The Villa

Chess serves as a foil to Emily and is, at times, her antagonist in the novel as well as her friend. The embodiment of ambition and success, Chess navigates a hard and less-privileged upbringing than Emily, managing to find fame after struggling in a college creative writing class and working as a waitress after graduation. Becoming wealthy, Chess sheds much of her background, changing her name from Jessica Chandler to Chess Chandler. She still has her low-country accent, a sign of her origins, and an accent that reminds Emily of their shared past. During Chess’s first appearance, she arrives late for lunch, a move characteristic not of her newly earned wealth and influence but an attribute that dates to her childhood. Often unreliable and forgetful of plans and projects she dreams up with Emily, Chess breezes through her life and in and out of Emily’s. Breaking from her character, Chess follows through on the plan to spend time with Emily in Italy, perhaps indicative of her guilt at sleeping with Matt.

Chess is a divided character and plays into the novels exploration of split identity. As Emily’s antagonist, Chess has an affair with her husband Matt and tells him about Emily’s newest project. As her sidekick, Chess helps dispatch with Matt and works with her to help create their best-selling book about Mari, Lara, and Villa Aestas. The novel remains ambiguous about their shared responsibility for the murder, but Emily claims that she writes most of The Villa, and Chess becomes anxious to continue working together, an inevitable outcome following Matt’s murder. Reflecting her role as companion and side kick and, simultaneously, antagonist, Chess echoes Lara’s role in her relationship with Mara, represented by Chess’s pull toward Lara’s album and Emily’s attraction to Mari’s novel.

Described as “a delicate-looking woman in her late forties with reddish hair” (79), Mari functions as the protagonist of the novel’s 1970s narrative. Consciously modeled by Hawkins on the Romantic author Mary Shelley (nee Godwin, 1797-1851), her life parallels Shelley’s closely, transplanted to a later period. The characteristics and experiences of Mari follow those of Mary Shelley step-by-step. The daughter of a famous feminist, who dies giving birth to her, Mari lives with her father who remarries, bringing complex female relationships into Mari’s life. She is disowned due to her relationship with Pierce, and she and Pierce lose their child. The author of Lilith Rising, Mari writes in the same social context as Shelley, accompanied by her partner and a dissolute aristocrat who are escaping from scandal in England. The names in Mari’s life are deliberately mirrors of those in Mary Shelley’s life, for instance Mari Godwick (Mary Goodwin), Pierce (Percy), and Lara Larchmont (Claire Clairmont).

This very close modelling is not explained in The Villa, although it is clearly intended to be noticed by the reader. Some underlying themes may help to explain what it adds to the novel: Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein explores the nature of humanity and monstrosity and also the relationship between art and the artist, once a work has a life of its own. In this way, drawing a fictional parallel to Frankenstein helps draw out the tensions in The Villa between the multiple “selves” of the novel, especially those presented by the female narrators Mari and Emily. The transplantation of Shelley also creates a shadowiness in the character of Mari: Conceptually, she seems less “real” as a character because her identity of that of Shelley. This is interesting in the light of Mari’s third-person narrative which is framed by Emily’s first-person one. Hawkins opens that suggestion that Mari’s “own” narrative is the invention of Emily, inspired by Lilith Rising and other research: Emily is indeed writing a book about Mari and 1974.

Described by Mari as “pretty” although “her nose is a bit too narrow, maybe her chin is a little too sharp” (32), Lara appears excited and eager, unlike Mari. Like Chess, Lara serves as friend and side kick to her erstwhile rival and antagonist. As Mari’s foil in life and art, Lara highlights the talent and privilege of Mari, which she chases, as she also chases after Pierce. Despite this friction, Lara remains close to Mari until she dies in her own jacuzzi, having drank too much and taken Quaaludes. Dismissed and ignored partly by the men at Villa Aestas, Lara produces a best-selling album Aestas, which she writes at the villa. This connection and the album’s influence result in the renaming of the villa. Profiled later by Rolling Stone, Lara appears carefree and happy, even after the events at Villa Aestas, which a close source anonymously disputes. Like Mari, Lara owes her fame to the art she produced at the villa, and the subsequent albums don’t reach the artistic or commercial success of Aestas. Lara invites Pierce and Mari to Italy, as she’s Noel Gordon’s mistress at the time. She becomes pregnant with his child, only to miscarry days after Pierce’s death. She also, like Chess, has an affair with her sister and friend’s partner Pierce, whom she loves. Lara Larchmont is a parallel to Clair Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister and, as such, her character seems primarily based on her relationship to Mari and the need to follow historical fact.

Pierce Sheldon comes from a family of some wealth, with a country estate and relatives with titles, although his aristocratic connections pale in comparison to Noel’s. A visitor to Mari’s father’s house, she meets him there. Although he’s married to Frances and has a son named Teddy, he leaves his wife for Mari. Much older than Mari, Pierce has some of the characteristics of a predator, which Johnnie notes. As a reflection of Matt, Pierce likewise tries to control the women in his life, arguably causing the death of his wife Frances. A talented musician, with brown curly hair, Pierce embodies an attractive bohemian. His parents’ only child, he dismisses their dull way of life. Modeled after Percy Bysshe Shelley, Pierce’s talents don’t reach those of his partner Mari. Driven by his own desires, Pierce functions as a static character, blithely unaware of the consequences of his actions. He and Mari have a son Billy who dies as an infant. Pierce wants children but not the responsibilities that accompany parenthood.

Matt serves as Emily’s antagonist, having been her husband. He commits adultery with her friend Chess and serves as the inspiration for Dex in Emily’s Petal Bloom series. Driven by his need to control, he announces that they will have children without consulting his wife and holds her responsible for their breakup. A figure of scorn, Matt appears as a static character in the novel although Emily remembers him differently once. He forces her to write under his name and attempts to take credit for and royalties from her writing. Although he appears dissimilar in terms of his profession as an accountant, he serves as a mirror image of Pierce. Like Pierce, he wants a family without responsibility and doesn’t consider what affect children will have on his wife’s career.

Described by Mari as “[p]roperly famous, a rock star, an idol that Pierce respects and envies all at once” (35), Noel Gordon leads the band The Rovers, a band that created Mari’s favorite album. The son of an earl, Noel’s aristocratic heritage outranks Pierce’s, and Noel serves as Pierce’s foil. Like Pierce, Noel eschews normative social mores and plays music with real talent. Although he can be cruel, as he is to Johnnie or when he dismisses Lara’s pregnancy, he seems drawn to Mari and tries to save her from Pierce’s chaos. He’s married to an heiress, Lady Annabelle Wentworth, and he dies flying to Nepal in 1980. Despite his flaws, Mari remembers him fondly, giving him a part in her fictional ending to the events of 1974 and sensing his spectral presence in Villa Aestas in 1993 when she returns the last time. Modeled by Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron), Noel shares the first name of his wife with Byron. Rumored to have been bisexual, Lord Byron’s affairs reflect in Noel’s sexual episode with Mari and Pierce.