Title & author
The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Synopsis
In 1518 Strasbourg, a group of up to four hundred people, mainly women, danced for two months in a frenzied state. Using this historical setting, Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s The Dance Tree not only reflects on how any action going beyond white, patriarchal control has been erased or vilified in our textbooks, but also showcases modern day inequities that are far too similar to those found in the 16th century.
Who should read this book
Fans of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna and Like a Bird
What we’re thinking about
What stories are erased from our history textbooks
Trigger warning(s)
Physical violence, sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, xenophobia, miscarriage
Though the history we learn growing up may be dictated by so-called winners, that does not mean alternative histories do not exist. In Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s The Dance Tree (HarperVia, 2023), Hargrave builds a fictional story around a historical event not commonly taught in school courses. In 1518 Strasbourg, a group of up to four hundred people, mainly women, danced for two months in a frenzied state. Known as the “dancing plague,” the event has been recorded as an act of religious mania, poisoning, or a response to societal standards at the time. Using this historical setting, Hargrave not only reflects on how any action going beyond white, patriarchal control has been erased or vilified in our textbooks, but also showcases modern day inequities that are far too similar to those found in the 16th century.
Lisbet, The Dance Tree’s main character, lives outside Strasbourg with her husband and mother-in-law. Having suffered from multiple miscarriages, Lisbet longs to be a mother, finding solace in keeping for their farm’s bees. After her husband’s sister returns from a seven-year stay at a convent and her husband leaves on travel, and as the dancing in the city intensifies and Turkish musicians join to quell the chaos, Lisbet finds herself growing close with others society has deemed as outcasts. And though the thematic messaging of the story may feel like a stretch at times in its attempt to align varying forms of discrimination and persecution, and some characters feel defined solely to advance the protagonist’s evolution, the messaging is clearly connected to the same inequities society is steeped in today. “Lisbet feels she could stay forever here, breathing with these women, held in the moment where she understands nothing and everything that is between them” (Hargrave, 146). Lisbet’s connection with her sister-in-law and best friend is strong, despite not fully being able to grasp their romantic relationship. And though she possesses internalized homophobia and racism—largely against the Turkish musicians staying at her house—thanks to the church’s messaging, she begins to understand that the justification behind such discrimination is baseless.
“It’s easy to draw lines from then to now in attitudes to the LGBT+ community, to immigrants, to class. We have come so far, and not nearly far enough. The power structures we operate under are no longer titled ‘God’ but they are still very much in existence. The world-at-large remains too often a hostile place for people who live, look, or love a different way,” Hargrave writes in the Author’s Note (241). Although as a society we’ve made progress throughout the decades, our underlying roots in white supremacist beliefs and values—ones that dictate sexuality, gender norms and identity, racial divides and status, capitalistic reliance, religious standards, and more—hold strong. (Expectations and cultural “norms” were all set by white colonists and imperialists at the sake of others’ cultures and histories. In doing so, white settlers upheld their own identities and beliefs as above all others’, standards that still manifest in everything from police brutality to housing inequities today.)
Looking back at history, especially through an often-erased lens, not only reframes what we’ve learned in our school lessons, but also demonstrates the many ways in which society today is too similar to the world of centuries earlier. The Dance Tree does just this—highlights how those who don’t conform to societal expectations, particularly those set by white, straight, cis men, are largely treated the same today as they were in the 1500s…and for many of the same reasons. While there is no excuse for the lack of evolution in over 500 years, the novel showcases the persistence, the found joy, the progress, and the strength of those fighting for change.
“Lisbet feels she could stay forever here, breathing with these women, held in the moment where she understands nothing and everything that is between them.”
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Did you feel as if supporting characters in The Dance Tree possessed their own story arcs, or were they mainly written to advance Lisbet’s?
Did you find Lisbet’s internalized homophobia and racism to evolve over the course of the novel? Why or why not?
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