Annabelle Laurier
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Annabelle Laurier was one of the first notable writers of the Ariddian Isles, and an early voice of left-wing ideals.
Contents
Early years
Annabelle Laurier was born on January 2, 1835 in Cité-Belle, in what was then the Ariddian Republic. Hers was an upper middle class family with ties to the aristocracy, and a very comfortable lifestyle. Annabelle, an only child, was given a full and thorough education, and was reputedly a curious child and a voracious reader.
Although her parents never intended her to seek employment, expecting her to make a "good marriage" and live as a comfortable housewife, Laurier expressed an interest for journalism at an early age. With a gift for words, enchanted by "the beautiful music of the language", both French and English, she contributed (anonymous) poems to the mildly conservative, very respectable bilingual newspaper Le Quotidien from the age of 16. At the age of 19, she discreetly met the newspaper's editor - whom a cousin of hers knew well - and he agreed to allow her to publish literary reviews, under the pseudonym "Auguste Duval".
"Duval" soon became known amidst the Quotidien's readers as an insightful, cultured and witty reporter, much to Laurier's delight. By 1851, she had begun publishing poetry under the pseudonym "Marthe Bleumont".
Social and political awareness
Laurier later stated that it was her desire to write a novel which led her to read all she could about the lives of the "lower classes" in her country, combined with "simple curiosity". She had read newspaper articles relating to the condition of the poor, and around 1850 she began donating regularly to charitable organisations, although she did not immediately take an active interest in their work.
Accordingly, she began to wander into the poorer areas of Cité-Belle, observing the living conditions there. What was initially to be a fact-finding operation for a novel became a revelation. Shocked by what she saw, Laurier became an active member of several charities, and soon began writing down her thoughts on the condition of the poor. It was while working for a charity that she met Tony Blacksmith, a young, working class man three years her senior, a passionate Socialist who devoted what little free time he had to working for charities and organising meetings where he preached his beliefs to the working class. Laurier was intrigued.
Socialist thought was all but absent from Ariddia in the mid nineteenth century (the conservative Land Party was the only existing political party until the creation of the... Conservative Party in 1854), but Blacksmith leant her books written and published abroad which expounded Socialist theories and suggested radical remedies for the plight of the working classes. Laurier read them with great interest and, although she was initially critical of many aspects of Socialism, gradually began to agree with Blacksmith's beliefs.
Laurier shared her newfound ideals with her family, who, for the most part, attempted to persuade her to give up on her dangerous acquaintances, but appear to have considered her empassioned commitment to radical socialism harmless, "a passing whim of tender girlish fancy" (in the words of her father).
While she continued to publish poems and literary reviews in Le Quotidien, Laurier also began to write opinion articles in the left-wing newspaper La Voix du Peuple (created in 1851), under her real name. The newspaper had a tiny readership, but it enabled her to organise her thoughts, set them down on paper, and submit new facts and ideas to its readership.
In 1854, she moved into a fairly small flat with Blacksmith. To reassure her parents, and avoid shocking the standards of decency held by her social class, she married him that same year. She became pregnant shortly thereafter.
Literary career
In 1856, she published her first novel (also under her real name, and retaining her maiden name), The Grey Window (La Fenêtre Grise), admired for its vibrancy, its mastery of the sounds of language, if not - by the general public - for its unmistakably socialist ethos. The latter aspect did, however, gain her national attention as a curiosity: a socialist militant from the haute bourgeoisie, married to a man of the working class, and whose smallish flat was stylishly decorated and reminiscent of the class comfort and tastes of her origins. When one reader wrote to Le Quotidien denouncing her "hypocrisy", in part because Laurier was a Church-going Christian, the latter replied that "true Christianity is socialism, caring for one's fellow beings".
In addition to her Socialist commitment, Laurier gradually became an outspoken feminist, and a defender of Indigenous Ariddian rights. Her second novel, Black Night (Nuit Noire, 1859) combined these three elements, depicting the life and struggles of an urban, working class Wymgani woman. Both Black Night and The Grey Window were set in her home town of Cité-Belle, denoting her emphasis on social realism. Also in 1859, she published an article in La Voix du Peuple in which she called upon Parliament to recognise women's right to participate in political life. "Women are not free if they are subject fully and solely to the laws of men," she argued.
Somewhat controversially, Laurier did not shun her own class background, and continued to attend functions of her social class with her family, who never repudiated her. Her husband most often attended too, and she made sure their children (two daughters, born in 1855 and 1856, followed by two sons, in 1860 and 1862) grew up in material comfort - which she defended as being "a mother's sacred duty".
In 1863 she published Soul's Forest (Les Forêts de l'Âme), after extensive research on traditional Wymgani lifestyles and beliefs. Her novel, which fictionally depicted an Indigenous family adapting to expanding colonial settlements in the mid eighteenth century, and celebrated the values held dear by Ariddia's Indigenous communities, did much to increase awareness of Wymgani traditional lifestyles, and boldly suggested they had much to teach White Ariddians.
Her first three novels were all rapidly translated into English, the country's second official language, but not into Wymgani. In 1865, Laurier decided to teach herself Wymgani, and then set to translating her books into that language, with the help of Ea Wo, a young Indigenous woman who was a journalist for La Voix du Peuple. Laurier later stated that it was by far the most challenging task she had ever faced, because she was attempting to render the original meaning of her novels into a language she had started learning at the age of 30, and to write beautiful, meaningful prose in that language. Consequently it was not until 1872 that she and Wo published The Grey Window in Wymgani. Black Night and Soul's Forest followed in 1876 and 1879 respectively.
The Liberal era
In 1879, Ariddian conservative politics were disrupted slightly by the creation of the Liberal Party which, while moderately conservative and openingly capitalistic, was somewhat less right-wing than the Land or Conservative Parties. After several weeks of silent thought, Laurier tentatively welcomed the birth of the party, applauding it as a "small step in the right direction". Although the Liberals were in many ways the antithesis of socialism, many members of the newborn party were advocates of increased civil rights, and some were feminist sympathisers. Ariddia's tiny socialist movement, still far too small to cohere into a structured, national political party, was divided over the issue of reacting to Liberal ideals. Many socialists opposed the Liberals as ardently as they opposed the Conservatives, but Laurier and a small delegation of left-wing or left-leaning feminists met with sympathetic members of the Liberal Party - including future Prime Minister Hugh Vale - to discuss the role of women in society.
In 1884, Liberal candidate Serge Marchand came to power. Laurier cautiously supported him, alienating some of her socialist friends in the process and arguing with her staunchly anti-Liberal husband. She was soon disappointed, however. Conservative elements within the Liberal Party were influential enough to limit many (though not all) progressive policies - and to sweep the issue of women's suffrage firmly under the carpet. Laurier withdrew her support for the Liberal Party, and criticised it bitterly in La Voix du Peuple.
Utopianism
Returning to her writing, Laurier embraced a new approach to socialist literature: utopian novels. In an era dominated by conservative politics, and seemingly no realistic prospect of a left-wing upsurge, utopianism enabled her to envision an "ideal", fairer society within the realm of fiction. The result was Riopse (1888), set in a distant, fictitious land, with a predominantly mountainous geography underlining its distanciation from the flat, forested Ariddian Isles. In the "Democratic Land of Riopse" (the French word espoir spelt backwards), all people, men and women alike, were citizens and proud workers contributing selflessly to ensuring one another's well-being. Laurier called it a "communist" society, the first appearance of the word (and concept) in Ariddian literature. She and Ea Wo then translated the novel into Wymgani, while others translated it into English.
Riopse has been considered by some as Laurier's greatest masterpiece (although others prefer The Grey Window, her first novel). Certainly it inspired other socialist utopian writers, in the following century. Laurier's work was very much ahead of its time, and met only with limited success in her lifetime, although she is now considered one of Ariddia's greatest writers.
Discovery (Découverte, 1897), her fifth and last novel, was a return to the Democratic Land of Riopse through the eyes of foreign visitors attempting to understand the workings of a fully democratic, egalitarian, communist society; it was, by Laurier's own admission, more didactic in intent, aiming at explaining practical aspects of socialism to doubting readers.
Later years
In 1898, a Socialist Party finally came into being, almost at the same time as an (equally left-wing) Wymgani Party. Laurier gave it her full support, participating in poltical campaigns despite the fact that, as a woman, she could neither vote nor stand for political office.
As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, and with it "hopes that our nascent socialist movement shall one day blossom into a true Ariddian democracy", Laurier finished translating Discovery into Wymgani (1901), then settled for writing poetry once more, while campaigning for the Socialist Party and spending time with her grand-children. In 1906, she became a vegetarian, and added animal rights to the list of causes she still actively defended.
In 1914, her husband Tony died, at the age of 82. By that point Laurier (aged 79) had gradually wound down her active involvement in movements of all kinds for social rights, Indigenous rights, women's rights and animal rights. As from 1915 she spent much of her time talking to a young man, Julian Brown, who was writing her biography (it was published in 1921 as Portrait of an Remarkable Woman: the Life and Work of Annabelle Laurier, with a second edition in 1926, after her death).
In 1919, Liberal Prime Minister Hugh Vale (whom she had met personally 38 years earlier) introduced suffrage for women, and Laurier was able to vote for the first time in her life in the 1924 general elections. She died the following year, in her sleep, at the age of 90.
It was only many decades after her death that she was recognised nation-wide as possibly the greatest Ariddian author of the nineteenth century.
Works
- La Fenêtre Grise (1856)
- Nuit Noire (1859)
- Les Forêts de l'Âme (1863)
- Riopse (1888)
- Découverte (1897)
- The Poetry of Mrs Annabelle Laurier: An Anthology (1929, posthumous)
