Ann-Marie MacDonald’s love of the fabulous is in full force with this multi-layered reworking of her earlier play, The Arab’s Mouth.
Following her father’s death, amateur scientist Pearl MacIsaac struggles to discover the secret of her family’s past, which her father had been kept hidden with the help of the family doctor. Set in Scotland in 1899, this dark and redemptive gothic comedy is a story of family secrets that have come to life and of the birth and evolution of ideas – and truly a play of morals. Reaching out in two directions to reconcile the extremes of rationalism and romanticism, Belle Moral embraces a complex range of turn-of-the-century thought including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, contemporary medical beliefs and the concept of eugenics.
I haven't reread this since I read Fayne. I enjoyed how the two texts speak to one another in some ways, and it reading Belle Moral: A Natural History has made me want to read both FayneandThe Way the Crow Flies. I love Ann-Marie MacDonald's writing and so much of what she has written!
[Physical, own]
*4.5
I love Ann-Marie MacDonald's work! I highly recommend reading (or seeing) this play when/if it's in production.
I've read maybe one other play in the last 15 years, and so I was a bit taken aback when I opened the tiny novella. But this text was well worth the effort!
We follow a family bereaving their departed father, so an adult daughter (logical and responsible scientist), an adult son (a libertine; aimless, romantic and depressed), and their aunt, and the conversations leading directly up to the reading of the patriarch's will. Many conversations have to do with mental distress, and also heredity and evolution.
Other characters include a doctor, a young lawyer, and some funny side characters like the servants.
I would describe this as a gothic satire that everyone interested in the genre should try... The social commentary is on point!
Belle Moral is a gothic melodrama set during the late 19th century on an estate outside Edinburgh. The place is inhabited by a menagerie of characters who spout all manner of pseudo-science from the period. (BTW, the estate name is a riff on the Royal Family's nearby holdings at Balmoral.) McDonald describes her play as a "dark comedy," but the humor felt very light-hearted to me. Some reviewers can be forgiven for taking seriously the heroine's earnest philosophical monologues at the conclusion. But like the banter that dominates Acts I and II, her musings are a piece with the author's intentional emulation of Shaw and Wilde.
Okay this was definitely a little weird, but I was here for it. Victorian sensibility crossed with absurdism, and theatrical touches that I felt eager to experience with my own eyes (e.g. the painting).
This one is actually a play, which I had no idea when I picked it up at the library for the fact that it was a slim little slip of a book that I could carry with me and read. And I did, all in one day. It was fabulous. I loved the forthright female protagonist and the combination of spooky and science in the subject matter. I can only imagine it would be a joy to see it performed, and I was shocked when I read in the book that I was very familiar and had even met some of the people who were involved in the plays first performance!
I am definitely a fan of Ann-Marie MacDonald. I have read all her fiction which I enjoy greatly, however, her plays are fabulous. Her fiction is challenging emotionally, somewhat dark and yet hopeful. She writes about family and people living difficult lives. Her plays, on the other hand, are fantasy and fun and fantastically humorous. Read the plays and if you get the opportunity to see them performed on stage go see them and enjoy.