As someone who only half-watched The Other Boleyn Girl, I truly had no idea that the author had something like this little trilogy (Wildacre, The Favoured Child, & Meridon) under her belt. In looking over some of the everyday reader reviews, I saw they all focused negatively on the sex in the book and “unlikeability” of the main characters. Apparently I’m one of some microscopic minority who read this as a story about land and how complete privatization (enclosure of the commons) destroys entire communities that were previously able to move somewhat past the injustices of the past to a point where slightly smaller but less bloody, injustices could be endured with the understanding that those with damn little would at least have enough sustenance & shelter & self sufficiency to make it worth getting up in the morning to work to provide their “betters” with an even better level of comfort.

When the gentry break the standing social contract with the village and begin claiming sole rights to the use of ALL the land in order to make more cash (because everyone’s doing it, hey – capital is king and land is just that: a financial asset to be squeezed for every ounce of profit … not the living breathing entity that the first of the 3 women in these 3 books knows in her blood as a sibling when the tale begins) all hell breaks loose and everyone will suffer. Sure there’s incest, but haven’t those in power always indulged in breeding with direct family members in order to keep the ownership of all they claim close and completely within their own ranks, hemophilia & oversized jaws be damned?

The lengths to which the first woman goes to try and “own” her land only serve to separate her from what she wants – one could blame patriarchy for poisoning her mind with the whole concept of “ownership” while simultaneously denying her that privilege because of her lack of penis. Her offspring spends the next book trying to overcome the well-meant attempts of her guardians to water down the spirit she should have inherited from her dam in the interest of making her a better person – while unfortunately not drowning her cousin/brother who freely develops all the bad habits that he feels he has the right to as a person of penis. The last spawn is sent away from the land and lives a live of non-luxury but loves her faux sister with the desperation her grandmother had for the fields & forests – so we know she is capable of feeling for something other than herself. Although sorely tempted to become as selfish as anyone else in her birth class once restored to her “rightful” place, she also has some guidance from an elder who already paid a huge price for hubris and greed (kept his dick but lost a couple of other appendages). Obviously, any sense of balance is probably extremely temporary in a world where inequity is normalized and any concept of society is really just a ruse for maintaining an economic system that relies on haves and have-nots. Still, the ending does offer a bit of respite.

So, thank you, Ms, Gregory, for putting your anti-Tory beliefs down on paper in a series that doesn’t require it’s female protagonists to be likeable – just attractive & ultimately strong enough to do what needs to be done in order to get to the next generation (or to receive comeuppance for an unforgivable fuckup).