By Meredith Grace Thompson
Charlotte Taylor’s story requires very little introduction to be completely enthralling. A maverick woman in a time when agency was denied to those of her gender, Taylor was a human being to be marvelled at. Written by her great-great-great-granddaughter Sally Armstrong, The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor is a fictionalised account of the life of the woman who has become legend in Tabusintac, New Brunswick.
The story begins on her voyage fleeing her home in England with her family’s Black butler, with whom young Charlotte has fallen deeply in love. They hope to make a home for themselves in Jamaica, but after a terrible accident in a foreign land where she has no rights and no protection, Charlotte Taylor finds herself alone and unmarried—and very much with child.
Talking her way onto a merchant naval ship with a compassionate captain, Taylor manages to make her way north to the shores of eastern Canada. Through the narrative of this fictional Taylor’s life, Armstrong manages to embed some of the history of European settlement in Atlantic Canada, moving through the history of the Acadians and their deportation and eventual and struggling return, to the Mi’kmaq tribes and their relationship with British settlers, as well as the nature of settlers’ land rights as land shifted from Nova Scotia to the newly formed province of New Brunswick.
Charlotte Taylor’s story is one of perseverance and endurance. Living well into old age, the novel looks at the expanse of her life—her survival of the brutal Atlantic winters, her nine children by four different fathers, her three marriages and three separate experiences of being widowed, and her lifelong friendship and love affair with a Mi’kmaq man. Othered by her sex and the seemingly inescapable misogyny of the men around her—including her father, husbands, and even eventually her sons—Charlotte Taylor refused to conform to what was expected of her, and yet always did what was necessary for her family. Armstrong’s connection to her protagonist is clear, as the narrative feels like an elongated family legend being told over the remnants of a large dinner.
Armstrong paints Taylor as the mythical figure of the Canadian white settler. She battles the elements, overcomes infringements on her rights as best she can, raises her children fiercely, and has a special relationship with the Mi’kmaq band nearby. While I have no doubt that many of these characteristics are true, I am forced to wonder at the level of mythologizing which occurs in these pages. Charlotte Taylor is a strong woman, a hero of female worth and emancipation, but she is also steeped in white privilege. Encased and cocooned in her own assumed gentleness and dependant on the kindness of strangers who unquestioningly give her the “benefit of the doubt” (so intrinsic to whiteness and all the privileges that are attached to it), Charlotte Taylor manages to skate through life in a way that women of colour or a lower class would not have been able to. While attempting to be respectful and inclusive of the Indigenous experience of Atlantic Canada, Armstrong’s depiction of the gentle Wioche, the Mi’kmaq man Charlotte loves her entire life, is problematic. Taylor never considers building a home or a life with Wioche, and seems to use him only for emotional support during her own times of need. She never seems to ask him anything about himself or allow him agency of his own. This portrayal, if not falling headfirst into Indigenous fetishization and tokenism, certainly teeters on the edge of it.
Armstrong’s narrative is clean, focused, and meticulously plotted. The plot rushes forward at nearly breakneck speeds, racing through years while lingering on and luxuriating in defining moments. The narrative voice is however decidedly contemporary, sometimes unintentionally breaking the illusion constructed by well-crafted historical fiction with overtly modern words or phrases. But this is made up for by the veracity of the protagonist herself. Charlotte Taylor is a force to be reckoned with. Radically open, with a wildness of spirit and an abundance of self-worth, Taylor falls in love quickly and easily. And you will in turn fall in love with her too.
Thank you to Penguin Random House for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.