Guided by visions she claims are from God, given to her to protect the women under her care, she also stirs trouble - because a woman like her should not have power. She arrives as a child and grows into a formidable woman, with urges, desires, and issues like any other woman.

Her unattractive visage and towering, manly body may have made her unsuitable for court life and marriage, but Marie uses her domineering image for the good of the abbey - increasing its wealth, building its security, and making a name for them in the far corners of England.ĭespite her rough start, Marie spends over half a century at the monastery, securing a strong - though controversial - legacy for herself.

Groff often conflates Marie's desire for power with her desire to keep her charges safe: She publicly challenges political laws, social structures, and ecclesiastical mores, seemingly for her personal enjoyment and prosperity. (This is Groff's only nod to the poet's real life in the novel.) But Marie's writing days are quickly replaced with a spiritual devotion to the women who she comes to care for. Reluctant at first to assume her role as prioress to pious old women, 17-year-old Marie attempts to reverse her banishment by writing an extensive ode to Queen Eleanor in an attempt to win her favor and be asked back to court. We meet Marie just as she is expelled from the French royal court and banished to England to be the new prioress of an ailing abbey filled with sick and starving nuns. Matrix introduces a warlike poet-nun, based on the real medieval author Marie de France, who challenges the Catholic church and the very foundations of patriarchy - while also exploring womanhood and unbridled sexuality. It has sisterhood, love, war, sex - and many graphic deaths, all entangled in a once-forgotten abbey in the English countryside.

There's always the possibility of coming on too strong and imposing modern ideologies onto a period where they may not be as believable as the author hopes.īut Lauren Groff's Matrix is an inspiring novel that truly demonstrates the power women wield, regardless of the era. Setting a feminist story in the 12th century is no easy feat.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff