The Beauties by Lauren Chater
The Beauties (2024, Simon and Schuster), the fourth historical fiction novel by Australian author Lauren Chater, is a masterclass in storytelling. Centring around art, love and the power of feminine beauty, the novel explores the role of women during the Restoration period, revealing how they were oppressed in every way while simultaneously being exalted for their beauty in the royal court.
Set predominately in London during the 1660s and the Hague during the 1650s, this tightly woven story has three main characters: Emilia Lennox, Henry Greenhill, and Anne Hyde. The book begins with Emilia travelling to London, determined to acquire the King’s pardon for her husband whose lands and title have been confiscated. Her morals are challenged when the King offers to pardon her husband in exchange for her becoming his mistress. Meanwhile, Henry, an apprentice to the acclaimed court artist Peter Lely, is tasked with painting a portrait of Emilia for the King. This proves difficult as Emilia makes every attempt to delay the artwork’s completion.
Between these events, Chater takes the reader back in time to the Hague during the mid-1650s, where Anne Hyde, a young lady-in-waiting to Princess Mary, begins a friendship with Mary’s brother James, the Duke of York.
While the shifts between three characters and two time periods as well as first and third person points of view can initially cause some confusion, Chater has a skilled hand, and putting trust in the author is worthwhile as the different perspectives become deeply intriguing and unputdownable. The prose is also embellished with vivid imagery and descriptions of the Restoration period, with resplendent sentences that reel you into the story like a fish caught on the most enticing bait:
“The descending quiet seems laden with expectation, as if the paintings have just stopped talking.”
Chater has written the stories of two powerful women growing to see their femininity as a strength and discovering their right to have an opinion on their own path in life. Though they never physically meet, each woman’s life mirrors the other in some way. Emilia has spent her life being told she is beautiful; Anne has had the opposite experience. However, they both desire to be seen and loved for their inner beauty.
“Perhaps it's different if you've grown up being admired and told you're beautiful every day. You learn to accept from a young age what people are saying. When the opposite occurs – when you are an ill-favoured and sickly-looking child like I was – you find yourself searching harder for evidence, sifting through the looks and compliments for something you've missed.”
Emilia and Anne endure lives laden with struggle and hardship. However, from this hardship they find their identities rooted in strength of character and the unique value they bring to people around them. Emilia, through no fault of her own, is forced into destitution. While her husband falls deeper into his own melancholy, we see Emilia travelling solo to London, spending months standing in a crowd all day for the attention of the King to save her husband. However, by the end of the novel, Emilia chooses to live her own life and allows herself to pursue her passion for painting:
“I had learned that beauty was able to do more than merely exist for decorative purposes. It could be used to comfort, to teach, to express understanding, to celebrate the complex traits that were inherent in every person God had chosen to place upon the earth, the things that made them special and unique. That was beauty's gift.”
Following heartbreak, Anne decides to open her heart again to James, Duke of York, a friend with shared values. This leads to a relationship filled with respect, commitment, and love. Despite the social challenges – a commoner cannot marry a duke! – Anne pushes through the emotional and social trauma and becomes a strong duchess with the power to commission a series of portraits which become known as The Beauties.
“Men commissioned portraits of themselves to demonstrate their wealth and status. Why shouldn't women see themselves as they truly were – strong, powerful, intelligent? Instead of gazing outwards, I wanted them to look within, identifying the unique skills and accomplishments that would allow them to endure the trials every woman must face.”
These women both challenge the social expectations placed upon them as well as the gender inequalities of the time.
Henry’s chapters offer a male voice to the story and create a bridge between Emilia and Anne. As an assistant painter to the court artist, Henry interacts with both women and goes through his own growth to understand the daily challenges women are forced to endure.
Through his character development, Chater highlights how individuals could be oblivious towards the inequalities of the time. Chater uses Henry as a contrast to Emilia and Anne by the choices he is offered throughout his life, compared with the limitations the two women face. His awareness of the inequalities surrounding him becomes evident later in the novel when he refers to himself and his fellow apprentice Mary as “opposite sides of the same coin.”
Any fan of historical fiction should immerse themselves in this intriguing story Chater has brought to life on the page. The Beauties opens a window into the 17th Century and the social and political vices still echoed within today’s society. This is a story guaranteed to leave you reaching for your history books and making a visit to the art gallery.
Hannah Robinson is a writer based in country South Australia. With a degree in creative writing, she is kept busy working on her first novel and writing for her blog flowersingumboots.com.