Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister- Gregory Maguire

How I found this book: I noticed this book actually before I connected it back to Wicked. I thought the premise of it sounded intriguing, and have always wanted to try it.

Setting: Haarlem, The Netherlands, in the 16th century

Main Characters:

Iris Fisher Van de Meer: The character by whose eyes we see the major part of the story, she is a plain girl who is forced to keep an eye on her sister Ruth and to abide by the wishes of her ambitious mother Margarethe. Born in England, her head is filled with all sorts of fairy-tale fancies as she arrives in this strange new land, but she has eyes that see and watch everything, and soon she is growing up and discovering that the real ‘monsters’ in the world can be seen with her own eyes, and not with her imagination. While sharp tongued and witty, Iris is also sensitive and caring, and really does try to do the right thing, even at the expense of her mother’s wishes.

Ruth Fisher Van de Meer: The narrator of the first and last chapters, Ruth is considered mute and mentally inferior through much of the story. A large girl, described as an ‘ugly, stupid ox’, she is much more watchful than the reader is led to believe. We are never explained why she acts the way she does, though in the last chapter she does give us a bit of an explanation surrounding her own fear and jealousy of her sisters.

Magarethe Fisher Van de Meer: The scheming, ambitious mother of Iris and Ruth, she is driven from England back to her father’s home in Haarlem, only to find that she must somehow eek an existence for herself and her daughters. While Margarethe highlights the harsh existence of women in a time when they were dependent on men for both their moral honor as well as their survival, she also highlights their ambition in terms of security. Seeking to live both a comfortable life and gain a good position in society for her daughters, Margarethe comes to extreme ends to ensure that she comes out on top, and damn anyone else who gets in her way.

Cornelius Van de Meer: A wealthy tulip merchant, Cornelius plays heavily in the high-risk, tumultuous business of the tulip trade. He has little involvement with his household, save to use it as a way of displaying both his wealth and his tulips to potential investors. He is a very easy going man, easily hen-pecked by his wives, and often thoughtless with his observations, even to the point of hurting the feelings of those around him.

Henrika Van de Meer: The first wife of Cornelius Van de Meer, she is the source for much of his wealth as she herself is a wealthy heiress. She keeps her husband on a tight leash, particularly in terms of money, and their only daughter, Clara. She is very proud of her house and her position, and her personality tends to conflict with the scheming Margarethe.

Clara Van de Meer: The unearthly beautiful daughter of Cornelius and Henrika, she is trapped in her home unwilling to go past the door or the garden. She is a very self-centered girl, unable to deal with the changes around her, though she isn’t unfeeling or uncaring. Plagued by a childhood trauma, she is convinced that she is a changeling, and will be taken off by others of her kind at some point to live with them. She has a bond to Iris and to Ruth, but is close to few others, feeling that most people only see her beauty and never her true self.

Master Luykas Schoonmaker: One of the many painters in Holland at the time period, (he’s said to be a contemporary of Rembrandt von Rijn.) He takes Margarethe and her daughters in when they first arrive in Haarlem, and he teaches Iris how to see the world through a painters eyes. He seems to have some regard for the grasping Margarethe, and a fondness for both the girls despite his gruff manner. He is hoping that his latest and greatest work, Girl with Tulips will help launch his career.

Casper: Master Schoonmaker’s apprentice, Capser is a lively, fun boy, who has a true affection for the Master and his work, and a growing affection for Iris. While he plans to become a painter himself, he is eager to help Iris learn how to see the world.


Plot: In this retelling of the familiar ‘Cindarella Story’ from the viewpoint of the ugly stepsister, Iris Fisher and her family flee England to Haarlem seeking to start a new life. Little do they know how hard it will be in Holland, where the cities fortunes rise and fall on the popularity of the tulip, a new flower variety that is taking the area by storm. Iris’s mother Margarethe plots and schemes to help her struggling family survive, eventually finding a position with the wealth Van de Meer family, and their strangely and ethereally beautiful daughter, Clara. As Iris tries to understand the beautiful girl, she also begins to learn how to paint, and thus to see the world that she had viewed through her own imagination through the realistic eyes of a painter. What she sees is a family being rocked by change, an impossibly beautiful girl who is locked up in the tragedy of her own life, and a grasping mother willing to stop at nothing to see to her own families well being. When Maria de Medici, the Dowager Queen of France comes to Haarlem in the midst of a downturn in the tulip market, Margarethe sees yet another change for her to advance her own cause. But a strange turn of events causes everything to change once again, and unbeknownst to the Van de Meers, their own, hard life becomes the pretext for a fairy tale.

Themes:

Incredible beauty can be as troublesome as incredible ugliness: Throughout the story, Iris is fascinated by what she calls ‘God’s mistakes’, those who have been afflicted with age, disease, or handicaps. She sees herself and Ruth in this light, ugly people who pale in comparison to her beautiful step-sister, Clara. But like the ugly and forsaken of Haarlem who are trapped by their outer appearance in the worlds they live in, Clara herself is trapped as well. She complains that she is never seen for who she is, but rather is seen only for her beauty. She is in many ways just as limited by her looks as any of God’s mistakes. Unlike Iris, whose plain looks allow her the freedom to run about the city or to do as she wishes, Clara feels she will always be defined by how she appears, when her beauty fades, there will be little else to define her.

It isn’t just in the general populace that Clara feels this frustration, but with her own family as well. Clara, an only and much beloved child, is very spoiled, and used to having her own way and not being required to do much beyond occasional lessons. Household chores in the kitchen are not her domain, though it appears her mother, Henrika, does participate. Clara is forever seen as a beautiful child in the eyes of her parents, kept in childish clothes and never being asked or required to do much beyond sitting around and looking beautiful. This limited perception leaves Clara at a loss when her mother dies, and she is left to fend with Margarethe, whose own daughters have learned how to be useful about a house. Clara comes off as being spoiled or willfull, when in reality she has been placed in her cubby hold and has no way of knowing how to get out of it.

Metamorphosis: The Cinderella story is a story about a young girl who goes through a miraculous change from a dirty maid to a princess all in one night. While there are no pumpkins or fairy god mothers in this story, there is a great deal in the way of changes going on, and change is a massive aspect of the story. Margarethe, one of the driving forces of the story, changes herself from a homeless, poor Englishwoman, to a housekeeper, to a proper Dutch, middle-class wife seeking to marry off her eligible daughters. Cornelius Van de Meer changes from a jovial and well-to-do merchant to a depressed, broken man overnight. Iris changes from a fanciful young girl who sees the world in stories and fairy tales to a serious, thoughtful young woman who sees the world through the realistic eyes of a painter. As the novel continues she grows, and despite her plainness comes to see herself as a girl of merit, with more to herself than just a face, but a mind, a heart, and great wit and talent, so much so that a French Prince found her interesting. Iris begins to see herself less through the eyes of others, and more through the eyes of a woman coming into herself.

Two of the greatest changes in the story are that of Ruth and Clara. Clara, the exquisite young girl who is trapped by her own fear and her own beauty handles her issues by changing herself again and again to fit her needs. As a child who was abducted, she convinces herself she was a changeling, going from the fussy young toddler to a prim, well-behaved child, the real Clara being whisked away by fairies. Not only is this symbolic of her own changing from toddler to child, but it also helps the traumatized Clara deal with an event she was too young to understand or to cope with. However, this event would define her as her parents were too afraid of losing their treasure, and she was too afraid of the outside world to deal with it. Clara would change again with the death of her mother, Henrika. She would be forced to face the reality of her existence, and that she was pretty and pampered but not fit for much else useful, and was hampered by her own beauty to be nothing more than ‘pretty’. She takes to the kitchens, learning to cook, sleeping by the fire, wearing soot and ash, and becoming the ‘Cinderella’ we know from the stories, not because she is being abused, but because she can’t understand the changes going on around her and wants to hide even further. She refuses to play the part of the beautiful, changeling child anymore, and seeks to retreat even further from the world that she fears. It is only with Iris’s help she comes out of her shell and takes on another role, that of princess, that Clara comes into her own, even though her experience is harsh. But out of this she does grow and in the end it is beautiful, selfish, spoiled Clara who stands up for her family and ensures that no harm is done to them.

Ruth herself also changes, she is only every seen as the dumb, stupid ox of a girl who can barely talk and is barely manageable. But Ruth is growing up as well. Not only are she and Iris becoming women, (as backhandedly mentioned as their menstrual cycles start), but she is growing aware of her family. She sees clearly that her mother is bound to bring ruin on them all with her endless scheming, that Iris is in love with Casper and wants to become a painter, and that Clara wants nothing more than to escape her life and never be the Girl with Tulips. But she is also a girl who, like Clara, has been pigeon-holed her entire life as the stupid, mute, ugly one. It turns out in the end that like Clara, Ruth is so much more, a girl who truly feels and things, and who is so much more perceptive than anyone ever gives her credit for, especially her own family.

Beauty and youth fade, but stories last forever: Like the tulips that are a major theme in the story, beauty is dazzling at first, but then wilts and dies, only to be reborn again in anther generation and another time. Maria di Medici was once a young girl, but is now an obese old woman, Henrika was a beautiful and rich burgher’s wife, she dies relatively young, as does Iris we discover in the end. And even Clara in her exquisite glory eventually has her looks pass away, and she too dies after her final transformation into a colonist in New Amsterdam, (modern day New York). They all fade away into obscurity. But the story of Cinderella, of the ash girl who rose up to become a princess, and her family who abused her has lived on, even if it isn’t completely the truth. We find much of the same thing today, with our own legends, how figures become mythological and are only remembered as two-dimensional characters, and we forget the depth to them, their faults, the trials, and the tribulations. Cinderella is never seen with the emotional scars, the ugly stepsisters are never seen as loving their sister, the evil stepmother’s motivations are never given beyond her own selfishness. It isn’t that the legend doesn’t have some truth in it, all legends have some basis of truth, but the rough edges are smoothed out and the crooked paths made straight in our minds, else the story wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.


Every book sucks somewhere: I have to say this, compared to Wicked, this book was so much better. That being said, Confessions still suffers from a lot of confusion in the way the story is written. At this point, I can only assume that it is the way that Maguire writes, in a manner in which he doesn’t clearly let you into the why of things. Why are these things happening, where did this start, how did we get from point a-b. While it isn’t as pronounced as it was in Wicked, (I believe that this novel came after and suffers less from that sort of writing), there are certain points where I’m wondering why it is that Iris is acting waspish with her mother, or why it is she is sad. It’s never explained why she sees the fanciful visions she sees, or why it is that Ruth is the way she is. These are things that tend to leave me a bit confused and irritated.

The characterization for many of the characters, save Iris, Ruth, and Clara, is very flat. This could be mostly because the story is told from the third person vantage point of Iris, and like other third person stories, might suffer from the fact that it’s Iris’s perceptions of what is going on, rather than what is actually happening. But I have a hard time understanding Margarethe outside of the obvious, or Henrika, or any of the other characters. Why is it that Caspar is so angry at the entire Van de Meer family, Iris in particular, at the end? What in the world possessed Van de Meer to want to marry Margarethe so soon after his wife’s death, no matter if she was a widowed woman in his household? None of this is handled very smoothly.


What did I like: First of all, I loved that this book wasn’t as bad as Wicked. I could actually read it all the way through and stay engaged. I loved the metaphors and the subtle references to the Cinderella story. I love how Iris is seen both as a sympathetic character, but also as a character you can see believably turned into the ‘ugly stepsister’. I love that Clara is so much more complex than just being ‘good’ or ‘bad’. And I absolutely adored the historical setting of this book. It made it so much more realistic and relatable than Wicked was as you had something concrete to build your perceptions on.

I also liked the fact that if you didn’t know better, and save the allusions, you would never know that this had anything to do with Cinderella. Gone are the fairy godmother and pumpkins, and in its place is something that is realistic, but just as wonderful in its own way. This is a much more grown up story than the Cinderella tale itself, even than Wicked, which I think makes it so much more fun to read.

How would I rate this wormy book: I would rate this as a FAT worm, though it is perhaps on the low end of the FAT worm scale. I really do not like Maguire’s writing style, I feel it is rough and disjointed, but that is just me. I think however the story is much more engaging than Wicked was, and much more interesting, with a very unique take on a very old story that I both found compelling and sympathetic as well. It’s great for a lazy afternoon read.