• About Me
  • Contact Me
  • Policies
  • Welcome

Novelhistorian

~ What's new and old in historical fiction

Novelhistorian

Tag Archives: Lord Byron

Sins of the Father: Enchantress of Numbers

29 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Ada Lovelace, biographical fiction, book review, Britain, Charles Babbage, computer science, historical fiction, Jennifer Chiaverini, literary fiction, Lord Byron, mathematics, nineteenth century, sexism in science, Victorian Age

Review: Enchantress of Numbers, by Jennifer Chiaverini
Dutton, 2017. 433 pp. $27

He’s magnetic as few people are, well titled, brilliant, a poetic genius, utterly debauched, and what would today be called manic-depressive. Her parents try to warn her, but Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke, Baroness of Wentworth, will have her Lord Byron, believing that ardent love and a spotless moral example will cure him of his excesses. It’s 1815, the year of Waterloo, and a different sort of battle is about to begin.

Annabella’s delusion receives a sharp setback on her wedding day, and though the Byrons pass a few companionable weeks, during which Annabella becomes pregnant, their marriage quickly falls apart. Lord Byron prefers other women, especially his half-sister, Augusta, and only someone as innocent as Annabella could have failed to realize how deep that preference runs. By the time Annabella’s daughter is born, and he insists on naming her Augusta, as is his legal right, his long-suffering wife begins to get the idea. Shortly afterward, Annabella leaves Byron, a scandal so infamous the separation is forever referred to with a capital S. Henceforth, she calls her daughter only by her middle name, Ada, and sets out to eradicate any presence of her former husband, real or perceived. She decides that an overwrought imagination led to Byron’s depravity, and she watches her young child for that or any other evidence of “evil Byron blood.” Whenever Ada shows the least sign of willfulness, subversion, or curiosity deemed repugnant, Annabella leaves home, putting Ada in the hands of hirelings who enjoy correcting her every fault, many of which exist only in their eyes, and determined that no fairytales, flights of fancy, or moments spent ruminating ever be part of this young girl’s life.

I confess I have a visceral reaction to this novel, which could be subtitled How to Destroy a Child. I wanted to rescue this poor girl from parental tyranny and show her kindness, warmth, and encouragement. However, the stakes are even higher than that of an emotionally strangled child, for Ada is preternaturally intelligent, passionate about science, and a born mathematician. Luckily, Annabella tolerates this to some extent, or the world would have lost a genius. Known to history as Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s only legitimate child has been credited by some historians as having devised the first computer algorithm, in a journal article discussing the work of her close friend, Charles Babbage. But, as Chiaverini tells it, all this could have easily gone another way.

How this comes to be shapes the narrative, but Enchantress of Numbers is much more than a biographical novel, a genre that too often shows its limitations. Chiaverini succeeds brilliantly, in part because each chapter has its “no — and furthermore” and portrays Ada’s struggles lucidly. She longs to make her own decisions, and, as she gets older, to gain recognition for her science, not as an ornament to her father’s misbegotten reputation. Even better, Chiaverini carries these conflicts through Ada’s adulthood, and they never recede. Her mother remains withholding, elusive, and controlling; and men are men, with rights and privileges Ada can never claim. Moreover, though Ada counts among her friends such luminaries as Darwin, Dickens, Faraday, and Mary Somerville (Ada’s mentor, a brilliant polymath for whom a college at Oxford is now named), most scientists dismiss her work as dabbling, simply because she’s a woman. No doubt Countess Lovelace would have understood implicitly the endemic sexism in today’s Silicon Valley and have much to say about it.

Watercolor portrait of Ada King, Countess Lovelace, 1840 (courtesy Wikimedia Commons, via Science and Society Picture Library)

But feminism aside, Enchantress of Numbers is also about a corrosive mother-daughter relationship and the rivalries that Annabella exploits for her own advantage. No question that Byron abused her, and since his subsequent poems satirize her mercilessly, she continues to suffer. But she passes on the punishment with interest, constricting Ada within an inch of her life while not letting her read the poems, so that the girl’s only knowledge of her father comes from her mother’s harangues. Even his family portrait is hidden in her grandparents’ house:

Whenever I was feeling especially brave, I would steal into the room alone and gaze up at the covered portrait, wondering what lay behind the dark green curtain. What did my father look like? Of course I did not remember . . . . There must be something truly terrible about his appearance or my grandmother would not have hidden him from view. . . . In my imagination — that wicked, persistent faculty — he became a chimera of the magnificent and the monstrous. . . . and . . . Since I was his child, something sinister and dangerous lurked within me too.

I wish that Chiaverini had devoted more space to Ada’s emotional reckonings late in her short life, though I understand why the author didn’t go that way. Enchantress of Numbers is lengthy as it is. But it’s utterly riveting as well as topical, and I highly recommend it.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Recent Posts

  • Good, Evil, and Hope: Deacon King Kong
  • The Marsh Girl: Where the Crawdads Sing
  • No Quarter: Wolves of Eden
  • Heresies: The King at the Edge of the World
  • Orwell’s Vision: The Last Man in Europe

Recent Comments

2020 – A Year… on Missing, Presumed: The Poppy…
Novelhistorian on Hard Life Lessons: Domini…
Mila on Hard Life Lessons: Domini…
Novelhistorian on Tormented Souls: The White Fea…
Juxtabook on Tormented Souls: The White Fea…

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Categories

  • Comment
  • Reviews and Columns
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blogs I Follow

  • Rewriting History
  • Damyanti Biswas
  • madame bibi lophile recommends
  • For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction
  • Suzy Henderson
  • Flashlight Commentary
  • Diary of an Eccentric

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 153 other followers

Follow Novelhistorian on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • Good, Evil, and Hope: Deacon King Kong
  • The Marsh Girl: Where the Crawdads Sing
  • No Quarter: Wolves of Eden
  • Heresies: The King at the Edge of the World
  • Orwell’s Vision: The Last Man in Europe

Recent Comments

2020 – A Year… on Missing, Presumed: The Poppy…
Novelhistorian on Hard Life Lessons: Domini…
Mila on Hard Life Lessons: Domini…
Novelhistorian on Tormented Souls: The White Fea…
Juxtabook on Tormented Souls: The White Fea…

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Contents

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Rewriting History

How writers turn history into story, and story into history

Damyanti Biswas

For lovers of reading, writing, travel, humanity

madame bibi lophile recommends

Reading: it's personal

For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction

Suzy Henderson

What's new and old in historical fiction

Flashlight Commentary

What's new and old in historical fiction

Diary of an Eccentric

writings of an eccentric bookworm

Cancel