The Evening and the Morning

Ragna is a Norman woman. She is a romantic who fantasizes about passionate love affairs and grand adventure. However, Ragna finds herself in the same unenviable position as the other women in the novel: Men would prefer that she be a submissive ornament rather than a partner or joint ruler. Her mother tells her, “You want a grand passion, a lifelong romance, but those exist only in poems. In real life we women settle for what we can get” (78). However, Ragna is unwilling to settle. She is intelligent, curious, compassionate, and gains a reputation for wisdom. One of her nicknames is Deborah, who was a famous Israelite Judge. She is impatient with most men’s expectations for her. When Guillaume attempts to court her, she is unimpressed with his vision of her future: “Spinning, weaving, dyeing, stitching, embroidery, and of course, laundry. A woman should rule that world the way her husband rules his domain” (149).

Ragna always speaks her mind and quickly tells Guillaume that his vision for her life sounds dull and intolerable. Her life changes when she meets Wilwulf—“Wilf”—a dashing English warrior and ealdorman who immediately wants her as much as she wants him. This requires a move to England, a country she soon comes to despise. Ragna is beautiful, resourceful, brave, and loyal to her husband. However, she soon finds herself trapped in a difficult situation. Wilf’s brother, Wynstan, is a corrupt bishop whom she distrusts immediately. When her husband refuses to stop sleeping with other women after their marriage, Ragna is resigned to it, burying herself in work instead. She constantly struggles against the assumption that her beauty is her defining feature, and therefore most men do not take her seriously.

When Wigelm and Wynstan murder Wilf, Ragna’s husband, she is completely vulnerable to their whims. The men quickly use her children against her as leverage. She agrees to marry Wigelm as long as he will not take her son Alain from her. Threats against her children are the only thing that ever make her submit. Late in the novel, when Ragna believes that she will never be with Edgar, she reconciles herself to making the most of her life: “Nothing had gone the way she planned, but she was going to make the best of things. She still had most of her life ahead of her, and she was going to live it to the fullest” (850). Even though she believes she has lost the man she loves, she is undaunted and committed to a satisfying life.

Aldred is a “miraculously handsome” (76) and ambitious monk with a love for learning. Other than his devotion to God, his main desire is to expand the monastery’s scriptorium and advance the cause of scholarship. However, Aldred is not free from sin or temptation. There is a disgrace in his past; at a former post, he was caught having physical relations with another young novice named Leofric. Aldred is comfortable with his vow of poverty and few comforts, but he is frequently tormented by carnal appetites: The sin of lust was more difficult to avoid than the sin of gluttony, for Aldred” (124).

Aldred is a devout monk who believes that his calling is the execution of God’s will, but he is also interested in reforming what he considers to be the excesses of the church. He hates that men like Degbert and Wynstan exploit the church as cover for their crimes. Aldred prides himself on refusing to look the other way when evil is being done: “Monks ought never to accept evil. They had to fight against it” (500).He is also frequently frustrated by the shortcomings of the region’s rulers, including King Ethelred. When the king opts to avoid conflict by ignoring Ragna’s situation, Aldred says, “I understand that kings avoid conflict whenever they can, but sometimes a king should rule!” (830).

Aldred is brave, loyal, and highly intelligent. He is also willing to indulge in showmanship to raise money for the church, as evidenced by his staging of the miracle with Saint Adolphus’s bones. Aldred rises through the ranks of church leadership and is happy about his prospects at the novel’s conclusion.

Dreng is Wynstan’s cousin and Degbert’s brother. He is a one-dimensional character whose primary function is to serve as a foil to Edgar’s family, his enslaved people, and his wives. Dreng is a hideously cruel man who acts without fear of reprisal, highlighting the evils of slavery and the leniency granted to men who mistreat their women. Aldred describes him as “loathsome” (122). Dreng enters the story as a lifeline for Edgar’s family after the Viking attack, giving them a farm on his land. Their relief, however, is short-lived. Dreng’s only joy seems to be the torment and domination of anyone around him, except for his daughter Cwenburg, whom he treats with relative gentleness. He is bonded to Edgar’s family when he agrees to marry Cwenburg to Edgar’s brothers, Erman and Eadbald. He constantly makes excuses about his “bad back” (120), using it to get out of any physical labor. When he realizes that Edgar’s talents could be useful for him, he still resists, saying, “No one wants a dog that barks at its master, and I don’t want Edgar” (142). Their frequent skirmishes lead Edgar to reflect that “like most bullies, Dreng was a coward when confronted” (187).

The worst of Dreng’s misdeeds is the murder of Blod’s baby. After watching her suffer through labor, he takes the newborn outside to the river: “With a rapid, vigorous motion Dreng swung the baby, windmilling his arm, and hurled it across the water” (230), rather than provide for another mouth. He also kills the baby as a demonstration of his power over his enslaved people, and that he has no reason to fear punishment from the courts. Dreng dies when he faints and hits his head, immediately after beating Mairead with a shovel.

Edgar’s mother is not in the novel for long, but her influence over Edgar and his brothers is clear. During her most meaningful conversation with Edgar, they commiserate about their respective losses of Pa and Sungifu. His mother says, “Your father was a rock. He meant what he said, and he did what he promised. He loved me, and he loved you three, and that didn’t change in more than twenty years (136). Her grief helps Edgar see that she understands his own loss, and it is one of their few conversations that does not focus on practicalities. She wants Edgar and his brothers to be like her husband.

Ma is clever, with a highly refined sense of injustice. She clashes with men like Dreng immediately because she cannot tolerate oppression. For instance, when Dreng stops feeding Edgar as a petulant punishment, she stops feeding Dreng’s pregnant daughter, claiming that she will make sure they always eat the same amount. She is also willing to forgo her own needs for those of her children. When she dies, it is during the period of the family’s greatest hunger. Edgar suspects that she kills herself so that there is more food for her children to share.

When the story begins, Wynstan is the corrupt bishop of Shiring. He is the brother of Wigelm and Wilwulf and the son of Gytha. At the beginning of the novel, the 35-year-old man seems greedy and aloof, but not evil. However, Aldred describes Wynstan’s descent into moral depravity: “This must be how the devil made a man his own, Aldred thought; by stages, one sin leading to a worse” (492). Initially, the reader learns that Wynstan skims money off the top when collecting Wilf’s rent for him; however, Wilf expects this to some degree, so it is not a damnable offense. Wynstan is self-aware when it comes to his own appetites. “Money and power” (459) over people give him more joy than anything else. The more wealth he can accrue, the more influence he has over others.

Wynstan’s worst traits become more obvious after Ragna marries Wilf and enters the family. He knows that she can make trouble for him because she is a just, righteous person who will not look the other way when he sins. His main scheme for making money is the counterfeiting of coins. His dishonesty is immeasurable when he refutes Aldred and Edgar’s claims at court, blaming Cuthbert for Wynstan’s own crimes. He hides behind the mantle of the church as he pronounces the self-aggrandizing sentence: “Because of his wicked attempt to put the blame on two senior clergymen, his punishment will be more severe than usual. I sentence Cuthbert to be blinded and castrated” (493).

Wynstan’s greed and hypocrisy grow to the point where he and Wigelm kill Wilf as soon as he becomes a potential liability. In addition to the loss of his brother, Wynstan’s sexual promiscuity and his frequent use of sex workers do not go unpunished. He contracts a sexually transmitted disease from Agnes, whom he is using to betray Ragna. The disease causes him to experience symptoms of severe mental illness. His descent into paranoia is a form of poetic justice. A man who was obsessed with appearing powerful and brilliant slowly becomes a weak and slow-witted man without memories. When the novel ends, he has been stripped of his title and lives on Leper Island. What is a sanctuary for some people is a punishment for Wynstan.

Like Dreng, Wigelm is another one-dimensional character. The thane of Combe and the brother of Wynstan and Wilwulf, Wigelm is a cowardly, illiterate, and weak sadist who enjoys tormenting people. When he threatens to raise the rent in Combe, Edgar’s parents lead the protests against him. He is greedy and extravagant with his spending. He complains every time the possibility of losing money arises and treats the people he collects rent from as less than human.

When he meets Ragna, he immediately squeezes her breasts and says, “My, they really are big, aren’t they?” (246). He treats everyone—but especially women—as if they are objects that exist only for his amusement and pleasure. Wigelm experiences no character development throughout the novel. Rather, his actions grow more grotesque with his every appearance. Although he initially seems to be a spoiled, selfish youth, by the time the novel concludes, he has killed his brother, raped Ragna, coerced her into marrying him, and taken her son from her. Wigelm’s death is a satisfying act of revenge. Ragna suffocates him while he is in a drunken stupor, vomiting. She thinks about Wigelm’s legacy, which is a perfect summation of his character: “She thought of the year in prison, and the repeated rape, and the theft of her child. By forcing his way into her house tonight he had shown that his torture of her would never end, not while he lived” (871).