Gender-fluid character won’t skirt controversy

AN author from Ipsden has written a mystery novel about gender fluidity and forbidden love during the time of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion.

Ravenglass, by Carolyn Kirby, author of The Conviction of Cora Burns and When We Fall, is the story of a character called Kit Ravenglass.

Living in Whitehaven in the 18th century, Kit’s family has painful hidden secrets. As his father takes new risks in the world of shipping and looks to the slave trade, Kit, who adores his sister, Fliss, prefers the feminine life over that of a macho seafarer.

After a terrible turn of events, Kit turns fugitive, living as “Stella”, before becoming involved in Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion. But will Kit unravel the mysteries of the past and be able to live fully and freely?

Carolyn, who will be talking about her book at Henley Literary Festival, says: “I think probably Bonnie Prince Charlie cross-dressing was my original thought, because I’ve always been interested in the lives of men and women in the past and why they were so different. I had this idea that maybe I would explore that through a character who can see things from both sides. Bonnie Prince Charlie disguised himself as a maid, Betty Burke, to Flora McDonald, to escape from Scotland, he dressed himself in a maid’s dress and outfit.

“Then I found these other characters from the time, like the Chevalière d’Eon, who was a famous sword fighter who lived as a man and then did his swordfighting while he lived as a woman in a dress.

“He was well known and was a very popular figure in London, but seemed to live fairly comfortably both as a man and as a woman.

“In the portraits of the time, you can’t really tell the difference between a toddler boy and a toddler girl because they’re wearing exactly the same.

“Again, it made me think that, probably, not all boys were happy to leave their petticoats behind and they might quite like them. I think it was obviously mainly done for practical reasons, for potty training and the difficulty of laundry in those days, but nevertheless it was a way in to the way that men were perhaps at one point in their life in touch with their feminine sides.” The themes of the book were shaped by the coronavirus pandemic.

Carolyn, who studied history at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, got in touch with Dr Julie Farguson at the college.

“Julie’s expertise really is in the monarchy and aristocracy of the turn of the 18th century, the late Stuart, early Georgian period.

“It is not a well-known part of our history but it is so pivotal and so interesting. It’s the later 18th century that gets all the publicity, but the early part is really so formational in terms of the society that we’ve become.

“The problem with the research was that Julie and I had this really amazing conversation in late February 2020. Then very luckily we made a trip to Cumbria and visited Whitehaven in March 2020.

“As we were in the car on our way to Whitehaven, two people in Carlisle had been taken into a hospital with a mystery illness they picked up when they were skiing. Little did we know that would be the end of my on-the-ground research because it was lockdown, but it did focus my mind completely on the book.”

Ravenglass features a black male character called Jossy and gives a glimpse of his perspective. “As I was writing, the big story apart from covid was Black Lives Matter, the killing of George Floyd and that huge exploration and soul-searching that went on.

“So that inevitably fed into the story and Jossy was a product of Black Lives Matter in a way.

“One of the things that I was interested in is that slaving as a trade happened from the second half of the 17th century onwards, but the abolitionist movement didn’t really get going until 100 years later. “So, one of my interests was, what were the real origins of the slave trade, and actually I did find them in this period, in Philadelphia.

“I’m very interested in the people standing up for their rights and not just the horrors of slavery. It is touching on the most controversial contemporary themes but I just feel strongly that they’re issues that should be explored. I think that, as long as you have sensitivity and empathy for other human beings, that’s the main thing.”

l Ravenglass, by Carolyn Kirby, is published on Thursday, September 25 and will be in the Bell Bookshop. Henley Literary Festival presents “Historical Fiction Today: Carolyn Kirby and Vanessa Beaumont” at the Relais Henley on Sunday, October 5 at 2pm. For more information, visit www.carolynkirby.com