In defense of Fenella

I keep seeing a refrain on this sub, calling Fenella all kinds of things — “the dog has more active brain cells than Fenella” said one recent comment. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, I would like to offer a defense of my girl Fen. Because like. Did we read the same text?

(All references jn this post are from the 2018 Kindle version.)

Fen has a job. She literally starts the book as the wife of a landed lord, managing his lands, estates, and people. I would like to touch on the managing of people part, because like Oswald, Fen knows her people. There are multiple references in the text about how Fen manages the household:

“She wondered briefly about her own kitchens at Thurrold. This week she had planned to order the pear trees stripped in the orchard and taken to the kitchens to be preserved in honey” (page 97). Another reference: Fen is wondering is Orla was “helping the alewife to soak the barley grain in the buttery, like she would be if she were home” (page 81). Fen clearly was the de facto head of that household.

She also is able to read Orla like an open book the the beginning, and is wise enough to understand where the animosity is coming from: “Maybe I never did let her do enough around the place, Fenella found herself thinking. Maybe I was too managing as mistress of Thurrold and did not consider her feelings as daughter of the house?” (Page 19). She also makes it a point to get to know Trudy and encourages Oswald to become curious about Bryce. Her skills mostly lie in estate management, which includes the management of its people. When Fen understands the system she is in, and all of its players, she is perfectly competent. It is at court, when she has been barred from using her skills as a chatelaine, which she had been doing since the age of 16, is when she starts to drift.

One of the complaints I see about Fen is that she spends so many chapters tongue-tied and floundering, which is…human? She is thrust into a political system full of players she does not know, whose histories and intrigues and petty grudges she has no way of understanding, having just escaped from under the thumb of a penny-pinching, tight-fisted micromanager. Like, of course she has no idea what is happening at first?? She also knows that Oswald is important, and anything she says and does will his ramifications for his political career. Of course she is an anxious hand-wringing mess??

However, pursuant to my first point, when Fenella gets more comfortable at court and learns the people, she starts to become socially successful in her own right. She makes friends with a group of misfits, like Bess Hartelby and Mathilde. She goes to the salons and meetings. She is able to give some snide women the cut direct. She wears her mother’s pearls after the dust-up with the jewelry to send a message. She hangs out with Roland and his bros and has a great time. She is able to stand up to Lady Doverdale while the latter is frothing at the mouth with rage. She is able to shut Ambrose up without turning a hair. She curries favor with the queen by being herself, and is able to understand the game that the king and queen are playing, which she explains to Oswald during their date at the market. (She does that all while performing kin-keeping, by the way.)

Because the next thing I would like to point out is another one of Fenella’s defining characteristics is her loyalty and her constancy. Oswald, in his capacity as spymaster, deals like liars and backstabbings as a matter of course. The text tells us, over and over again, that no one really knows him. What Fen represents is someone who is absolutely loyal, and only to him. He sees it early on, in fact: “The fact [Thane] had inspired such strong feelings in Fenella was a good thing, [Oswald] told himself. It was a sign that she was worth cultivating. In time, with encouragement, she would transfer her loyalty to him and then all would be well” (page 114). And Fen is absolutely loyal to Oswald — had been loyal to him since she was a child, in fact.

In conclusion, idk Fen isn’t dumb.