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Margaret Frazer: Sister Frevisse and Medieval Mysteries Patricia W. Jnlins Once upon a time, writers-particularly satirists or social critics-set their plots in imaginary places presented as unexplored lands, the better to make their point about the society in which they lived. Thomas More, following Plato's lead, created Utopia or "no place." Jonathan Swift placed Lemuel Gulliver, his literal but dense reporter, in the lands of Lilliputians and Brobinagians and Yahoos to make his comments about his own world. But soon the globe was explored and mapped. There were no more floating islands, no more mysterious lands. So writers found a new arena-the world of the future or of other universes. Some of the most perceptive of the social commentators found a home in science fiction-Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert , and Alexei Panshin among others. Recently, mystery writers have sought an environment through which to make their own statements about the events and attitudes of their time. Like Asimov and Herbert and Panshin and the others, they cloak their commentary in another time. However, these writers have chosen to place their action in the historical past. Since 1992 and the introduction of her nuncum -detective Dame Frevisse, Margaret Frazerl has taken her place among the company whose social commentary is played out upon the stage of the Middle Ages. One of the cliches of literary scholarship is that neither writer nor critic can leave his or her own time; that they cannot shake off the realities of the twentieth century; and if they could, they should not. Their audiences, after all, are firmly grounded in the present, and one of the requirements of historical fiction, whatever its genre, is to establish a link, no matter how tenuous , between that time and our own. Margaret Frazer in her seven medieval crime novels establishes that link through her mastery of the cultural minutiae as well as the larger history of the fifteenth century. The dual issues of class and choice operate in all the books of this series. Early in The Novice's Tale (1992) Frazer makes her attitude toward class clear in the words of Thomas Chaucer, son of the poet and Frevisse's uncle: he says, "my place in the world would hardly change by my gaining a title. I'd simply add more duties to my life and my taxes would go up and that's an idiot's price for fancying my name" (9). Shortly after, the actions and words of Lady Ermentrude remove any doubt that nobility, in the hands of Margaret Frazer, is generally far less than noble. Ermentrude's values become apparent when she says of her son, Walter, "Lord Fenner is dying 122 Margaret Frazer 123 now, it seems, and since the title comes by right of blood to Sir Walter, he's there to make sure not too much is lost when Lord Fenner makes his will" (25). Nobility, as both Geoffrey and Thomas Chaucer knew, has to do with the heart and the mind and the character of a person, not with the robes and honors-or lack of them-that mark the public self. However, many of us, then as now, would eagerly pay the "idiot's price." In fact, untrammeled hunger for visible rank provides the foundation for the crime in The Novice's Tale, the 1992 opener of the series. None of the parties are innocent -not the victim, arrogant proud Lady Ermentrude, not the murderer, and not the bystander who made no move to stay the killer. Such misplaced faith in the superiority of class is not the sole province of the laity, however. The Novice's Tale also introduces Dame Alys, the cellarer , whose pride in and allegiance to family far overshadow her commitment to God. Lady Ermentrude is a Fenner and Dame Alys a Godfrey. Ironically, both families are very minor aristocracy whose pretensions to grandeur have found a decades-long battleground in the issue of land. Dame Alys' character and priorities are clear from her first words, "Would it were in my power to serve her [Lady Ermentrude] as she deserves. Spoiled fish and rotten apples, with ditch water for a drink, that's what she'd have." When a lay servant comments, "That would be enough to start a real feud between the Godfreys and Fenners," Dame Alys responds, "There's been no bloodshed yet, but there's a feud all right. And the blood will come soon, too, if they...

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