Cunning Women by Elizabeth Lee is set in 1620 in Lancashire and follows Sarah, a young woman from an outcast and destitute family known for their “cunning.” Each woman in her family is marked by the devil, has a familiar, and has knowledge of herblore to make and sell remedies to the nearby village that also views them as pariahs.
Enter Daniel, a young man set to inherit his abusive father’s farm, who falls for Sarah. Daniel very much views Sarah as wild, untamed, and somewhat of an “other” compared to the village women. This view he has of her didn’t entirely sit right with me, and although he claims to have fallen in love with her, I never fully bought their romance because he didn’t seem to be initially attracted to her for the right reasons (if that makes sense.) He seemed to other her to the point of being a wild, scared animal. From Sarah’s point of view, Daniel offers financial support and stability for her destitute family, as well as kindness that is not offered by any other man in the village. Her internal dialogue also indicates that she would not be entirely truthful to him about things that had happened to her, which in my view held their romance more at arms length.
Although the subject matter is up my alley, I had a hard time getting through Cunning Women. I never really got into it, but I did finish it. It is slow moving, the style of writing was sometimes confusing and disjointed with the lack of full sentences and logistical placements, and I honestly fell asleep many times while reading it. I was also unclear about (and this may have been the point) if this story was supposed to be a sort of Magical Realism in that the women of Sarah’s family really were marked by the devil and really did have familiars, or if these aspects were simply imagined based on superstitions (ie birthmarks and imagined animals as stand ins for their emotions,) much like the village’s views of them.
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