INTERVIEW WITH LAUREL CORONA

      Last year, I had a very interesting interview with Laurel Corona, author of Penelope's Daughter, and received very positive feedback from my readers.  So I am pleased to have persuaded Laurel to stop by again, this time to mark the publication of her new novel, Finding Emilie, which is set on the eve of the French Revolution.  Laurel, as you know, for I quote her often enough, has eloquently articulated the responsibility of the historical novelist in five very powerful words–Do not defame the dead.  

Sharon:  Tell us a little about the book.  Who is Emilie du Châtelet, and why were you interested in her story?

 I teach the Enlightenment era in my San Diego City College humanities classes, and her association with her longtime lover, Voltaire, sometimes comes up as a side note in textbooks. Quite frankly, the wigged-and-corseted women one sees in paintings from that era never interested me that much.  How could starchy-looking Madame de This-or-That be any fun?

I first learned about Emilie from Einstein's Big Idea, a DVD I show snippets of in class. Based on David Bodanis' book E=MC₂, the program gives the history of each part of the equation, focusing on Emilie's advocacy for the importance of squaring.  What grabbed me was not the science, however, but her astonishing life.  She was not only a brilliant physicist and mathematician, but a free-spirited woman who dared to be herself despite the cruel and often frivolous constraints of her society. Wild woman and scientist make quite an interesting combination, especially in light of the tragedy that put an early end to her life.


Sharon: Wasn't it unusual for a woman in her era to be a scientist?

Women of means were able to pursue intellectual pursuits as a private matter, but their work was rarely published, and indeed credit was often taken by the men around them, including Voltaire for some of Emilie's pioneering work on Newton. 

She was unusual, but far from alone. Laura Bassi was championing Newton in Italy at the same time. Compatriots and fellow physicists Sophie Germain and Marie Lavoisier worked a few decades later. Only in recent years, by the way, has Marie been seen as a scientist in her own right, rather than a mere secretary and lab assistant to her famous husband, Antoine de Lavoisier. In FINDING EMILIE, I modeled my protagonist Lili and Jean-Étienne's relationship loosely after that of Marie and Antoine, who was beheaded in the Reign of Terror after the judge announced that the Revolution had no need of scientists.

Sharon: You said Emilie had a wild side.  What kinds of things did she do?

She was an inveterate gambler, amusing herself as a teenager at salons by using her prodigious math skills to win enough at cards to finance her purchases of the latest science and physics books. Later, she and Voltaire had to make a quick nighttime escape from Fontainebleau because she had lost a small fortune and could not pay up (a high-ranking guest was cheating, but it was improper and dangerous to make the accusation).  She figured out how to make good on the debt by inventing a scheme today known as trading in derivatives.

She cross-dressed on occasion to go to meetings of scientific societies, where women were not permitted.  She discouraged a dull suitor by trouncing him in a fencing match. She set up a bathtub in her parlor so she could receive houseguests while she bathed. She used her dowry to pay the greatest mathematicians in France to tutor her. But it is her scandalous love life where she really made her mark.  

Her match with the Marquis du Châtelet was a marriage of convenience, and I don't think either expected fidelity. Emilie and Voltaire lived openly as lovers for fifteen years at her husband's ancestral home.  He would come to visit from time to time, apparently unconcerned about his wife's cozy arrangement with another man under his own roof.

Emilie and Voltaire remained lifelong friends after their affair ended, but tragically life would not be that long for her.  She fell madly in love with a dashing young soldier-poet and became pregnant by him at 43, unheard of at the time. Six days after the birth of a daughter, Stanislas-Adélaïde, she complained of a headache and within hours she was dead, probably of a stroke from an embolism.

Sharon: With such a fascinating real-life character, it's surprising she isn't the protagonist in the novel.  Why did you choose to focus on the life of her daughter instead?

 First, I think it is harder to write historical fiction when the protagonist is a real character. You are basically stuck with the actual life story, and too much inventing or embellishing is a violation of what I think is an unwritten pact with readers not to misinform them.  It's worked for me better to invent the protagonists and have the real characters come in and out of their lives. Second, I fell in love with Emilie, I didn't want my novel to end in the sad way her story does. I just couldn't do that to readers, who I am sure will love her too.


Sharon: Tell us a little about Lili, the daughter.  What is her life like?

Lili grows up in an aristocratic home, raised by a friend of her mother's after the Marquis (knowing he is not her father) shows no interest in her.  Julie de Bercy, whom Lili calls Maman, has a daughter Lili's age, and she and this girl, Delphine, grow up like sisters. Julie is a free-thinking salonnière who introduces Lili to Rousseau, Diderot, and the Comte de Buffon, luminaries of their time.  From them, Lili develops an independent mind, despite the efforts of a dour Châtelet relative to shape her into a docile, pious, unrebellious future wife and mother.  Uninterested in the inanities of court life, Lili finds solace in books and in her own satirical stories of an adventurous little alter-ego named Meadowlark. As she and Delphine reach marriageable age and her life constricts around her, Lili realizes that the life of the scandalous mother whom no one will speak of may offer insight into how to avoid death by destiny.  Lili goes off in search of information about her mother, hoping to find answers about how to take control of own life.

Sharon: Without spoiling the plot, what answer does Emilie have for her daughter, and for us?  

Everyone is entitled to pursue happiness. The key to happiness lies in understanding who we are as individuals, and then letting our deepest self lead us. It's up to us to use our minds and talents to escape the ordinary.  Conformity is often deformity–that's one of the themes of the book–and we mustn't feel guilty at our efforts to resist it.

Thank you, Laurel, for another fascinating interview.  I am looking forward to reading Finding Emilie once I sort out Coeur de Lion once and for all.   And readers will love the fact that you've added a Who's Who of characters, a pronunciation guide, an author's note, and  a discussion guide for reading groups.

    

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www.laurelcorona.com

THE FOUR SEASONS, PENELOPE'S DAUGHTER, and FINDING EMILIE are now available in bookstores and online. Support your local independent bookstore and library!