Zillah Bethell on Writing

 

Zillah Bethell’s novel Girl In Profile was inspired in part by artist Gwen John and her relationship with Rodin.

Why did you choose to write about Gwen John and her experiences in Paris?

I was researching Caravaggio for a short story and a book on Gwen John kept falling out of the library shelf, so I thought: ‘Okay, so you want to be written about’. I became intrigued by her passionate relationship with the sculptor Auguste Rodin and her pared back lifestyle in Paris. Her paintings and personal life (on the surface) seemed to contradict each other and I wanted to probe a little deeper.

Why did you choose to title the book after one of Gwen John’s paintings – and this painting in particular?

 The book is a succession of moments – like pictures. I wanted the writing to be like painting, sometimes glancing, sometimes going in deep… Lots of repetition, symbols taking on a life of their own, semantic resonances.

Gwen John spent most of her career painting women and girls sitting in rooms – often the same woman/girl over and over again with slight alterations – as if trying to explore what it means to be a woman or confronting the process of creating itself.

I saw Girl in Profile at the National Museum of Wales which is partly why I used it as the title. I liked the way she left the flaw in the work. It seemed like the perfect title for my own profiles.

What if anything about Gwen John’s life inspired the other characters in the book?

I wanted to think of a woman who was the complete opposite of Gwen John, whose whole life was her children, which led me to create Moth. And then, of course, I imagined Moth as an old woman. Waiting in a room. Waiting for her children to visit, the children she had given everything to, sacrificed everything for. Regretting a little, but ultimately rejoicing in that.

Why do you think that women choose to write to death row prisoners, knowing what they have been sentenced for?

I think many women do write out of compassion – there but for the grace of God and all that – but I think your question is hinting that some women write for romantic reasons which is undoubtedly true. I guess a man on death row is the ultimate bad boy and we think we might be able to reform him. Also there would be a great intensity to the relationship, but I suspect the attraction lies in the fact that they are completely unattainable – it is an emotional investment that is risk free. There’s no danger of them actually turning up on our doorstep with a bunch of flowers!

How do you see yourself looking back on your life when you are Elizabeth’s age?

I hope I’m still writing books. I hope I’m a big part of my happy and successful children’s lives and I hope I’m not in an institution of any sort! I don’t think I can ask for more. I think I’d be happy with that.

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Zillah Bethell was born in Papua New Guinea, is a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford and now lives in Tondu, south Wales, with her husband and two young children. She has published two novels for adults as well as several short stories and her upcoming novel for children will be published in autumn 2016 by Piccadilly Press.

Bethell’s Girl in Profile examines the lives of women before children, with children, and after the children have gone. The novel’s focus ranges from a Paris-based artist in the early 1900s (based on the Welsh artist Gwen John), a Swansea mum in the present day, and a Tenby woman struggling against dementia in the not-too-distant future.

“Bethell’s prose is like a rain shower of language, dark and mysterious – then the sun breaks through illuminating the lives of its female characters.”
Jo Mazelis, author of Significance, Jerwood Fiction Uncovered award-winner

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, Interviews, On Writing