full of ladies spending the afternoon in embroidery as was used to describe scenes of distressing violence. I also felt the story rather petered out at the end and the bookending story simply seemed pointless. ( )
  SuzieD | Jan 3, 2023 |
This is a historical fiction book about Edith Swanneck, wife of King Harold who died at Hastings. There is very little actually known about her, and this book attempts to tell her story.
I love English history and I thought I'd like to know more about this period, but the book really dragged. This was a perfect example of telling rather than showing. The author was very descriptive, but never really had the characters show their feelings. Even Edith's reaction at Harold's death was glossed over, more how she identified his body rather than how she might have felt. All the characters were curiously unemotional and while I understand that there isn't much known about them, the purpose of historical fiction is to make them come alive for the reader within those known facts. It was a bit of a disappointing read to tell the truth. ( )
  N.W.Moors | Oct 19, 2017 |
The Handfasted Wife is the first of a trilogy Carol McGrath is writing about the women connected with the Battle of Hastings in 1066 These are not the easiest of ladies to tease out of history, particularly those whose families were on the losing side.

McGrath's first Lady is Edith the Fair, also called Edith Swanneck, who was an heiress to lands in Cambridgshire, Suffolk, and Essex. About the year 1045 Harold Godwinson, brother-in-law to King Edward the Confessor, became the Earl of East Anglia, an area encompassing Edith's lands. This gives a more political aspect to their relationship than McGrath indicates, but the story is told from Edith's perspective. According to the accounts, Harold was a handsome man and it is quite possible that Edith loved him. The couple entered into a "handclasp marriage," This was not a marriage approved by the clergy, but it was accepted by the laity.

The Church at this time was still working its way into the daily lives of the nobles. It was a slow process of moving marriage from a contract between two families to a permanent sacrament (with exceptions). First the priest got an invitation to come to the festival to bless the marriage. Then the Church persuaded the participants to marry on the church porch, and later to observe the sacrament at the church altar.

In Edith's case, we don't know if a priest blessed the marriage. Only that the couple lived together for over twenty years and produced six legitimate children before Harold's fortunes changed dramatically. On January 5, 1066 Edward the Confessor died without naming an heir. On January 6th, the Witan named Harold King with his coronation the same day. This did not make Edith a queen. Indeed, just as Harold may have married Edith to secure his lands in the south, Harold now turned out another Edith to secure northern England. The new queen married Harold in the Church. Edith Swanneck fell into a twilight zone as the mother of Harold's first six children.

And then matters got worse. Other claimants to the English throne marched against Harold. No sooner had he defeated his enemies to the north than Harold turned his troops to a forced march south to meet the Normans at Hastings where he died.

Edith Swanneck became a wanderer in search of revenge for her husband's death and a return of the English throne to her eldest son. McGrath brings forth a tale of courage and desperation as Edith travels from England to Ireland and back again.

McGrath's comfort with her subject is clear as with a light hand she depicts an age in which women did what they could with the little they were given. ( )
  Sandra_Wagner-Wright | Feb 3, 2016 |
This was a beautiful frame story: a nun [possibly Elditha herself] telling the story to a group of other nuns. She declares:

"My tale follows the fortunes of the woman whom Harold loved and who passionately loved him back; his handfasted wife Edith [called Elditha in the story], she of the elegant swan's neck.... After he became king, he betrayed Elditha and sent her away. But that is not the end of her story. It is but a beginning."

This novel tells of the time of the Norman Conquest of England from the viewpoint of Edith Swanneck, Harold Godwinson's wife by handfast wedding ceremony, not church marriage. This moving story tells of her and Harold's love and their children, Battle of Hastings itself is given short shrift but a big battle scene doesn't serve the purpose of this novel. This is Elditha's story: the aftermath after Harold's death, searching for his dead body, escaping a forced, loveless marriage with a Breton knight, fleeing to the Irish court to find two sons. She returns to England, lives through the three-week long siege of Exeter and makes her final decision about the rest of her life.

Exquisitely written and well paced. I felt for Elditha, the tragedies in her life and how she rises above them and finally finds peace. Characters were well drawn, especially the women. The Bayeux tapestry is commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, http://www.medievalists.net/2009/06/11/the-bayeux-tapestry/

Elditha embroiders the scene of her burning estate. In my copy, that scene was shown on the cover. By the embroidery she feels the Godwins will always be remembered. I liked the epigraphs at each chapter head, an excerpt from something written in that period, e.g., [Anglo-Saxon Chronicle]; each one gave a clue as to what the chapter would be about. ( )
  janerawoof | Jul 19, 2014 |
This is the author's debut novel, the first in a projected trilogy entitled The Daughters of Hastings. This one is about Elditha (Edith) Swanneck, the first wife of King Harold II. She was married to Harold in the old Danish tradition of handfasting, a type of union not recognised by the Church. After Harold became King he married another lady, Aldgyth of Mercia, for dynastic reasons, though his union with Elditha had already produced half a dozen children, the oldest being boys in their late teens.

The Battle of Hastings takes place only a third of the way through the novel. As this is a novel told entirely from a female perspective, it all happens "off stage". We don't know what happened to the historical Elditha after Hastings, so most of the novel is intelligent speculation, involving her trying to protect what she sees as her sons' inheritance and plotting with Harold's formidable Danish mother Gytha. Harold's actual Queen-widow Aldgyth disappears almost completely, though there is a brief, dismissive reference to her having given birth to a son, who from a legitimist point of view might have been regarded as the Saxon heir, though only a baby, of course. Elditha ends up contributing to part of the Bayeux tapestry. Not a great novel, though engagingly written. I will probably read the sequels, the premises for which, following the later lives of Elditha's daughters, sound interesting. ( )
  john257hopper | Mar 22, 2014 |
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Fiction. Thriller. Historical Fiction. HTML:

'Moving, and vastly informative, a real page turner of a historical novel.' Fay Weldon

The Handfasted Wife is the story of the Norman Conquest from the perspective of Edith (Elditha) Swanneck, Harold's common-law wife. She is set aside for a political marriage when Harold becomes king in 1066. Determined to protect her children's destinies and control her economic future, she is taken to William's camp when her estate is sacked on the eve of the Battle of Hastings. She later identifies Harold's body on the battlefield and her youngest son becomes a Norman hostage.

Elditha avoids an arranged marriage with a Breton knight by which her son might or might not be given into his care. She makes her own choice and sets out through strife-torn England to seek help from her sons in Dublin. However, events again overtake her.

Harold's mother, Gytha, holds up in her city of Exeter with other aristocratic women, including Elditha's eldest daughter. The girl is at risk, drawing Elditha back to Exeter and resistance. Initially supported by Exeter's burghers the women withstand William's siege. However, after three horrific weeks they negotiate exile and the removal of their treasure. Elditha takes sanctuary in a convent where eventually she is reunited with her hostage son. This is an adventure story of love, loss, survival and reconciliation. 

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