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Friday, June 24, 2016 - 12:17
If I made a list of the books I re-read shortly after finishing, ordered by the briefness of the delay in starting that re-read, the top five slots would all be occupied by books in Bujold’s Vorkosigan series. While I have deep philosophical problems with some aspects of underlying socio-political messages of the stories, I will be one of the first to admire her ability to create a “good read”.
I say all this to provide a context for my reaction to this latest Vorkosigan story. Meh. Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen follows the unexpectedly [to the reader] intertwined personal lives Cordelia Vorkosigan (Regent of the planet of Sergyar) and Oliver Jole (Admiral in charge of same) several years after the death of Aral Vorkosigan, Cordelia’s husband and Oliver’s long-term lover. Now that they are beginning to recover emotionally from the death of the man they both loved, Cordelia has plans for her future that offer Oliver some options that only this latest generation of Barayarans have any need or ability to take account of. Options that involve creative uses of reproductive technology.
GJ&tRQ isn’t a romance in any sort of structural sense, but it is very much organized around personal, domestic concerns and consequences. Family dynamics. Relationships. Life choices. That sort of thing. And given that one of the things I’ve always loved about the series is the focus on those dynamics, one might think the love would carry over here. But…meh. All in all, it felt like nothing much happened. The dancers walked through the figures and returned to their places, a little flushed and out of breath, but nothing more. And the non-personal aspects of the plot revolve around the everyday logistics of running a colony planet. Early on in the story, the phrase “bureaucracy porn” popped into my head. I’m sure a thrilling novel could be built around diplomatic disasters and finding ways to turn the tables on dishonest contractors, but this novel wasn’t it.
I joke that the series hasn’t been quite as interesting since Miles became happy, but there’s a definite correlation in my enjoyment of the books. A Civil Campaign was the last one that triggered an immediate re-read. About a third of the way through GJ&tRQ, I realized that if I put the book down and walked away, I wouldn’t feel like I’d missed anything. It is a technical well-written story about interesting characters, but it feels like the butter is being scraped over too much toast at this point. I’m sure that Bujold can still write a book that would have me diving back to page one after I get to “the end”, but I’ve come to the conclusion that such a book is likely to be outside the Vorkosigan universe.
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Thursday, June 23, 2016 - 21:26
Sorry about missing posting this yesterday. (Well, technically I missed writing it.) It's be a hectic week at work, and I haven't quite gotten into the rhythm of the new posting process yet. So you're getting the Princess Re-Read in place of a Random Thursday.
The second part of Chapter 8 (In The Attic) briefly touches on Becky's very practical support for Sara, which consists of giving her advice on how to behave in her new position (by the tactful means of explaining what her own behavior means: "Someone would be down on us if I did [say please and thank you]." Becky takes a few moments each day to help Sara dress and undress. It's an interesting echo of Mary Lennox's experience in The Secret Garden. Both Sara and Mary are accustomed to being assisted in dressing by servants. But while Sara's transition to doing for herself is eased by Becky's eagerness to play lady's maid, Mary is ridiculed for expecting someone else to help dress her.
Mind you, Mary is very much in need of some shock therapy to get her rebellious spirit working in productive ways. But I find the parallels between the two characters fascinating. Both come from financially priviledged British colonial families in India. Both lose their parents abruptly. (And although Mary didn't lose her mother at birth, in an emotional sense, she might as well have.) While both girls might be considered dreadfully spoiled, Sara has emerged with a happy and helpful disposition, while Mary is self-centered, rude, and exploitive of anyone she has power over. If we are to identify a cause of this, it would be that Sara was loved and knew she was loved, while Mary knew herself to be not only unloved, but essentially forgotten.
But we were talking about Sara. The majority of the rest of the chapter involves Sara's rapprochement with Ermengarde. Somewhat conveniently for the plot flow, Ermengade was temporarily taken out of the picture for family reasons just after the tragic birthday party. So by the time they see each other again, Sara has settled into her new life of service, and has gotten used to the expectation that she will no longer interact with the students as an equal. Her diffidence sends Ermengarde into awkward confusion when they next meet and Sara shows one of her few flashes of mean-spiritedness: she snaps at her friend's rather tactless question and drives her away. One expects that there's a bit of pre-rejection going on, so that Sara doesn't have to deal with Ermengarde snubbing her.
But Sara's friendship is so important to Ermengarde that she risks another rejection by going up to Sara's attic room to plead for forgiveness. It never, in any of her dealings with Sara, occurs to Ermengarde that her demands for continued friendship put Sara at a great deal of risk. Their relationship continues much as before, with Ermengarde gaining emotional and academic support, but now Sara does get something in return: she has one continuing relationship with someone who treats her as a social equal. (Becky doesn't treat her as an equal--Becky always and ever treats Sara as her superior.)
And Ermengarde gives Sara one more thing: she re-awakens Sara's imagination, transforming the garret into a cell in the Bastile or the Count of Monte Cristo's dungeon in the Chateau d'If. These transformations (and others) will enable Sara to manipulate her relationship with her environment and to re-negotiate her relations with the Minchin sisters, at least in her own mind.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - 13:25
The push to get the website finished distracted me over the weekend, but now I’ve almost finished processing all the beta-reader comments. Quick fixes are being taken care of immediately; more complicated things—like, “simplify and clarify Barbara’s dealings in Turinz”—are being noted for the next phase. The next layer, that is. At this stage of revisions, I find it easier to isolate tasks into “patches” (small, specific tasks) and “layers” (taking one particular thing and going through the whole manuscript to address it). I find that approach less daunting, and it makes it less likely that I’ll get distracted and forget some element within a larger set.
So the next layer will be to go through from the start and find the revision notes for those more complicated items and patch them. (This is where Scrivener is really helping my workflow. There’s that little place to add notes to each scene) The layer after that will be a high-level read-through. For that, I need to trick myself in two ways: change the visual appearance (different font, different size) so that I can see it fresh, and export it into the pdf-mark-up app on my iPad so that I won’t be distracted into doing actual revisions, I’ll just be able to flag items to come back to. (This, of course, assumes I will remember why I flagged them.)
After that, it’ll be time to export into Word for the layers of formatting, copyediting, final spell-check (and drawing up the vocabulary/names list), and then delivery. My beta-readers were good about noting all manner of copyediting things, but there are a few systematic issues that aren’t worth addressing until the end, because they may simply get re-introduced. (The most annoying one is how the smart-quotes always go the wrong way when quoted speech trails off in an m-dash. One of my readers valiantly flagged every single instance. Sorry about that!)
Seems like a lot to get done in…yikes, nine days! *deep breath* No problem. I can do it. To be sure, the June 30 delivery date is arbitrary, given that it’s unlikely to get editorial attention for a few months yet. But it’s the date I promised, and I’d mess up my working habits if I started treating due dates as squishy.
Remember: Mother of Souls, due out in November! Opera! Magic! Evil sorcery! Literary salons! Duels! Scandalous novels! The founding of a women’s college! What more could you ask?
Sunday, June 19, 2016 - 22:30
This will be the first time when I publish a new LHMP entry directly to the new website. Maybe next week I’ll experiment with setting up a post-dated publication date. Exciting adventures!
Full citation:
Lardinois, André. “Lesbian Sappho and Sappho of Lesbos” in Bremmer, Jan. 1989. From Sappho to de Sade: Moments in the HIstory of Sexuality. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-02089-1
The association of the name Sappho and the word Lesbian with female homoeroticism is so well entrenched that the question is rarely asked: what evidence do we have that Sappho was a lesbian (in the orientation sense, rather than the geographic one)? And how would such an orientation have been understood in her age and culture? Lardinois addresses these questions from empirical (if scanty) evidence.
Lardinois notes that the first use of the word “lesbian” in the sexual orientation sense in English dates to 1890 (although other authors have noted much earlier uses in other languages, with the earliest examples dating to the Middle Ages). The question of whether the connection between the isle of Lesbos and female homoeroticism has historic roots in Sappho’s time has been long debated, beginning in Antiquity.
The earliest source materials for Sappho’s life are: the remnants of her poetry (mostly fragments quoted by later writers); an assortment of fiction, gossip, and facts about Sappho and her poetry found in the works of Classical authors; and circumstantial evidence regarding the socio-historic context in which she lived.
Sappho’s body of work includes songs celebrating the beauty of young girls, ceremonial songs (cultic hymns, wedding songs), satires, and songs about members of her immediate famliy. There is also a fragment of an epic. It is the songs in praise of girls that form the primary evidence for Sappho’s erotic interests, but the ceremonial songs provide important evidence regarding the social context. Sappho’s authorship of cultic hymns demonstrates that she was an established and respected member of her community. Therefore if her songs in praise of girls are evidence of sexual interest, then that interest must have been acceptable to her community. Similarly, the satirical works that speak of rivalries and jealousies indicate that whatever relationships were involved, they were known and accepted by the community.
Lardinois discusses clues in Sappho’s poems regarding social and political relationships on Lesbos and the respectable position that both she and the girls she addressed held. And yet there is a pattern of references to named girls leaving Sappho, either with her consent or to her regret. The personal and individual nature of these references suggests they were works written for specific occasions. In contrast, her praise verses tend to be generic, not mentioning names either of the speaker or the subject. (Though it should be noted that most of what survives is fragmentary and we can’t know what was in the parts not preserved.)
If one takes the content of these poems at face value, they suggest a context of female pederasty (in the technical, classical Greek sense), and one which was compatible with respected social standing. Over the centuries, these two observations have often been interpreted according to the prejudices of the interpreter.
Although Sappho’s poetry never touches explicitly on sexual activity (with the possible exception of one fragmentary reference to a dildo, insufficient to determine the context), it does use the forms and tropes of erotic love poetry, and details activities associated with courtship (making flower wreaths) or that are suggestive of physical expression (”on soft beds...you would satisfy your longing”). For context, these themes should be compared to poems written in the context of male pederasty, which similarly avoid mention of sexual acts (but where no one doubts their existence).
Songs praising the beauty and attractiveness of girls--even when Sappho notes her own response to it--must also be understood in the context of their performance, often as part of marriage ceremonies. Themes of praise may be conventional rather than personal. Turning the argument around again, later male poets such as Catullus had no qualms about quoting Sappho’s work to express their own erotic response to a woman.
Among the later “testimonia” regarding Sappho’s life, the story used most prominently to argue against her homoeroticism (or at least to argue for her eventual and inevitable “conversion” to heterosexualtiy) concerns Phaon, the man for home she is said to have made a suicidal jump from the Leucadian rock. (The earliest surviving source for this is from Ovid, taking the form of a letter purportedly in Sappho’s voice.) Sappho’s work also refers to a daughter, and it is unlikely that she could have held the social position she did without being married (to a man). Can all these elements be compatible with homoerotic desire? References to that desire (albeit, often disapproving ones) are rife in later classical commentaries. Athenian comedies sometimes caricatured her, but never for homoeroticism, rather for heterosexual promiscuity. It can reasonably be supposed, however, that these authors were as unfamiliar with the historic context of 6th century BC Lesbos as more modern authors are. The only difference is that they most likely had a much larger corpus of Sappho’s work available to them.
So, for example, when classical authors assert that Sappho had a daughter named Cleis, a certain amount of confidence can be placed on this (the name appears in fragments of her work, and she wrote about other family members) even though the fact could not be confirmed from what survives of her work today.
What, then, are we to make of the story of Phaon and the Leucadian rock? Lardinois suggests this is a mythic reference and a poetic trope. Phaon was one of the legendary beloveds of Aphrodite (who figures prominently in Sappho’s songs), and it is possible that the story arose from a poem that was intended to be understood in the voice of the goddess. A near-contemporary poet of Sappho, Anacreon, mentions a “leap from the Leucadian rock” as a proverbial remedy against the pain of love. As love-pangs feature regularly in Sappho’s work, it is not unlikely that she, too, may have made use of it as a rhetorical device. From such references, a later legend of Sappho’s leap of despair for the love of Phaon could have been constructed by someone not familiar with the literary motifs.
Could Sappho’s reputation for loving women also have originated in a mis-reading of poetic tropes? For this, such tropes would need to exist. And if they existed, then they would reflect prevalent and accepted practices. Did such practices exist? (And if they did, would they not be support for the historic plausibility of homoeroticism being compatible with Sappho’s professional reputation?)
Sappho’s sexual reputation in pop culture changed radically over time. Sappho flourished around the early 6th century BC. In Athenian comedies of the 4th century BC, she was satirized as excessively heterosexual. Snide references by Roman writers to her “disgraceful friendships” with women began appearing around the 1st century CE. Slang uses of the term “lesbian” (lesbis, lesbia) underwent similar shifts. It always had a primary sense of “a female inhabitant of Lesbos”, but picked up a variety of erotic connotations. Aristophanes (5th c BC) used a verb with the same root to mean “to practice fellatio” and this sense continued through late antiquity. The first known explicit association of “lesbian” with female homosexuality comes from Lucian (2nd century CE) who writes, “They say there are women in Lesbos with faces like men, and unwilling to consort with men, but only with women as though they themselves were men.” And there are Byzantine references to “lesbia” explicitly meaning a female homosexual.
Were the shifts in Sappho’s sexual reputation a result, or a cause, of shifts in the senses associated with “lesbian”? Or is it entirely the wrong question to ask whether Sappho was homosexual, given that a categorical distinction and division between homosexual and heterosexual eroticism post-dates her era?
The final part of Lardinois’ paper turns to evidence for that historical context. The first consideration is the social institutions that brought young girls together in groups for the sort of education in song, dance, and other activities referenced in Sappho’s works. The second consideration is the evidence in other parts of Greece of that era for institutions of female pederasty, in parallel with the more familiar male institutions.
There is copious evidence for organized institutions of young women who learned music, singing, dance, and other activities to “serve the Muses.” In addition to serving as education for the girls, they would participate in religious and social rituals. This organization and these activities are perfectly compatible with the many references in Sappho’s poetry, including references to beautiful clothing and other adornments. Therefore the context of Sappho’s interactions with the subjects of her poetry could easily be in one of these institutions.
Although later Roman authors generally treated the subject of female homoeroticism with distaste and disapproval, they provide occasional references suggesting that earlier Greek attitudes were different. Plutarch describes a Spartan custom whereby “distinguished ladies” had sexual relationships with younger women/girls, in direct parallel to the pederastic relationships between adult men and youths. This claim is corroborated by other authors as early as the 4th century BC. The Greek poet Alcman, who wrote songs for Spartan “maiden choirs” in the 7th century BC (i.e., slightly earlier than Sappho) used the word “aïtis” for a girl in a sexual relationship, as a direct parallel to male “aïtas”, which was the official term for a boy in a pederastic relationship. Alcman’s songs for the maiden choirs include language that suggests erotic interactions (or at least desires) between the girls themselves. A vase from the Greek island of Thera ca. 600 BC shows two women in a stylized interaction similar to depictions of male erotic couples.
From all this, we can envision a scenario where a married female poet of high social status and impeccable reputation could enjoy and openly celebrate erotic relationships with the young women under her guidance. Such relationships could even have been an important part of extensive social and political networks. Only with the loss of that institution were later writers left with the need to try to make sense of Sappho’s erotic expressions in the context of her life and times.
Time period:
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Sunday, June 19, 2016 - 02:45
Quite some time ago (nearly two years, I think), I decided I needed a more professional looking website for my writing activities. And it could have all sorts of bells and whistles! Book reviews! Forthcoming publications! Future convention schedules! I could not only move the Lesbian Historic Motif Project to the new site, but I could make it the primary home of my blog. And then it could push content automatically to LiveJournal and Twitter and Facebook. And the LHMP could have improved functionality, with better tagging, and a dynamic index page, and...and everything!
Bells and whistles take a while to build. And there are a few important steps to get from, “So what would you like it to look like?” to “Go live!” But thanks to the folks at SK+ (Sharon Krossa Consulting), I have a lovely new web home. Some of the back-end bells and whistles are still under construction, but the front end is ready to go.
Check out the site. Explore the new LHMP interface. Kick the tires. Let me know if you spot any problems. (And old links to content at the site should roll over to the new equivalents.) And when I’ve had a chance to breath a little, I’ll probably do some sort of fun thing to celebrate the launch (and drive traffic to the site).
(Note: A variety of older blog entries have been imported for testing purposes, but I won’t be systematically migrating older LiveJournal entries to the new blog.)
Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - 11:00
This post originally appeared on my LiveJournal in this entry, which may include a lively discussion in the comments.
I suspect that the structure of Chapter 8 (In the Attic) is affected by the expansion of the original story. (This is one of those places where I'm curious to look at the original shorter version.) The first half is something of a brisk summary of at least the first several months (maybe longer) of Sara's new life. But then the chapter returns to the morning after Sara first moves to the attic and begins a more detailed look at her new relationships. I'll cover the first part in this blog.
I feel that the first several paragraphs capture the trauma of Sara's sudden transition vividly: the physical discomfort, the emotional distress, the sense of being removed from herself and looking for something to hang on to, even if only the painful truth, "My papa is dead!" We get some foreshadowing of Melchizidec in the scampering noises she hears in the night. And then, the next day, it's as if her life as a student has been erased. Her belongings have disappeared from her old suite of rooms. Lavinia has reclaimed the position of honor closest to Miss Minchin. And Sara is assigned a task that actually suits her abilities perfectly: a sort of teaching assistant to watch over and coach the youngest students.
But beyond that, she is turned into something of a maid-of-all-work: cleaning, and shopping, and running errands, and anything else that the rest of the staff can dump on her. Anyone who has experienced a sudden change of occupation, and especially when the new one involves physical labor, can easily imagine how time would blur together as Sara simply tried to make it through each day. And yet she made time to continue studying on her own and she connects education with class very directly. If she doesn't hold on to the things she has learned, she fears that she will "be like poor Becky" and lose her upper class speech mannerisms.
Behavior is one of the few things Sara has control over. She now wears plain, shabby clothing that she is always outgrowing and that becomes an object of ridicule. And there is now an enormous social distance between her and the other students, even when she is interacting with them. Those interactions become more constrained when Sara is told to take her meals with the other servants. (For all of Miss Minchin's instruction that Sara's transition is to be immediate and complete, there does seem to be a more gradual withdrawal in some areas.)
In combination with Sara's decision to set the best, most hardworking example that she can, she survives emotionally through her role-playing. At first, she sees herself as a soldier like her papa. "Soldiers don't complain. I will pretend this is part of a war." It will be some time before she returns to the role of princess.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016 - 11:00
This post originally appeared on my LiveJournal in this entry, which may include a lively discussion in the comments.
Sara’s reaction to the news of her father’s death feels like one of the most emotionally real passages in the story. (And this isn’t meant to disparage the rest of the story!) Her shock, her desperate self-control in public, and then her retreat to privacy and nearly incoherent attempts to reconcile herself to the news feel both utterly in character and entirely realistic. For all Sara’s popularity, she is an intensely private and self-contained person. And, as Becky later notes, sometimes it’s best that people in trouble should be left alone. (It might not be true of all people, but it’s certainly true of Sara. And once again, Becky is spot-on in her emotional reactions.)
When Sara emerges again to face Miss Minchin, she is subdued, but self-controlled and determined. This reaction might almost be designed to set Miss Minchin off. Miss Minchin wants to be the one in control, the one who causes others to react. For the rest of the story, she will view Sara’s self-possession as a personal affront—as a challenge to her authority. The more self-control Sara shows, the more out of control Miss Minchin becomes.
Miss Minchin verbally strips Sara of every scrap and vestige of her previous luxury and privilege, failing only when Sara refuses to give up the doll, Emily, who represents her emotional bond with her father. And when Miss Minchin thinks she’s putting the last nail in the coffin of Sara’s pride, by telling her she will need to work for a living, Sara subverts the situation by seizing on this as a positive. She will earn her living and prove her worth. And she will keep her self-possession and dignity, symbolized by her refusal to thank Miss Minchin for her “kindness”.
But it isn’t until she is shown to her new room up in the attic that she lets down her guard once more and feels the full weight of the transition in her life. And it is only there—when Becky comes in to comfort her—that Sara comes close to crying. When she first met Becky, she observed that they were alike—both two little girls. And now she repeats that observation: that there is no difference between them now. Becky, however is wiser. “Whatever happens to you—whatsoever—you’d be a princess all the same. And nothing couldn’t make you nothing different.” She recognizes the deepest truth to the story, that Sara’s “princess nature” is an inherent characteristic and not something that can be taken away.
But it will be a while before Sara rediscovers how to use that “princess nature” in her new situation, and first she needs to renegotiate her relationship to the world around her.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - 09:15
This post originally appeared on my LiveJournal in this entry, which may include a lively discussion in the comments.
In the second part of Chapter 7, we see the depths of nastiness that the adult characters are capable of. Captain Crewe’s soliciter comes to tell Miss Minchin the news that Crewe has died--and died a pauper after the diamond mines failed. The soliciter does get one rather delicious line in this conversation. In the initial conversation where he is railing against the fantasies spawned by the diamond mines, he notes, “When a man is in the hands of a very dear friend and is not a businessman himself, he had better steer clear of the dear friend’s diamond mines, or gold mines, or any other kind of mines dear friends want his money to put into.” After dropping the bomb that the Captain has died from a combination of jungle fever and business troubles, Miss Minchin asks exactly what the business troubles were. “Diamond mines,” answered Mr. Barrow, “and dear friends--and ruin.”
But the shock of the thought of Crewe’s fortune having evaporated (and Miss Minchin being on the hook for the funds she’d fronted for Sara’s party, as well as ordinary expenses), seems to drive a number of things out of both their minds. It seems implausible to me that neither of them thinks to try to locate someone who will stand in loco parentis for Sara. The soliciter presumably had the means to follow up with Captain Crewe’s military superiors, who might have ideas about what arrangements might be made--even assuming that Sara truly has no remaining living relatives. (Whatever did happen to her mother’s family?) For that matter, he is quite aware of the existence of Captain Crewe's "dear friend" who--though presumably equally bankrupt from the mine debacle--might well be expected to feel some responsibility for Sara (as, indeed, we later see he does), and might very well have relatives of his own in England who could step in and provide assistance.
But even Miss Minchin is aware of Sara having at least one potential sponsor, because she knows that Crewe chose her school on the personal recommendation of Lady Meredith. And there’s a clear indication in Chapter 1 that Miss Minchin had personal correspondence with Lady Meredith regarding Sara’s suitability for the school. So why doesn’t it occur to her to contact Lady Meredith and let her know that her dear friend Captain Crewe’s daughter is now friendless and destitute? At the very least, Sara might be taken off her hands. At the most, Lady Meredith might feel a moral obligation to pay Sara’s debt at the school as well.
This aspect has always troubled me. There is no reason other than plot logistics for Sara to be considered genuinely alone and friendless in the world.
Miss Minchin is so personally affronted by the loss of Sara’s fortune that she leaps to the decision to throw her into the street, rather than considering following up on any of these possibilities. It is noted that this is an indiscreet intention to voice. But the soliciter, rather than chiding her for her hard-heartedness, only points out that it would reflect badly on the school and that it would be more practical to exploit Sara as an unpaid servant. If nothing else, this is one more piece of evidence that Captain Crewe was extremely incompetent in his business decisions. One might think that when he chose an agent to look out for his daughter’s interests in England, he would have chosen someone capable of empathy and compassion.
But, no.
So Miss Minchin calls her sister in to do the dirty work and devises a way of informing Sara of her father’s death designed for maximum trauma. In this chapter, any sympathy one might have had for Minchin’s position vis a vis her pampered pupil is trampled into the dirt.
It’s left to Becky--who has been hiding under the table while all these conversations have gone on--to think what all this will mean for Sara herself, and to beg for permission to help soften the blow and assist Sara in the transition. And it’s Becky who sees the tragedy as a story arc: “It’s exactly like the ones in the stories--them poor princess ones that was drove into the world.”
Next week, we’ll finish Chapter 7 with Sara’s reaction to the news.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - 07:30
This post originally appeared on my LiveJournal in this entry, which may include a lively discussion in the comments.
It was pointed out in comments last week that one thing that may be behind the very uneven time-flow of the story is its origins in a much shorter work. So now I'm curious to what extent that shorter work focused primarily on the two time-periods that take up such a disproportionate amount of the page: the day of Sara's 11th birthday party, and the day of Mr. Carmichael's return from Russia. In any event, today's discussion continues with the fateful birthday party with Chapter 7 "The Diamond Mines Again".
We begin with a detailed re-emphasis of Sara's wealth, in reviewing the presents her father has arranged for her. His lack of sense with regard to spending is only emphasized by her reception of those gifts: she seems most delighted with the books, and while she philosophizes over "the last doll", it's clear that dolls themselves--with all their opulent accessories--aren't particularly important to her. The doll Emily is important as a story-telling locus and an emotional focus (as sort of an object-diary to whom she tells her inmost thoughts), but not quite so much as an object for play-manipulation. So the "last doll" with its elaborate clothing and accessories serves as the ideal symbol of excess and waste: important to Captain Crewe to represent wealth, unimportant emotionally to Sara (witness how little regret is involved when she eventually disclaims ownership of the doll, compared to how she clings to Emily), and a thorn in the side of Miss Minchin who has had to front the money for the gifts and will be left holding the bag.
But the beginning of the birthday part also has two key emotional scenes. Sara's request that Becky be allowed to stay to witness the opening of the presents is both a kindness and an imposition. A kindness, in that she publicly acknowledges not only Becky's basic humanity, but her right to "be a little girl" and enjoy girlish pleasures like dolls. Mind you, at the age of 16, a working class girl like Becky is the farthest thing from "a little girl" in this sense. And Sara's inclusion of her in the party is, in some ways, the farthest thing from a "kindness", as it brings her to the disapproving attention of Miss Minchin and--as we will see--ends up trapping her in a location where her accidental eavesdropping could have severe consequences. It's one thing to feed Becky stories and meat pies in the privacy of Sara's rooms, and another to single her out on a public setting. But Sara isn't always wise when her sense of justice is riled up, as we see on other occasions. And I don't see this as a flaw in her, but rather a consistent aspect of her realistic complexity.
The other key emotional scene is the foreshadowing when Lavinia asks how easy it would be for Sara to pretend to be a princess if she were a beggar and lived in a garret. The scene is a bit clumsy only for the fact that it occurs immediately before the announcement of the arrival of Captain Crewe's solicitor who (as it happens) is bringing news of his death and ruin. But it gives us a chance to glimpse how Sara thinks her imaginings would function if she were destitute, before she has to deal with the reality. (And, as we'll see, the reality is that using imagination to fight immediate physical and emotional hardship is not quite as easy as one might think.)
So we will leave this week's discussion in the same way that Sara leaves the schoolroom with the presents: with "the Last Doll sitting upon a chair with the glories of her wardrobe scattered about her; dresses and coats hung upon chair backs, piles of lace-frilled petticoats lying upon their seats." And, like Becky, we will linger just long enough to need to duck into hiding when Miss Minchin returns with the solicitor, so that we can listen in on their conversation...
Wednesday, May 11, 2016 - 06:30
This post originally appeared on my LiveJournal in this entry, which may include a lively discussion in the comments.
(Starting this while waiting to board my flight to Chicago, but I see people lining up, so I'm guessing I won't post it until the other end of the flight. Maybe not until I get to the hotel this evening.)
I have a tendency to create timelines and genealogies and whatnot when analyzing books. There are no genealogical puzzles to sort out here, but I had to draw up a detailed timeline to figure out exactly when various things occur, how old various people are at the time, and how long certain situations are in place. A Little Princess contains 19 chapters. The first six take Sara from her arrival at the school at age 7 to the eve of her 11th birthday. Chapters 7-12 take her from the day of her disastrous 11th birthday to The Day of The Magic, which by my best evaluation appears to be about one and a half years later. Chapters 13-15 all take place on a single day (The Day of the Magic). Chapter 16 seems to cover several months., then 17-18 occur on a single day (the day of Mr. Carmichael's return from Russia), and the final chapter covers an unspecified period of at least several months. The passage of time is vague and only tentatively anchored by references to weather and sometimes general mentions of "holidays". It doesn't help that the text often ranges ahead and then circles back, making it hard to pin down the chronology of the individual events.
Plotting out a timeline also points up several places where the static nature of the background characters borders on absurdity. So let's lay out both the chronology of the chapters and the estimated ages of some of the girls.
Chapters 1-3: We are told explicitly that, at the beginning of the book, when Sara first arrives at the school, she is 7 years old, Lavinia is "nearly 13", and Lottie is "just 4 and the baby". Ermengarde's age is never specified, but it's implied that she's been at the school for at least one year previous, and if we take the age of 7 as the typical age of entrance, then she must be at least 8.
Chapter 4: The story does one of the "ranging ahead and circling back" things, talking about "the next few years" of Sara being at the school, but then returning to her first interactions with Lottie when Lottie is still identified as being 4.
Chapter 5: We are told explicitly that Sara has been at the school for "about 2 years" when Becky is hired and that Becky is 14. If we take "2 years" in absolute terms, then Sara is now 9, Lavinia is nearly 15, Lottie is 6, and Ermengarde is at least 10.
Chapter 6-7: Chapter 6 must cover a period of about 2 years, because it takes us up to Sara's 11th birthday. So at the end of this chapter, Sara is 11, Lavinia must be ca. 16-17, Lottie is 7, Ermengarde perhaps 12, and Becky 16.
Chapter 8-9: The chronology of these chapters is very confused. First we get a description of Sara's life for "the first month or two" after the disaster. Then we circle back to her first night in the attic. Then we get mention of Ermengarde being called home for "a few weeks" (presumably right after the party) and then after her return it's several more weeks before she gets desperate enough to venture up to the attic to confront Sara. In chapter 9 we circle back to scenes with Lottie right after the party and Lottie's eventual visit to the attic, and then up through the taming of the rat, Melchisidec and a few weeks later to Ermengarde's introduction to the rat. It's impossible to sort through this to figure out exactly how much time has passed. Certainly several months, possibly more.
Chapter 10: We get bits of language indicating the passage of time. Sara is out-growing her clothes. The weather is turning toward winter. And we get one clear date reference in the encounter with young Donald and the incident of the Christmas Sixpence. At some later date Mr. Carrisford moves in next door. It seems likely that several months have passed, perhaps even nearly half a year...
Chapter 11-12: ...because Sara's encounter with Ram Dass occurs in a weather context that suggests high summer. Chapter 12 discusses the Carmichael children getting to know Mr. Carrisford, among other events, and must take us up to wintertime again.
Chapter 13-15: These chapters cover the Dreadful Day that ended in The Magic. The weather definitely indicates winter, and Ermengarde's reference to presents from her father and to the coming holidays suggests that we're shortly before Christmas. But this is also the day that Mr. Carmichael leaves for Moscow, and given the description of his stay there (as well as the range of events that have to happen during his absence), the fact that "it had been snowing all day" on the day he returns suggests that either the author has lost track of her own timeline, or it was a very very late winter that year.
Chapter 16: This chapter covers the entire period between The Magic and the day of Mr. Carmichael's return. It's long enough for Sara and Becky to lose their half-starved look under the benefits of Mr. Carrisford's secret charity. I can't seem to make it longer than about 3 months, which may be just barely both long and short enough for everything to make sense.
Chapter 17-18: When Sara's identity is finally revealed to Mr. Carrisford, he claims to have been looking for her for two years. There's an implication that there was some delay after Captain Crewe's death before Carrisford had his act together enough to start searching. But even if he started searching the day of Crewe's death, I can't make the elapsed time into two years without a certain generous rounding up. But if we take it as a reference point that this is exactly two years after Sara's 11th birthday, then Sara is 13, Lottie is 9 (and yet still with the emotional behavior she had at age 4), Ermengarde is perhaps 14, and Becky is 18. Curiously, Lavinia is ca. 18-19 which seems a dreadfully advanced age at which to still be attending the school. And yet Lavinia is still there, still playing Mean Girl, and still caring about Sara's relative place and status rather than eagerly looking forward to getting out into the world and being treated as a grown-up woman. This is what I mean by the curious unchanging nature of the secondary characters.
Chapter 19: And we conclude with an interlude of an unspecified several months after Sara is adopted by Mr. Carrisford before she decides to return to the bakery that figured prominently in The Dreadful Day, and to set up her charitable program to distribute bread to hungry children.
There, that's out of the way. Later, I'll make a similar digression into linguistic issues, covering clues spread out across the book.
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