It is the thirteen century and fourteen year old Lady Catherine, known as 'Birdie', is on the cusp of womanhood. There's a very good film called 'What Will People Say' that's worth tracking down if you have the time. Great acting, great dialogue, not quite as laugh out loud funny as I'd hoped it would be but enjoyable nonetheless - to a point, which it makes very well. You're just pleased this is a tale set in the past, a time of yore, so long ago, a long time passed, well you'd like to think that's true, but you know, and I know too, that it all depends upon the cards that you've been caste. But her father's most insistent she'll soon pack, for disobeying he metes out several hand whacks, potential suitors are arranged, so she presents as quite deranged, then Shaggy Beard, decides he'd like to have a crack. So arrangements are prepared to sell her off, it makes her quite annoyed, it makes her scoff, so she wriggles and she squirms, to avert taking new terms, prevent her moving to a strangers dirty trough. “Birdy starting to realize that everybody around her is also trapped in their own sort of proverbial cage and experiencing their own challenges with the society that they live in was a really beautiful thing to watch Bella play.Birdy's a young girl, almost a woman, a bit naïve of all the world in which she's living, but she's got to grow up quick, a new clock's primed and starts to tick, she now has value and a modesty for taking. “In terms of how she matured, something that is in the book that we tried to bring out more this idea of her starting to understand that other people are in pain,” Dunham said. Her father Lord Rollo, who originally ‘sells’ her to Shaggy Beard, tracks down his carriage and fights Shaggy Beard to win Birdy back.īirdy dutifully records these events of her life in a journal, asked by her monk brother Edward (Archie Renaux) to do so in the hope that she would mature and become more learned The film ends with Birdy’s escape from Shaggy Beard as well, but not because he dies.

Birdy is happy at the end of the book because she feels she will get along better with the son. In Cushman’s book, Birdy ultimately escapes her last suitor who she calls Shaggy Beard, because he dies, but his son marries her in place of the older, gross man.

‘Catherine Called Birdy’ Review: Lena Dunham’s Modern Sensibilities Clash With Medieval Coming-of-Age Tale

Catherine karen cushman