Kate Murdoch’s 2nd historical novel, The Orange Grove, is set in a nobleman’s chateau at the beginning of the 18th century. What do we expect of a historical novel? That it recreates a different, distant time and a place for us, with the author’s research providing a seamless, believable world; that the time and the place and the characters take on their own life; that the story arc and its resolution be faithful to the period as well as to the characters.

On these three counts, I think this is a successful novel. There is nothing clunky about it; the prose is elegant and vivid, the characters (for the most part*) believable, the period and the mores and culture of the aristocratic circle are brought to life through the characters and the choices they make, and the resolution is satisfying, though more, I would say, in terms of romantic fiction than of realism.

The book opens with the voice of a child, Solange, who is the daughter of one of the senior mistresses of the Duc Hugo d’Ambroise. Solange and her playmate Tomas appear throughout the story, playing their games of hide and seek, frog races, and spying on their elders. As the story arc climbs and the tension amplifies, they and another child, the Duc’s legitimate daughter Estelle, have key parts to play. The point of view shifts through the main characters — the jealous Duchesse Charlotte, who is shunned by her husband in favour of his latest (much younger) mistress, Letitia;  Henriette, Solange’s mother, who was Charlotte’s closest friend and ally, but now discarded because she befriends the newcomer Letitia; and Celine, the second eldest mistress, who is  out of favour with the Duc but wiles her way into Charlotte’s favour by colluding with her against their rivals for the Duc’s attentions.

You may have noticed that the main characters are women. And here, for me, is the * I noted above. The men in this story are, I find, two-dimensional. The Duc is more or less taken for granted as a patriarch whose right is to have a polygamous household. Ageing, his Achilles heel is that he falls in love with his latest young mistress, who falls in love with a much younger aristocrat;  he declares his intention not only to marry Letitia but to be faithful to her, going against the polygamous grain. The other main man is Romain de Villiers, an ‘old friend’ of the Duchesse, who reads Tarot cards among the aristocratic circle of women to make a living, and has a slightly shady past. Yet he falls in love with Henriette, who is a virtuous woman, despite her status as a mistress, and in the end (plot spoiler) forswears his questionable past and swears loyalty to Henriette. A reformed character … perhaps!

The Duc has a double standard;  he spends his desire with whom he pleases, yet rejects his beloved Letitia when he discovers she has been with the young aristocrat she is in love with. He ignores his mistresses when they no longer please them, though he doesn’t actually discard them, except in the case of his wife Charlotte when she steps over the line and does mortal harm through her plotting. Then he climbs on his high moral horse. All this, no doubt, is in keeping with the morality of the court at that time. Yet for me, he and the other lesser male characters are rather undeveloped. I can’t help comparing them with the shining prince Genji in Murasaki Shikibu’s medieval romance, The Tale of Genji, set in the Emperor’s court in 10th-11th century Japan. The court was hierarchical and polygamous and women’s status was determined by their mother’s lineage and the degree of favour they held with noblemen of the court. This is not the space for a description of how these courtiers arranged their affairs and how the women managed to survive and thrive, or not, within the court. But that much longer, more complex novel, I think, gives a richer and more ambiguous picture of polgyamy, all the more remarkable for the fact it was written so long ago, by a woman who was herself part of the court circle, in a time when women writers in Europe were mostly translating men’s religious writing.

Regarding the ending of The Orange Grove, I noted it is more romantic than realistic. So Letitia is released by the Duc and allowed to marry her shining aristocrat. And Henriette, the virtuous older mistress, gets and gives a second chance with the ageing erstwhile roue, Romain. In a more realistic story, they are likely to have had less happy outcomes. Perhaps we see in this novel a wish fulfilment for happy monogamous endings, such as I wanted myself when I was young and even middle aged. Notably, both the women who come through with a promise of happiness are true to their hearts and at least attempt to be virtuous within the polygamous system.

The book is most enjoyable and well written, with a complex and well-managed plot and credible characters. My reservation is that, as a study of how it is to be a desiring woman in a man’s world, it is limited by the conventions of romance.