THE CARTOONIST MOST LIKELY TO ELEVATE THE CULTURAL STATUS OF GRAPHIC ART

Krazy by Michael Tisserand - Harper (2017)

What is high art, what is low art, and who can we trust to fence the murky swamplands in between? Is there anyone capable of making unassailable objective statements about such a subjective field of thought? These are some of the questions that artists and critics alike have been raising in regards to the ‘funnies’ for well over a hundred years. Can transient humor touch upon the same deep-rooted cultural anxieties as more ‘serious’ works of art? 

George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat and the surreal anthropomorphic characters of Coconino County, would probably answer in the affirmative. Although his concentrated narratives disappeared from newsprint long before my time, I recognize some of the main components from the comics of my own youth. Herriman plays with dynamic issues like race and gender but remains ambiguous through his use of whimsical animals, alien landscapes, and a fathomless wardrobe of illusions and disguises. His legacy can be traced through the storylines of Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Peanuts, and he has inspired numerous cartoonists to nurture their own imaginations. Until recently, the extent to which Herriman identified with the elusive identities of his characters was greatly underestimated. Not until 1971, nearly three decades after his death, was Herriman’s birth certificate produced to confirm his status as an African American, ‘passing’ as a white man during one of the most violent and bigoted periods of American history. One can only imagine what this ‘father of graphic art’ felt working for the very newspapers in which “the discovery that a person was racially passing was treated as a front-page scandal.” 

George Herriman’s incredible story is offered in what could easily be called his ‘definitive biography.’ In Krazy, Michael Tisserand leaves no stone unturned, and grounds his arguments and conclusions in an impressive collection of the artist’s own sketches. This biography is certainly the most visually-appealing I have ever read, and its whimsy and humour will be relatable to anyone who has ever looked forward to reading the comics each morning—even if Krazy Kat was never among them. 

Michael Tisserand is a native of New Orleans (Herriman’s own hometown) and is committed to preserving the history and culture of the ‘Big Easy.’ Besides Krazy, his other books include The Kingdom of Zydeco, and Sugarcane Academy: How a New Orleans Teacher and His Storm-Struck Students Created a School to Remember. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Tisserand wrote an eleven-part series of articles titled ‘Submerged’, which appeared in numerous publications nationwide. His fierce celebrations of New Orleans have been featured in The Oxford American, The Nation, and The Progressive. When not writing, Tisserand organizes the annual New Orleans Chess Fest and volunteers his time at the Laissez Boys Social Aide and Leisure Club, of which he is a founding member. To say that Tisserand’s love of New Orleans is evident in his writing would be a serious understatement. His efforts at creating a more interactive experience for readers should also be noted, as he offers a collection of Herriman comics on his website and is an active and entertaining member of Twitter. 

George Herriman’s comics did for graphic art what Shakespeare did for the English Language—he helped to establish a vocabulary that would be recognizable across distances and generations. Perhaps this is why Krazy Kat feels intimate and familiar to a reader whose first exposure is in a posthumous biography. Writes Tisserand, 

A comic strip is, most broadly defined, a series of pictures that tell a story, usually combined with words and most often published in a newspaper or magazine or, more recently, online. Over the years, comics developed their own visual language: word balloons, radiating worry lines, droplets of nervous sweat, hats popping off heads, and “grawlixes,” the term coined by cartoonist Mort Walker for typographical symbols indicating profanity…the comic strip’s unique integration of these three elements—words, pictures, and symbols—allows it to tell a story, whether humorous or serious, that can’t as effectively be told any other way.

Through statements such as these, Tisserand confirms his position as a proponent of the ‘comics as art’ school of thought. And he is persuasive. His main intent, besides pinning down and organizing every piece of biographical detail, is to convince readers that comics must be viewed and analyzed in a category of their own. They are not ‘low’ versions of paintings or novels. The characters and conversations may be reduced, but they are rarely one-dimensional. Comics can convey things that traditionally ‘high’ pieces cannot. Cartoon characters can say things that celebrities and politicians cannot. And not all comics concern themselves with trivial or domestic matters, although some, like Blondie, certainly do. Herriman was both highly educated, and naturally intelligent—a fact that any astute reader can ascertain if they look at Krazy Kat with more than a cursory glance. Writes Tisserand: 

Herriman was bringing everything he had to Krazy Kat: gags about boxing and Prohibition; quotations from Shakespeare and Tin Pan Alley; references to fate and spiritualism, including a postwar Ouija board craze; Navajo and Japanese myths; topical jokes about trusts, wartime profiteering, and the League of Nations; a new character named the Widow Marijuana Pelona…and frequent greetings to friends such as Seldes, Pinky Springer, and Tad Dorgan. 

Although George Herriman is no longer a household name, his influence on other cartoonists cannot be overstated. He is the invisible artist whose shadow survives in the panels we all know and love. Gilbert Seldes, one of Herriman’s biggest fans and the author of The 7 Lively Arts writes that, 

…whether he be a primitive or an expressionist, Herriman is an artist; his works are built up; there is a definite relation between his theme and his structure, and between his lines, masses, and his page…The little figure of Krazy built around the navel, is amazingly adaptable, and Herriman economically makes him express all the emotions with a turn of the hand, a bending of that extraordinary starched bow he wears round the neck, or with a twist of his tail. 

Herriman’s power and prestige can only be truly appreciated in the words of his contemporaries. They worshipped him, despite his mysterious background, and welcomed him into the restless club of American journalists whose escapades would come to define a certain paradoxical period of idealism and disenchantment. Writes Tisserand of Herriman and his colleagues Charles Van Loan and Beanie Walker:

The trio worked and caroused together, attending show matinees and political conventions, ball games and fights, and taking automobile excursions to out-of-town events. They traded stories about their adventures in print, at times turning the Examiner into their private journal of the Los Angeles sporting life. They reported from Tom McCarey’s and Jim Jeffries’s blood-stained fight clubs and joined the “plungers” who sought fortunes at the track. As Examiner men, they had reserved seats for both minstrel plays and opera; a true Sport never missed a good show, “whether operatic, dramatic, or pugilistic,” as Herriman described it. For meals, they jostled with journeyman fighters—the “pork-and-beaners”—for stools at tamale stands and countertop steakhouses.

George Herriman never explicitly commented upon his own racial background, and his life might have turned out differently had he done so. But now that the mystery of his origins has been debunked, his comics attain a new and bittersweet tenderness that adds to their complexity. Describing one comic titled “First White—Then, Black—Then, White Again!” Tisserand writes:

The gags begin when Van Bones drops a stovepipe on Alexander [his cat], blackening him in soot. Alexander dashes upstairs, where Leila [Van Bones], not recognizing her pet, shoos him off. Alexander then leaps into a tub of water being carried by a black servant, who warbles a minstrel song about possums and banjos. The servant brings the cat, now returned to sparkling white, to her grateful employer, while Van Bones slips his servant a dollar to keep quiet…Herriman has introduced multiple color reversals into a world of animals. 

Even today, ‘passing’ is a subject spoken about only in furtive whispers. Speculation is rampant and documentation is scarce, but Herriman continues to ask—through his comics—what the color of an animal has to do with his fundamental being. White Alexander is the same cat as Black Alexander, and the tragedy lies in the fact that his own ‘parent’ is unable to recognize him. The color of his fur negates the existence of a singular personality. Perhaps this is why Herriman never spoke up about his own roots in New Orleans—he knew that if his ‘blackness’ were revealed, his friends and colleagues would cease to recognize him as George Herriman. In his tender and beautifully-illustrated biography, Michael Tisserand accompanies George Herriman as he explores sensitive questions of race and identity in a world of minstrel kats and brick-throwing rats.

Michael Tisserand's (fantastic) website

Interview with Michael Tisserand in The Comics Journal

New York Review of Books essay

New Yorker essay on gender identity in Krazy Kat

NYT book review

THE POET MOST LIKELY TO EXTOLL THE VIRTUES OF FRIENDSHIP

Rumi's Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love by Brad Gooch - Harper (2017)

The older I get, the more I value my friendships. Platonic relationships do not impact our lives in the same way that romantic ones do. Friends do not emerge from a heady cloud of hormones and desire, and they do not leave smoldering piles of wreckage in their wake. Because of their constancy, great friendships do not make for great literary subject matter. It is much easier to write a novel about a lover than one about a best friend. The vocabulary of lust is simply more evocative than the vocabulary of mutual respect. But as I’ve come to realize, my closest friends have contributed more to my mental health and security as an individual than any of my romantic interests. Friendships are my longterm relationships, and I’ve watched them expand and develop with all the affection a mother might bestow upon a growing child. I think this is why Rumi’s poetry remains popular and relevant more than eight centuries after his death. It is rare to find stories and poems which touch upon the intimate feelings we have for our friends, and most of us feel self conscious about expressing friendship in romantic terms. Rumi never had any reservations about sighing dreamily over the virtues of his closest friends. Through the sensual, vivid language of his poetry, this thirteenth-century Persian poet shows modern readers that it is entirely possible for friendships and romances to involve similar emotional responses. There is nothing wrong with ‘falling in love’ with your friends, and this realization can bring immense relief to anyone who ever has. 

Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love by Brad Gooch is a joyful celebration of friendship, compassion, and mystic belief. Gooch’s affectionate treatment of the Persian poet makes for a thoroughly uplifting read. Gooch is no stranger to biographies, having published books on Flannery O’Connor and Frank O’Hara, along with a slew of nonfiction texts focusing on significant historical periods of freedom and creative expression. He is also a frequent contributor to such publications as the Paris Review, the New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vanity Fair. Brad Gooch seems to admire those who insist on creating beauty in the midst of chaos and despair. As I consider myself to be of this camp, I greatly respect the tone and emphasis Gooch employs in Rumi’s Secret. 

 Although Rumi was a devout Muslim, he was also a firm believer in the spiritual components of music, dance, and poetry. His world was a bright and beautiful one, and he somehow managed to remain ecstatic even as Genghis Khan and his Mongol army swept across the Middle East, destroying such cultural capitals as Samarkand and Bukhara. Rumi was determined to find evidence of God’s grace in the people he met, the cities he explored, and the words he encountered in recitations of poetry and the Quran. Writes Gooch: 

The ultimate beloved reflected in the purified heart was understood to be God: “Take a polished heart to God so that He may see Himself.” For Rumi, he and Salah [a fellow mystic] were two such mirrors, gazing into each other, their affinity inexplicable in words or thought. The polishing took place together and involved maturing through union and separation. Rumi’s passion around Salah was driven in part by his embrace of these concepts, and this vision of a world of ricocheting light and love compelled him for the rest of his life. 

While many people (myself included) might descend into periodic bouts of depression, Rumi never allowed himself to dwell on present circumstances. He maintained an admirably vast perspective. Thus, 

The tenor of much of Rumi’s poetry in the Masnavi is cheerful and transcendent. The conviction behind this sensibility depended on his belief in the shifting qualities of the world, so that thoughts were not taken as fixed or unchanging. Soul or spirit of even attitude could recast or illuminate the perception of all experiences. As far as the psychology of approaching death, Rumi almost reflexively counseled its embrace rather than its fear—advice, given the timing, for himself as much as anyone. He chose to see the ‘limping’ physical demands of his own aging as the fermentation of eternal love. 

Reading Rumi’s poetry is a cathartic experience. Even if you do not consider yourself to be especially spiritual, Rumi’s words seem to promote a mentality rather than a specific religious creed. The poet encourages readers to approach the external world armed with the ornamental lens of poetry, rather than the cold indifference associated with realism. Even at the moment of his death, Rumi’s persistent optimism refused to depart. Writes Gooch: 

No one left in the room was able to comprehend the length and breadth of Rumi’s expansive life. The companions who traveled with his family from distant Khorasan were now mostly buried near Baha Valad [Rumi’s father] in the family plot of the imperial rose garden. None of his children had ever laid eyes on the Oxus River, the great natural divide separating the Balkh region of his birth, nor was it any longer possible for them to visit the capitals of his youth, Samarkand or Bukhara, as they had been destroyed as cultural centers by the Mongols, as had Baghdad. His mother remained buried in Larande, and the grave of his first wife was not included among the rest of the family. Some closest to him had known of the remarkable Shams of Tabriz [Rumi’s best friend], but only Rumi understood the nature and extent of their months of intimate encounter that transformed him midlife from a respected religious leader into an audacious mystic and visionary poet. These experiences kept him a figure apart even in his approach to death. As everyone around him was grieving and sorrowful, he remained witty and serene. 

Rumi is still one of the top-selling poets in the world. Part of this has to do with the evocative words he employs and the way he manages to bring thirteenth-century Persia to life before the eyes of (disenchanted) modern readers. But Rumi retains a spot in my heart because of his incredible capacity for love, humour, and passion. Rumi reminds readers that they have some influence over how the external world appears to them. We can choose to don the glasses of Rumi or Dostoevsky, and the world will look different indeed. With his whimsical celebrations of friendship, Rumi underscores the beautiful things in our own lives that we often take for granted. Writes Rumi of his best friend Shams:

When your love enflamed my heart

All I had was burned to ashes, except your love.

I put logic and learning and books on the shelf.

NYT book review 

THE WOMAN MOST LIKELY TO THRIVE IN THE MARGINS

Vera by Stacy Schiff - Modern Library (1999)

Stacy Schiff is probably my favorite biographer. Attentive readers might remember her fantastic profile of Cleopatra from my very first blog post, but it is really her 1999 treatment of Vera Nabokov that solidifies her place in the pantheon of scribes. Vera lives up to every bit of critical gushing. This snappy, meticulous book earned Schiff a well-deserved Pulitzer, along with a slew of additional honors. From a reader’s perspective, Vera is evidence of Schiff’s impressive ability to characterize a real woman without rendering her two-dimensional. This task is especially difficult when the woman in question happens to be the elusive wife of one of the most controversial writers in modern history. Biographers have spent decades combing through Lolita, along with lesser known works by Vladimir Nabokov, hoping to unearth evidence of his mysterious wife—so cryptic and refined compared to his most notorious female creation. Stacy Schiff refuses to pin Vera Nabokov to the pages of her husband’s texts. As in Cleopatra, it is Schiff’s remarkable knack for embodying her subjects—while at the same time acknowledging the futility of this aim—that elevates her above her peers. There is a part of Vera Nabokov that will never be recovered, however closely we examine the words and sentences she lurks behind. The entire life of Mrs. Nabokov cannot be distilled from crafted pieces of fiction. Coming to terms with the limitations of recorded history is the demoralizing fate of every biographer. How each chooses to treat the inevitable gaps in the narrative is really what distinguishes the adequate writers, from the exceptional ones. 

Schiff’s talent for stirring the imagination without dehumanizing her subject makes for a whimsical, jaunty read. More so than most scholarly writers, Schiff has fun with her text and makes no effort to sanitize her own narrative voice in order to sound more ‘serious.’ She knows she does not need to do so. Schiff’s methodical research stands on its own and does not need to be bolstered by twelve-letter words and convoluted syntax. Vera is not a journey through a clapboard funhouse of smoke and mirrors—it is a thorough investigation presented with style and panache. Right from the introduction, Schiff draws in readers with her playful tone and masterful command of imagery and vocabulary. Describing the peculiar relationship between Vladimir and Vera, she writes:

To one person she remained always hugely visible. Nabokov was supremely conscious of her presence. He lit up around his wife; he played off her. The two comported themselves as if they shared a secret. With visitors later in life they resembled nothing so much as two children plotting, in code, about how much they dared tell the adults…Nabokov reveled in being a figment of Vera’s imagination, which is no wonder, given who she thought he was. When she met him she felt that he was the greatest writer of his generation; to that single truth she held strong for sixty-eight years, as if to compensate for all the loss and the turmoil, the accidents of history. She did all in her power to see to it that he existed not in time, only in art, thus sparing him the fate of so many of his characters, imprisoned by their various passions. 

If the Humbert-Dolores relationship is a bit too icky for your tastes, the Vera-Vladimir one might be more palatable. Schiff writes about this flighty pair of Russian agoraphobes as if their marriage counts among the greatest love stories of all time. And she makes a convincing argument. Cold and hostile as she comes across in her correspondence with demanding publishers and nosy journalists, Vera Nabokov was loyal to an almost pathological degree. She believed in her husband’s innate talent absolutely—to such an extent that she bypassed fanatical hysteria to exist solely within the realm of confident certainty. Her favorable opinion of her husband’s genius was held so strongly that it became fact. No amount of slander could soil her image of Vladimir because she was in love with his mind, as expressed in his beautiful words, and cared primarily for the preservation of his intellect. Her farsightedness proved to be uncanny. Despite the fact that Lolita struggled to find an American publisher and almost landed several British ones in jail, it slowly inched its way into the literary canon and is now something of a classic. If Vera felt confident in her husband’s posthumous ascension, it is easy to see how she could brush aside insults and insinuations inflicted during his life. Schiff presents the Nabokovs rather like a pair of determined, tireless stokers, working together to ensure that their shared imaginative furnace was never extinguished. At times they seemed to nurture a single creative spirit. Writes Schiff, 

Vera knew where she sat in her husband’s private pantheon. She showed no sign of having felt oppressed, eclipsed—or, for that matter, central, indispensable, a full creative partner. At all times she appears to have believed that she stood not in her husband’s shadow but in his light. The tacit participation worked two rather paradoxical effects. It established her as everywhere present in a life from which she sought—and fought—to absent herself. 

Part of the mystery of Vera Nabokov—and, unfortunately, part of her attraction as well—is the extent to which she sought to annihilate herself. She wished to exist solely as the protector and defender of her husband’s artistic nucleus, although she refused to accept the role of muse or inspiration. It is a curious psychological phenomena that has stumped critics and biographers for decades. Vera was so confident in her abilities as a reader and advisor that she believed no one else could encourage Vladimir in his efforts. She understood his needs, his desires, and his neuroses. If the world were to benefit from the beauty of his prose, she needed to abandon her individuality and live only to support her husband’s pursuits. It was anonymous subjugation to be certain, but complicated by the fact that Vera believed wholeheartedly that her role as accomplice was just as vital to the final product as Vladimir’s creative mind. She believed so strongly in the ideals her husband represented that assuming the role of his wife was by no means a demotion. Writes Schiff, 

Vera assumed her married name almost as a stage name; rarely has matrimony so much represented a profession. It was one of the ironies of the life that—born at a time and place where women could and did lay claim to all kinds of ambitions—she should elevate the role of wife to high art…Traditionally a man changes his name and braces himself for fame; a woman changes hers and passes into oblivion. This was not to be Vera’s case, although she did gather her married name around her like a cloak, which she occasionally opened to startling effect. 

One of Stacy Schiff’s greatest challenges in Vera is writing about a woman who rarely talked about herself, yet was the subject of relentless gossip and scrutiny. She was the wife of a man known for writing a ‘pornographic’ novel about a middle-aged professor with pedophilic inclinations. As Nabokov was himself a middle-aged professor at the time of publication, the ensuing controversy was inevitable. Much was said about Vera over the years—that she had written the book herself, that she approved of her husband’s ‘nymphets,’ that she enjoyed an open marriage—none of which she deigned to refute. There has always been a strange contrast between Vera’s visibility, and her silence. Schiff captures the enigmatic personality of Mrs. Nabokov when she writes, 

She did not seem to care; the perfect magician’s assistant, she could be sawed in half with no loss of dignity or composure. She refused only to concede that the magician had an assistant. To admit that he did so was to admit that some kind of sleight of hand was being worked. She was not going to reveal her husband’s tricks. Every artist is a great deceiver, Nabokov reminds us. And Nabokov was a very great artist. 

Frustrating and inexplicable as the Nabokovs may have been, there can be little doubt as to their compatibility. Vera and Vladimir worked in tandem, as evidenced by their merging into the singular entity of ‘V. Nabokov.’ Publishers rarely knew whether letters were sent by the author or his wife, and it never seemed to make much of a difference. They constituted a single being. The outside world understood little of Vera and Vladimir Nabokov, but they understood each other perfectly. And Stacy Schiff, in her incredible biography, Vera, understands that the shadows and whispers of Mrs. Nabokov are all the evidence we need to recognize her greatness. 

NYT book review

Pulitzer profile

Stacy Schiff's website

THE QUEEN MOST LIKELY TO RULE WITH HER EMOTIONS

Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird - Random House (2016)

Whether we acknowledge it or not, most of us prefer leaders who somehow manage to rise above the trivial concerns with which we ourselves struggle. We want our artists and writers to be passionate and unpredictable, but tend to lose respect for politicians who put their hearts on display. The best politicians are those who never have sex and never get angry. Nothing cools political enthusiasm so quickly as definitive proof that those in charge are—shockingly—just as red-blooded and hot-headed as the rest of us. Collectively, we imitate the  single lady who rejects every suitor who doesn’t live up to her sanitized Prince Charming standards (or the wistful young man whose dreams occur in the quaint stage-set of Stepford, Connecticut). She will remain single, and we will remain politically stymied. The amount of pressure we heap upon the shoulders of our representatives is unfair and unproductive. Different as their platforms may be, the one thing that all presidents, prime ministers, and royal families have in common is their biological status as human beings. The heart cannot be cut from the equation, and rather than persecute these individuals for the sins we know too well, we should perhaps cultivate a certain degree of empathy. (in case this introduction should be misconstrued, I am defending natural expressions of emotion NOT excusing derogatory remarks or blatant sexual assault).

Despite having ruled for sixty-three years and seven months; despite the fact that her influence was great enough to be immortalized as an eponymous era; despite the role she played in both The Industrial Revolution and the expansion of the British realm from a damp little Island on the periphery of continental Europe to one of the most expansive empires in history—Queen Victoria is remembered by many as a melodramatic, mopey woman. She is scoffed at by historians because of her shameless expressions of grief following the death of her beloved husband, Albert. What these historians might consider to be the greatest virtues of a vulnerable, helpless woman, prove to be unattractive in one who wielded incredible power. In her masterful biography, Victoria: The Queen, Julia Baird focuses on precisely the same attributes other biographers have used to damn the diminutive queen. Baird distinguishes herself, however,  because she chooses to celebrate Victoria’s obvious humanity—every one of her ‘unseemly’ emotions—rather than cite these flashes of feeling as evidence that women are inherently unsuited for positions in government. Baird’s biography is a celebration of feminine passion and perseverance, arguing that these attributes actually elevate Victoria above her male counterparts. It is also a book containing lessons that are highly relevant to the political situation in which we presently find ourselves. 

Julia Baird is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia. She is known for her contributions to The Sydney Morning Herald, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Guardian, and Harper’s Bazaar. She makes frequent appearances on television and radio shows in Australia, and hosts The Drum on ABCTV. In addition to Victoria: The Queen, Baird is also the author of Media Tarts, a book which utilizes a series of in-depth interviews to examine the roles female politicians play in Australia. Baird has long evinced an interest in women who are interested in politics. She profiled both Sarah Palin and Rachel Maddow for Newsweek, and wrote her Ph.D. on the relationship between female politicians and the press. Julia Baird’s interests and experience as a journalist make her the ideal candidate to expose the degree to which Queen Victoria has been unfairly attacked due to her gender. One of the most admirable qualities of Baird’s writing is that she refuses to justify Victoria’s reactions or apologize for her emotions. Baird doesn’t feel the need to reduce Victoria to the inhuman level of her frigid male contemporaries. Victoria deserves our admiration precisely because she allowed her heart to participate in her rule. In the introduction to her book, Baird clarifies the challenges she faced while writing about Victoria:

When she was crowned, people were amazed that Victoria could think clearly and speak without stumbling; when she married, they were convinced she had deferred all major decisions to Albert; and when he died, she was castigated as a remote, grieving widow. All this is wrong. Queen Victoria was a decisive ruler who complained of the weight of her work while simultaneously bossing prime ministers about daily, if not hourly…Yet our generation, almost as much as the Victorian, seems to fail to understand how such a woman could wield power ably and with relish. Part of the reason for this failure is the sheer difficulty of digging through the mass of legend and hyperbole to reach the real Victoria. 

Ruling women must spend an incredible amount of time balancing the scales of power. It is a lose-lose situation and an inexcusable waste of time and energy. If they invest themselves too much in politics, their ‘feminine ways’ are blamed for any and every failure of policy. If they disappear into the domestic sphere and focus their energies on birthing a dynasty, they are seen as the spineless instruments of dubious husbands and ministers. Women in power are objects of suspicion. Women who relinquish power are nonentities. A queen who is publicly affectionate with her children is too unfocused to rule. A queen who ignores her children is biologically deficient. Queen Victoria struggled all her life to manage her reputation as a mother, wife and sovereign, because it was unthinkable that anyone could manage all three roles at once. She is still burdened with these prejudices today. As Baird suggests, 

Victoria was the most powerful queen, and the most famous working mother, on the planet. When we allow her to remain—as she has done in public memory for so long—submerged in her black piles of mourning, we forget that Victoria had been fighting for her independence, her prestige, and the honor of the Crown since she was a teenager, and did so successfully and in large part alone. We also forget that she fought for an empire and values she believed in and worked until her eyes wore out, that she advised, and argued with, ten prime ministers, populated the royal courts of Europe, and kept the British monarchy stable during the political upheavals that shook Europe in the nineteenth century. We forget that she loved again, that she giggled when grandchildren played at her feet, that she helped avoid a war with the United States, that she leapt upon opportunities to fire or anoint prime ministers. We forget that suffrage expansion and antipoverty and antislavery movements in the British Empire can all be traced to her monumental reign, along with a profound rethinking of family life and the rise of religious doubt. 

If that resume isn’t impressive enough for you, Baird encourages readers to take a step back and consider Victoria’s rule from a wider perspective:

The queen was born at a time of immense upheaval—the sleepy village that surrounded Kensington Palace would become a bustling metropolis by the end of her lifetime, with chimneys billowing smoke that clouded the sun, row houses crammed with five families per room, rivers clogged with sewage, and ships proudly sailing across the world to plant British flags on foreign continents. Uprisings would rattle the Church, the aristocracy, and Parliament. Under her reign, Britain would achieve a greatness it had not known before This queen would rule a quarter of the people on earth, an epoch would be named after her, and her stern profile would forever be associated with a paradoxical time of growth, might, exploitation, poverty, and democracy. 

Throughout Victoria: The Queen, Julia Baird zooms in and out, jumping from a cozy domestic scene, to one in which Victoria’s international reach is evident. This structural balance makes for a thoroughly enjoyable read in which Victoria is allowed to shine as both a queen and a woman. Too often her biographers elevate one position at the expense of the other. Baird’s deliberate shifting between micro and macro, public and domestic, is a refreshing argument against the myth that women have to choose. Queen Victoria is proof that a woman can be both a ruler and a human being—that strong emotions might actually improve one’s ability to govern. Baird says it best in the concluding paragraph of her introduction:

Victoria grappled with many of the matters women do today—managing uneven relationships, placating resentful spouses, trying to raise decent children, battling bouts of insecurity and depression, spending years recovering from childbirth, yearning for a lost love, sinking into the strength of another when we want to hide from the world, longing to make independent decisions about our own lives and to shape the world we live in. She lusted after and fought for power at a time when women had none. Victoria’s story is one of unmatched prestige and immense privilege, of defiance and crumbling, of meddling and mettle, of devotion and overwhelming grief and then, finally, a powerful resilience that defined the tiny woman at the heart of an empire. It is, above all, a surprising story of strength. What we have truly forgotten today is that Victoria is the woman under whose auspices the modern world was made. 

NPR interview with Julia Baird

NYT book review

Julia Baird's website