Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

V.E. Schwab’s novel Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a sweeping historical saga that moves through the centuries, beginning in 1521 and ending in 2019. Schwab covers 500 years of human history through the stories of María/Sabine, Charlotte, and Alice. Because all of her main characters are queer women, Schwab is able to examine the historical evolution of women’s rights and LGBTQA+ rights over the past half a millennium as her characters move through a rapidly changing world.

María grows up in a world with strictly prescribed gender roles that feel stifling to her. She’s expected to get married and have children—the only avenue available to her. In 16th century Spain, historian Dr. Marjorie Ratcliffe writes, “Women…were not passive witnesses to the deeds performed by the men of their society…Nevertheless, the majority of medieval women considered no other role but that of wife and mother” (Ratcliffe, Marjorie. “‘Matris et Munium…’ Marriage and Marriage Law in Medieval Spanish Legislation.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. 13, no. 1, 1988, pp. 93-109. JSTOR). Ratcliffe goes on to elaborate that though there were “severe” laws that punished those who harmed women, the severity of the punishments reinforced the sense of women as the property of powerful men: “their subordinate status is repeated throughout the law codes of the different centuries” (Ratcliffe, Marjorie.