“The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History”, by Linda Colley

 

416 pages, Anchor Books, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0385721493

I thought that The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History was the first book by Linda Colley that I had read – until I remembered that I had read Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850 (reviewed on July 13^th, 2022). And I should’ve realized, for the theme, as well as the pacing, of Ordeal closely matches that of Captives. And just who was Elizabeth Marsh? Well, she was an Englishwoman who lived from 1735 to 1785; when she was but 21 years old, the ship she was traveling on from Gibraltar to England to unite with her fiancé was intercepted by a Moroccan corsair and overtaken by its crew; she and a number of the other passengers onboard where thence held captive in Morocco by the Sultan, Sidi Mohammed ben Abdellah al-Khatib, for a brief period (You see? Sometimes white Europeans were the victims).

From there, Colley traces Marsh’s life and travels (and travails), from her birth in Jamaica in the 18^th Century (and her, possible, biracial background) to her return to England, her marriage and domestic life with James Crisp and her journeys by ship through Asia – even including a pirate adventure. Thus, Ordeal records a great deal of interesting and obscure parts of history that you might not get out of a typical history textbook, due mostly to Elizabeth Marsh’s rather atypical life, but also to the Colley’s very detailed and comprehensive descriptions of this unknown woman. While there are whole stretches of Marsh’s life that were as ordinary as ordinary can be – marriage, children, meddlesome in-laws – there were others that were as different as one could imagine.

Don’t be misled, though, as Colley hasn’t written an adventure tale by any means; indeed, whole stretches of the book drag on and on, and one can’t help but feel that some parts, at least, were inserted in the interest of stretching the thing out to 400+ pages (reminds me of my college days, inserting every 10¢ word I could think of to reach the minimum word count). Oh, to be sure, in order to develop this unfamiliar tale, Colley had to dig deep and unearth any number of fascinating (and less-than-fascinating) details about Marsh, but the problem is that her protagonist’s life was not all that interesting for whole stretches – decades, even – and that Colley, by necessity, had to produce quite a bit of filler in order to keep her reader’s interest.

Ultimately, the focus of Ordeal is not on developing a true to historical narrative of Marsh’s life, boring warts and all, which again presents problems. Regarding Marsh’s unique life trajectory and the reasoning behind her sometimes unknowable motivations, there are many areas where Colley makes educated guesses as to why her protagonist did what, guesses which I found to be without any satisfying evidence. It must be said, however, that Colley does attempt to stick with what she has evidence for, and when she dives into conjecture she acknowledges that she is doing so. I imagine that is was difficult to develop this account because, while Colley was able to unearth a surprising amount of material about (and by) a rather obscure woman, it is still largely incomplete.