The Blazing World

Heartless Art

Harriet Burden, the heroine of  Siri Hustvedt’s sixth novel, The Blazing World, is a well built Amazonian woman, talented, opinionated and frighteningly erudite.  In a world where women are still expected to be feminine and beautiful by the current standards, Harriet, called Harry by her friends, would have no place, if she had not managed to marry right. Her husband, Felix Lord, a rich art dealer, dies leaving her with immense wealth which, ironically leaves her even more ‘invisible’ than when he was alive. She was the ‘wife’ then and is the middle-aged ‘widow’ now; the art world doesn’t care much for her or her work.

Harriet then decides to expose the art world’s sexism, shallowness and ignorance, but getting three young men to show her work as theirs. Predictably, the response to the work is gushing. She finally gets the attention she craves, even if it is under other names.  Then, under one of her aliases she writes to an arts journal, exposing the hoax—that three series of elaborate installations, were Harriet Burden’s work, attributed to male artists.

 The book has been written as a series of interviews with her children, friends and critics, and her own journal entries, compiled by a fictional professor of aesthetics, after her death. So her plan is revealed right at the start in his foreword, what the reader gets layer by layer is how she did it, her interactions with the three men, other people’s responses to her as woman and as an artist.

Even though, the gender barrier has been lowered somewhat in the art, literary and media circles, remnants  of old biases remain, and women continue to be judged first by their appearance and then their ability.

Hustvedt does not portray Harriet as a likeable or even sympathetic woman, but a bundle of contradictions and quirks.  She puts up with her husband’s many infidelities, her daughter accuses her or caring more for her son,  and till her husband’s death she prefers to remain in the background, simmering with discontent, but doing nothing about it, except bursting into occasional loud harangues that embarrass Felix.

The book offers many glimpses into art, philosophy and critical theory—all explained in footnotes—which makes it a difficult as well as enlightening read. The title comes from a work byMargaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, a sixteenth century writer and scientist, who also went unrecognized in her time. Posterity recognizes her as a feminist heroine.

The Blazing World

By Siri Hustvedt

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 357