Madselin

This review is written from the perspective of a romance reader (and an occasional dabbler into historical fiction of an earlier or later period). MADSELIN is a short but detail-packed book about a rather spoiled young woman who finds herself widowed, homeless and of no account when the Normans come to take possession of her rather isolated part of England. She grows from a sheltered and rather spoiled young woman into a woman who cares for her new husband's serfs and attempts to rescue a childhood friend and lover. Madselin is not perfect. She remains inactive at many crucial moments, failing to warn her new husband of problems that are developing in the estate (although she does act from time to time). Here is no super-heroine on the model so often seen in medieval romances, with modern attitudes. Madselin's thoughts and concerns are are mostly about herself, and not those who have been killed nor those who remain. But she is not an unkind woman, just one who is slow to mature. Part of her problem is that she is distrusted both by her husband's followers (as a Saxon) and by her first husband's people (as someone who has married a Norman willingly). This theme of falling between two worlds is rather interesting. How much does one adjust, and in what ways does Madselin gain and yet lose? The real interest in this story lies not in the romance between Madselin and her second husband (of which there is precious little, although there is growing trust and support on his part), but in the details of how the Saxons take or do not take to Norman conquest. Through the changes on this rather impoverished estate, we also see some of the problems faced by the more humane Norman lords who are not only imposing a foreign rule but also moving from the freer Anglo-Saxon society to rigid feudalism. Rolf is torn between the requirements of the King (that he build a castle) and the fact that all the estate resources are being poured into this same castle with all the problems that this entails for the future. Unfortunately, not all the characters are fleshed out in detail. We learn very little about Madselin's family (apart from her royally descended mother and her late elder sister) and we do not learn how she fitted into Saxon society. We learn even less about Rolf, except that he had a brutish father and he was not a knight. Rolf is however the King's Armourer and as such, has special privileges. Some of the secondary characters - the fearful and aged priest Alfled, the sullen waiting woman Hild, and a few of the peasants (now serfs) - are well fleshed-out. The others are less so - including Britt Four Ox, whose fortunes decline steadily through the novel. All in all, this is a well-written look at England in the time of the Conquest, and how one small isolated estate adjusts to the Normans. The first half was much stronger than the second half, but the plot held together reasonably well and there was sufficient depth in characterization