Madness, in the Victorian era, wasn't taken gently. The term 'madwoman in the attic' came about from Mr Rochester's harsh treatment of his wife in Jane Eyre; in a time where women had no power, men could do what they would with women who they thought were lunatics.
In The Painted Bridge, Anna Palmer is admitted to an asylum by her husband, who claims she has been showing signs of hysteria. She is desperate to escape treatment in such a place, and along the way meets many characters, some friend, some foe.
As a writer myself, I'm always interested in the 'behind the scenes' of a novel, and author Wendy Wallace agreed to write a little something for Subtle Melodrama Book Reviews about the process of creating the characters in The Painted Bridge:
It is an interesting question, how one creates characters. In The Painted Bridge, the names were the starting point. I wrote a synopsis before I began the novel, of about 2,000 words. At that point, the names had to work to signal the characters.
The heroine Anna Palmer is named partly for the way the words sound – to me they sound open, like a wave on the sea, partly-formed. Anna is from the coast, pre-occupied with the perils of the sea, and at the beginning of the novel is rather naive.
Emmeline Abse has a French first name, chosen before I’d realised her love of all things French. Fanny Makepeace, the matron at the asylum, is more of a strife- maker but acquired her surname by a marriage that didn’t last and kept the ill- fitting name. Querios Abse is an awkward-sounding, peculiar name, as is the man.
Martha Lovely, Anna Palmer’s keeper while she is in the madhouse, is one of my favourite characters and all her loveliness is on the inside and not immediately apparent. A poor woman, she is afflicted by chilblains from the work she does and scarred from smallpox as a child.
Throughout the writing of The Painted Bridge I collected pictures – postcards mainly – that related to the people in the story. I had at least ten paintings and photographs of youngish women, none of whom were 24-year-old Anna Palmer exactly, but all of whom had something about them that I associated with her.
Researching in detail the kind of clothes they wore made the characters more real for me. Vincent Palmer’s long black coat and dignitaries’ hat, with cords from brim to crown, are like an actor’s costume and Vincent is to some degree an impersonator - of himself. The sound of Lovely’s clogs approaching down wooden corridors is one of the aural motifs.
Catherine Abse is a minor character, introduced initially reading aloud from a book of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Catherine’s passion for the long poem Aurora Leigh showed her dreams of a future very different from her fifteen-year-old present. If the inner life of a character can be discerned, the rest can follow easily I think.
None of my characters arrived fully formed in the first draft. All of them were built up in quite a painstaking way, so that with each successive draft it became more possible to know with certainty what they would and would not feel and say or do in different circumstances.
I got to know the characters as you would get to know people in life – by spending time with them, listening to them, observing their pre-occupations and mannerisms. They are not the same people in the finished book as they were when I first brought them on to the page. By the end, I felt a lot of affection for all of them, including the awful ones. Ultimately, characters must all come from the writer’s own personal ragbag and treasure store.
The heroine Anna Palmer is named partly for the way the words sound – to me they sound open, like a wave on the sea, partly-formed. Anna is from the coast, pre-occupied with the perils of the sea, and at the beginning of the novel is rather naive.
Emmeline Abse has a French first name, chosen before I’d realised her love of all things French. Fanny Makepeace, the matron at the asylum, is more of a strife- maker but acquired her surname by a marriage that didn’t last and kept the ill- fitting name. Querios Abse is an awkward-sounding, peculiar name, as is the man.
Martha Lovely, Anna Palmer’s keeper while she is in the madhouse, is one of my favourite characters and all her loveliness is on the inside and not immediately apparent. A poor woman, she is afflicted by chilblains from the work she does and scarred from smallpox as a child.
Throughout the writing of The Painted Bridge I collected pictures – postcards mainly – that related to the people in the story. I had at least ten paintings and photographs of youngish women, none of whom were 24-year-old Anna Palmer exactly, but all of whom had something about them that I associated with her.
Researching in detail the kind of clothes they wore made the characters more real for me. Vincent Palmer’s long black coat and dignitaries’ hat, with cords from brim to crown, are like an actor’s costume and Vincent is to some degree an impersonator - of himself. The sound of Lovely’s clogs approaching down wooden corridors is one of the aural motifs.
Catherine Abse is a minor character, introduced initially reading aloud from a book of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Catherine’s passion for the long poem Aurora Leigh showed her dreams of a future very different from her fifteen-year-old present. If the inner life of a character can be discerned, the rest can follow easily I think.
None of my characters arrived fully formed in the first draft. All of them were built up in quite a painstaking way, so that with each successive draft it became more possible to know with certainty what they would and would not feel and say or do in different circumstances.
I got to know the characters as you would get to know people in life – by spending time with them, listening to them, observing their pre-occupations and mannerisms. They are not the same people in the finished book as they were when I first brought them on to the page. By the end, I felt a lot of affection for all of them, including the awful ones. Ultimately, characters must all come from the writer’s own personal ragbag and treasure store.
Many thanks to Wendy Wallace for her guest post.
My review of The Painted Bridge will be posted in the next day or two - so watch this space.
My review of The Painted Bridge will be posted in the next day or two - so watch this space.
