In early twentieth century Albania, there is only one way for a woman to live. She must be chaste, modest, and obedient. She must marry the man her parents choose for her. And she must have sons. Anything else is unacceptable, unless one swears to remain a virgin forever. Then she becomes a man in the eyes of her tribe and northern Albanian society. In Kristopher Dukes’ The Sworn Virgin, we get the story of Eleanor who gets caught between expectations and her own drive for independence.
Eleanor’s father spoiled her, at least in the eyes of her stepmother and every other man, woman, and child in their northern Albanian village. She got to travel around, talk back to adults, and skip out on most of her chores. But after her father is killed in a blood feud, the parental indulgence comes to a screaming halt. After a gross betrayal by her stepmother, Eleanor abruptly declares that she is now a sworn virgin.
Eleanor seems custom designed to annoy the bejesus out of me. In the past, I’ve enjoyed books with unlikeable female characters, but those characters always had an interesting reason for being the way they were. Eleanor’s reason is that her father never pushed her to stand on her own two feet. She’s independent only the sense that she likes to get her own way. While her stepmother (who is no saint, but who I have a lot of sympathy for) keeps house and scrounges for food, Eleanor is ungrateful, angry, and clueless about life without her father maintaining a buffer against the real world. And this is before Eleanor makes some even worse decisions.
The Sworn Virgin could have been much better if Eleanor had wanted to become one, instead of accidentally becoming one in a moment of panic. This book, and Eleanor, was very disappointing. I only stuck around because I wanted to learn more about Albania and its history.