NOVEMBER Read - SPOILERS THREAD - Daughter of Time

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NOVEMBER Read - SPOILERS THREAD - Daughter of Time

1jillmwo
Nov 3, 2014, 7:35 am

In the interests of preserving the reader experience for those who have never before read this novel amidst those of us who have, I'm starting this spoiler thread for Daughter of Time. If you've read this novel already, you can spoil away on THIS thread.

2Morphidae
Nov 3, 2014, 7:40 am

:P~~~~

I was going to do this today.

Really!

3jillmwo
Nov 3, 2014, 7:42 am

I knew that you were probably around. But your to-do list is so long these days, I thought I'd be "helpful" and do it for you. (Cross it off your list and you still get to feel like you've already accomplished something!)

4Morphidae
Nov 3, 2014, 7:44 am

Ha! Since Saturday, I've had a reminder popping up telling me to do it and I keeping "snoozing" it.

5MrsLee
Nov 3, 2014, 11:25 am

>1 jillmwo: May I answer the question you posed in the other thread over here?

From all the games he went through with the lines on the ceiling, we learn he is creative, inventive, intelligent, educated. From his instant analysis and rejection of the books we learn he has read extensively. He is a man of action we know from his accident, and his restlessness and tedious humor somehow give us the idea that this is not his normal attitude.

This is not my first time reading this book, but I remember falling in love with Grant in the first chapter when I first read it.

6MrsLee
Nov 3, 2014, 2:09 pm

Why is it called The Daughter of Time? I can't see anything in the story to correlate with "daughter" although it does have to do with time, sort of.

Also, I am trying to figure out what happened to Grant to put him in the hospital so immobile that his doctor only seemed to examine his toe. Was his back broken? It doesn't sound as if he was in a full body cast, in fact, it doesn't mention cast at all. I think it says something about his leg brace. Any thoughts from the medically inclined?

7Taphophile13
Nov 3, 2014, 2:25 pm

>6 MrsLee: It's from Francis Bacon: "Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority."

8MrsLee
Nov 3, 2014, 4:23 pm

>7 Taphophile13: Thank you!

9jillmwo
Nov 3, 2014, 7:14 pm

She -- that is, >7 Taphophile13:, has a better edition of the book than I have. My paperback simply gives the source of the quotation as being an "old proverb".

I agree with your assessment in >5 MrsLee: , of how we see Grant in Chapter One. What I noted as well was that he is used to being autonomous so his helplessness lying in the hospital irks him to the extent that he has nicknamed the nurses (rather than using their real names). He's bored and he's grumpy because he is no longer autonomous. At the same time, he's not attracted to fiction, as you noted by his disdain for the novels offered for his entertainment. He prefers a fact-based, informed assessment of the real world. He's a clear thinker as we can tell from his articulate dissection of Mary, Queen of Scots. He's not swayed by sentiment and has little patience for those who are. His friends (Marta and Mrs. Tink) are not particularly sentimental themselves.

If, in Chapter One we're talking about the "prickles of boredom", in Chapter Two we're talking about what shapes perception. For Grant, it's his ability to characterize faces (rather than categorize or "type" them). It's interesting to see how the medical professionals in Chapter Two diagnose the health condition of Richard III based on the portrait of him. The surgeon at first glance specifies polio as the problem whereas The Midget sniffs and suggests that the problem is with the liver. In both instances, its their experience with previous patients that directs their thinking rather than any other kind of knowledge. In Grant's instance, he goes by whether he'd expect to see the man in the dock or on the bench.

The other thread in Chapter Two has to do with perception as governed by what we learn when we're young. There are the stories about historical figures intended for children (Canute and his courtiers, Alfred and the cakes) and there are the tidy summations of monarchs that are equally faulty in getting at the reality of the human being.

10SylviaC
Nov 3, 2014, 7:56 pm

As an aside, I just want to say that for some reason, this book and jillmwo are firmly linked in my mind. While I don't think of The Daughter of Time every time I think of Jill, I do think of Jill every time I think of The Daughter of Time.

11MrsLee
Nov 3, 2014, 8:04 pm

I also enjoy one of the nurses response to his grumpiness (it may be later on in the book) by asking him if he is constipated. At least I think it was a nurse to him.

In the last chapter (I'm sorry, I did finish the book today and if I don't mention this now I'm afraid I will forget altogether), Grant is amazed at how one of the historians can castigate and be horrified at Richard III's supposed murder of his nephews, but in the next chapter breezily excuse Henry (was it VII?) for murdering any possible rivals (and there were quite a few) to the throne as an expedient.

This story also makes it clear that none of the facts are unknown, and that respected historians have already told us that Richard is in the clear, but nobody listens. I think that is really the whole point of the story. Tonypandy. We are led by the media or those who tell the story, and we don't really want to hear the truth. They report that there was a huge march on the White House for one cause or another, when there might have been a couple of hundred people, or they completely ignore a march of thousands on the White House if it is a cause they do not wish to espouse. We are very susceptible to these things and even reluctant to hear the truth if it doesn't feed our ideas which we have in our heads. I find that scary.

12jillmwo
Nov 4, 2014, 8:34 pm

First of all, MrsLee, it was a nurse, specifically The Midget.

With regard to the historical accuracy, I learned from an introduction by Alison Weir that Winston Churchill panned this book because he felt Tey was not persuasive in her historical argument. Richard III was a bad guy and that was it. However, Weir also notes that subsequent scholarship unavailable to Tey while she was writing did eliminate some of her points. So it might've been that Churchill had it right all along.

I'll have to review the specific sources named by Weir and let you all know which have been discredited.

13MrsLee
Nov 4, 2014, 10:28 pm

Hmmm, but now I want to like Richard III. ;)

14MrsLee
Nov 7, 2014, 1:00 am

I decided to put this in the spoiler thread.

You Game of Throne fans may be interested in this theory, that Tyrion is based on an innocent version of Richard III.
http://history-behind-game-of-thrones.com/warofroses/princes-in-the-tower1

The link takes you to that page if you wish to pursue it. :)

15Sakerfalcon
Nov 7, 2014, 6:47 am

>12 jillmwo: Weir's own account of The princes in the tower is notoriously biased against Richard, and several of the reviews here on LT point out its internal inconsistency and reliance on the Croyland chronicle and later Tudor sources. So she may not be the most disinterested commentator on the novel! (Also I wonder if she dislikes the novel's disdain for historians!)

I finished the book on the train this morning having loved it from page 1. Grant is a great character and I agree that chapter 1 does a great job in showing us his essential personality and priorities. The side characters were also good - Marta, Mrs Tinker, Carradine - they felt like people with lives that carried on beyond their roles in the story. Grant's logical dissection of the various sources of evidence is certainly very persuasive and, like MrsLee, I want to like Richard too! Actually, Tey's theories weren't new to me as Jean Plaidy used them as the basis for her novel Uneasy lies the head which shows events through Henry VII's eyes, and is every bit as persuasive as Tey.

16MrsLee
Nov 7, 2014, 10:50 am

I loved the description of the yearly Christmas gift of a lovely purse for Mrs. Tinker, and its destination. My mother and grandmother are/were just like that! So my uncle, the only one in our family who could afford truly lovely expensive gifts, took to hiding money around his mother's house for her to find after he left.

17jillmwo
Nov 11, 2014, 9:19 pm

>15 Sakerfalcon:, Source Materials for Daughter of Time

Alison Weir noted that Tey didn’t have access to some primary material, specifically a contemporary account from Dominic Mancini which was published in 1969.

Weir also notes that recent scholars such as Brian Spencer in 1973 had discredited the idea that Thomas More had gotten his rendition from Cardinal Morton. Tey had based the line of reasoning attributed to Alan Grant from Clement Markham’s account and the year before Daughter of Time got published, another historian Paul Murray Kendall had offered similar theories.

Of the books that Grant consults, there was no Sir Cuthbert Oliphaunt and the J.R. Tanner she references did compile volumes of primary documents but not for the period of Richard III. The novel, The Rose of Raby, was actually written and published but not the author (Miss Payne-Ellis) noted by Tey but rather by Guy Paget. (Note: I learned this last bit from Shakespeare and Modern Culture by Marjorie Garber. Google Books can be useful for research purposes upon occasion.)

And >16 MrsLee: , I like Tink as a character as well.


18Sakerfalcon
Nov 12, 2014, 8:48 am

>17 jillmwo: Thank you for tracking all that information down. I did think while reading the novel that the leap from More to Morton as writer of the account was a bit of a stretch. Though if anything, surely being written by More who we are told was only 8 when Richard died, makes the account even less likely to be reliable than if it were by Morton?

Very interesting that Tey referred to a real novel but changed the author attribution!

19jeri889
Nov 12, 2014, 3:51 pm

Pertaining to the discussion above about Grant's attitude in the hospital (chapter 1), the word that keeps popping into my head is persnickety. (I have to keep reminding myself that this was written at a time when there were no TVs in the hospital wards and there probably weren't volunteers around to bring more books, or other activities to alleviate the boredom).

20Morphidae
Nov 12, 2014, 4:55 pm

I'm in chapter 2 and am feeling like Grant's a bit of a jerk.

21jillmwo
Nov 12, 2014, 8:49 pm

What are you taking exception to, specifically, Morphy?

22Morphidae
Nov 12, 2014, 8:54 pm

He's so bored he's boring, women are objectified, he criticizes everything - books, various pastimes, etc.

23jillmwo
Nov 12, 2014, 9:12 pm

I had noted that he distanced himself from the two nurses. We're told their ordinary names, but we only know them as the Midget and the Amazon. He and Marta have something of a "convenient" relationship throughout the series. Neither is interested in a deeper "thing" but both are happy to have the other as a convenient escort/date for Occasions.

I would imagine that if you are a relatively active person, unused to ill-health, you find the lack of activity when bed-bound to be particularly galling. I think jeri889 referring to him as persnickety in #19 fits my idea of Grant. (Later in The Singing Sands which is the last book in the series published after Tey's death, we discover he's prone to depression and claustrophobia)

24NorthernStar
Nov 17, 2014, 2:25 am

Just finished rereading this - still love it.

25Meredy
Nov 28, 2014, 3:55 pm

I'm now reading this for the first time, so I'm not looking at the spoilers. Just wondered if others had looked up the portrait that so arrested Grant. I take this to be it:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/King_Richard_III.jpg

I printed it out to put inside my copy of the book. Like Grant, I think it does take a lot of looking. And yes, it is a picture of pain.

26Morphidae
Nov 28, 2014, 4:17 pm

Okay, maybe it's not Grant. Maybe Tey simply doesn't like women. She has put down or made fun of every woman in the book so far. And when she wrote that prostitutes were over-sexed women, I nearly lost it. The men certainly aren't described in such poor terms.

I certainly won't be reading anything else by Tey. I keep getting knocked out of the story by her misogyny. Are we sure a woman wrote this? (Rhetorical question.)

27MrsLee
Nov 28, 2014, 10:54 pm

>26 Morphidae: Yes, that phrase about prostitutes made me wince also. When she was writing, that was a common view not only among men, but among "proper" women as well.

I wonder if her portrayal of women isn't intentional, but a subconscious reflection of the attitudes of the times. Just as many racisms are products of the unconscious thoughts we have, and subtle choices we make without being aware of them, behaviors ingrained in us from early life; I think also many attitudes towards women are the same. We aren't even aware they exist until they are pointed out. Her writings may have been perfectly normal then, but the attitudes are glaring to us today. That's good, right? It means there has been some change?

I wonder who her main fans were, men or women? I have the idea they were women, but that is only because my friends who like her are women and I don't know many men who love mysteries.

28Morphidae
Nov 29, 2014, 9:22 am

>27 MrsLee: I know there is sexism in older books but it hasn't seemed so blatant. Perhaps because there are a lot of female characters?

29Meredy
Dic 2, 2014, 8:51 pm

I finished the book just last night and read this today:

"Questions raised over Queen's ancestry after DNA test on Richard III's cousins"
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/questions-raised-over-queen%E2%80%99s-ancest...

It looks like there's still no end to the controversy surrounding this king.

30jillmwo
Dic 7, 2014, 7:36 pm

Isn't royal infidelity a great form of link bait? We'll never know for sure, but I click through every time to get the scoop on such salacious aspects!

31jeri889
Gen 15, 2015, 3:38 pm

I know Nov has come and gone but I finally found time to sit down and finish the book.

I enjoyed how Tey gives a quick over view of the events without bogging you down in too many details. She leaves it up to the reader to go out and seek more information on the events or be content with this alternate point of view of what.

The Richard III mystery surrounding the boys is an area that I would really like to read more on (it's on my list) and I think The Daughter of Time is what sparked this interest.

32jillmwo
Feb 3, 2015, 8:33 pm

You're right, >31 jeri889: and I think that's one of the reasons that the book has enjoyed such a long life.

33clamairy
Lug 19, 2023, 5:38 pm

Well, I had a hell of a time finding these discussion threads! They were never added to the group wiki, so I fixed that.

I enjoyed this one, and I am going to continue to give Richard III the benefit of the doubt. Apparently Elizabeth II refused to allow the bones that were found in the tower (and subsequently moved) to be tested for DNA every time she was asked. Which I thought was a bit odd. I wonder if Charles will do likewise.

I really didn't appreciate Grant's tone to his caregivers, but I did enjoy the book quite a bit.

34jillmwo
Modificato: Lug 22, 2023, 11:50 am

Actually, I'd forgotten that we did this discussion way back when!! But some of the comments above as well as what you note, clamairy, (re Grant's attitudes towards his caregivers) reminded me of a discussion group of which I was recently a part. The Folgers did a virtual discussion of this title and one of the first things that got mentioned to attendees was that the organizers asked that participants NOT use the nicknames that Grant assigned to them, that is, the Midget and the Amazon. Rather they asked that we use their actual character names as the nicknames might be interpreted as hurtful slurs. I was caught off guard (as was my friend) and we both had to rapidly scramble to find the proper names.

Follow-up Edit as of July 22, 2023: I went back and looked it up. The petite nurse's name was Ingham and the hefty nurse's name was Darroll. (Original post was time stamped 7-19-23 at 8:48pm)

35MrsLee
Lug 19, 2023, 9:27 pm

I forgot we did this as a group read also, and I'm marveling at clamairy's memory!

As for Richard III, I'm pretty sure he was a rotter (really wanted to say the nickname for Richard there), but only because I've read a lot more about the ancient royalty since I first read this and most of them were rotters; unless you were on their side.

36clamairy
Lug 20, 2023, 7:41 am

>34 jillmwo: I couldn't remember their actual names, even if there was a cash prize.

>35 MrsLee: Yes, but maybe he was less rotten than the rest of them. LOL Henry VII was almost as bloodthirsty as his son, but you just don't hear about him because none of his victims were his spouse.

37jillmwo
Lug 20, 2023, 10:56 am

>36 clamairy: *chortling* At least one of the two names appears in the first two pages of the edition I was using. Still can't remember what that was. So you've got lots of company!

Do you know where the non-spoiler thread for this particular discussion might be?

39clamairy
Lug 20, 2023, 2:21 pm

>37 jillmwo: I see >38 Taphophile13: already posted a link, but I did add both threads to the book discussion page on the main Green Dragon page. Now I am concerned that there are a bunch of other discussion threads that don't have links on that page. Someone remind me in the Winter to come back and do a search for missing discussion threads.. LOL

40jillmwo
Lug 23, 2023, 12:16 pm

You know, that recent reread of The Daughter of Time did make clear to me that Grant's biggest problem was that he couldn't find a good immersive reading experience. In that first chapter, there are at least six different kinds of books sitting by his bed and none of them hold any kind of appeal for him. I can understand that he wouldn't want the one on statistics that was at the bottom of the pile, but surely one of the others might have done more for him than the cracks in the ceiling.

41MrsLee
Lug 23, 2023, 12:19 pm

>40 jillmwo: Having struggled with reading slumps myself, I can empathize with him. During my recent health issues, nothing held my attention, or sparked my imagination or inspired me.

42clamairy
Modificato: Lug 23, 2023, 12:22 pm

>40 jillmwo: Well, he may be a good detective, but he seemed like a bit of douchebag in other ways. Doesn't he finally read most of the books about ¾ of the way through the book though?

>41 MrsLee: There's that, too.

43MrsLee
Lug 23, 2023, 12:25 pm

>42 clamairy: I don't remember him being a douchbag in her other mysteries involving him. Sometimes in fact, he is barely present and others he isn't on top of things at all, but stumbles along just like the reader.

44jillmwo
Lug 23, 2023, 12:26 pm

>41 MrsLee: I think it may have been sympathizing with your recent reading slump that made the connection for me. We've all been there and it isn't necessarily tied to being held immobile in a hospital bed. Grant could just as easily have been standing in the middle of the biggest Barnes & Noble in the world and been disgruntled that he couldn't find anything he wanted to read -- nothing that would scratch his particular itch at that moment!

I remember occasions when I would stop into a bookstore during a restless phase, buy 3 or 4 things in the HOPE that one of them would suit the mood and still grumble that I had nothing to read.

45jillmwo
Modificato: Lug 25, 2023, 1:13 pm

>42 clamairy: I don't recall for sure whether he gets through everything. I did find it indicative of the period that he was dispatching all of his contacts around to different environments to retrieve other books for him. The nurse brings him her old very basic school history. His sergeant finds him a Constitutional History of England that is too impersonal, too cosmic in its overview. Marta can't find a copy of Thomas More and has to resort to the public library. It's not just a case of finding Grant something readable; it's about connecting him with the right treatment of his topic.

46cindydavid4
Modificato: Lug 25, 2023, 10:20 am

just happened upon this thread; oh I loved this book! Another much later author sharon kay penman had long been a fan of an innocent Richard. Her book sunne in splendor is about him and his life and makes a case for what happened to the boys. (all of her HF novels are fantastic; writes esp about the relationship of England and Wales, but also about Eleanor and Henry the II She also has written some middle ages mysteries)

By the way Grant was persnicky to those around him and life in general because he was laid up; a situation he was not used to. Ive been there aftr I broke my hip and was not too pleasant.