Catherine, Called Birdy

“That is all there is to say.”

Birdy’s emphatic tone implies that she has the last word in these recollections and judgments recorded in her diary—and indeed she does: “There is no more to say” (9). Everything is recounted through Birdy’s point of view, and the reader should sometimes question whether her perspective is valid—or at least, the only valid perspective. This makes her an unreliable narrator, especially when it comes to character assessments and emotions.

“I am near fourteen and have never yet seen a hanging. My life is barren.”

This reveals Birdy’s naiveté and her longing for adventure. In the first instance, Birdy exaggerates her frustration at being prohibited from seeing a hanging; this is typical overwrought teenage emotion from Birdy. Readers witness her experience with a hanging later, and the awfulness and injustice of the event leave Birdy fleeing the scene and vomiting; in her innocence, she is unaware of the implications of being a witness to an execution. In the second instance, this is the first of many statements declaring her desire for more adventurous experiences than those of domestic chores and “lady lessons.”

“It is Perkin who taught me to name the birds, to know the weather from the sky, to spit between my front teeth, to cheat at draughts and not get caught, all the most important things I know, the Devil take sewing and spinning.”

Birdy reveres the goat boy Perkin for his intelligence and what she sees as freedom. These “important things” resonate for the tomboyish Birdy, who would rather be chasing adventures and roaming free outdoors than participate in domestic life. She chafes against her designated role, defined by her gender and social class.

“Why must the lady of the manor do all the least loveable tasks? I’d rather be the pig boy.”

Again, her emphatic statements against the domestic work assigned to women reveal her antagonistic relationship to her social role and her naiveté at the nature of other work. She has little to no idea what the “pig boy ”must actually do. It is only later in the book, once she has matured a little, that she recognizes the hard work and sacrifice of the servants of the manor: During Holy Week, she notices that a servant must stay up all night cleaning and preparing the fireplaces, while she gets to sleep in. It is her first acknowledgment of her privileged status.

“‘That’s all very well,’ says the stupid man, ‘but where is myself? Where in the world am I? Am I here? Am I here? Or am I here?’ And he looked under the bed and behind the chair and in the street, but it was all in vain for he never did find himself.”

From the Jewish matron’s story about a man so stupid, he forgot how to wash himself. The story gets at the heart of what the book explores: Birdy is in the process of growing up, discovering herself, and trying to maintain her own identity while navigating the demands of her destiny; namely, to be married off to an older man. The point of the story is that one cannot seek a sense of self from external circumstances; rather, one must draw from internal confidence. Birdy must learn to understand that she will always be Birdy, no matter where she goes or whom she marries.

“I think I love geese more than any other birds because no one else does. They are not small and delicate like larks and sparrows, or swift and clever like hawks and falcons.”

Birdy loves geese because she compares herself to them: She believes she is plain in her looks, with brown hair and gray eyes, and she is sturdy and stubborn just as they are. She defines herself in relation to Uncle George’s brave and beautiful eagle and her mother’s lovely but vain swan (lovely but vain, among others. This is part of her quest to find herself. stubborn just as they are. She defines herself in relation to Uncle George’s brave and beautiful eagle and her mother’s lovely but vain swan (lovely but vain, among others. This is part of her quest to find herself.

“Would I choose to die rather than be forced to marry? I hope to avoid the issue, for I do not think I have it in me to be a saint.”

While musing on Saint Catherine, her namesake, Birdy hits upon the conundrum that will become the central conflict of the book. Her father soon decides that she is to marry, and Birdy does her best to sabotage his chosen suitors, ultimately running away at the prospect of marriage before accepting her fate. This is also a reflection of Birdy’s contrarian character, a counterpoint to the lives of the saints.

“Last night I tucked a pin into an onion and put it under my pillow so I would dream of my future husband. I dreamed only of onions and in the morning had to wash my hair.”

The onion later symbolizes the layered nature of identity. Birdy notes that people are often like onions, looking “[o]n the outside smooth and whole and simple but inside ring upon ring, complex and deep” (157). Here it represents Birdy’s continued reluctance to accept the passage into adulthood that is marriage.

“I asked him [Uncle George] if he loved her [Ethelfritha]. He said he loved her money, her business, and her good heart, and that was enough.”

George’s statement here reveals much about medieval marriage. It is not about love or personal choice, as individuals commonly think of it in 21st-century Western society; rather, it is about wealth, property, and social standing. The fact that he mentions her “good heart” at all reveals a tender streak that Uncle George will eventually show for Ethelfritha.

“I thought to go with them but this morning when they left the snow was so deep and the wind was so fierce and the dark so very dark that I snuggled down into my quilt and decided to wait for an adventure on some warmer day.”

Here, Birdy considers accompanying some monks to Rome. Her yearning for adventure bumps into reality, revealing the childlike, unserious nature of her desires and her privilege. She can choose to stay in bed while others go off to Rome or the crusades. Birdy is still a child full of imagination but with little nerve or experience.

“I think she is clever and funny and writes songs. And that she will grow to love me and not wish to be without me [...] And I will never again have to spin or weave or comb wool or stir boiling vats of anything! And no one will be able to marry me off for silver or land.”

Birdy describes Joana, the king’s cousin. Another childish fantasy, Birdy looks everywhere but inside herself to solve the problem of her betrothal and lift the dullness of her daily chores. This kind of magical thinking is eventually dashed by reality: Joana is old and odd, with no real power nor desire to save Birdy. Birdy must figure out a way to make peace with her lot.

“But, my dear,’ she [Joana] went on, ‘I flap my wings at times, chose my fights carefully, get things done, understand my limitations, trust in God and a few people, and here I am. I survive, and sometimes even enjoy.’”

Joana’s description of her life is thinly veiled advice to Birdy: Learn how to make the most of your situation; be free when you can be, and submit when you must. For women of this time period and social class, there are few options and very little power, even over their own fate. Joana suggests that Birdy learn to navigate the system and find joy where she can.

“I think Lent is all about hope. No matter how bad we feel about Jesus dying or how sick we get of fish, Easter Day always comes. We just need to hope and believe.”

This reflects on the mindset of the medieval period in general. From the difficulties of life and the vagaries of fate, religion provides a respite. Birdy is learning how to look for the proverbial silver lining in the cloudy skies. This reveals that she can be flexible and creative in her thinking and that she may yet figure out how to be herself in this system. She is maturing.

“Why can villagers have a say in whom they marry and I cannot? I wish I were a villager.”

Birdy’s social class defines and restricts her as much her gender does. Villagers are free to choose whom they marry—to an extent: women still must often pay dowries—because these arrangements are not key to amassing wealth or political standing. Marriages among the nobility, however, are business transactions.

“[Geoffrey]is vain about his clothes, taking care to keep them clean and free of wrinkles, but he cannot read and does not wish to learn. He is polite to the bigger boys but not so kind to the little ones. He is not exactly like the Geoffrey of my dreaming.”

This is yet another example of how Birdy’s childish fantasies are disrupted by reality. While Geoffrey is young and attractive, thus garnering Birdy’s attention, his character unappealing to her. Birdy’s immediate, immature judgment of character is replaced by a more mature reflection on his actions, not merely his looks.

“I tried talking to Odd William who said, ‘In the illimitable sweep of time, what will it signify? What will you signify?’”

Birdy hurls a jug at Odd William for such disturbing talk, Few, much less the immature Birdy, wish to contemplate mortality or one’s significance to the world. Odd William, though, expresses a common medieval view, that earthly life is relatively meaningless; one receives their reward in Heaven.

“A wonder: I have not the powers to avoid Shaggy Beard. Did I then truly have anything to do with George and Aelis? Or was there no curse?”

Birdy’s innocent musings give way to a more mature understanding of the limits of her power, marking her coming of age. She does not have the fantastic power to make curses real; she doesn’t even have power over her own life and choices. The reality of her powerlessness begins to sink in.

“The news of the Hebrew-speaking villager has greatly excited Odd William. This, if true, he says, supports his growing suspicion that Brutus and the early Britons were not Trojans but members of one of the lost tribes of Israel.”

The irony of Odd William’s excitement is that it is set against the expulsion of the Jews from England. Should the early Britons actually be descended from one of these lost tribes, they would, in fact, be Jewish. However, it was thought that the discovery of the lost tribes would somehow hasten the second coming of Christ, so Odd William’s excitement still serves the church’s established narrative.

“It was only a few steps for me but seemed a lifetime’s journey for an ant.”

This view from above can be seen as a metaphor: Birdy looks down upon the toiling ant just as God looks down on the mortal humans. It also signifies a musing on the nature of power. While Birdy is powerless over certain circumstances in her life, she flips the narrative in helping the ant, discovering that she does have power when the situation is viewed from a different perspective.

“Heaven was remarkably crowded, considering how few people we are told are good enough to get there.”

The above refers to Birdy’s viewing of the Corpus Cristi play, where the “mummers” (actors) crowd the fake Heaven with angels. Her comment is lightly sarcastic and reflects Birdy’s opinion on religion throughout the book: that it is necessary when convenient but confusing or contradictory when examined. The play is an amalgam of the sacred and the profane, as when an actor dressed as an angel bumps his head and curses loudly. The solemnity of the Biblical events is often overtaken by the revelry of the occasion.

“But it occurred to me that what actually makes people married is their consent, their ‘I will.’ And I do not consent. Will never consent. 'I will not.’”

Although Birdy still stubbornly rejects her eventual fate, but she is also on her way to figuring out how she can retain some of herself in the scenario inevitably to come. This can be read as a comment on the conundrum of “free will”: Only actions which are freely chosen count toward one’s ultimate salvation. This contradicts the ways in which women like Birdy are dealt with in medieval society—though there were no shortage of thinkers who believed women incapable of salvation in any case. While Birdy’s stubbornness causes her trouble throughout, it also has the capacity to save her.

“Thinking on it, I feel much like this bear. We can neither of us live alone and free and survive in this world, but we might wish for a cage less painful and confining. Deus help us both.”

Birdy has finally reached the inevitable conclusion: She will have to submit to a marriage at some point. She must be taken care of and has little say in how that arrangement is made. Her desire for a more humane cage represents her acceptance of the situation while still allowing her to critique the injustice of her fate.

“I am like the Jews in our hall, driven from England, from one life to another, and yet for them exile was no exile. Wherever they go, they take their lives, their families, their people, and their God with them.”

Birdy—now coming of age into Catherine—comes to terms with her situation and grasps at the sliver of hope that is offered by this comparison. To her, marriage is exile, a casting out by her father into a life she isn’t sure she wants. Yet she ultimately decides that she need not lose herself, her family, or her beliefs in this process. While it is not the happiest of endings, it is the most hopeful that can be derived given the limitations of the period.