Haw has done an
excellent job of creating the events that allowed Caroline to blossom and
become the person who appears in the history of astronomy. (Review by Margaret
von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
Once again, following other novels such as The Woman at the Wheel and The Invincible Miss Cust, Penny Haw has
taken a female figure marginalised by history and given us a fictionalised
account of her life.
I have always found fictionalised biography (so-called “faction”) a potentially difficult area – it can raise too many questions about how much of their own stamp an author can or should place on a real character – but here, in this tale of astronomer Caroline Herschel, Haw offers us a compelling and very plausible narrative.
Born in Germany in 1750, Caroline was scarred and stunted by illness in childhood, and her mother decided there was no point in educating her, or preparing her for an advantageous marriage, and turned her into the family drudge. Yet she would go on to become the first woman scientist in Britain to be paid a salary and be recognized by scientific bodies for her contribution.
Her charismatic and talented brother William rescued her by taking her to England, seeing to it that she received an education and encouraging her musical talent. But his own interests moved from music to astronomy, and Caroline became his assistant in making telescopes for sale and in mapping the stars. When he was offered a position as the King’s Astronomer, he uprooted her from the life she enjoyed in Bath and took her with him to Windsor.
It would never have occurred to Caroline that she could forge her own path and refuse. She was terrified that if she didn’t do as William wished, she might be sent back to her controlling and unpleasant mother in Germany. So she allowed herself to give up a life she enjoyed, and became her brother’s full-time assistant. And as she learned more, she nurtured a secret desire to become an astronomer in her own right, but women didn’t do such things, and her early life had robbed her of the self-confidence that could have made it possible.
Haw draws on Caroline’s own diaries and writings, but, as an author’s note explains, there is a major gap in these at the time of William’s marriage, relatively late in his life. This allows Haw the space to create Caroline as a realistic, flawed and fascinating character, who could be – and often was – her own worst enemy, her lack of confidence holding her back at every turn. But Haw has done an excellent job of creating the events that allowed Caroline to blossom and become the person who appears in the history of astronomy.
The novel ends at this point, but of course Caroline would march on. There are various heavenly bodies that bear her name – and the Herschel name also lives on in South Africa where Herschel School in Cape Town is named after her nephew – William’s son and also an astronomer – who came to the Cape to map the stars of the Southern hemisphere.
The Woman and Her Stars gives Caroline a voice and shows with impressive clarity that women in the 18th Century – the so-called Age of Enlightenment – had to overcome enormous obstacles to gain the recognition they deserved. And Caroline Herschel really does deserve it.
Penny Haw’s The Woman and Her Stars is published by Sourcebooks: ISBN 13:978-1-7282-9548-0
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