He Ain't Lyin' When He Says Mumbo Jumbo!

Painful. That is the word that comes to mind as I forced myself to crawl through this week’s reading. It was painful. Ok- maybe I’m being a bit over-dramatic there, but let me explain.

This book was written in the mid 70s and it takes place in New York in the mid 20s. This was a turbulent time in American History to begin with. As a nation, we were struggling through the aftermath of a war that had taken thousands of young American men to Europe and returned them maimed-physically and/or emotionally-if they were returned to us at all. Alcohol had been made illegal, the flapper generation was pulling at the moral fiber of our country and the blacks were in the mix as well, trying to find their rightful place in society.

This seems to be what Mumbo Jumbo is about: finding that rightful place, but the style of writing is jumbled and chaotic. There is a mix of fact and fiction; real names and real places interact with the fictional names and places. The mix makes me wonder how much of what I was reading really happened and what is made up of whole cloth. I suppose this adds an element of believability to the story.

Though the book is supposed to be “a racy and uproarious commentary on our society”(back cover), I have yet to even crack a smile. I see the book as a clash between black and white. The whites in the book (most of them) want things to stay the same and they feel the blacks should keep their place in society as backward, submissive, uneducated former slaves, while the whites continue to dominate society and keep the blacks from progressing as they naturally would and should. This archaic attitude has caused discontent and anger between both races. It makes me want to say, “I don’t understand.. why can’t we all just get along?” Adding to the difficulty is the style in which the book is written. 1's are used instead of the word one. Quotations aren't marked, making it difficult to figure out who is talking to whom. There seems to be no organization to the chapters or to the order of the book. The rules are ignored. Is that one of the points the author is trying to make? No one is following the rules?

So- what is the first half of the book about? I wish I knew. We have two cultures clashing- one culture is arrogant and brutish while the other is intelligent and sophisticated. The whites are portrayed as the brutes, trying to force this other, alien culture back underground. Meanwhile, Jes Grew, a plague to some, anti-plague to others is making its way around the country, infecting people by the tens of thousands. What is Jes Grew? Is it acceptance? Is this why the dominant culture wants to squelch it, so they can force the other culture into hiding and submission?

I have begun work on the second half of the book and that will, I hope, shed a bit of light on what I have read thus far. This has, admittedly, been a difficult read for me, but now I need to know if it is my own attitude that prevents my understanding or if the book itself is the stumbling block.

Stay tuned.

Family Linen Part 2

After a week away, I’m back with the continuation of Family Linen.

The second half of this book is as entertaining as the first with some subtle shifts in the narrative voice. Smith relies less on the view points of the individual character and shows more interaction. This, as mentioned by several classmates, is a sort of “weaving” of the fabric of the story, much like linen is woven together (my paraphrasing). After Elizabeth dies, her children are left to deal with the pain that her death causes each of them. However, they now learn to lean on one another to help deal with that pain. They slowly begin to learn to accept one another and to come together as a family unit, something that was not possible as long as their mother was alive. Elizabeth’s views and personal issues spilled over onto her children, thus preventing them from bonding with one another early in life.

There is only one chapter in which we ‘meet’ Elizabeth and it is very enlightening. Until that point in the book, the reader sees Elizabeth only through the eyes of her children and siblings. To see her life through her own eyes gave me a deeper understanding of her.

Days of Light and Darkness: Memoirs

Elizabeth has a flair for the dramatic as well as the poetic. Her writing style is elegant and fits the elegant manner in which she has tried to live. Unfortunately, that elegance is not terribly realistic, nor are her views of the world around her. She is angry about her sister Nettie’s tom-boyish ways. She feels hurt at her father’s seeming preference of Nettie over her, even though it is Elizabeth who tries so hard to make their home comfortable and inviting after their mother’s death. I thought of Elizabeth as a very traditional Southern Bell who was born a hundred years too late. Her thoughts, her writing style, and her morals seem to hearken back to an earlier day, the day of plantations and hoop skirts. She does not fit in well in the 20th Century.

The chapter written from Elizabeth’s viewpoint is a short one and it is the only chance we have to get to know her as she sees herself. I would have liked to see more of her life as she grew older and had children.

It is from Nettie that we learn about Elizabeth’s first husband, Jewell, and what really happens to him. It is not Elizabeth who kills him, but Fay, with whom he has fathered a daughter. Jewell repeatedly takes advantage of Fay and her mental handicap. He rapes her, as Nettie witnesses,

“And the worst part about it was Fay’s face, which I could still see, I could see her face all the time, over Jewell’s back, above his white shirt. Her face had changed from that waiting, knowing look into something terrible where wanting and hating went back and forth like the shadows of clouds across a field, back and forth faster and faster, ending up as something awful which you’ve not got the words to say” (234-5).

Fay gives birth to Candy, who is raised as Elizabeth’s daughter and it is Fay who kills Jewell and dumps his body in the well--not Elizabeth, as Sybill remembers through hypnosis.

Toward the book's end, many things happen at once. The body of Jewell is found, Sean tries to kill his father, but the gun misfires, and Fay is found dead.

The book abruptly moves forward some weeks to Karen’s wedding. Elizabeth’s children are learning to be a family and that their differences aren’t really all that important. Family is family and you accept them and love them anyway. It’s a rather hokey thought, but an apt one, I suppose. Don and Myrtle have done some work on the family homestead and are now living there. The wedding of their pregnant daughter Karen has brought the family together again, but this time it is under happier circumstances. They seem much more accepting of one another and it is difficult to imagine the scene unfolding happily if Elizabeth was still alive. It was she who kept the family apart for so many years. Now that she is gone, the siblings are free to see one another through different eyes, not through the eyes of their mother. There is no more competing for her love and approval.

I did enjoy the book, but I felt that it hurried the ending a bit. I would have enjoyed seeing a bit more of the healing process as it happened between the siblings, though Smith did manage to wrap it up fairly neatly and without any gaping holes. Sybill lost some of her bitterness and edge, Myrtle lost some of her need for approval. Sean learned the importance of his parents and that, though they may be pains in the butt, they really do mean well. Lacy is accepting her lot in life, that of divorced woman; Candy continues to style hair, oblivious to her real parentage and Arthur seems to have found a woman who may be able to keep him in line while helping Nettie and Clinus in the process. Basically, Family Linen is a story about a dysfunctional family realizing that they can be dysfunctional and still love one another. Another happy ending

Airing that Family Linen

This is a fun read and one that I know will have layer upon layer of story, each layer building upon the one beneath it. It’s like Hemingway’s iceberg effect. What we see on the surface is nothing compared to what lies beneath.

The book is set up in sections that are like chapters, with each ‘chapter’ being told by a different character and in a different form. Sybill’s story is told in third person, as if someone is looking in on her life and her thoughts. Her sisters’ and brother’s stories are told the same way. However, there are two characters whose stories are told in first person: those are the characters of Sean, son of Myrtle and grandson of Elizabeth, and Fay, Elizabeth’s mentally challenged sister. By telling the story in this way, the author is able to present the story as a whole. The reader sees all the different angles and can form their own opinions about the characters and their lives and views. We see Sybill from her own point of view as well as seeing her through the eyes of her siblings, nephews and aunts. We see each of the family members in this way and we end up with a well rounded representation of a pretty messed up family.

I wonder about the reasoning for the changes in voice throughout the story. Why are some told in third person while the others are told in first? I think it is to show the attitudes of the characters. Sybill, Myrtle, Candy, Arthur, and Lacy have lives that are out of control. Sybill is, as I said, a control freak. Myrtle is as well, to a certain extent. For her, appearances are everything. She lives in the nicest house in town and has a decent marriage to a well respected dermatologist. She has also just turned 40 and is embarrassed about letting anyone know because she doesn’t think she looks her age.

“Because it’s true that if you don’t look your age, which Myrtle doesn’t, you don’t want it broadcast around. And she has worked hard on herself. People simply cannot believe that she has a daughter twenty-two years old, or Theresa who is eighteen, or Sean, fourteen” (pg 50).

Sybill is the old maid. She must be in control of every aspect of her life and for this reason, I think, she has never taken a mate. Once you introduce someone else into your life, you lose that complete control. Myrtle must continue to maintain what she believes is perfection, even though her life is far from perfect. Arthur is an alcoholic who has never managed to hold a job nor is he able to hold his family together. Lacy is the youngest and newly divorced. She is unhappy and has no control over the things happening in her life. Candy, while she seems the happiest of the siblings, lives in two rooms over her beauty shop and has been having an affair with her brother-in-law for 20 years. But she has no control and feels trapped in the life she has, “Kids around here get married so fast, they can’t see beyond the back seat of a car. They can’t see the trap. Well, it doesn’t look like a trap, then. Candy couldn’t see it either, nobody can. And you can’t tell them” (pg. 115). The thing that seems to tie these characters together is the feeling that they are all simply watching their lives go by them, that they are simply going through the motions and not really living. For that reason, perhaps, their stories are told in the third person, as if they themselves feel that they are the ‘third person’.

Fay and Sean on the other hand, tell their stories in the first person. Sean is an angry fourteen year old who, while having little actual control over his life, doesn’t seem to realize it yet. He does what he wants to do. He is testing his boundaries and the limits of his parents’ control. He can anger them or pacify them, depending upon his mood.

“Where’s breakfast?” I say. Mom starts crying harder, and dad says, “Son, can’t you fix yourself some cereal at least? Is that too much to ask?” “Just fuck it,” I tell them all. “See you later,” and I leave. “Son, get back in here,“ Dad is yelling. “I’ll be back in a little while,” I yell back. (pg. 141)

Sean is more in control of his surroundings than any of the other characters so far. He is living his life, not just making the motions and therefore, his voice is first person. I’m not so sure I can explain Fay in the same way. Her story is also told in first person, but being mentally challenged, she is like a child in many ways. Perhaps the voice has more to do with the way the characters view themselves and the world around them, than the idea of control. I am still working that out in my mind.

As far as a pattern in the chapter set-up, I don’t see one yet, but I think that has to do with that iceberg. On the surface the pattern is not obvious, but once you go a bit deeper it may become so. This family is certainly a dysfunctional one, and it scared me more than a little to see similarities between myself and the characters of Sybill and Lacy. It could be my age, which is close to the ages of those characters. It could be that I am a divorced woman, like Lacy, and living the life of a single woman with no male attachments, much like Sybill’s. I found myself identifying with these women, at least in a small way (More so with Lacy then Sybill, thankfully!)

The rest of the book will be digested in the coming week and I am looking forward to digging into it to uncover the layers that I am sure are lying there, atop one another and waiting to be peeled back and understood.

Goopher Those Grapevines!

How do I say that a black author in the late 19th century wrote in a way that would make most whites of that time think the author was a white person, thus surprising those whites who would stereotype most blacks as being uneducated and unintelligent? Furthermore, how do I say that without offending anyone or sounding racist, an attitude that many of the people in the late 19th century held, though they may not have been aware of it. Perhaps I simply put it that way and hope that it makes sense to those who read it.

As I read Goophered Grapevines, this is the thought I had: here is a black author whose piece was picked up and published by a popular literary magazine, in a time when many whites considered blacks to be somehow second class citizens. Segregation was in full force and the idea of ‘Civil Rights’ was so far in the future that it probably hadn’t even been thought of yet. Charles Chesnutt wrote eloquently, and in GG, his characters show that education and social standing does not necessarily indicate intelligence. In this way, he also showed the reader of that time that color plays no part in ability, intelligence, or class.

The person narrating the story is a Northerner. While it never actually says that the Northerner is white, it was an assumption that I made. Considering the era that the story takes place and the area the Northerner is hoping to settle in, it seems a logical conclusion. This made me wonder if those reading the story also thought that way, furthering my thoughts on Chesnutt and his reasons for writing the story and the positive influence he may have had on the attitudes of non-blacks.

Told largely in dialect, GG features Julius, who is a former slave, as the story-teller. This dialog was sometimes difficult to read and I found myself speaking many of the sentences aloud in order to make sense of them. However, this dialog served to make Julius clear in my mind’s eye. I saw an aging former slave sitting on an old pine log and telling a story about bewitched grapevines, life in a world of slavery, and the culture of the slave who was forced to live in submission to the often less intelligent master.

The master, Dugal McAdoo, hires a ‘witch’ to bewitch the grapevines in order to keep the slaves from stealing the grapes which is, he thinks, cutting into his wine profit. Julius is careful to mention that even though McAdoo is sure the blacks are stealing his grapes, “somehow, er nudder dey couldn’ nebber ketch none er de niggers. I dunner how it happen, but it happen des like I tell yer, en de grapes kep’ on a’goin des de same.” Julius also mentions that the master set traps and succeeded only in shooting himself in the leg. While he couldn’t catch the slaves, he managed to catch himself!

Later, McAdoo hires a ‘Yankee’ to help him cultivate his vines. McAdoo does everything he is told and most of the vines die because of it. He also loses large sums of money to the Yankee in nightly card games. Later, vowing to kill as many northerners as possible, McAdoo joins the Civil War and is killed himself, leaving Julius to profit from the vines the master has left behind.

It seemed to me that it was the profit that Julius was trying to protect with his tale of the bewitched grapevines. He hoped to discourage the Northerner from purchasing the vineyard because it means the loss of Julius’ livelihood. However, the Northerner does buy the vineyard and has no problem with bewitched vines. He also keeps Julius on and pays him a wage to make up for his loss in income.

This brings about the question of intelligence. Who was the smarter? McAdoo, who worked to keep the grapes to himself, shoots himself in the leg, loses money to a stranger and ends up losing his life in the war, or Julius, who sits back and makes a decent living from what is left of the grapevines? Julius gets my vote.

Overall, I enjoyed the story and the vivid pictures Chesnutt’s dialog painted in my mind, but it left me wondering about Chesnutt's reasons for writing his tale of the Goophered vines? What was the effect upon the literary world of 1887 when the story was originally published? Also, is there more to the story? Is there more Chesnutt was trying to say that I may have missed? The story speaks of the brutality of slavery, but it is not an anti-slavery story in itself. The story spoke to me of the unfairness of racist attitudes and of the need for equality, while thumbing its nose at the attitudes of the day and giving us a character who, though uneducated, is not in the least bit unintelligent.

The Yellow Wallpaper

This week’s reading was phenomenal. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is complex and has such depth that to only read it once is to be doing it a great disservice. There are so many ways to look at this piece and I feel as if I’ve only scratched the surface. I want to get so much deeper into it and learn the meanings of the many different situations that occur.

Jane, who we learn late in the story is actually the narrator, is suffering from a mental illness of some sort, one that her doctor husband tries to help her deal with, even though his ‘dealing with’ means Jane must acknowledge that there is really nothing wrong. She is merely nervous or easily excited. Of course this only makes Jane feel worse because she knows there is something wrong; she feels so sad and feels such despair--yet the fact that her husband says it is nothing only makes it worse for her. The wallpaper we see becomes, in a way, one of the main characters.

Jane has a room upstairs in what was once a nursery. The bed is nailed to the floor; the windows have bars on them and the walls are partially covered with a horrible yellow wallpaper. The paper has been torn in places. It is old and faded and when the dampness reaches it, it smells. It is a smell that permeates the entire house and clings to everything. Jane finds herself mostly confined to this room where the wallpaper takes on a life of its own. She finds herself trying to form patterns within it and one of those patterns “lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.” The eyes don’t blink and they follow Jane everywhere. At night, when the moon shines in, the wallpaper forms bars. Jane is trapped within the room, just as she is trapped within her illness.

The illness, I believe, is post-partum, because we learn that she has recently had a baby. Even by today’s standards, post-partum is often misunderstood. Very recently, there was a great deal of publicity surrounding it when one celebrity went as far as to say that the post partum depression suffered by another celebrity was mostly of her own making and that it wasn’t a real condition. Given the era that this piece was written, the doctors were completely unaware that such a thing even existed.

Jane sees a woman on the other side of the wallpaper, a woman who is struggling against her wallpaper bars trying to escape. Jane helps that woman escape by finally locking herself in the room and going at the wallpaper with ferocity and tearing at all of it she could reach. However, I don't think the narrator actually wants the woman to escape. She has a rope with which to tie the woman up when she is finally freed from the wallpaper. In the end, the narrator refers to Jane in the third person and she becomes the woman in the wallpaper.

There are a few situations within this story that I did not understand, for thing what does the creeping signify? The narrator sees a woman creeping about, “I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I’ll tell you why—privately—I’ve seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows…I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.” Is the creeping woman really there? Is it the narrator who has distanced herself so far from reality that she views it from afar? Another is the fainting husband. What causes him to faint and why is this important to the story?

I enjoy reading literature of this type because I know there is so much that is not plainly written that the reader must think about and find out about. It was a great piece and I’m looking forward to digging into it more deeply.

The Turn of the Screw (or The Screwy Get a Turn)

Oh dear. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I had to read this story with a dictionary in hand. James is a bit wordy, is he not?

The governess is a young girl who finds herself offered the perfect job- if she was forty-five and experienced in running a household and raising children by herself, that is. However, she is a young girl and this is her first job. She has romantic fantasies about the ‘master’, a man who obviously wishes he’d never been put in the position of guardian and whose irresponsible attitude is to pass the children and the household off to the first person who will take it, and to order them never to contact him about anything. I thought this man was horrible, but the governess sees him as perfect and she has silly romantic fantasies about him throughout the story.

As I read the story and the governesses reactions to the things that happen to her and around her, two words came to mind: Drama Queen. This girl is a wreck. She has been hired into a position far beyond her abilities and she has no support at all. She is too young to realize that she is in over her head and now that she is at Bly, she has no one to turn to for help. When she begins seeing the ghosts, if they do indeed exist outside of her own overtaxed imagination, she goes to pieces completely. She sobs and wails and clings to Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper. I found these displays of emotion annoying.

I burst, as I had, the other time, made her burst, into tears; she took me to her motherly breast, and my lamentation overflowed. “I don’t do it!" I sobbed in despair. “I don’t save or shield them! It’s far worse than I dreamed—they’re lost!” (p. 674)

Oh, please. What adult in their right mind would react in this manner? Outbursts such as these led me to the conclusion that this girl is not in her right mind, that the ghosts are not real and that she has lost touch with reality and is, indeed, crazy. I think this may be one of the reactions James was hoping for. This story could go in so many different directions. Is the governess insane, or are the ghosts real?

I see similar tensions in this story as I saw in Roman Fever. There is an unspoken sexual tension here. What of the relationship between Peter Quint and Miss Jessel? The reader never finds out for sure just what that relationship was nor how much it involved the children. There are unspoken situations that may or may not be happening and, depending upon where one’s mind goes, the story can take different directions. For example, Mrs. Gross tells the governess that Peter is “too free” with Miles. Too free in what way? Does he let him get away with mischief that he should not be allowed to? Or does their relationship border on the inappropriate? Maybe Peter is simply too common and Miles, being a gentleman’s son, is learning behavior that is not fitting his station in life? James wrote the story in such a way as to leave each of those questions open, with no right or wrong answers.

My opinion of the story, however, was simply that a young girl got in too deeply and couldn’t handle the stress. She saw things that weren’t there, jumped to inappropriate conclusions, and made mountains out of mole-hills. She drove Flora away from her and, somehow, contributed to Miles’ death (though I haven’t quite figured out how she did it). Overall, it was an interesting story and shows the language of the day. Sometimes, too much so.

Wharton's Roman Fever

I enjoy looking at a story not only for what is written, but for the stir it may have caused at the time of its publication. In the 1930s, the United States was dealing with the aftermath of the Depression and looking toward Europe with somewhat distrustful glances. Americans were still clinging to their Victorian roots and trying to remain wholesome and pure, or at least pretending to be. Reading literature from the early 20th century is like watching a child attempting to pull away from his overbearing, overprotective parents. Roman Fever is, among other things, one of those sorts of pieces.

In the story, we see two "ripe but well-cared-for middle age" women, vacationing in Rome. We learn that they have known one another since childhood and that there have been feelings of envy, jealousy, and even a bit of animosity between the two of them most, if not all, of that time. There is reason for the animosity: the women are in love with the same man.

Alida Slade is jealous of her friend, Grace Ansley. The women live in similar homes on the same street and Alida keeps constant vigil on the comings and goings of her neighbor. "When the drawing-room curtains in No.20 East Seventy-third Street were renewed, No. 23, across the way, was always aware of it. And of all the movings, buyings, travels, anniversaries, illnesses- the tame chronicle of an estimable pair. Little of it escaped Mrs. Slade." Alida even seems to compare their daughters and finds her own, while angelic in many ways, somehow lacking when held in comparison to Grace's daughter Barbara. Alida seems to be a sad woman, made bitter from years of knowing there was a relationship of sorts between her own husband and Grace Ansley.

I felt the story read like a game of cat and mouse, with Alida trying to coax her friend Grace into the open concerning a vicious prank Alida had played when the girls were in Rome many years earlier, when both were vivacious, single, young women. Alida was aware that at one time, Grace had feelings for Delphin Slade, Alida’s fiancé. Now that both women are grown and widowed, Alida seems to need to confess her prank. I don't think she wants to soothe her conscious though- I think she wants to hurt Grace while reminding her that it was she, Alida, whom Delphin chose to marry.

"I don't know why I'm telling you now" (says Alida).

"I suppose, " Said Mrs. Ansley slowly, "it's because you've always gone on hating me."

Here, Grace does not dispute that fact, but says, "Perhaps. Or because I wanted to get the whole thing off my mind."

The reader learns that all those years ago, Alida wrote a note to Grace asking her to come to the Colosseum in the evening. She signed it with the initials of her fiancé, Delphin Slade- D.S. This was scandalous behavior for women at the turn of the century, the time frame in which this part of the story is set. It is here that Wharton seems to rebel against the strict Victorian attitudes of many Americans. We learn that Grace answered the note and that Delphin, having received that note, went on to meet her at the Colosseum that night. We learn too, that the meeting was not at all innocent.

I loved the last few lines of the story as Alida is put quietly in her place and Grace is allowed her own revenge. Alida seems self satisfied when she tells Grace that she had had Delphin as a husband for twenty five years while all Grace had had was "that one letter that he didn't write."

And here is my favorite bit. My mind’s eye could see the smug look on Grace's face as she makes the one final comment that puts Alida in her place while assaulting the backward attitudes of the day.

"I had Barbara," she said.

That one line confirms something that Victorian America did not want to admit. People were having sex in public places, outside of marriage, and with partners they had no intention of marrying even then, thus proving that the idea of Free Love was not an invention of the Flower Children of the 1960s. It’s been around for a very long time and it’s hidden in plain view, just beneath the surface.