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The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz
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I was mesmerized by The Commoner. I felt the visceral claustrophobic isolation that must be reality for the exalted (and scrutinized) Empress of Japan who started out being a regular girl. Schwartz did a fine job of making the reader experience the deprivation and sadness that opulence and privilege and duty demanded of his subject. It’s not necessarily good to be the queen.
No, it's historical fiction. Schwartz was one of the authors at the Key West Literary Seminar, and he was wonderful. He made the point that it was easier to write historical fiction when there are very few known facts. The Japanese Imperial Family is notoriously sequestered. His mother was a children's book editor and she interviewed the real Empress Michiko. That's when he became fascinated by this story. Here's a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_Mic...
Her marriage was described in great detail, from her point of view. I felt like I would suffocate. She was under so many layers of clothing with six-pounds of hair ornamentation. Here is another link to Schwartz's website.http://www.johnburnhamschwartz.com/
The book was a nice twist on the fairy tale where women end up happily ever after once they marry the prince. I was always frustrated by fairy tale endings, even in Jane Austen's works which I otherwise love, where marriage ended all troubles. It seemed more like a death sentence, as if anything worth noting happened before one married. It's no wonder there's a name for Japanese women who refuse to marry but continue to live with their parents: parasite singles.
I recently read The Commoner and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was certainly a reminder that there are trade offs in everything and becomming a Princess may not be a dream come true.
It certainly wasn't a dream come true. It was almost like torture. The isolation seemed unbearable to me.
You do have to wonder, though, why she didn't stand up to the family or at least the servants even a little bit. I guess it's easy for me to say not being in her place and looking at it from a 2009 perspective but she did seem to suddenly loose all her spirit.
She was a twentieth century girl suddenly thrown into a medieval culture where all her "spirited" traits were seen as flaws. It would have been better had the Crown Prince fallen in love with someone less athletic, educated or smart. Even after she was Empress and her son fell in love with someone very much like her, she was unable to protect her as much as she wished. She had very little power, it seemed.
