The third of these artists, the true coup of Harriet’s plan, will see an artist named Rune, already an established and recognised force on the art scene, become the mask of the pinnacle third piece of art that will send violent undulations throughout the art world. Harriet Burden creates three pieces of work which will be revealed to the world by three ‘masks’ generally young, attractive males who will claim these works to be their own before Harry reveals the truth. The Blazing World, a title taken from a utopian work by Margaret Cavendish, one of Harry’s foremost heroes, centralises on her act of revenge, her chef d’oeuvre which will expose the misogyny and corruption of the contemporary art world. The hideous patriarchs of her life and the chauvinism of her contemporary society stoke up the fire that sits in Harry’s stomach until it becomes a blazing fire that will only be relinquished by some act of revenge, some act of justice. But there are people who have the audacity to suppose that her artistic abilities stem from her husband, a big time art dealer well-known in the artistic spheres. Yes, she has even received positive reception of her art in minor art journals. Yes, she has produced work that has appeared in galleries.
She also knows that the sole reason she does not flourish in the contemporary art world is because, as she puts it, she is “old lady artist Harry Burden with two adult children and a grandchild and a bank account”.
Yet it seems that the misogynistic and superficial world in which she finds herself is unable to harness the force that she is, and instead Harry is forced to live out a repressed and confined lifestyle, playing out the social role expected of a woman in the twentieth-century.īut deep down, Harriet Burden knows that she is an exceptional artist. Further to her shining intelligence, Harry is a woman with a blazing fire in her belly, a woman with a stern and uncompromising attitude to life. As the novel proceeds we are made aware of Harry’s erudite, abstruse and astonishing breadth of mind through journals left behind after her death, as well as interviews with people who knew her and worked with her in her art. Harriet Burden, the protagonist of Hustvedt’s novel, is a woman with an insatiable thirst for life and knowledge.
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