RIP Madeleine L’Engle
The Wrinkle in Time writer took us through space and time in the company of her realistic heroines
By Sarah M Seltzer
Published: September 24th, 2007 | 3:20pm
Madeleine L’Engle, who passed away at age 88 on September 6, 2007, had an ability to swing through the cosmos and manage genealogies that was admirable even among science fiction and fantasy writers. Ardent L’Engle readers know that recurring characters and resonant events link her books and that the L’Engle verse has its own mythology and its own dynasties, with enough arcane detail to rival J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling. But what set Madeleine L’Engle’s writing apart in any genre was her mastery of the emotional details of our world, particularly as it appeared through the eyes of young women.
Like most of her readers, I started my journey into L’Engle’s works with Meg Murry and her family, tearing through A Wrinkle in Time
I was hooked by the way L'Engle's plot unraveled, stretching my ability to reason and imagine far more than the latest Nancy Drew novel. I was hooked on the misfit heroes of the story. Meg and her brother, Charles Wallace, were not charming or witty; their power derived from their love for their dad and for each other. The Murrys were altogether quirky. Perhaps that quality is why L’Engle had such a struggle getting Wrinkle initially published; it eventually was in 1962. Wrinkle's sequels took Charles and Meg into other dimensions, back in time, and even into human cells — L'Engle taught me what mitochondria were long before I took biology.
Closer to my teenage years, I received a gift of a set of L'Engle books. They looked dubious. Taking place in a realistic setting, Meet the Austins
Because of characters like Vicky, Meg, and Meg's daughter Polly, who stars in her own series of books, L’Engle was a particularly crucial writer for the young girls who loved her books. She took us seriously. Her heroines are flawed and unglamorous (who can forget the image of Meg adjusting her glasses by shoving them up the bridge of her nose?) without being cartoonishly gawky. They don’t strive to be chic and they don't a have bevy of girlfriends to gossip with. Their interests lie in writing and science, in intense friendships and family relationships, in solving mysteries both internal and external. Their early stabs at romance are both poignant and painful. They are the kind of realistically drawn teenage girls that decades later, are still hard to find anywhere — in literature, on film, on television.
L’Engle had enormous respect for the event of the life cycle, and didn't try to whitewash reality for her young readers. She had the guts, in her later books, to depict Meg as grown up and married and still unfulfilled, and to give Meg’s daughter Polly her own series of adventures without bestowing upon them an untroubled mother-daughter bond. L’Engle also had the courage to have her characters confront death — not mystical, pre-ordained death — but random, senseless death. She painted sexuality as natural and inevitable without fetishizing it. And she gave us families that were loving but dysfunctional, like our own. L'Engle's books can be categorized in different genres, but they all contained the elements of philosophy, psychological realism, and a reverence for the inner life of her characters. I owe her not only the inspiration she gave me as a writer, but the guidance her books offered me as I, like Vicky, made my way through the perils of early adolescence.
Issue #35
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