Amber (novel)

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Amber is the German title of the 1944 historical novel Forever Amber by the American writer Kathleen Winsor (1919-2003). It became an instant bestseller and was made into a film in 1947. The novel is set in England in the 17th century and tells the career of the (fictional) mistress Amber St. Clare, who came from a simple background and made it through the various strata of English society to the English royal court. In doing so, she maintains a passionate love for a man she can never fully win. The time in which she sacrifices her life (next to her soul) for Carlton in the months of the plague binds her again, but again she does not achieve the marriage to the lover. In her essential years she suffers from the fact that 'Bruce' will never marry her and does not withhold it from her. When he abducts their son to the distant country with approval, she breaks inside and lives her youthful years more frivolously than ever (despite the other daughter S.), in order to play a role in the king through title and fortune as well as the other child of the king To take company. It pays dearly the high price of its usual origins by not accepting its own limits.

action

Amber is the illegitimate daughter of a young noblewoman who had to have her child on the run during the English Civil War and died in childbirth. The child grows up under the name Amber St. Clare with his mother's friends, simple farmers in a village. Beautiful, spirited and relatively self-confident, at the age of 16 she fell in love with a noblewoman who stopped in her village on her trip to London . Lord Bruce Carlton, like his king long in exile, is on his way to see the return of King Charles II after the end of Oliver Cromwell's reign , the beginning of the era of the English Restoration . At Amber's insistence, he takes her to London with him without giving her false hopes. When Lord Carlton receives his letter of captivity and ships from the king as planned , he sets off with other privateers in the Caribbean and leaves Amber pregnant, but with a well-stocked purse.

As a naive country girl, Amber disregards his advice and falls victim to marriage swindlers. Financially ruined, she ends up in guilt prison. From this low point she slowly works her way up by first getting involved with a leading mugger. Black Jack frees her from prison and forces her to go on raids with him. When her child was born, she placed it with a foster mother in the country. A jealous mistress of the mugger leads the constables on their trail, Black Jack is caught, whereby Amber escapes.

She lets a student last for several months and gets a job as an actress in the King's Theater. When the student drops her under pressure from his father, she is already on the next step in her career: she takes the wealthy officer Rex Morgan from a colleague, who falls in love with her, supports her as a maitress and takes good care of her. When Bruce Carlton - after successful years as a privateer - is back in London, she meets him so carelessly that Morgan finds out, duels with Carlton and is killed in the process.

During a trip to the country, she meets the old merchant Samuel Dangerfield, one of the richest men in the country - and business partner of Bruce Carlton, whose piracy he helps to finance in a health resort. She seduces and marries Dangerfield, after his death she is a wealthy widow.

The plague struck London in 1665, and Bruce Carlton also returned from a trip infected. Amber nurses him energetically and self-sacrificingly, saving his life before she falls ill in turn and he nurses her back to health. The relationship deepens, but Carlton may want them. a. do not marry for reasons of class and go out again as a privateer.

In the house of Lord Almsbury, a friend of Carlton's, she met the Earl of Radclyffe without being able to know that he wanted to marry her mother twenty years ago. She accepts Radclyffe's marriage proposal in order to get his title of count, who in turn is interested in her fortune. As a countess, she can finally be presented at court; but when the king begins to take an interest in her, the jealous Radclyffe forcibly takes her to his country estate, where he holds her almost like a prisoner. Mutual hatred increases, and when she starts an affair with Radclyffe's son, the father tries to poison both of them while he is traveling to London. The son dies, Amber escapes the attack and follows Radclyffe. In the turmoil of the Great Fire of London in 1666, she and a servant succeed in killing Radclyffe undetected.

She can now go to court unhindered, and for years becomes Maitresse of King Charles II. This gives her a high income. When she becomes pregnant, he marries her to a nobleman in order to legitimize the child and raises her to the rank of duke. For a long time she stayed cautiously out of the intrigues of court society ; she was primarily interested in the envy of the ladies and the attention of the men. As before, she will continue her passionate relationship with Bruce Carlton when he is back in London. Carlton, who got rich as a privateer, is now a tobacco grower in Virginia , where he always gets new lands approved by the king. On his last visit to London he appears with his new wife, whom, contrary to the habits of his class, he actually loves. When his wife finds out that he has a parallel relationship with Amber, he ends this - in order not to offend his wife, who is not used to the courtly manners, and because Amber presses him too much in her jealousy and desperate fear of loss. When he leaves with his wife, this is used by courtly intrigues against Amber who want to knock an uncomfortable rival out of the field. A forged letter leads Amber to believe that Carlton's wife fell ill and died. The book ends with her following Carlton to Virginia.

publication

Only the fifth draft of Winsor's manuscript was accepted by MacMillan, who wanted to build on his success with the 1936 novel Gone With the Wind . The editors shortened the book to a fifth of its size, and the published novel was 972 pages long.

In the first week after publication, over 100,000 copies were sold, a total of over three million; it was the best-selling book of the 1940s. In retrospect, a journalist described the author as “the inventor of the modern bestseller”. The German translation came early; it was published by Diana Verlag (Stuttgart, Baden-Baden) as early as 1946.

The film adaptation, produced by Otto Preminger , appeared in Germany as Amber, the great courtesan .

criticism

Positive reviews highlight the interesting, ambiguous character of the main character, the differentiated, at the same time close and distant psychological description of the characters, as well as the well-researched and dense historical-sociological presentation. Winsor does not seem to have made the common mistake made by authors of historical novels to incorporate views of their time as anachronisms into their novels. She is certified to have differentiated the mentalities, the social habitus of the most diverse social classes and milieus and also accurately reproduced them linguistically. The novel tells a lot about the 1660s in England, the era of the English restoration .

Some reviewers see in Amber, as in Scarlett O'Hara, the main character of the novel Gone with the Wind , a proto-feminist figure who energetically uses the possibilities of her patriarchal era to make her way. Amber is originally driven by the desire for recognition, love and a fulfilled sexual relationship, which is strongly combined with cynicism and ruthlessness under the considerable pressure of London society, which forces her to fight for survival. The book is seen as a psychogram of a strong, but ultimately still very much influenced by patriarchal thinking and feeling woman.

In two places, critics saw a reference to time: The great catastrophes that Amber experienced (the plague, the great fire) are interpreted as a reflection of the fears and dangers of the Second World War at the time. Amber's strength is seen by critics as an echo of the increasing social strength of women in the United States, which was promoted by the Second World War.

Negative reviews came from the conservative side. Fourteen states in the US banned the book as pornographic, the first being Massachusetts, whose prosecutor listed 70 sexual intercourse sites, 39 illegitimate pregnancies, 7 abortions and "10 descriptions of women undressing in front of men". The Catholic Church banned the book as "indecent", which contributed to its popularity. One critic went so far as to number all of the scenes he complained about. These reviews contributed significantly to the book's sales success.

For the film version, the book was heavily reworked to meet the criticism of the church.

Winsor himself did not see her book as particularly "daring" and denied any interest in explicit sex scenes. "I only wrote two sex scenes," she remarked, "and my publisher canceled them both".

expenditure

  • Kathleen Winsor: Amber. Novel ("Forever Amber", 1947). 2nd edition Diana-Verlag, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-905414-07-4 (translated by NO Scarpi ).
  • Kathleen Winsor: Forever Amber. A novel . Macmillan, New York 1954.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elaine Showalter : Forever Amber . In: Guardian Unlimited book review , August 2002.
  2. ↑ Peter Guttridge: Obituary: Kathleen Winsor. Author of the racy bestseller "Forever Amber" . In: The Independent, May 20, 2003, p. 20.
  3. ^ Adam Bernstein: Kathleen Winsor, 83, "Forever Amber" author . In: The Seattle Times, June 1, 2003, p. A29.

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