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September 28, 2003 Issue 
Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor 
Much Ado About Nothing - Censorship and "Forever Amber"
I've often thought that deconstructing the psyche of a censor would make fascinating if perhaps also frightening study. Censors must be closet perverts for they are anxious to censor everything of which they themselves are afraid, be it ideas that challenge their power and control or behavior to which they themselves find it easy to succumb. Since I grew up in communism where censorship was used for both - to deny the existence of another world and to control one's thinking and behavior, my parents did not believe in any type of censorship and encouraged us to read anything and everything. Critical thinking was neither taught nor practiced in communist schools. Instead of analyzing and discussing our lessons, we were trained to simply memorize them. My parents believed firmly that the only way to develop some critical thinking skills was through reading all divergent and opposing views on a controversial subject. Thus, by the age of fourteen I had read Zola's "Nana," Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina," Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" and Stendhal's "The Red and the Black." My parents were incredulous when their new American friends told them that they considered these books immoral and unsuitable for their own teenage girls. Who knew that censorship was (and still is) well and alive in America too! As with any forbidden fruit, I quickly got hold of the hottest censored book at that time - "Forever Amber" by Kathleen Winsor, published first in 1944. It was the first book I read in English (with the dictionary by my side) and it is from "Forever Amber" that I learned about the Puritans, Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads and the execution of Charles I. Two months ago Kathleen Winsor died and with noting her death came a new revisionist evaluation of "Forever Amber." No longer is this book viewed as immoral and scandalous. Suddenly every reviewer is raving about it being a great historical novel. I thought it a fitting book to reread and review at the closing of this year's Banned Books Week. So last week I waded through the 820 pages of a ratty paperback edition of "Forever Amber," remembering most of it and savoring the descriptions of life in 17th century England. Amber is the love child of a young aristocratic couple caught in the conflict between the Puritans and the Royalists during England's civil war of 1642 -1652. After generations of friendship and a life-long love and commitment to marriage between the two youngest members of two noble families, the fathers take opposing sides during the civil war and force their children to sever all contact with each other. The parents of Judith, Amber's mother, quickly find for her a new bridegroom - the dour-faced Earl of Radclyffe. In a clever twist of plot and fate, unbeknownst to them both, many years later Amber and the Earl would marry. As in any romantic novel, the young people's love transcends the war and political strife, they meet secretly and Judith, under a pseudonym, goes to stay with a farm family in a small village to await the birth of their child, the end of the war and the reunion with and marriage to her love. But as it often happens in real life, the best laid plans frequently go astray. Judith dies in childbirth without having the chance to reveal her true identity. She is only able to tell her hostess that she wants to name her baby daughter Amber, "for the colour of her father's eyes." The father too appears to have been killed in the war for he never returns to the village to seek out his beloved and their child. Amber's heritage and family background remain an enigma. She grows up into a beauty with hair and eyes the color of amber and honey, assuming that she is the orphan niece of the farmers with whom she lives. They have not even told her that she is of noble blood. And then Charles II and the Cavaliers return from exile. The Restoration brings the end of the gloomy puritanical censures and the return of gaiety and frivolity. She grows up into a beauty with hair and eyes the color of amber and honey, assuming that she is the orphan niece of the farmers with whom she lives. They have not even told her that she is of noble blood. And then Charles II and the Cavaliers return from exile. The Restoration brings the end of the gloomy puritanical censures and the return of gaiety and frivolity. A group of Cavaliers passes through Amber's village. Instantly she falls in love with one of them, Lord Carlton, and leaves with him without a backward glance. A lot of events and adventure are packed in just a few years of Amber's convoluted saga. Through her beauty - Amber's only marketable asset - she climbs higher and higher the social ladder eventually becoming the mistress of Charles II. But it is Lord Carlton whom she really loves and wants. He is however, somewhat of a cad, for he won't marry her because she does not have the pedigree he wants in a wife. She marries money and titles, she saves his life during the plague, she gives him everything yet, hypocritical Lord Carlton marries someone else with the right family background. We don't really get to know Carlton. He is a handsome cardboard person. Only once the author hints at his character. Amber "still did not realize," writes Winsor, "that selfishness and cynicism made him indifferent to what might happen to her." At times the dialogue in the book is too saccharine and unrealistic and the characters lack depth and dimension, but the historical descriptions of life in 17th century London and of the palace intrigues make up for these shortcomings. In view of the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the now accepted notion of living together without marriage or even having children without marriage, "Forever Amber" is tepid and harmless. Amber is actually to be admired. She was a gutsy woman who wanted a certain kind of life and went after it with the only weapon available to a woman in those days - her beauty and feminine tricks. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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