Why Does HE Get to Do All the Swordplay?

Why Does HE Get to Do All the Swordplay?

by Kathleen Marple Kalb, author of the Ella Shane Mysteries

There’s nothing like the climactic duel on stage or screen: swords ringing steel on steel, combatants pushing each other back and forth, swashbucklers fighting for their lives and honor. It’s an iconic scene…and one that’s almost always reserved for the menfolk. If women are in the frame at all, they’re in a corner wringing their hands and making small squeaking noises. Even women we all know are people you don’t mess with – Olivia de Havilland seriously has to stand outside the action while Errol Flynn has all the fun?  

I can’t be the only girl who saw those scenes growing up and wondered why the ladies didn’t get to play. So when I was thinking about the kind of character I wanted to write, I loved the idea of a woman swashbuckler who did her own swordplay. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get there, and it just stayed at the back of my mind through a couple of early projects that didn’t work out. 

It sat there marinating with a wry joke from a radio colleague about the top of the hour show being the “Boy Shift.” Once upon a sexist time, a woman wasn’t considered authoritative enough to open an hour. No longer – the top is my regular shift — but it’s just one more memory of what used to be a woman’s place. 

Everything crystallized when I was reading a book about young singers at the Met, including a mezzo-soprano who sang what is jokingly called in the trade “witches and britches.” Trouser roles. Romeo, the ancient general Xerxes, Count Octavian who courts the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier; all kinds of romantic, heroic or interesting men played by women who have to be strong and skilled enough to do their own swordplay.

Just the right job for a lady swashbuckler. And so Ella Shane was born. 

Actually, she was born Ellen O’Shaugnessy, to a Jewish mother and Irish father on the Lower East Side at a time when interfaith marriages were not only rare, but a ticket to the social abyss. She has the classic orphan made good backstory (because I read a little too much Anne of Green Gables growing up!), taken in by her aunt after her mother’s death, discovered by a woman whose house they were cleaning, and steered into trouser roles because of her vocal range, and as she puts it, “the height and scrappy attitude to carry off a boy’s role.”

By the time we meet Ella, she’s the successful star of her own opera company, playing to full and appreciative houses in operas like Bellini’s version of Romeo and Juliet. The most fun part of writing Ella is that she’s a swashbuckler on stage, and when circumstances warrant, but very much a lady the rest of the time.  And wants everyone to know it.

When Gilbert Saint Aubyn, Duke of Leith, shows up at the Washington Square townhouse Ella shares with her cousin and manager Tommy Hurley, he’s looking for answers in the death of her last Juliet, who was part of his aristocratic clan. Though she didn’t like the girl, Ella has a strong sense of responsibility to her employees, and she’s sympathetic…except that the Duke comes in with a raft of assumptions about her and “theatre people.”

Ella’s in the middle of fencing practice, so she tosses the Duke a foil – and schools him in both swordplay and behavior. Even though she gives him a draw, he ends up chastened – and hooked.

So now, we also get to play with that whole wonderful Regency romance trope of our virginal heroine winning the Wicked Duke by the sheer shining power of her virtuousness. Don’t worry, that one’s getting turned on its head too. The Duke may be a prize by most standards, but Ella’s not interested in becoming a man’s property and he’s going to have to prove himself worthy. That’ll take a few books. Plenty more duels, too.

And speaking of duels, of course I went all the way at the end of A FATAL FINALE, and put Ella in a classic Errol Flynn-style catwalk battle with the killer. There’s even a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-inspired moment where she proclaims that she’s Malka O’Shaugnessy’s daughter and proud of it. No spoilers, but the Duke is waiting in the wings, and might even be wringing his hands a bit…though I’m reasonably sure there were no small squeaking noises.

The wonderful thing about historical fiction, especially if you’ve grown up on a steady diet of it, is that there are all kinds of expectations to play with, and occasionally meet, all within the context of the time.  You can trust me – and Ella – not to do anything anachronistic, or that violates her strong moral and ethical code. But you can also trust us to take the conventions and expectations and have some fun.

More duels – with and without swords – ahead!

My website: https://kathleenmarplekalb.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kathleen-Marple-Kalb-1082949845220373/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KalbMarple

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathleenmarplekalb/

Bio:  Kathleen Marple Kalb grew up in front of a microphone, and a keyboard. She’s now a weekend morning anchor at 1010 WINS New York, capping a career begun as a teenage DJ in Brookville, Pennsylvania. She worked her way up through newsrooms in Pittsburgh, Vermont and Connecticut, developing her skills and a deep and abiding distaste for snowstorms. While she wrote her first (thankfully unpublished) historical novel at age sixteen, fiction was firmly in the past until her son started kindergarten and she tried again. She, her husband the Professor, and their son the Imp, live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat. 

A FATAL FINALE

On the cusp of the twentieth century, Manhattan is a lively metropolis buzzing with talent. But after a young soprano meets an untimely end on stage, can one go-getting leading lady hit the right notes in a case of murder?

New York City, 1899. When it comes to show business, Gilded Age opera singer Ella Shane wears the pants. The unconventional diva breaks the mold by assuming “trouser roles”—male characters played by women—and captivating audiences far and wide with her travelling theatre company. But Ella’s flair for the dramatic takes a terrifying turn when an overacting Juliet to her Romeo drinks real poison during the final act of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi.

Weeks after the woman’s death is ruled a tragic accident, a mysterious English duke arrives in Greenwich Village on a mission. He’s certain someone is getting away with murder, and the refined aristocrat won’t travel back across the Atlantic until Ella helps him expose the truth.

As Ella finds herself caught between her craft and a growing infatuation with her dashing new acquaintance, she’s determined to decode the dark secrets surrounding her co-star’s fatale finale—before the lights go dark and the culprit appears for an encore . . .

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers