Austin Scott Collins's Blog: Upside-down, Inside-out, and Backwards, page 9
November 23, 2013
Who Is Victoria da Vinci?
...And why write three books about her?
Victoria is a wonderfully weird and complicated character. She serves as a useful literary avatar to cover all kinds of fun ground. She is not only a great device to highlight important aspects of the historical backdrop into which I have inserted her, but also a tool for critiquing cultural norms.
Victoria’s first name is a double reference: to the Victorian Period (1837-1901) itself, obviously, but also -- and perhaps more significantly -- to the controversial revolutionary Victoria Woodhull, obliquely referenced by Josiah Blumfield in Chapter One of Dicing Time for Gladness.
I have five books on Victoria Woodhull, the best of which is Notorious Victoria by Mary Gabriel. Unlike Woodhull, Victoria da Vinci has no political aspirations and does not believe in the supernatural. She is similar primarily in her fearless, passionate iconoclasm, her head for business and her skepticism towards traditional relationships.
I like to write flawed characters, defined by their faults. Victoria, for instance, is grandiose and egocentric, prone to self-indulgent speechifying. She has delusions of grandeur, a messianic complex and a remorseless willingness to pluck girls out of their lives and into her cult-like circle -- which she rationalizes (perhaps rightly) as rescuing them from oppression. Whether this supposed justification is sound or not, her real motivation is clearly to feed her vanity by surrounding herself with admiring disciples. Despite having a brilliant scientific mind, her utopianist ideas are charmingly quaint and naïve.
Most of my characters do tend to have serious deficiencies and shortcomings. Constance is a a bit of a spoiled brat, awash in angst and self-pity but simultaneously crippled by being timid and riddled with self-doubt. It's doubtful that she would have done much to improve her situation in life had Victoria not come along. Righty has self-control issues. Greta is a pathologically insecure bully. Josiah is neurotically obsessed with an idealized vision of morality and virtue that he can't reconcile with reality. Familiarity is a drunk and probably addicted to opium. Millicent, perhaps the most tragic figure in Dicing Time for Gladness, has been so trained into helplessness that she proudly defends it to her daughter, even though we get repeated hints that she used to be hot-blooded in her younger days. I like flawed characters; they aren't necessarily sympathetic, but they're interesting.
Victoria wears red repeatedly, and this represents her unbridled, unabashed sexuality. I like the fact that we get to see her acknowledge that her younger, more idealistic self would have been disappointed in her adult self for using her sex appeal in such a calculated way to achieve her objectives. Victoria rarely lets a glimmer of internal conflict show through her indomitable façade.
Mostly, I find her fascinating because -- like so many other female scientists, engineers, physicists, mathematicians, inventors etc., she has to figure out how to deal with society's extreme hostility towards a smart woman. Here is a person with brilliant ideas, decades ahead of her time both philosophically and technologically, facing nothing but scorn. How does one deal with that? How would you? How would I? She has made a Faustian bargain, compromising certain principles in order to do what she really wants to do: travel the world while designing and building marvelous things. That, ultimately, is what the three Victoria da Vinci novels are really all about.
Victoria is a wonderfully weird and complicated character. She serves as a useful literary avatar to cover all kinds of fun ground. She is not only a great device to highlight important aspects of the historical backdrop into which I have inserted her, but also a tool for critiquing cultural norms.
Victoria’s first name is a double reference: to the Victorian Period (1837-1901) itself, obviously, but also -- and perhaps more significantly -- to the controversial revolutionary Victoria Woodhull, obliquely referenced by Josiah Blumfield in Chapter One of Dicing Time for Gladness.
I have five books on Victoria Woodhull, the best of which is Notorious Victoria by Mary Gabriel. Unlike Woodhull, Victoria da Vinci has no political aspirations and does not believe in the supernatural. She is similar primarily in her fearless, passionate iconoclasm, her head for business and her skepticism towards traditional relationships.
I like to write flawed characters, defined by their faults. Victoria, for instance, is grandiose and egocentric, prone to self-indulgent speechifying. She has delusions of grandeur, a messianic complex and a remorseless willingness to pluck girls out of their lives and into her cult-like circle -- which she rationalizes (perhaps rightly) as rescuing them from oppression. Whether this supposed justification is sound or not, her real motivation is clearly to feed her vanity by surrounding herself with admiring disciples. Despite having a brilliant scientific mind, her utopianist ideas are charmingly quaint and naïve.
Most of my characters do tend to have serious deficiencies and shortcomings. Constance is a a bit of a spoiled brat, awash in angst and self-pity but simultaneously crippled by being timid and riddled with self-doubt. It's doubtful that she would have done much to improve her situation in life had Victoria not come along. Righty has self-control issues. Greta is a pathologically insecure bully. Josiah is neurotically obsessed with an idealized vision of morality and virtue that he can't reconcile with reality. Familiarity is a drunk and probably addicted to opium. Millicent, perhaps the most tragic figure in Dicing Time for Gladness, has been so trained into helplessness that she proudly defends it to her daughter, even though we get repeated hints that she used to be hot-blooded in her younger days. I like flawed characters; they aren't necessarily sympathetic, but they're interesting.
Victoria wears red repeatedly, and this represents her unbridled, unabashed sexuality. I like the fact that we get to see her acknowledge that her younger, more idealistic self would have been disappointed in her adult self for using her sex appeal in such a calculated way to achieve her objectives. Victoria rarely lets a glimmer of internal conflict show through her indomitable façade.
Mostly, I find her fascinating because -- like so many other female scientists, engineers, physicists, mathematicians, inventors etc., she has to figure out how to deal with society's extreme hostility towards a smart woman. Here is a person with brilliant ideas, decades ahead of her time both philosophically and technologically, facing nothing but scorn. How does one deal with that? How would you? How would I? She has made a Faustian bargain, compromising certain principles in order to do what she really wants to do: travel the world while designing and building marvelous things. That, ultimately, is what the three Victoria da Vinci novels are really all about.
Upside-down, Inside-out, and Backwards
My blog about books, writing, and the creative process.
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