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belle-keys · 1 year

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Matthew Fairchild: Beauty and the Bottle (Meta)

Alternately entitled Matthew is still in love with Cordelia in the Epilogue, or, The Love Triangle made sense thematically, or, Matthew’s character arc was just excellent in ChoT, or, Matthew as one of Cassie’s best.

Feel free to stream Pomme while you read.

Okay, so now that we’re post-ChoT, I’m starting a new meta series where I break down some of the characters and the issues I had with The Last Hours trilogy now that it’s complete. In this post, I’m exploring the intersection between the Fairstairs, Matthew’s alcoholism, his characterization, and Oscar Wilde (the man). I’m starting off with Matthew, who’s my favorite character in the trilogy and like, my third favorite TSC character ever. This is a review and analysis of his character arc in the series as well as some of my opinions on his character. (N.B. there’s a lot of gushing and simping here. The other ones I have planned are not even remotely as flattering.)

How Cassie writes Matthew

All in all, I thought Matthew was the best written character in TLH and in Chain of Thorns. I thought that his character had a clear-cut narrative arc and that his character also remained consistent from start to finish. Matthew feels well thought-out because he’s fundamentally a character of enigma and a character of subversion. It felt like Matthew was real and wasn’t just a sidekick or an unwilling hero. But moreover, I find that from the midpoint of Chain of Iron, Matthew changed the trajectory of the story completely. I don’t mean in the sense that the love triangle was formed and got in the way of Jordelia (okay, I guess), but rather that Matthew’s character arc threw both James and Cordelia’s own arcs off guard, out of their orbits. This was for the better.

Enigma - It’s incredibly interesting that we don’t know what Matthew thinks or feels, at least not really, due to no Matthew POVs. We got a couple of pages in ChoG from his POV, but that was only to show the Grace kiss, and that was only because we couldn’t have gotten anything from Grace’s POV so early on in the trilogy for obvious reasons. And besides Cast Long Shadows, we got nothing else using Matthew’s narration in the trilogy. Nothing in ChoI or ChoT at all, at the very least. Like… that’s fricking weird, isn’t it? Not weird in the bad way, but weird in the sense that you have characters who are significantly less influential in the main plot/in the Jordelia plot, like Anna or Ari, who get POVs literally all the time. And yet, we never really know what Matthew is feeling at any moment. This is actually awesome. By giving us less of Matthew in the POV, Matthew becomes a larger-than-life character in the story i.e. he’s outside of the reach of the reader; he’s almost untouchable despite being, in my opinion, omnipresent in ChoT. I find it hard to believe people don’t see Matthew as a compelling character by default.

Subversion - Indeed, I was not kidding when I said Matthew is vaguely omnipresent. He is, kind of. He literally threw the Herondaisy ship off its course in a considerable way. His alcoholism and increased depression were always in the back of every character’s mind, and yet, we didn’t really get a peep out of Matthew until we did, and when we did, it always packed a punch. I think the fact that Matthew hides his feelings and his innermost desires is an effective trait that Cassie plays on time and time again by not giving us his POV. We’re always getting a reveal from Matthew, or an unanticipated act from him i.e. “love is a creeping vine”, him going to Edom with James. I know this is partly due to the alcoholism, but it’s a smart narrative choice nonetheless. Matthew is always important without his importance being immediately shoved in our faces: Matthew was instrumental in both the Thomastair arc and the Jordelia arc.

Matthew and Alcoholism

I was really pleased with the way Cassie dealt with Matthew’s addiction and his trauma. The scene where he tells Charlotte about the potion business should have been an extended scene, but everything else was amazing. Cassie absolutely needed to put Matthew through the wringer in ChoT for all of his foreshadowing as being a beautifully tragic young man to make sense. In fact, I had anticipated it would be way worse than it actually was, but alas, it’s fine. I like the way that Matthew absolutely did not have an easy time in Chain of Thorns. Every time you thought the withdrawal symptoms were manageable for him, he either drank again, or got hurt in some way, or simply couldn’t manage the withdrawal symptoms at all. It also was the factor that ended Fairstairs, which was important, as Matthew was becoming, in Cordelia’s head at least, a potential reincarnation of her father. Matthew’s alcoholism was as realistic as possible, at least in the context of a YA paranormal fantasy book. Cassie didn’t sugarcoat or water down what Matthew was facing nor its consequences on his relationships, and good.

Matthew and Cordelia

I maintain that by the Epilogue, Matthew is still in love with Cordelia, that he's leaving in part because of his feelings for her, and that she's very much aware of this (the stone thing seems metaphorical). This is why I say that Matthew's arc is bittersweet: his love will indeed remain unrequited and he has to live with that, at least until he inevitably moves on. He does not have the chance that Jem will inevitably have with Tessa in 100 years. He's leaving James and Cordelia for a reason, because he knows it will hurt to live and have to see it every damn day (in the same way that he was actually gonna run off to Paris alone and by himself at the end of ChoI anyway, before Cordelia has busted in).

In my opinion, the Fairstairs arc was excellent, from a holistic perspective. I will talk about this more in Cordelia’s meta piece, but essentially, Matthew symbolizes the self-liberation trope as it relates to Cordelia (James symbolizes stability and safety). For Cordelia, Matthew is kindled fire where James is eternal cool, Matthew is the bacchanalia where James is the hearth, Matthew is the Bohemian where James is the Gentleman’s Paragon. As you may have noticed in some of my previous posts on this topic, Matthew exists to provide an avenue of freedom for Cordelia: freedom from rules, from Edwardian morals and etiquette, from judgment, freedom from repression - he subverts Cordelia’s expectations of how her own life can play out. It’s for this reason that Matthew is characterized as the hedonist and as the decadent, and why we’re reminded of it time and time again by Cordelia herself. Matthew, by nature of the subversion that we’ve covered in the earlier section, was the ideal choice to whisk Cordelia away from the path she’d thought was carved out for her. If James and Cordelia are two stars locked in each other’s orbit, Matthew is a golden comet that appears out of nowhere but whose power you cannot deny.

If Matthew effectively symbolizes self-liberation and his character plays purely on subverted expectations, then Cordelia not having Matthew and Cordelia rejecting Matthew (Jordelia stans, look away now!) represents the end of Cordelia’s quest to escape society, to escape society’s inherent restrictions, hierarchies and repression, and the end of her quest to attain self-liberation to the fullest. Cordelia has chosen the least subversive path possible at the end of her story and has chosen to stay in orbit after all, and great for her! Matthew, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, will always represent to Cordelia all the sins she never committed, all the choices she never really made, all the opportunities she did not take, and she will always be fond of him for that. Regardless, Matthew was not in a suitable mental place for any relationship in ChoT (see the previous section on alcoholism) and we’re reminded that this freedom that Matthew symbolizes came with a caveat after all. Plus Herondale love runs true yadda yadda. But let’s not pretend that anything is given for nothing - Cordelia indeed has lost something very big by the end of ChoT, and it’s very bleak if you look at it with a microscope… but this isn’t Cordelia’s post! On we go!

Matthew Fairchild as Dorian Gray

So, Matthew is absolutely Dorian Gray. Starting with the physical or immediate similarities, we do notice that Matthew is lean and tall and blonde and angelic, looking the way Dorian is described in the text (we as a society must never let a certain actor, bless him, let us forget this). Dorian makes a deal with the devil to stay young and beautiful forever, while Matthew purchases a truth potion from a sketchy fairy because his trust in his mother faltered; this is the crux of Matthew’s central conflict (which will always be directly proportional to Alastair’s own conflict in the story). Dorian's horrid painting hidden in the attic is Matthew's grim secret about what later happened with the potion. Dorian is a murderer, and Matthew sees himself as a murderer (he isn't one, but he absolutely believes it). Dorian has sold his soul, and Matthew thinks his own soul is forfeit. Both Dorian and Matthew live for the sake of art, freedom, amorality, and beauty. After all, Matthew's key tenet in life is to do “mad, wonderful, colorful” things. But a hidden darkness and silent suffering beneath the obvious beauty are intrinsic in Matthew's character. Matthew turns to the bottle to cope with his own painting in the attic. The fact that Matthew is also bisexual, eccentric, a lover of Oscar Wilde, and positively adored by everyone he interacts with whosoever are also signs of his parallels with Dorian Gray. Both Matthew and Dorian prioritize extensive travels as a means of attaining these mad, wonderful, colorful experiences - Dorian, like Matthew, had fled London to tour the world and gain all the experiences he could gain with his newfound gift. Likewise, Matthew and the Fairchilds having an ever so tangential link to Faerie (even if it's by virtue of his own character descriptions) also helps us picture him as eternal and larger than stuffy London life. Matthew's beauty - beauty of body, beauty of soul, beauty in suffering, beauty as a mere pursuit - is simultaneously Matthew’s core value and core trait.

But Matthew Fairchild eventually supersedes Dorian Gray. Dorian did not ever have the heart or soul or courage to look his own sin in the eye or to acknowledge the equilibrium that must exist between body and spirit. But Matthew finally opened up that dusty attic by the end of Chain of Thorns and looked the worst of himself in the face. And so, Matthew will retain that grace and beauty and light that is now forever out of Dorian’s reach.

Concluding Thoughts

Matthew is a character who we crave more of by virtue of Cassie’s choice to give us less of him than we would anticipate, especially considering that he’s one of the four cornerstone characters of The Last Hours. He's one of the few characters in ChoT specifically who didn't constantly make me envision Cassie just pulling strings and making things happen out of nowhere. Matthew is aesthetically beautiful on the outside and by consequence, it’s easy to merely watch him flirt with the joy of living like you’re watching a play, which is rather fitting for a character who is timely linked to stagecraft and who claims he would have been an actor in another life. But the other Matthew on the inside is also equally beautiful and shining, and he shows his capacity to love, suffer and still come out on the other side of it all with his cracks glowing gold like kintsugi. In this way, Matthew Fairchild is as relatable to us as he is still untouchable. And that’s fricking awesome.