The Thirteenth Tale

Vida is one of England’s most celebrated authors, most famous for her first book, Thirteen Tales, which includes only 12 stories. This oddity has made her infamous, a reputation that is emphasized by her continued refusal to give any information about her personal history. Instead, each time she is interviewed, she makes up a story. She contacts Margaret at the beginning of the novel because she feels it is finally time to tell her true story.

Vida transforms from a celebrated author in control of her story and her environment to a vulnerable woman with a devastating personal history. This transformation is marked by changes in her physical appearance, as she gradually abandons all of her armor to reveal her true self to Margaret. When Margaret first meets Vida, she sees her as “an ancient queen, sorceress or goddess” (43). Vida is armored in jewels, brightly colored fabric, and heavy makeup: “Her bright copper hair had been arranged into an elaborate confection of twists, curls and coils. Her face, as intricately lined as a map, was powdered white and finished with bold scarlet lipstick” (44). Vida has masked herself with distractions like false eyelashes and flamboyant colors, but a piece of her true self has been revealed, as Margaret notes, “only her nails, unvarnished, cut short and square like my own, struck an incongruous note” (44). Vida has, for years, disguised her physical self in the same way that she has disguised her personal history, creating a story for the world.

Vida’s appearance gradually changes as she reveals more and more of the truth to Margaret. The final reveal of her true self comes when she asks Margaret to cut her hair, shorter and shorter, cutting away the colored parts to reveal her true self. As Margaret says, “With her cropped hair, her naked face, her frail hands denuded of their heavy stones, she seemed to grow more childlike every day” (311). Vida has stripped away her own armor, appearing almost as a child, echoing the child she is in the Angelfield story that she is telling. At the end of the novel, Vida dies after finishing her story, almost as if she was only waiting to finish her tale.

Throughout the narrative, Vida’s identity also shifts. At the beginning, Margaret is led to believe that Vida is Adeline. As the story continues, and Adeline’s actions become more reprehensible, Margaret has a difficult time reconciling Adeline’s actions in the story with Vida’s character in the present. This mystery is solved with the revelation that Vida is not Adeline, but a third child, the product of Charlie’s rape of an unknown local woman. Vida resembles the twins, with her copper hair and green eyes, so much so that she eventually assumes Adeline’s identity. Vida is found by John, in the garden, stealing food and sleeping in the shed. For most of her childhood, Vida is an invisible presence at Angelfield, but when the household is faced with tragedy and someone needs to manage the household, Vida does so, taking Adeline’s identity for her own. 

Margaret meets Aurelius on her first outing to Angelfield. After he terrifies her by emerging from the abandoned building, he invites her into one of the functioning rooms of the building for tea and cake. Margaret shares her first impression of Aurelius: “But for all his great dimensions, this man, too, had something of a child about him. Too plump for wrinkles, he had a round, cherubic face, and a halo of silver-blond curls sat neatly around his balding head. His eyes were round like the frames of his spectacles. They were kind and had a blue transparency” (133). This childlike quality reinforces Aurelius’s true identity in the text, as Emmeline’s child.

Upon first meeting Margaret, Aurelius assures her that he knows that Angelfield is his home, although he has no proof. As he gradually tells Margaret, he was a foundling, abandoned on Mrs. Love’s doorstep when he was just a baby, with only a few items to offer clues to his identity. In the process of solving the mystery of Vida’s past, Margaret uncovers the truth about Aurelius’s identity as the child of Emmeline Angelfield and Ambrose Proctor. After he is born at Angelfield, Adeline is jealous of his intimacy with Emmeline, and Vida gradually comes to fear for his life. This culminates the night of the Angelfield fire, when Vida leaves Aurelius on Mrs. Love’s doorstep to keep him safe from Adeline. She never returns for him because, in the end, she is not sure that she saved Emmeline and does not trust that he will be safe.

Aurelius was raised by Mrs. Love and still lives in a cottage nearby. He is a local caterer and a gentle, caring man, but he longs to understand his origins and is lonely for family after Mrs. Love’s death. When Margaret discovers his identity, she also discovers that his father, Ambrose, married and had a child after Aurelius. At the end of the novel, Aurelius gets answers to his questions about his past and discovers that he has a sister, a local woman named Karen, and in her children, a niece and nephew as well.

Hester is the governess at Angelfield, brought in by Dr. Maudsley after the village decides that the twins need oversight. In some ways, the character of Hester echoes that of Jane Eyre. She is a governess, arriving at an estate with a strange history, hidden secrets, and neglected children. Jane Eyre is famously described in Brontë’s novel as “plain,” a description that Setterfield echoes in her description of Hester: “She was plain, if not worse than plain, but plainness on Hester had not remotely the same effect that it might on any other woman. She drew the eye” (153). Similar to Jane Eyre, Hester’s passion and intelligence exude from her and supersede what might otherwise be forgettable features: “Hester was of average height. Average build. She had hair that was neither yellow nor brown. Skin the same color. Coat shoes, dress, hat: all in the same indistinct tint. Her face was devoid of any distinguishing feature” (150). However, Hester is smart and ambitious and immediately takes charge of the household.

As a governess and educator, Hester has many ideas and “methods” that she puts into practice with her charges. It is Hester who conceives of the plan to conduct research on Emmeline and Adeline, to see if separating them results in improvements in both children. She brings Dr. Maudsley into the project because, even though she believes herself to be more intelligent than him, she needs a man to publish. As the experiment continues, Hester and Dr. Maudsley fall in love, which results in a neglect of the twins and a continuation of the experiment beyond the point where it is useful to the children. When Hester and Dr. Maudsley are discovered kissing by Mrs. Maudsley, the experiment is terminated, and Hester disappears that same night. When bones are found in the ruin of Angelfield, Margaret initially assumes that they are Hester’s bones. However, the genealogist who is looking into Hester eventually discovers that she left for America. After the death of his wife, Dr. Maudsley joined Hester in America, where they had four children and a long life together.