During the Reign of the Queen of Persia by Joan Chase

First published: 1983

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Domestic realism

Time of work: The 1950’s

Locale: Sherwood, Ohio

Principal Characters:

• Gram (Lil Bradley Krauss), the matriarch of the Krauss family, nicknamed the “queen of Persia”
• Grace, the second of Lil’s daughters, who battles breast cancer
• Neil, Grace’s husband, a writer
• Elinor, the daughter who moves to New York and becomes a Christian Scientist
• Celia, one of Lil’s grandchildren
• Grandad (Jacob Krauss), Lil’s abusive husband

Form and Content

In interviews, Joan Chase has explained that During the Reign of the Queen of Persia began as a long short story told with a third-person point of view. The initial story became the first-person completed work, a story told in five sections by different narrators: “Celia,” “Grandad,” “Grace and Neil,” “Aunt Elinor,” and “Gram.” Each section reveals another layer of truth in the central event of the novel, Grace’s dying of cancer. Lil Bradley Krauss, known as Gram, presides over a family of five daughters—May, Grace, Elinor, Rachel, and Libby—and four granddaughters.

“Celia” establishes Libby’s daughter Celia as the heir of Grace: Celia inherits her mother’s sexual attractiveness and a pattern of struggle against her mother to expand the social limits placed on courtship. The “Grandad” segment, like the “Celia” segment, opens with a description of setting, one reminiscent of fairy tales. This second section of the novel recounts the courtship and marriage of Lil and Jacob Krauss. Competition for Lil, like competition in the courtships of her daughter and granddaughter, provides the impetus for Jacob to propose to her. This second segment is not solely a historical study of Gram’s marriage; it also advances the plot of Grace’s illness by detailing the day in which she travels to Cincinnati for tests. The crisis point brings together the two major plot actions of this segment: Grace’s test results lead Gram to sell some pasture land, land which matters to no one but Grandad.

The middle segment of the novel, captioned “Grace and Neil,” provides the history of their courtship and marriage, establishing a sense of inevitability in the progression toward death and reinforcing an overwhelmingly cynical view of marriage itself. The fourth segment of the novel, “Aunt Elinor,” begins at the train station where the cousins and Tom Buck (the fiancé of Rachel) pick up Elinor, who has arrived too late to see Grace before she died. This segment details Grace’s attempts to believe in Christian Science (and so in her sister Elinor) as her key to recovery. Elinor, well intentioned but certainly not saintly, reveals her nature in small and characteristic actions. For example, at a picnic she asks “that the orphan children be taken away where they wouldn’t disturb people while they were eating.” Grandad’s death is described, but the crisis of this segment is the death of Grace.

The final section of the novel, “Gram,” also begins in the train station with Elinor’s arrival, the voyage back to the house being the first step in the resolution of central issues within the narrative. The battle between Gram and Neil reaches its peak in the final section, Neil driving off in a familiar action, but their struggle is ultimately resolved by Gram’s compromise to allow Neil to keep the house that she financed. The barn, emblematic of Grandad’s life, burns to the ground, leading to the final encounter with a wild and shy “Queenie,” the pony that shares Gram’s nickname, and suggesting the destruction of Gram’s farm past. Gram’s formerly piecemeal sale of property ends with her selling the last of the land and the house for a commercial development, moving into a smaller house. The most important resolution in the final section of the book is the cousins’ acceptance of Grace’s death.

During the Reign of the Queen of Persia centers on universal themes of duty and acceptance, often articulating these themes through female experience. The daily concerns of food, laundry, and cleaning the house occupy the women in this novel. Gram, for example, cooks every night before she goes out to her card games. Chase makes plain the fact that Gram is not concerned with whether the family wants what she is cooking; Gram sees her obligation completed as soon as she places the meal on the table. After Grace’s death, however, Gram, having sold the property, uncharacteristically turns off the stove and takes off her apron after starting to prepare supper. She goes to a nearby restaurant, a clear indication of her having relinquished her perceived obligation to cook. Another pattern of female experience is scrubbing away on hands and knees whatever has been thrown on the floor, typically the remains of some argument. Grace, Gram, and Elinor each scrub the results of anger off the floor of the farmhouse, a realistic detail of subordination within many households.

At the end of the novel, Celia and Grace’s daughter Anne exemplify the struggle between individuation and group membership, Anne having nearly killed herself trying to prove that she could “climb the farthest of anybody” and Celia returning to the family in Ohio to recover after attempting suicide.

Context

The novel was printed after having been turned down by several publishers. Upon its release, Chase won several awards for fiction by a Midwestern writer, as well as an Ernest Hemingway Foundation award. Early recognition of Chase’s talent includes her contributing to an essay for The New York Times Book Review about writing second novels.

Chase writes from a child or adolescent’s perspective in this novel and in subsequent works. Her novel The Evening Wolves (1989) also makes use of the child’s point of view in relating the story. The female child’s perspective on adult relationships offers a significant subject for study in both of these novels. A short story collection, Bonneville Blue (1991), also contains stories told from the adolescent female narrator’s perspective, a pattern which suggests Chase’s place within the current of the modern novel.

Because her first novel is a study of a farm family, comparisons between Chase’s book and Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres (1991) arise. The women in both books struggle with individuality and relationships within the economic constrictions of the Midwest and the family pathology of a demanding father. The farmland itself becomes almost a breathing presence in both novels as well, although Chase’s setting is the more lyrically presented. In fact, setting in Chase’s novel is one feature that tempers the despair inherent in the marriages of Grace, Celia, and Gram.

Chase’s novel also explores individuality itself within female experience. Anne and Celia, the two cousins who separate themselves from the group, both require hospitalization. A reader could argue that Chase portrays the dangers of individuation for a young woman. Very different from Jane Austen’s early nineteenth century young women, the women in During the Reign of the Queen of Persia are drawn to marriage because of a physical attraction to the young man at issue, not from any sense of being completed by becoming a partner to a man. Writing about a traditionally patriarchal setting, the Midwestern farm, Chase explores women’s struggles with becoming individuals within relationships with men and with women, certainly a contemporary women’s issue.

Bibliography

Atwood, Margaret. Review of During the Reign of the Queen of Persia. The New York Times Book Review 88 (June 12, 1983): 9. Atwood notes that the novel is organized around recurring themes and that chronology does not drive the plot. She identifies memory as one theme and praises the vivid description and well-written dialogue.

Booth, Rosemary. “The Presence of Grace.” Commonweal 110 (July 15, 1983): 405-406. In this review, Booth notes the feminine perspective through which the novel is told and describes the male role as well as the aunt’s role in the nieces’/daughters’ growing up. Booth also discusses the graceful prose, providing passages that prove her point about style. As the title of her view indicates, Booth asserts that the primary role belongs to Grace.

Cosgrave, Mary Silva. Review of During the Reign of the Queen of Persia. The Horn Book Magazine 59 (August, 1983): 478-479. Written to acquaint high school readers with adult books of interest, the review aptly summarizes the characters and their relationships. Cosgrave identifies Neil’s role of teacher to the girls and one who articulates the female personality of the family.

Library Journal. CVIII, June 15, 1983, p. 1273.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. October 2, 1983, p. 8.

Nation. CCXXXVII, September 3, 1983, p. 187.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXIII, April 22, 1983, p. 86.

Schumer, Fran R. “Midwestern Matriarch.” The Nation 237 (September 3, 1983): 187. Schumer notes Chase’s graceful first-person-plural point of view in During the Reign of the Queen of Persia. She compares the cousins/sisters to Eugene Gant in Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel (1929). Schumer praises the beauty of Chase’s book, despite its grim portrayals.

Time. CXXII, July 18, 1983, p. 66.