How Should a Girl Deal with It All?

I whipped through Mockingjay in two days (including time to feed the family, although I'll admit, I wasn't doing a very good job of that at the end). For the past couple of days now, I've been trying to decide what I think about it. I don't think I liked it that much, and I'm trying to understand why. Today while listening to a student's speech, I think I might have found the answer. 

The student was talking about having strength in the face of difficult circumstances. She said she has found that hiding is not the answer, that problems have to be faced. It occurred to me that Katniss was always hiding. I know she was suffering PTSD, and it's no wonder. No doubt, she's been through some horrifying experiences.  But as a literary character, I'd like to see her fight her way through the pain to salvage some sense of hope. (Spoiler!) In the epilogue to this series, Katniss has what could be labeled a happy life with Peeta, but she still seems detached from it and unable to fully trust in it and even to appreciate it. I don't expect that the character would suddenly "get over" all the awful things that happened, but it would be nice to see evidence that she's healing. That evidence wasn't there, at least not to me.

Am I being unfair? I thought of some other characters who have faced terrible circumstances and how they've come out of it. Most recently, Ophelia. I reckon having your father murdered by your secret husband, thinking you've been cast off by that husband, having to fake your own death to escape the threat of a poison-happy, evil king, and then learning your husband and your brother have killed each other would be about as traumatic as what Katniss went through. The interesting thing is that Ophelia did the same thing as Katniss - she hid and sank into depression. For Ophelia, this happened in the convent, and she was finally brought out of it by the friendship of Isabel and by finding a purpose in working as a healer for the nuns.  When Horatio shows up, she's well on her way to being able to put the events of her past behind her and face her life with hope. 

I also thought about Sarah in The Heretic's Daughter. Being imprisoned in a 17th-century jail for months and having your mother be hanged as a witch is pretty traumatic, I'd think. Yet at the end of the book, Sarah has found a degree of hope in preserving her family's story so it's not lost to the future generations.  I even remembered Patty from Summer of My German Soldier - physically, verbally, and psychologically abused by her parents, suffering the loss of her friend Anton, under suspicion of spying for being friends with Anton, sent to a detention center - still, that book ends with a note of hope.

Mockingjay didn't seem to have any hope at the end, just a weary, distrustful sense of acceptance.  Maybe I'm naive or weak to want hope at the end of the stories I read; after all, not everything in life has a hopeful ending. But I would argue that books are not life. They are stories that can help readers, among other things, find the silver lining in the gloomiest cloud. That doesn't mean I want a "Pollyanna" ending. I know I've used the quote from Elizabeth George Speare before, so I'll just paraphrase very loosely here, but at the end of a book I want to feel that the main character can stand up to his/her life and will be ok. Maybe he or she is not ok just yet, but he/she is on the road to being ok. The book can have a "sad" ending, but still have that little glimmer of hope that keeps the ending from being "bleak." Mockingjay was bleak.

(There's a really excellent one-star review on Amazon by a reader named Suzanne G, and the follow-up comments are good, too. The review does a more in-depth critique of Katniss' character and the failings in her relationships with the other characters.)

It's Hard to Follow the Original

I just finished Ophelia by Lisa Klein. I liked it well enough, but as I was reading, it struck me how hard it must be to try to write something that's based on someone else's work. Or even to write something based on historical fact, as A Northern Light was loosely based on the murder of Grace Brown (which was also the basis of Drieser's An American Tragedy).

Klein did well, in my opinion, of taking the sketchy character of Ophelia from Shakespeare's play and putting credible flesh on her.  Ophelia's tale blended reasonably well with Hamlet's tale, although at times I found myself thinking the timeline seemed sort of bizarre. Of course, it's hard to tell from Hamlet what amount of time expired between Hamlet's encounter with the ghost and the eventual gory fencing match. In re-reading the play, I thought it might have been a period of even weeks, which would be one reason Hamlet berates himself so for failing to carry out the revenge his father's ghost demands.  In Klein's book, everything seems to happen in a matter of days, or at most, a couple of weeks.  It strained my suspension of disbelief a little that all those events - from Shakespeare's original and from Klein's story - could have been compacted into such a brief time.

The thing that bothered me most, though, was the character of Hamlet in Klein's work. He was faithful to Shakespeare's conception of the character, no doubt. But it seemed to me that he was missing some soul. He just seemed sort of flat in Klein's re-telling.  In Shakespeare's play, I found Hamlet quite appealing (does that make me weird?) - he's witty, with a sharp and wicked sense of sarcasm that depends on word play and nuance of language (I guess I am weird, if that's what I found appealing!). He's passionate, and yet he's detached; he's paralyzed by indecision, and yet he acts forcefully. He's disdainful of women, and yet that disdain seems to spring from a deep sense of being let down by a woman who mattered.  I'm still not convinced he was mad; not to get into Shakespearan criticism here, but Hamlet seems to be the poster boy for what happens when one is re-active rather than proactive.  Anyway, his character was very much alive and vital in the play, in every sense of that word.

In Klein's book, Ophelia naturally was the strongest character, since we're seeing the story from her viewpoint. I'm ok with that. I liked what Klein did with her. But I was disappointed in Klein's Hamlet.  He just didn't seem exciting enough to inspire Ophelia to be so caught up in him. Maybe that's part of the point. Maybe Ophelia didn't really love Hamlet, but the idea of Hamlet - the handsome, witty prince who is forbidden to her. Lots of girls fall for the equivalent of Hamlet and overlook the Horatios who would be infinitely better for them. I suppose since Hamlet was going to be killed anyway - and we all knew THAT was going to happen - Klein didn't want to waste a lot of narrative energy on him.  Or maybe she was hesistant to develop him too much beyond what we already knew from Shakespeare - the perils of using someone else's well-known character.

Another peril exists in trying to speculate beyond the bounds of the original story. Klein's method of having Ophelia escape was definitely in keeping with the spirit of Shakespeare's works. Once Ophelia was safely lodged in the nunnery, though, the story seemed to me to take a weird turn and sort of amble off on a side road filled with deep psychological and religious brambles that try to explicate the sources of all Ophelia's perceived failings at Elsinore.  Although it turned out ok, it was just "ok."

To get back to my original premise, it must be hard to take someone else's work and expand it (as Klein did) or link to it in your own story (as Donnelly did with A Northern Light). On the one hand (Klein), there's a risk that audiences won't agree with your interpretations of the original events and characters, and that they won't like your additions. On the other hand (Donnelly), there's the possibility that the original story will seem sort of "tacked on" without enough relevance to the story at hand (I really felt Donnelly could have told the story of A Northern Light without trying to drag Grace Brown back in every few chapters - the link seemed really contrived to me). It must be much harder than trying to create an original story, where you have complete control over everything.

A Mixed Reaction

(Sorry, this will have lots of spoilers.)

Somewhere along the way, A Northern Light and I parted ways. At first, I loved it. The main character, Mattie, reminded me in many ways of my teen self. She loved words and writing, but her day-to-day life made it difficult, if not nearly impossible, to see how she could follow her dreams of studying literature and writing her stories. I liked the dilemma she was facing (and wrote about it in an earlier post). I liked the supporting characters of Weaver and Royal and Miss Willcox and Mattie's family.  I liked the slice-of-life glimpse into early 20th-century upstate New York, where the rich came to vacation in the mountains and the poor made a living by serving them.

But toward the end of the book, Jennifer Donnelly made several choices as a writer that I disagreed with and that left me with a bad taste in my mouth as far as this book is concerned. First, I think the turnaround of Emmie Hubbard was just too darn convenient. Emmie has been a -- well, I don't know what she has been. A victim? Royal's father has definitely been taking advantage of her for years. A prostitute? She's been accepting his "gifts" of the first, freshest milk, etc. for all those years. Whatever she is, she's definitely weak. I think Donnelly wants us to view her as a victim, but I can't see it entirely that way.  But, I digress - her turnaround.  At the end of the book, Weaver's mother has moved in with Emmie and, in the space of a week or so, has completely reformed Emmie, so that she is clean and respectable and able to provide for her children. I don't buy it. For one thing, if Weaver's mother has been living across the road from Emmie all these years (and it came as sort of a surprise to me when that was revealed at the end of the book), and if she's such a good influence, and if everyone in the area knew what was going on with Emmie and Royal's father, and if she thought Emmie was being wronged - then why didn't she do anything about it before???? I think it's because it ties in to something else that bothered me about the book - the way Donnelly wanted us to feel about Royal.

I'll admit I've changed my mind about having Mattie get together with Royal since my previous post. I really don't think they would be compatible. She is attracted to him because he's good-looking and because she thinks he is attracted to her, despite her plain and bookish self. She doesn't really care for him or have anything in common with him and isn't really interested in the things he cares about, so for them to marry would definitely be a mistake.

However, I think Donnelly wants to push all the blame for this failed relationship onto Royal. The reason he wants to marry Mattie is because he sees the opportunity to build a farm "empire." He doesn't love her or care about her interest in books. The two things that eventually make Mattie decide to dump him are that he is going to pay the back taxes on Emmie's land so he can have it (which means Emmie will be homeless) and that he brings Mattie a used cookbook for a birthday present. Although she doesn't say so, I imagine that Donnelly wants us to say, "The nerve of the guy!" and write him off as a jerk. Well, I refuse to do that.

What's wrong with Royal wanting to get Emmie's land? She hasn't been meeting her responsibilities for years, either for paying her taxes or for taking care of her kids (they regularly come to Mattie's family's house to eat). He wants to take the land and make it productive. Then add to that the fact that his father has been having a long-standing affair with Emmie, and Royal sees his chance to get her out of their lives. I totally understand his motivation, and don't see it as being particularly ignoble. Yet Donnelly wants us to see him as selfish and grasping, willing to turn a mother out on the streets. And she even has Weaver's mama step in and straighten Emmie out so Emmie's not a bad mother anymore. I just didn't like that whole bit.

Another thing I didn't like was making Royal into a jerk for giving Mattie the used cookbook for her birthday. When she sees the gift and knows it is a book, she gets her hopes up, only to have them dashed. The way it comes across in the story, that's the worst thing a guy can do - be so insensitive to his girl's feelings and so unaware of her desires. Like the "right" guy for a girl is going to be perfectly in tune with her and understand exactly what she wants. Come on. I bet most women out there have had a gift like the used cookbook. Maybe it's something you open and you think, "Why did he think I would like this??"  Or maybe it is a useful and totally impersonal household appliance. Yet the husband or boyfriend who gave the lame gift has enough other, good qualities that you'll let it pass. At least Royal thought about Mattie enough to remember her birthday.  He should get some points for that, instead of being turned into an insensitive lout. Let's face it - he's not the only problem in that relationship. Mattie didn't care about his dreams, either. She was thinking about Emily Dickinson instead of concentrating while he was talking about a new kind of corn.

As I said earlier, I don't have a problem with Mattie deciding she doesn't want to marry Royal, after all. That's actually a pretty good message for young women - don't marry the first guy who says you're pretty if you know you have nothing in common. What I didn't like was having Royal be villified for being that guy.

Finally, I didn't like having Mattie just leave at the end. All through the book, she's been so concerned about keeping the promise she made to her dying mother; at the end, she doesn't even think about that. She doesn't seem to care at all what will happen to her family, especially to Lou, the sister who seems to me to have some emotional problems following their mother's death.  Mattie's teacher once told her, "You are many things, Mattie Gokey, but selfish is not one of them." I disagree.

What's a 21st-Century Feminist to Do?

I'm really enjoying A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly. Really, really enjoying it. I'm so glad I had that moment of weakness in the bookstore that led to buying it.

I'm about halfway through, and I find myself with a bit of a dilemma. I predict that the main character, Mattie, is going to have a choice to make at the end. She loves words and writing and wants to go to college, something that not many young women in the early 20th century managed to do. On the other hand, she is being courted by Royal Loomis, and she is liking it.  However, I'm afraid those two paths for her future are, unfortunately, mutually exclusive. As Mattie said,

Miss Wilcox had books but no family. Minnie had a family now, but those babies would keep her from reading for a good long time. Some people, like my aunt Josie and Alvah Dunning the hermit, had neither love nor books. Nobody I knew had both.

Maybe I'll be wrong, and Mattie will get to be the person who has both. But somehow I don't think the ending will be that easy.  And that brings me to my dilemma: which do I think Mattie should choose, love or books?

I find myself really hoping she will get together with Royal. He offers her something she doesn't have in her own family - stability. Since Mattie's mother died, her family has really struggled financially, and her father is distant and angry all the time. Royal seems like a steady, hard working guy who would always provide for Mattie.  Even as I write that, a little voice in the back of my head keeps saying, "But he doesn't respect her love of learning. They don't have enough in common to have a good relationship." Probably so. I keep falling into that same old trap girls have fallen into for centuries: "OK, so he's not perfect now, but he'll learn to respect the things that matter to her." Uh-huh.

So, she rejects Royal and finds a way to go to college. That would be the more 21st-century thing to do. Who says a woman needs a relationship to define who she is? Mattie can be true to her self and to her talents and not let anything stand between her and her dreams. Though giving up her chance with Royal might be hard in the short run, she will probably eventually find love with someone who is more in tune with her intellectually.  If she married Royal, she would be stuck in a life of drudgery on his farm, and he shows some signs of being a little rigid in his attitudes. Why should she sacrifice her own dreams to live his dreams? I can't let the old romantic fairy tale of love cloud the reality of her life. She's better off without Royal.

Yet, the enlightened and liberated professional woman I like to pretend I am seems to be losing out at this point to the romantic reared on lots of "happily ever after" stories.

I don't know how it's going to turn out - and I am absolutely resisting the strong urge I feel to flip ahead and see!

A Sharp Tongue or a Soft Answer

There's a saying on the marquee of a church that I pass frequently that reads, "A sharp tongue may cut your own throat." As I read The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent, I couldn't help thinking of that saying, because apparently the main reason Martha Carrier was imprisoned and hanged as a witch was because she had a sharp tongue. 

Everyone, from family members to neighbors, was a target for that tongue. Most people probably just let it roll off their backs, labeling Martha as an unpleasant person you shouldn't cross. However, there were some who took her comments more personally, and, in an atmosphere charged with suspicion and fear, they saw their chance to make Martha pay for that sharp tongue.

Am I saying that Martha was wrong to speak her mind? Not necessarily. Her sister, Mary, who is portrayed as being as gentle as Martha is harsh, was also arrested and spent months in jail (though she wasn't hanged). And I'll admit - there are times when something negative really ought to be said. "I'm not going to let you lie and trick my son into marriage." "Your writing is not up to standard." "You're not getting enough done." "Yes, that dress makes you look fat." The trick is, how can we say those things without creating enemies, as Martha did?

When I used to teach interpersonal communication, one of the concepts I liked and emphasized in class was rhetorical sensitivity.  Put simply, rhetorical sensitivity is the ability to look at a situation and to shape a message to meet the needs of the speaker and the listener in a way that will meet those needs (as much as possible) and maintain a relationship. Martha's responses usually met her needs only. Maybe she didn't care about the relationship. I get that; there are a couple of people at work who really bug me, and I don't care if they like me or not. However, I understand that I'm going to have to live with these people. Even if I wish they would get another job, it's probably not going to happen. I have to work with them, and if I antagonize them, working with them is going to be all that much harder.

How much truer would that be in a frontier community? No one could be completely self-sufficient. Like it or not, Martha was part of a community, and when she refused to make herself a part, the community turned on her and her family.

It's sad. I don't think Martha was a bad person, and the characters she sparred with were pretty despicable.  But the circumstances gave them power, and one thing despicable people in power will do is dispose of their enemies.

There's a lot of wisdom in Proverbs 15:1 - "A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger." (KJV)

Notes from a Reading Binge

I don't very often go on a reading jag, where I pretty much ignore all but the most essential duties (like being sure the family is fed). But from about Thursday until Saturday afternoon, I was totally caught up in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games series. I finished The Hunger Games on Thursday and went immediately into Catching Fire Friday morning, finishing late yesterday afternoon in time to cook something decent for supper (after throwing sandwiches on plates for lunch, ha ha).

I had several things I wanted to write about while reading, so instead of trying to tie it all into one coherent post, I'm going to stick together several small segments.

Katniss "Not Dynamic," Teen Says

When my son was first learning to read in kindergarten, I told myself I was going to be a mom who was on top of it all and keep ahead of what he was reading so we could talk about anything that might be challenging or questionable.  Ha.  I bet you can imagine how long THAT lasted.  He outstripped me on the Harry Potter series by the time he was in second grade.  I still try to read some of the things he's read, more now to be able to keep my finger on the pulse of young adult literature and culture than to keep my thumb on him (so to speak).  Every now and then, we do talk about those common things we've read.

For example, this morning on the way home from church, I asked him if he thought there was a plan in place all along to put Katniss in the Hunger Games to turn her into a symbol (more on that later). We shared perspectives on that for a moment, then he said, "Katniss wasn't a dynamic character."  Interesting comment to be coming from the mouth of a 14-year-old boy, so I asked what he meant.  He went on to explain that she didn't change much (I guess he DOES pay attention in his English class!).  Then he retreated back into the solitude of his iPod, so I'm left to ponder the validity of his statement on my own.

He has a point.  On the surface, some of the things Katniss does seem to be from unselfish motives, like volunteering to take Prim's place in the initial reaping.  But in reading her thoughts about everything that happens to her, I believe she's got a pretty self-centered outlook on the world.  When you get right down to it, the reason she doesn't want Prim in the reaping is because she herself couldn't stand the thought of her frail little sister being killed in the arena.  Ok, that's a good place for a character to start at the beginning of a trilogy.

(WARNING - Spoilers abound below!)

But while I was reading the conclusion of Catching Fire, I thought it seemed like Katniss was angrier about being used for the plan without anyone telling her than she was concerned with whether the plan was going to help the terrible life condition of the people in the various districts (which she had witnessed on her victory tour).  She says she thinks she hates Peeta for fulfilling his mission to keep her alive, and you get the sense it's because she feels that she failed in her mission to keep him alive (even though they believe he is still alive at the end of the book, he's most likely in the hands of the Capitol and may not have long to live).  She decides she's going to die from spite as a last, desperate way to try to spare him.  That seems to cheapen the sacrifices Peeta made for her.  A more mature character would possibly say, "Ok, you thought the cause and my role in it were important enough to sacrifice your life....the least I can do is make sure you don't die in vain."

I can't help making comparisons to Harry Potter, who was also the "chosen one" around which a rebellion of sorts centered.  Harry went through his whiny phase in Order of the Phoenix, but by the last two books, he was ready to take his place in the fight.  In all fairness to Katniss, Catching Fire is only the second book of three, so maybe in the third book, she will realize this thing is bigger than herself (to fall back on a cliche') and play her required role.  I'm betting she will, with typical Katniss intensity.

Well, that took more room than I thought it would, so I think I'll break this note into a short series of posts over the next few days.  Don't want this to turn into a dissertation.

Settling...In a Specific Case

I just finished Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring last night, and I couldn't help thinking of the recent "self-help" book for women, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb.  Now, I haven't read Gottlieb's book, and from the reviews I've read, I believe I wouldn't necessarily agree with what she argues in the book.  But in the specific case of Griet, I think "settling" was probably a mighty good choice.

(Sorry - there just have to be spoilers in this discussion.)

 In this imaginative account of the backstory for Vermeer's painting, Griet, the girl in the painting, develops a strong attraction to Vermeer.  I think a huge part of the attraction is that he represents a world Griet treasures, yet can't be part of in her actual life. I don't mean that he's of the upper class and (on the surface) wealthy; it's the artist's eye that appeals to her, looking at clouds and seeing ALL the colors that are there instead of just mushing them all together and calling them white.  She appreciates the way he orders the elements that go into the paintings to lead people to look at them in just the right way.  She understands that when he looks at something, he doesn't just see the surface of it, but what the "truth" of it is (maybe I'm exaggerating a little there).

On the other hand, she always seems to notice the blood residue around Pieter's fingernails and the smell of meat that clings to him, even when he's not at the meat stall.  It bothers her that he doesn't pay attention to those details.   Although in the end, she chooses to marry Pieter, I think if circumstances had been different and had allowed for it, she would have chosen Vermeer in a heartbeat. 

That would have been a mistake.

I say that because of respect. As I was reading the final portions of the book, when Vermeer was painting her portrait, I was completely annoyed with him because he had so little respect for Griet.  He didn't care that keeping the fact that he was doing the painting a secret made Griet's life with the other women in the household miserable.  (Actually, that started much earlier, when he ordered her to help him with grinding the paints.)  Because he didn't want to have to put up with the flack he would catch from his wife, he left the entire burden on Griet to bear - not just the burden of the truth, but the burden of what the wife and the other maid feared because they didn't know the truth.  I really disliked him when he gave Griet no choice about the earrings. So what if she had to go through the pain of piercing her ears herself? So what if wearing his wife's earrings would  threaten Griet's economic security and that of her family? Vermeer had no concern other than that he wanted to look at the earrings actually in her ear so he could paint the "truth."  He even made her pierce the other ear - the one that wouldn't even be seen in the painting - and wear both earrings so it would be "true."  And once the painting was finished, Griet felt his fascination with her was finished, as well.  She was really no different from the jewelry box or the blue table rug that were part of the set pieces in other paintings.

Pieter, though, respected Griet enough to let her keep her secrets. Sure, marrying him meant moving into that patriarchal system that marriage has always been, where he would be the dominant party.  Yet, in the specifics of this marriage, I get the sense that Pieter thinks of Griet as his partner in the enterprise. She may be cutting up bloody sides of beef rather than sitting for a painting, but with Pieter, what she wants and what she thinks matter.

So, how does this relate to "settling"?  Some people I know argue that a person should never give up passion.  They think it is most important in a relationship to be "soulmates" who understand each other and who value the same things.  "Settling" for less than that, they say, is to do yourself a grave disservice. Yet I think if Griet had kept trying to maintain the relationship with Vermeer (if she had the option - Catharina probably wasn't going to give her the choice), she would have been miserable throughout her life.  There might have been moments of pleasure - those fleeting times when Vermeer actually seemed to notice and appreciate her -- but they probably would have been few and far between.  By "settling" for Pieter, Griet actually opened up the world for herself.  She became a respected businesswoman with the right to refuse to serve people who were rude to her.  She had her own family and she helped provide for them.  Pieter allowed her the privacy of her past and her thoughts without prying into everything and without having to know the entire "truth" of her - he was satisfied with the part that was useful for life.  Pieter wouldn't have made Griet wear the second earring.

I'm not in favor of settling just for the sake of having someone.  But when the most important factors like basic respect and an attitude of love and equality fall into place, why sweat the small details?  Does the bloodstain around his fingernails really matter THAT much?

In Celebration of "Man Camping"

It's spring break week around these parts, and last night, my 14-year-old son invited a couple of friends over for what he called "man camping." That means the three of them took a tent to the creek bottoms that run through our field (less than a quarter-mile from the house) and spent the evening running around in the dark shooting at each other with soft-pellet air rifles.

My husband and I were betting these three boys wouldn't last the night in weather that hovered around 40 degrees, especially once the coyotes started yipping (they can sound like they are right on top of you, even if they are halfway across the field). We were wrong. After about 9:00 last night, we didn't see the boys again until 7:15 this morning when they came to the house for a "man breakfast" (cooked by a woman, of course - LOL). They were in high spirits. Apparently they had a great time. They even cooked their own supper over a campfire - hot dogs, hot chocolate mixed with instant coffee, and potatoes and onions fried in a cast-iron skillet. Supper was served about the time my husband went down to check on them for the last time, and he said the potato dish was hideous - the potatoes were barely cooked, and the whole dish was so heavy with pepper he couldn't taste anything else. But the guys were talking this morning about how great those potatoes and onions were. I guess independence is the best sauce.

I'm telling about the "man camping" because it came together in my mind with the book I just finished reading, Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson.  The protagonist of Anderson's book is 14-year-old Mattie Clark, who starts out with the self-centered, tunnel vision attitude of many a modern teen (maybe a little too close to modern teens, but more on that later).  Mattie lives in Philadelphia, which in 1793 was the capital of the new United States. The city is suffering through an unbearably hot, unbearably long summer.  But as summer drags on, a new threat emerges; people begin to fall ill with the dreaded yellow fever and to die, in staggering numbers.

I don't want to give spoilers here, so I'll just say Mattie's family -- and Mattie herself -- are touched by the fever.  Mattie faces some pretty tough circumstances, and at one point she is given a choice: she can go to the orphan home, where she may have to work hard but at least will have someone to take care of her, or she can go back home, where there are no guarantees of anything, including whether she will have another meal. (Ok, can't avoid a spoiler here - ARRGH) She chooses to go home, and the consequences of that choice force her to grow up. By the end of the book, Mattie is confident, competent, and comfortable in the role she's taken on.

What does this have to do with "man camping"? Stepping back. Sometimes we adults complain about how childish teenagers are, about how self-centered they are, about how they can't or won't do anything for themselves except recharge their iPods.  But maybe we are part of the problem.  How often do we step back and let our teens work things out on their own - even if they end up with inedible potatoes? Do we allow them the opportunities they need to find their own solutions, and to develop the confidence that comes with finding it?  Or do we hover over their shoulders, sharing our wisdom, until finally we see they are about to fail (by our standards) and step in to "save" the situation, leaving the teen feeling frustrated and like it's not worth trying?

I'm not advocating a completely laissez-faire approach to parenting teens - that would be dangerous in many ways! However, I think we have to recognize the opportunities that will give kids the chance to try their wings in an environment that is low-risk enough that they won't be hurt too much if things don't work out, but that they perceive as high-risk enough that they feel pretty good about getting through it.  For our family, "man camping" was a good opportunity. Hopefully, we can find other ways to help our kids make the transition Mattie made - without having to suffer through a dangerous plague!

A couple of notes: I said above that Mattie seemed awfully "modern" for the heroine of a historical novel. I'm not sure where I stand on that. I've not encountered other teen characters in historical novels who had the sort of disrespectful attitude and antagonism toward her mother that Mattie had at the beginning of the book, but....that doesn't mean teens in past ages didn't have those attitudes. Maybe it was the language, the way Anderson conveyed those attitudes, that seemed a little too modern.

Note #2: Blogger now offers the ability to include a link to Amazon to purchase the book. There's a possibility, I guess, that some reader of this blog might be so moved by my discussion of a book that they would be simply burning to buy the book, and I'll help make it easier for them.  You should know that I am not an Amazon Associate and will not receive any compensation if you do click on the link.

The Literary Equivalent of a Casserole

When I was a teen during the 70s, and Crock-pots were new, there was a casserole recipe for the slow cooker that was featured at just about every family get-together for a while. The casserole was called Panama Johnny Hash, and it featured a long list of tasty ingredients: browned ground beef, cheese, several "cream of" soups, noodles, onions, and probably some other things I've forgotten. Sounds pretty good, huh? The problem is, once all those good things were put together, Panama Johnny Hash was really sort of nondescript, with no one flavor that really stood out and gave the dish character.

As I drew near the end of Jacqueline Kelly's book, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, I came to think of it as the Panama Johnny Hash of the books I've read lately. The book, which is a 2010 Newberry Honor book, has a lot of good ingredients: a spunky heroine, an interesting setting (both in terms of time and place), some important themes (more on that later), some beautiful descriptive passages, some moments that really ring true with rural life. However, if I'm going to be honest, I have to say nothing about this book rose from the mix and stood out in my mind as THE distinctive ingredient. I was left feeling unsatisfied, and as is my manner, I want to try to figure out why.

I guess the thing that bothers me most is that I can't identify the overall message of the book. Maybe this is a false notion, but I feel that when a reader has invested the amount of time it takes to read a book (I'm talking a serious book, here, not one of those pulp novels meant for nothing but entertainment), he or she should be able to bring away some nugget of truth about life. I have a feeling Ms. Kelly wanted the "truth nuggest" for this book to be something about how limited the life choices for girls used to be (see? I can't even put into a sentence what that "something" is). Calpurnia is not interested in the traditional "girl" activities; she wants to be a scientist like her grandfather. Yet at the end of the book, we are left wondering just what Calpurnia is going to do. (Spoilers!) On Christmas Eve, her parents give her a book called The Science of Housewifery, and she is crushed.

"...there was no new century for me, no new life for this girl. My life sentence had been delivered by my parents. There was no pardon or parole. No aid from any corner. Not from Granddaddy, not from anybody....Great fatigue washed over me like a tidal wave, drowning my anger. I was too tired to fight anymore."

Later, on New Year's Eve, she makes a list of the things she wants to see in her life, but even as she reads them to the rest of the family, she felt "vaguely melancholy." The next morning, though, there's snow -- a very unusual sight in that part of Texas -- and Calpurnia runs out into it, and concludes

"My feet were turning into blocks of ice, and I realized I was exhausted...It was the first morning of the first day of the new century. Snow blanketed the ground. Anything was possible."

So....does that mean she's not too tired to fight anymore? Does that means she's going to keep fighting against the social roles that tighten around her like a corset? Probably. But I can't be sure. That one sentence - "Anything was possible" - is not enough, mixed in with the context of observing a coyote in the snow, and wondering about the finches, and having cold feet, and seeing her grandfather in the window. If that was meant to be THE message, it just blends in to everything else, like the melted cheese in Panama Johnny Hash.

There are other instances of the same kind of thing. The word "evolution" in the title leads me to believe Callie is going to undergo some kind of change and become something new and better. I don't really think that happens, unless it hinges on that "Anything was possible" sentence. The word also makes me think there is going to be some link to Darwin's theory of evolution. Sure, Calpurnia's grandfather teaches her about "survival of the fittest" and "natural selection." Sure, every chapter begins with a short epigraph from Darwin's Origin of the Species. But for most of those epigraphs, I didn't see a connection to the content of the chapter; it was more like the epigraph was put there to be Meaningful (if you know what I mean).

My biggest problem is that this book couldn't seem to decide what it wanted to be. Is it a book about a girl who chafes against the restrictions of late 19th-century life and wants to be a scientist? Sort of. But then there are several chapters that have nothing to do with that theme. Several chapters make me think the book wants to be one of those funny collections of stories about a quirky Southern family. Some parts make me think the book wants to be about growing up and realizing you won't be living in the same house forever and wanting to hold on to that. Some parts make me think the book wants to be about a girl who comes to have a close relationship with her grandfather. (Actually, that's the "flavor" that stands out most to me.) Any one of those themes is great, but having all of them in there together really makes it hard for one to predominate and give the book its character.

I read something last week that said everything in a book should support and underscore the theme. Anything that doesn't contribute in some way to conveying the message of the book should be left out. I think that's why I'm not satisfied with Kelly's book. There's so much, so many competing flavors, that I'm left feeling full, but without any real sense of what it was I ate.

This should be required reading....

(Note: This entry will be rife with spoilers!)

When I was a teenager, I ordered a paperback copy of a little novel called I Want to Keep My Baby through the Scholastic book orders. It was about a teen girl who got pregnant and whose teen boyfriend refused to marry her. She decided to keep the baby and raise it on her own. I think the reason I bought it was because I was curious about sex, and reading about it in a book (although I don't remember there being very much, ha ha) was preferable to talking about it with my parents.

Well, that was a long time ago, and the world has changed a lot, but some things haven't changed. Teens are still curious about sex, and they generally don't want to talk to their parents about it. And they don't have to - messages about sex are everywhere in popular culture. Watch a half-hour of music videos, in any genre -- flip through the ads and articles in popular magazines -- read the books at the top of the young adult list -- you'll see plenty about sex, and most of it is much more explicit than anything in I Want to Keep My Baby. However, there's one thing you don't see a lot of, and that's consequences of sex.

That's why I say Ann Turnbull's fine historical novel, Alice in Love and War, should be required reading, at least for teen girls. Alice is one of them, albeit living 300+ years ago. She feels stifled and trapped on the farm owned by her aunt and uncle, who adopted her when her father died. She's 16 years old, old enough to be recognized as a sexual being (including by her uncle, who has recently begun to make advances toward her). She longs for escape and love. Both present themselves in the form of Robin, a handsome, flirting young soldier with the Cavilier army (this is during the English Civil War). Alice falls hard for Robin, and provoked by the fear that he will be leaving soon when the army moves on, she gives her virginity to him in a clandestine meeting in an abandoned shepherd's hut.

Part of Alice knows she shouldn't have done it, but she justifies her decision by convincing herself that Robin loves her - the fact that he wants to make love to her proves that, doesn't it? When the army is ready to move on, she begs Robin to take her with him, and he does. For the next several months, Alice follows the army. She is very lonely, even though she makes friends; she has little time to be with Robin -- except at night, when he always manages to find a place where the two of them can be together. Just before the army is going on leave for winter, Alice discovers she is pregnant. When she tells Robin, he evades her insistence that he must marry her, and when she wakes the next morning, he's gone. He's left her a note and some money, but no mention of marriage or of a way she can contact him.

Long story short, Alice goes through the pain and heartbreak of miscarrying the baby. When Robin does return in the spring, Alice has to seek him out and confront him, at which time he confesses that he is already married and had, in fact, gone home for the birth of his second child with his wife. Alice has made friends among the wives of other soldiers, so she remains with the army. Eventually, however, her friends are killed and she manages to find refuge in a small village nearby. There she meets a Parliamentary soldier who is severely wounded, and she helps nurse him back to health. As she sits by his bed and reads to him and talks to him, she falls in love with him, but she fears a godly man like Jem will never have anything to do with a woman with her history. When Jem returns to the army, they continue a correspondence, and eventually he asks her to marry him. Alice gets a happy ending, after all.

I think there are so many messages of value in this story for young women. Yes, one of them is that sex is a pleasurable thing that draws people together. However, the story also brings home the message that if the situation surrounding the sex is not right, the worry and insecurity and shame outweigh any pleasure. From the first time Alice slept with Robin, she was worried - about losing him, about the perceptions of other people, about becoming pregnant. She constantly has to reassure herself that he loves her, drawing on any little sign she can muster - or manufacture. Her married friends and their intimate knowledge of their husbands (and I mean "intimate" in the sense of knowing something deeply, not just sexually) contrasts sharply with the fact that Alice knows almost nothing about Robin, and she feels that lack. She tells herself that Robin takes care of her, but looking at it from the outside, we can see that he leaves her to fend for herself during the day, reappearing each night to take her somewhere that they can be together - even if that place is shared with a dozen other couples. There's no getting around it - Alice made a mistake, and even when she won't admit it to herself, she knows it.

I'm glad Turnbull redeemed Alice in the end, though, and gave us a picture of a positive courtship. Through the sickbed conversations and their letters, Alice and Jem come to know each other as people long before the relationship becomes a sexual one. Wait, I take that back. Alice feels herself attracted to Jem fairly early in their relationship, and I'm sure the same is true of Jem. But they don't allow that attraction to get out of control and to dominate the relationship. Their sexual attraction to each other is only one facet of their entire, healthy relationship. On their wedding night, Alice "felt not only passionate but also safe and certain in a way she had never felt with Robin."

In my humble opinion, that's the message teens need to get about sex. Parents and teachers and preachers may say it over and over, but I think sometimes a story may be more effective in allowing teens to reach their own conclusions. And that's why I think this book ought to be required reading.

I Meet Another "Strong" Woman

Last night, I finally finished reading The Tall Woman by Wilma Dykeman. It's taken me an unreasonably long time to finish the book, especially when you consider that it is my favorite genre - historical fiction set in the United States during the nineteenth century. More than that, it's about a topic that I enjoy reading - the life of an ordinary woman facing challenging circumstances. I'll talk more later about why I think it took me so long to read the book, but first I want to celebrate another "strong" woman - Lydia McQueen.

(spoiler alert!)

The book covers Lydia's life from when she first marries Mark McQueen until she dies of typhoid fever at age 50. Yes! She dies! I haven't read very many books in which the main character dies at the end. But her dying actually gives the author a chance to pull together what it was that made Lydia strong. Lydia was the heart of her community. When a woman needed help with the birth of a baby, Lydia would go to help. When people needed health care of any kind, Lydia would go and do whatever she could to help. If people needed food, or clothes, Lydia would help. More than just being charitable, though, Lydia was the driving force that brought education to the community. She used a gift entrusted to her by the town's alcoholic doctor to buy land to start the school, and later, when the school is burned by an arsonist, she is not above a little blackmail of the town's most powerful man (who is the book's villain) in order to get a replacement school.

It's not just her public face that makes Lydia strong, however. She faces a string of horrendous challenges in her personal life. Her mother is abducted and terrorized by "outriders" in the waning days of the Civil War, leaving her mentally broken. Lydia has a difficult birth with her first child, and since the doctor is too drunk to come help her, her aunt delivers the boy using the doctor's forceps. The boy suffers birth injury, making him slow to develop mentally and physically. Later, the boy, who is special to Lydia, dies of pneumonia. Lydia's husband, Mark, comes back from fighting in the Civil War full of hatred brought on by months in Andersonville prison. The only thing that eases his bitterness is a year-long trip out West, during which Lydia has complete responsibility for the upkeep of their farm and their young family. No matter how you define "strong," Lydia meets that definition.

So, why did it take me so long to read this book? Not to sound arrogant, but I think Wilma Dykeman kind of lost sight of the story once in a while and veered off into Lydia-worship (if that makes any sense). You know, I can't really identify Lydia's character flaw. Everybody has at least one. Hannah Fowler was socially awkward and would do anything to avoid having to be around a lot of people for any period of time. Kate in The Perilous Gard is a little too nosy for her own good and suffers an inferiority complex when it comes to her sister. Susanna in No Shame, No Fear and Forged in the Fire prematurely jumps to conclusions and clings to stubborn pride that very nearly costs her a relationship with the love of her life. But Lydia McQueen doesn't seem to have any flaws - she's always patient and giving, she's always a champion of education, she's always fair-minded in recognizing her prejudices and setting them aside. On the other hand, some other characters in the book are sort of cardboard cut-offs for the "dark side." Hamilton Nelson, the villain, doesn't seem to have any redeeming qualities; it makes you wonder how he got to be the wealthiest and most powerful man in town.

Another thing that bugged me was that the narrative sort of meandered all over the place. I tend to like plots that are tight and knit together well. That doesn't mean everything has to be really simple-minded and foreshadowed early on or I don't like the book. But I think an author can get too many threads going at once and end up with a tangled mess (to carry the metaphor on through). In this book, Dykeman is juggling the threads of the mystery of who the outriders were who attacked Lydia's family, the struggle to get the school, the need to heal Mark from the legacy of hatred the war left in him, the uneasy relationship between Lydia and Hamilton Nelson, the unfair treatment by the community of the isolated Bludsoe family -- those are the major plotlines I can think of. Then, of course, there are a number of subplots going on as well. That's a lot to manage. I guess I just felt that sometimes we the readers were being strung along on something that then is tied up neatly and quickly at the end.

That's not to say there weren't things I didn't like about the book. One of my favorites is the part when Lydia develops an admiration for a red-tailed hawk that is raiding her flock of chickens. She hopes that Mark won't kill the bird, which seems to her to symbolize the very freedom and pride of the natural world. Eventually, though, Mark does kill the hawk, and instead of flying into an irrational frenzy (which I'm afraid I might do), she doesn't say a word to him about it. It wouldn't do any good, and she couldn't explain to him why she felt that way. However, on her deathbed, when she's delirious with fever and saying her last words to Mark, she remembers the hawk and tells him, "I was always sorry we killed that red-tailed hawk." Some things just stay with you, buried deep under daily life, but not forgotten.

What's a "Strong" Woman, Anyway?

It's funny how themes in current events and themes in my reading will sometimes wind themselves together. There's been so much talk in the news lately about "strong" women and feminism and the "glass ceiling" since John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. It just so happens that I've recently finished reading books with what could safely be described as "strong" women. In two cases, I would agree wholeheartedly; in the last case, I would describe the female protagonist as a bully, just another pit bull with lipstick.

The three books in question are Hannah Fowler by Janice Holt Giles, Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley, and Boone's Lick by Larry McMurtry. The only thing all three books have in common is a female protagonist who faces an overwhelmingly difficult situation. Hannah is kidnapped by maurading Indians, but manages to escape and make her way home, despite the fact that she's several months pregnant. Bella discovers a plot to start a war that will lead to the death of her best friend from childhood, and she sets off alone to the neighboring enemy country to warn him and to try to avert the war. Mary Margaret (in Boone's Lick) takes a wagonload of children across the American West to track down her wayward husband, braving flooded rivers, Indian attacks, and cold weather. No doubt about it -- all three of these characters had to be physically strong and mentally tough to get through the challenges they faced.

So, your question probably is....who's the bully? It's Mary Margaret. I suppose McMurtry gave her characteristics that are supposed to prove how "strong" she is. She's stubborn to the point of being obnoxious. She's single-minded and unrelenting in her pursuit of finding her husband, even if it means dragging her kids across the northern Great Plains in early winter. She's bossy, even hateful at times, to Seth, her husband's brother, who has stayed with her all these years while her husband is off starting several other families with Indian women. She belittles him, she contradicts him, she won't even let him drive the wagon. Perhaps McMurtry wants us to see her as "strong," but I see her as mean-spirited and selfish -- a bully, or a pit bull in lipstick.

Mary Margaret looks even worse when compared to Hannah and Bella. While Mary Margaret bullies Seth, Bella forgives Prince Julian for ignoring her -- his best friend -- when he sees her (a common peasant) while he's out on the town with his highborn friends, an act that hurts her deeply. Her love for him motivates her to carry out a plan to save his life that puts her in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable -- and possibly dangerous -- position, even though she believes she's nothing to him. And while Mary Margaret is driven to find her husband so she can finally get control of his role in her life, Hannah is driven to travel miles of rough territory without rest by her love for Tice (her husband) and her baby Janie. At one point, Hannah wants to get a drink from a creek, but she recognizes that if she gets off the horse she stole from the Indians, she would never be able to get back on in her weak condition. So she does without water until she gets back to a neighbor's house. Now, that's strength -- to deny yourself what you want immediately, and maybe need desperately, for the long-term good of others and yourself. Of course, both Hannah and Bella benefit from their sacrifices as well, but the way they are written makes it clear that for both characters, self-interest takes a back seat.

I guess what has me bothered by all this is that I'm afraid a "strong woman" is going to be narrowly defined in the Mary Margaret/"pit bull with lipstick" mode. I'm afraid we aren't going to value the type of strength Hannah and Bella show, because it sometimes looks like weakness. But what kind of world are we going to have if everyone is a Mary Margaret?