A Literacy Moment: Courtesy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Every now and then, I come across a literacy moment that is too good to simply gloss over while reading.  I may not have something specific to say about it, but as the moments accumulate, a pattern might emerge.  I have been re-reading the Harry Potter books from the beginning--slowly, and without a particular purpose--and I cam across this little gem, well-worth sharing!:

     "Dangerous?" said Harry, laughing.  "Come off it, how could it be dangerous?"
     "You'd be surprised," said Ron, who was looking apprehensively at the book.  "Some of the books the Ministry's confiscated--Dad's told me--there was one that burned your eyes out.  And everyone who read Sonnets of a SOrcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives.  And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading!  You just had to wander aroud with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed.  And--"
     "All right, I've got the point," said Harry.  (230-231)

And it is, in fact, a dangerous book capable of posession, definitely representative of a sort of subtext in Harry Potter about the dangers of books--an interesting subtexts, given some parental fears about the series, and also given their genre (children's lit first, school story second).  The subtext is also interesting because literacy is literally everywhere in the novels.  And where there is literacy, apparently, one will find dangerous books.  That burn out your eyes.  Or make you wish your eyes had been burned out, most likely!

Why I like The Hunger Games (Pt 2): Katniss

Starting with the main character is as good a place as any, and is perhaps an obvious place to start.  But let me say that I'm not in love with Katniss.  I don't relate to her particularly well, and I think that the first-person, present-tense narrative keeps the reader at arm's length in a counter-intuitive sort of way, preventing the reader from getting in her head.  But all of this is why the construction of her character is so intriguing to me.

First, her personality.  I have this one figured out.  She's an ISTJ to my INFP.  From Wikipedia:

ISTJs are faithful, logical, organized, sensible, and earnest traditionalists who enjoy keeping their lives and environments well-regulated. Typically reserved and serious individuals, they earn success through their thoroughness and extraordinary dependability. They are capable of shutting out distractions in order to take a practical, logical approach to their endeavors, and are able to make the tough decisions that other types avoid. Realistic and responsible, ISTJs are often seen as worker bees striving steadily toward their goals. They take special joy in maintaining institutions and are often highly religious. Despite their dependability and good intentions, however, ISTJs can experience difficulty in understanding and responding to the emotional needs of others. 

Although they often focus on their internal world, ISTJs prefer dealing with the present and the factual. They are detail-oriented and weigh various options when making decisions, although they generally stick to the conventional. ISTJs are well-prepared for eventualities and have a good understanding of most situations. They believe in practical objectives, and they value traditions and loyalty.

If I am slightly uncomfortable with analyzing a character according to the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, I am buoyed by Freudian analyses of characters, and by the very fact that, in this particular case, it makes so much sense!

So what does this mean?  In terms of the narrative voice, the emphasis in the ISTJ description on "the present and the factual" in conjunction with focus on the individual's "internal world" justifies the slightly irritating first person, present tense narration.  In fact, it's a little too neatly packaged. In terms of audience engagement, and I can only speak for myself, we have a character who is opposite from me in every possible way--except introversion.  So having figured out intuitively (INFP) why I can't find myself in the character, suddenly I can see it in concrete terms. Katniss resists introspection.  An INFP would reflect back--almost incessantly.  Katniss lives in her mind, but in the moment.  For whatever reason--personality or circumstances--she easily leaves the past behind (at least, when she is operating from her conscious mind--and trauma notwithstanding).  She is living in the moment--because she has to.  And because she lives in the moment, she survives--or, because she is a survivor, she knows to live in the moment.

Katniss is not a reader.  Literacy does not figure prominently into The Hunger Games (more on this later), but even in its absence, literacy is conspicuous.  In the children's/young adult genre, female characters are readers.  In the development of female characters, there seems to be an unspoken, unwritten, but understood rule that girls need smart characters who read to teach them that reading and being smart are okay.  The exceptional, very bright, slightly odd, female reader is such a commonplace motif as to make claims to the exceptionality of such a character hollow.  Consider, for example, the very mundane female protagonist of Cassandra Clare's Infernal Devices series.  Every now and then, the narrative shows Tessa with a book to remind the reader that her literacy is one of her distinguishing features, when otherwise, she is pretty bland.  So Katniss's very difference from these supposedly extraordinary female characters is refreshing.

So why do I like Katniss?

Although I am not particularly engaged by being able to relate to Katniss's personality--so different from my own--my own personality type causes me to read empathetically (I'm hammering the Meyers-Briggs, but it's sort of fun from a "rhetoric of reading" standpoint, because it can explain, to an extent, why certain readers engage with texts and characters the way we do!)  So I am sympathetic to Katniss's circumstances, and more sympathetic to her manipulation by those around her, when that comes to light in Catching Fire.  In fact, it was while reading Catching Fire that I really started to like the books and Katniss's character.

It is easy to understand Katniss's motivations, given what the reader knows about her character and her circumstances.  She is exactly what she should be, given what the reader knows.  And as a reader, I don't like to be unfairly manipulated by an author into feeling something I don't want to feel (as in The Giver), or thinking something that is untrue.  Katniss is satisfyingly well-constructed as a character.  And above all, what is predictable are her convictions.  There is a moment in book 3 when she votes in favor of "one last Hunger Games," and I wonder, as a reader, if this is an inconsistency in her character.  But then, I wonder whether that vote is sincere given the subsequent turn of events.

It her predictability (another ISTJ quality) as enacted in the novels that makes her vulnerable to manipulation--and having one's values subject one to manipulation is something an INFP can understand.  So there's a connection after all.  As a person of action rather than contemplation, Katniss acts from her convictions.  When she acts, she makes it count, as in volunteering for Prim in the Hunger Games, or survival in the games themselves.  Haymitch recognizes this trait throughout, and uses it for various purposes--most notably the revolutionary propaganda in book 3.

But finally, I come back to that narrative voice.  When the author's choice of a technique is so obvious as to register as a little bit wrong, there should be a definite reason for drawing attention to that choice.  I learned this from Robert Browning's verse, though Robert Frost has moments as well (Something there is that doesn't love a wall - one of the clunkiest lines in iambic pentameter).  As she moves through the events of the three novels, Katniss resists contemplation, even as she tries to work out what's happening to her.  She focuses on details rather than abstract concepts.  The narrative reinforces the sense of moving forward rather than looking backward, and does not give the reader advantages over the character's self-awareness, or lack thereof.  Rather, the reader experiences how baffling it is to be living one's own coming-of-age.  I can't speak to how it would have been to read this as a young adult.  I likely would have been more frustrated by the lack of introspection, because I wanted to figure out what was happening, or what had happened, and theorize about it.  I still do.  But looking at The Hunger Games, I can read the narrative, and live with the character, and think--yeah, it was exactly like that.  So at the end of the day, Katniss's narrative feels authentic.  And so does she.

Voyager: A Literate Friendship?

It is perhaps not surprising, after their initial encounter cleared up the misperceptions Lord John Grey has about Jamie's (and Highlanders') literacy (which might be read as synonymous for intelligence or capacity for rational thought), that the common ground that allows these two vastly different men to relate to one another is found in books.

Even after Grey puts Jamie in a position that compromises Grey's authority, and potentially compromises Jamie's integrity, and Jamie--not quite in response--breeches Grey's trust (and there are other issues concerning whether a captor has a right to further bind a captive via trust*), it is through books that they establish the normal--but highly abnormal--familiarity that borders on friendship:

They discussed matters of the prison, had a little conversation of books, and parted formally, but on good terms. (152)

The caveat "Grey did not mention gold" (152) points to use of common literate context as a diversionary, trust-building, and information-gathering tactic--chalk that one up to "uses of literacy"!

As the now-weekly conversation shifts to Jamie's experiences in French literary circles, it becomes a bit more theoretical, centering on the person of the author:

     Fraser smiled. “Oh, aye, Major. In fact, I was privileged to entertain Monsieur Arouet— Voltaire being his nom de plume, aye?— at my table, on more than one occasion.”
     “Really?” Grey cocked a brow in interest. “And is he as great a wit in person as with the pen?”
     “I couldna really say,” Fraser replied, tidily forking up a slice of mutton. “He seldom said anything at all, let alone much sparkling with wit. He only sat hunched over in his chair, watching everyone, wi’ his eyes rolling about from one to another. I shouldna be at all surprised to hear that things said at my dinner table later appeared on the stage, though fortunately I never encountered a parody of myself in his work.” He closed his eyes in momentary concentration, chewing his mutton. (153)

At this point, Jamie's invocation of Voltaire might be a diversionary tactic as well, since Jamie already knows of Grey's literacy snobbery.  So literacy functions as a potential plot device, on the one hand, and on the other hand, Jamie's display of his literary connections functions in the narrative as a commentary on the sociability of authors.  An unrelated point is Jamie's appreciation of the food, which Grey finds unacceptable, but which is choice compared with the prisoners' fare--an appreciation which borders on absurd when Jamie (implicitly) compares the mutton to French banquet fare (Again--consider the artfulness and subterfuge in Jamie's interaction with Grey.)

As Jamie continues to describe the habits of Voltaire, the reader gets a peek at the writer's art:

     “I have never seen Monsieur Arouet consume anything beyond a glass of water and a dry biscuit, no matter how lavish the occasion. He’s a weazened wee scrap of a man, ye ken, and a martyr to the indigestion.”
     “Indeed?” Grey was fascinated. “Perhaps that explains the cynicism of some of the sentiments I have seen expressed in his plays. Or do you not think that the character of an author shows in the construction of his work?”
     “Given some of the characters that I have seen appear in plays and novels, Major, I should think the author a bit depraved who drew them entirely from himself, no?”
     “I suppose that is so,” Grey answered, smiling at the thought of some of the more extreme fictional characters with whom he was acquainted. “Though if an author constructs these colorful personages from life, rather than from the depths of imagination, surely he must boast a most varied acquaintance!” (154)

Through discussion of literature, the two men leave behind their roles as prisoner and prison governor, and Jamie manages to court Grey's curiosity via his own literary knowledge.  In their commentary, the reader gets a portrait of the artist as introspective, dyspeptic (in the literal and figurative sense), and antisocial.  He practices the stereotypical "people-watching."  And the debate between Grey and Jamie as to the nature of the author's art and inspiration--from within or from without--is a kind of literary cliché, though presumably not for armchair critics in the 18th Century!  To take the cliché (an enjoyable cliché, mind you) a bit further, Jamie recounts that

“It was not Monsieur Arouet, but a colleague of his— a lady novelist— who remarked to me once that writing novels was a cannibal’s art, in which one often mixed small portions of one’s friends and one’s enemies together, seasoned them with imagination, and allowed the whole to stew together into a savory concoction.” (154)

This "author-as-cannibal" is a necessary transition into discussion of Robinson Crusoe, which Grey introduces as "a favorite of mine since boyhood" (154).  The remainder of their evening is neatly summarized:

The conversation turned then to romances, and the excitement of the tropics. It was very late indeed when Fraser returned to his cell, leaving Major Grey entertained, but no wiser concerning either the source or the disposition of the wanderer’s gold. (154)

The moment turns out rather pitiful.  From assuming a position of superiority, Grey has been caught unaware by the extent of Fraser's knowledge--a fact that Jamie uses in order to dominate and direct the conversation away from the subject Grey most wants (wanted?) to address--the matter of gold.  The scene is a reminder not to underestimate literacy--or shared literacy context--and the power it can give. The positions of the two men are equalized, and then Grey's authority effectively subverted.

What becomes a bit heartwrenching is Jamie's exploitation of Grey's naïveté--a naïveté he has exploited before, on the eve of a battle in the uprising (see Dragonfly in Amber, or Grey's reminiscence in Voyager).  Even given his authority, Grey has weaknesses--loneliness, and desire for intellectual companionship, quite apart from an appreciation for Jamie's attractiveness (at this point understated).  If one has the ability to feel pity for Grey given his authority, and specifically, to feel a pity centered specifically on his homosexuality**, it is sad to see that his affection for Jamie (which includes, but does not seem limited to, sexual attraction) begins with deception.  It is not unreasonable to expect that Jamie enjoyed the evening, but the narrative ("Fraser returned to his cell, leaving Major Grey entertained, but no wiser concerning either the source or the disposition of the wanderer’s gold") strongly suggests that he did not lose himself in the conversation the way the other did.  Beware, then, the literacy-based affection?

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

* In an earlier circumstance, Jamie declares to Grey, “It is not legitimate for ye either to extort my services or to threaten me, Major.” (134)

**In all of the novels in which he is a character, Lord John's homosexuality is frequently an object of pity inspired by the narrative, rather than sympathy or empathy.  If I analyze the Lord John novels, I plan to explore how I think Gabaldon maintains an arms' length from Grey's sexual orientation, often portraying homosexual relationships as destructive, futile, and sordid, especially as compared to Grey's platonic and almost transcendant relationship with Jamie.

Voyager: Prison Literacy

Of all of the details about prison life in the chapters dealing with Jamie's incarceration, the scenes of literacy and orality stand out as particularly well-formed.  The place of honor in the prison is the hearth--reserved for anyone with a story to tell, a preservation of the bardic tradition, and a narrative nod to the tradition of oral storytelling.  Jamie, aka Mac Dubh, does oral storytelling a bit differently:

Mac Dubh never took his place on the hearth, even when he told them the long stories from the books that he’d read— The Adventures of Roderick Random, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, or everyone’s favorite, Robinson Crusoe. (119)

First, he refuses the seat of honor, presumably because of either humility or because he already holds a privileged position--or a combination of the two.  Second, the stories he is telling orally are novels.  So Jamie sets himself up not only as literate, but also as well-read. This account takes Jenny's reading aloud to a different level.  Novels were frequently read aloud in communal settings in the18th Century [citation needed--but not right now], but here is a hybrid--the story is text-based, but the text is remembered rather than being present.  Yet it is not like oral storytelling or oral-formulaic because there is a fixed, linear storyline that asks to be remembered in the same order in which it exists in the text--in oral-formulaic poetry, the idea is that the basic elements of the story, as well as formulaic poetic elements, were compiled anew by each performer, resulting in a story with a basic storyline that varied some with each telling. However, Jamie is shaped more by his literacy than the oral highland tradition, and so is concerned with remembering plot details exactly--a point that becomes clear in his first encounter with the new Governor of Ardsmuir prison:  Lord John Grey.

From the earliest moments of their relationship, Jamie's and Lord John's interactions are literate encounters:

     When Grey came through the door from his bedroom a few moments later, he found his guest standing by the bookshelf, apparently absorbed in a copy of Nouvelle Héloïse.
     “You are interested in French novels?” he blurted, not realizing until too late how incredulous the question sounded.
     Fraser glanced up, startled, and snapped the book shut. Very deliberately, he returned it to its shelf.
     “I can read, Major,” he said. He had shaved; a slight flush burned high on his cheekbones.
     “I— yes, of course I did not mean— I merely—” Grey’s own cheeks were more flushed than Fraser’s. The fact was that he had subconsciously assumed that the other did not read, his evident education notwithstanding, merely because of his Highland accent and shabby dress. (151)

Grey is in a position of authority over Jamie.  He is coming from a place of privilege.  Immediately, he makes assumptions about Jamie's literacy based on his dress and accent.  Accent is important as a marker of class throughout English literature--D. H. Lawrence and G. B. Shaw provide particularly good examples, and Joyce's "The Dead" provides an Irish-flavored example of speech as a marker of class and education.  However, "shabby dress" seems a bit much, given that Jamie is a prisoner, and does not possess the ability to clothe himself as a free man might.  The unstated assumption is that prisoners are uneducated.

There is nevertheless a difference between Jamie's protest, "I can read, Major," and Grey's own assumption that "the other did not read."  The difference is that Grey's assumption is not an assumption of illiteracy, but rather not reading.  And that is interesting because it resembles contemporary literacy crises--we don't so much worry about the ability to read--at least in suburbia; the question is whether people read or what they read.  I'm thinking about a not-atypical comment by a professor of mine from graduate school, that his daughter's friends' homes had no books.  They simply didn't read.  And that indictment is perhaps more serious than illiteracy (especially from an English professor), because to be able to read, and not to do it, is--more or less--a middle class snubbing of literacy.  Which is a greater excuse for snobbery than the inability to read.  And Grey is a first class literacy snob.

Jamie explains:

“I have been telling the men the story, but it has been some time since I read it; I thought I would refresh my memory as to the sequence of the ending.” (152)

So he is not only literate, and reads; Jamie has in fact read the novel in question, which is interesting since this scene takes place in 1755, and Rousseau's novel seems to have been published in 1761 (oops!).  But what I was going to say before I looked it up is that the novel was contemporary, and in French, and yet Jamie has already read it.

Having been corrected in his impressions of Fraser's literacy, and having been told Fraser's purpose in consulting the book, Grey turns his snobbery to the men:

     “I see.” Just in time, Grey stopped himself from saying “They understand it?”
     Fraser evidently read the unspoken question in his face, for he said dryly, “All Scottish children are taught their letters, Major. Still, we have a great tradition of storytelling in the Highlands.” (152)

And so Jamie sets himself up as more or less a typical Highlander--a hybrid of literacy and oral tradition, though his fact-checking--or sequence-checking--suggests that he is more indebted (or perhaps enslaved) to his literacy.

Grey's snobbery might be a product of his position as an Imperial authority.  Elsewhere (in other novels), and primarily in his sexual exploits, he is more... egalitarian.  But being illiterate, unintelligent, uneducated, and savage, is part and parcel of being a Highlander in the English imagination, as represented by Lord John Grey.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Voyager: Some Problems with Literacy (A Literacy Moment)

The title of my dissertation was "Literacy and Its Discontents."  Finally, Ch. 7 of Voyager introduces a few of the problems of literacy--albeit more material and less existential problems than might be found elsewhere.  The first is the difficulty of finding information in documents.  It is ironic commentary when the narrative reveals that "a week later, Roger’s faith in documents remained unshaken" (99).  Because they do not know in which prison exactly Jamie was incarcerated, they have to acquire documents from all of the possible prisons.

The second "problem" of literacy is one that bibliophiles and scholars (and all people who get junk mail) know well--the problem of the voluminous mass of print materials:

This table normally was asked to accommodate no more than a small lamp, and a collection of the Reverend’s smaller artifacts; it was pressed into service now only because every other horizontal surface in the study already overflowed with papers, journals, books, and bulging manila envelopes from antiquarian societies, universities, and research libraries across England, Scotland, and Ireland. (99)

This is one of the major benefits of the eReader.  Even someone enamored of the codex will admit that storing them becomes a problem after a while.  With limited space, and without the ability to cover every flat surface with paper, I do find my Kindle and my Kindle apps (and PDFs, etc) to be a welcome relief.

Perhaps a more existential problem (or perhaps not) is the difficulties that arise from placement or misplacement of documents.  Sometimes, you just can't remember where you're put them.  And when Roger misplaces a specific envelope, he has to issue an appeal for help finding it.

Fiona, who Roger inherits as housekeeper, has a relationship with the books and documents that marks her as a non-reader.  This makes for some interesting commentary and interaction.  At this point in the chapter, the narrative seems to be coming from Roger, who has the most intimate (but not in that way) knowledge of Fiona:

Fiona had not the slightest use herself for history— never read anything beyond My Weekly magazine— but she never questioned his activities, tranquilly dusting the heaps of books and papers daily, without bothering about their contents.
     “Thanks, Fiona,” he said. “I was only wondering, though; have you seen a big blue envelope— a fat one, about so?” He measured with his hands. “It came in the morning post, but I’ve misplaced it.”
     “Ye left it in the upstairs bath,” she said promptly. “There’s that great thick book wi’ the gold writing and the picture of the Bonnie Prince on the front up there, and three letters ye’d just opened, and there’s the gas bill, too, which ye dinna want to be forgetting, it’s due on the fourteenth o’ the month. I’ve put it all on the top of the geyser, so as to be out of the way.” A tiny, sharp ding from the oven timer made her withdraw her head abruptly with a smothered exclamation. (100)

This passage portrays Fiona as a practical woman with a relationship to the written word that is different from Jenny's.  Rather than seeking any kind of help--practical or transcendental--from books, Fiona simply counts books as part of the household objects.  The initial description of Fiona as having "not the slightest use herself for history," coming as it does on the heels of her account of the oral history of the "Dunbonnet," who all (except Fiona) understand to be Jamie, the description is particularly unfair.  Her level of and use for literacy--described with reference to a popular publication--emphasizes the "hyper-literacy" of Roger and the comparatively low literacy of the housekeeper.  Further indictment comes from the fact that she never "bothers about [the] contents" of the books and papers that she dusts daily.  Hers is a functional literacy, but one that isn't particularly functional for her.

And yet there is affection (albeit condescending) in Roger's account of Fiona, and her practicality stands in contrast to the absent-minded professor who leaves the documents in the bath and forgets to pay the gas bill.  A follow-up paragraph--one that really makes the narrative "voice" sound like Roger's--emphasizes Fiona's focus on the materiality of books:

     Roger turned and went up the stairs two at a time, smiling. Given other inclinations, Fiona’s memory might have made her a scholar. As it was, she was no mean research assistant. So long as a particular document or book could be described on the basis of its appearance, rather than its title or contents, Fiona was bound to know exactly where it was.  (101)

Again, the tone is affectionate, but the meaning is condescending--to Fiona and to research assistant, who, the implication seems to be, would be more efficient if they paid more attention to the appearance of the book or document and less to their insides!  It might take a tiny twist to get to that particular implication, but I don't think it's too far off.

There are many questions that remain unanswered about Fiona, her "inclinations," and whether Roger's assessment is particularly fair.  If there is indictment of the scholarly inclination and lifestyle as elitist and scattered, it is slight--but then, the narrative pulls from Roger's perspective, and in the bigger picture, Fiona provides the missing elements of memory, practicality, and orality.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander) Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Voyager: Faith in Literacy and Orality (A Literacy/Orality Moment)

Claire settles in to read the account of Jamie's exodus from Culloden and Inverness in Lord Melton's journal, which Roger just received in the mail from a fellow-scholar.  The experience of reading has the ability to transport her to the place, particularly since it is a place she already knows:

I accepted a cup of tea myself, and sat down in the wing chair with the pages of Melton’s journal. The flowing eighteenth-century handwriting was surprisingly clear, in spite of the archaic spelling, and within minutes, I was in the confines of Leanach farmhouse, imagining the sound of buzzing flies, the stir of close-packed bodies, and the harsh smell of blood soaking into the packed-dirt floor.
     “ …   in satisfaction of my brother’s debt of honor, I could not do otherwise than to spare Fraser’s life. I therefore omitted his name from the list of traitors executed at the farmhouse, and have made arrangement for his transport to his own estate. I cannot feel myself either altogether merciful toward Fraser in the taking of this action, nor yet altogether culpable with respect to my service toward the Duke, as Fraser’s situation, with a great wound in his leg festering and pustulent, makes it unlikely that he will survive the journey to his home. Still, honor prevents my acting otherwise, and I will confess that my spirit was lightened to see the man removed, still living, from the field, as I turned my own attentions to the melancholy task of disposing of the bodies of his comrades. So much killing as I have seen these last two days oppresses me,” the entry ended simply. (96)

Some of the difficulties of archival research and working with primary sources--the handwriting and archaic spellings--figure into the account, but by contrast, since Melton's handwriting is legible.  The limits of the research in this case are the limits of Melton's first hand knowledge.  It is as Brianna asserts her faith in Jamie's identity as the "Dunbonnet" of legend that the research moves from textual sources into the realm of oral history:

     “The Dunbonnet?” Fiona, tut-tutting over my cold cup of undrunk tea, looked over her shoulder in surprise. “Heard of the Dunbonnet, have ye?”
     “Have you?” Roger looked at the young housekeeper in astonishment.
     She nodded, casually dumping my tea into the aspidistra that stood by the hearth and refilling my cup with fresh steaming brew.
     “Oh, aye. My grannie tellt me that tale, often and often.”
     “Tell us!” Brianna leaned forward, intent, her cocoa cupped between her palms. “Please, Fiona! What’s the story?”
     Fiona seemed mildly surprised to find herself suddenly the center of so much attention, but shrugged good-naturedly.  (97)

When written sources have been exhausted, oral tradition fills in the gaps, and puts Roger on Jamie's scent once more:

     “Jesus Christ,” Roger breathed. He set his cup down carefully, and sat staring into space, transfixed. “Prison.”
     “You sound like that’s good,” Brianna protested. The corners of her mouth were tight with distress, and her eyes slightly shiny.
     “It is,” Roger said, not noticing her distress. “There weren’t that many prisons where the English imprisoned Jacobite traitors, and they all kept official records. Don’t you see?” he demanded, looking from Fiona’s bewilderment to Brianna’s scowl, then settling on me in hope of finding understanding. “If he went to prison, I can find him.”  (99)

Roger has a sort of opportunistic attitude that does not register as amiss, since the reader wants Roger to find Jamie.  But there is some insight into what it means to think like a scholar in Brianna's dismay as compared to Roger's enthusiasm--a man's misfortune is a scholar's gold, and in this case, the man in question is the focus of much narrative sympathy:

     “He’s in there,” Roger said softly. “On a prison roll. In a document— real evidence! Don’t you see?” he demanded again, turning back to me. “Going to prison made him a part of written history again! And somewhere in there, we’ll find him!” (99)

Though Roger's enthusiasm is in part because of his now-intimate connection with the story through Claire and (especially) Brianna, there is a certain coldness in his jubilation to find that Jamie went to prison.  The contrast with Fiona's more personal connection with the tale is sharp:

“So he made a bold plan, the Dunbonnet did,” Fiona was continuing. Her round face was alight with the drama of her tale. “He arranged that one of his tenants should go to the English, and offer to betray him. There was a good price on his head, for he’d been a great warrior for the Prince. The tenant would take the gold o’ the reward— to use for the folk on the estate, o’ course— and tell the English where the Dunbonnet might be taken.”  (98)

Even though the story is far removed, the connection to the oral tale seems more emotional--more human than the connection documents can provide.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander).  Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Voyager: A Faith in Documents (A Literacy Moment)

Perhaps this will be easier if I just say it--this has been a hard post.  It has been a hard post to think about, a hard post to write, and mostly a hard post to think about writing.  And I think that's because there's a lot going on in Voyager Ch. 7, and it all begs to be analyzed.  So I guess I'll just begin at the beginning and stretch this out a little bit more...

First of all, Chapter 7 announces its literacy theme in its title:  "A Faith in Documents."  One of the reasons that Voyager feels preoccupied with literacy is because at the beginning, in 1960s Scotland, the action centers on finding what happened to the historical Jamie Fraser.  Roger Wakefield, being a historian like Frank Randall, knows and follows all of the usual channels.  It is Roger who possesses the unflappable "faith in documents."  Brianna mostly has faith in Jamie (having accepted him), and Claire has very, very little.  But that's all part of the narrative moment.

The chapter is replete with reading material.  First a letter:

He picked up the thick manila envelope and held it for a moment, weighing it. Then he ripped the flap recklessly with his thumb, and yanked out a sheaf of photocopied pages.
     The cover letter, on heavy university stationery, fluttered out. (95)

Which Claire reads:

“‘ Dear Dr. Wakefield,’” I read. “‘ This is in reply to your inquiry regarding the execution of Jacobite officers by the Duke of Cumberland’s troops following the Battle of Culloden. The main source of the quote in my book to which you refer, was the private journal of one Lord Melton, in command of an infantry regiment under Cumberland at the time of Culloden. I have enclosed photocopies of the relevant pages of the journal; as you will see, the story of the survivor, one James Fraser, is an odd and touching one. Fraser is not an important historical character, and not in line with the thrust of my own work, but I have often thought of investigating further, in hopes of determining his eventual fate. Should you find that he did survive the journey to his own estate, I should be happy if you would inform me. I have always rather hoped that he did, though his situation as described by Melton makes the possibility seem unlikely. Sincerely yours, Eric Linklater.’”
     The paper rattled in my hand, and I set it down, very carefully, on the desk.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons.  First, it is evidence of the community of scholars and researchers who are linked together by common pursuit and willing to help one another.  Dr. Linklater is a very collegial sort, in the true academic sense of the word.

Second, it illustrates the research process, and highlights the use of primary sources to answer questions.  It is not simply enough to read books by historians, because historians necessarily write with a filter of what seems most significant to the story they wish to tell.  In this case, Jamie Fraser was not historically significant.  What is interesting about this is that the member of the Fraser regiment who survived Culloden was actually, in real-world-outside-of-the-novel history, important enough to make it into historical accounts just by virtue of having been a survivor (see "Massacre of Wounded Officers" on this page for the "remarkable escape of one of their number, Alexander or John Fraser, commonly called MacIver").  Roger contacts Dr. Linklater after reading the book that Linklater wrote about Culloden in order to find out whether the sources he used in his book gave any account of Jamie Fraser.  And as it turns out, they did.

The third thing that strikes me as interesting might simply strike me as interesting--from the perspective of a would-be or had-been humanities scholar.  Since most scholarly activity in the humanities deals with perceptions--how we understand the events at Culloden, how those events were recorded, how what was left out of the accounts has shaped our understanding, and what happens when we add those left out bits back in... You know, exactly what the documentaries do with the Bible.  That's a prime popular culture example:  The Gospel of Judas; The Gospel of Mary Magdalen; The Gnostic Gospels; why they were left out, by whom, and what they might mean if we integrate them into the canon. At any rate, because scholarly activity deals so much in perception, humanities scholars spend their lives arguing that perceptions are real, and the other part of their lives feeling self-conscious that their work has little real meaning or influence ("poetry changes nothing" vs. poets as the "unacknowledged legislators").  Here, in Voyager, scholarly activity has real meaning.  The work that Roger is doing--the information he is uncovering--will shape not only the perception of the past held by a handful of people (and notably Claire); it has the potential to shape the past itself (well, maybe.  See my posts on time travel for a sense of just how complex that question is...)  Claire's decision whether to return to the past hinges on what Roger can find out about the fate of Jamie Fraser.  It is perhaps an enviable position for a humanities scholar--to know he is significant.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Voyager: Translation and Torment (A Literacy Moment)

This post is sort of a side note in two different ways--it is a side note to the last post because it discusses a literacy context that frames the scene in which Jamie waits anxiously in the house as his sister Jenny gives birth.  It is also a side note to the literacy theme of Voyager (and if I haven't said it before, I think that Voyager has more of a literacy sub-text than the others--at least up to this point in the series).

As Jamie enters the house to wait for Jenny to give birth--and to be with her in spirit, if not actually in the room--he surprises a neighbor, who is reading to the children from the Bible:

     “ ‘ And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression,’  ” read Mrs. Kirby. There was a loud, rolling scream from upstairs, that seemed to go on and on. Mrs. Kirby paused for a moment, to allow everyone to appreciate it, before resuming the reading. Her eyes, pale gray and wet as raw oysters, flickered toward the ceiling, then rested with satisfaction on the row of strained faces before her.
     “ ‘ Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing, if she continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety,’  ” she read. Kitty burst into hysterical sobbing and buried her head in her sister’s shoulder. Maggie Ellen was growing bright red beneath her freckles, while her elder brother had gone dead-white at the scream. (66)

It is an interesting literacy moment because of the type of literacy represented.  First of all, it is didactic.  There is both an implicit and an explicit lesson.  The words that Mrs. Kirby is reading indict every female in the guilt of Eve--not an uncommon argument, even in contemporary Abrahamic religions--and that childbearing saves women.  Implicitly, pain in childbirth is punishment (a point that is explicit in Genesis 3:16), and Jenny--for some of them, their own mother--is an exemplar of this.  (I do wonder what a literal reading of the Biblical passages would mean for women who opt for an epidural... No pain, no heavenly gain?)

I do take issue with this scene, as it assumes that women in the 18th Century would not have had pain management techniques.  A well-prepared woman need not scream, even without modern medicine, and Jenny would have had the wisdom of her midwife, of women around her, and of her own previous births, as well as the endurance of a woman who was used to having to endure other pain and discomfort in daily life!  But then, this vision of childbirth goes along with an agenda that is subtly apparent throughout the books--the danger, hardship, and pain of childbearing.  The combination of this Bible verse and childbirth in this particular novel suggests childbearing as a Purgatorial act for women--although the context (the cruelty of Mrs. Kirby's didacticism; Jamie's intervention) argues strongly that if Christianity teaches that childbirth is Purgatorial, that this is evidence of Christian teaching about women being skewed.

The other reason that it is interesting is because of the text, which is from 1 Timothy 2:14-15.  No, I'm not that good.  That's what Google is for.  The text also appears to be taken from the King James Version, which is another thing I need to ponder.  The King James Version, while poetic, is a notoriously bad translation, as a semester of Ancient Greek made clear.  Just for fun, here's a sample from Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin. I'm a little fuzzy on whether an 18th Century Scottish Catholic household would have a Bible in English, much less the King James Version (albeit the nod to the Stuarts).  I don't have a source that I can check for this a the moment, only the internet (I could go over to the library databases of the university for which I work, and in order to answer the question sufficiently, I would have to do more research than that...), but for now, I simply have the question:  To what extent was the King James Version of the Bible adopted by Catholics in/by the 18th Century?  I would expect that, in Scotland, the Bible would have been in Latin, or if possible, Gaelic, with an alternate translation being the third choice.  The dominant Catholic translation would have been the Douay-Rheims.  Jamie might have had a French Bible.  The question is an interesting one.  In the meantime, here are some parallel translations of the line in question.

Incidentally, here's the Douay-Rheims:

{2:14} And Adam was not seduced; but the woman, being seduced, was in the transgression.{2:15} Yet she shall be saved through child bearing; if she continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.

The language is much more Catholic.

Jamie enters in this mist of this troubling literacy moment, disperses the crowd and confiscates the Bible in displeasure.  It is a nice detail that Jenny’s bookshelf is "battered and scarred from the last incursion of Redcoats, three months ago." (67)  When he hears the sounds of Jenny's suffering, he unwillingly turns to the words in the book he holds--not verses this time, but records:

Hearing a prolonged moan from above, he glanced down involuntarily at the Bible in his hand. Not really wanting to, still he let the book fall open, showing the page at the front where the marriages, births, and deaths of the family were recorded. (67)

What follows in the novel is a text-based reminiscence of Jamie's family history, beginning (in a way) with the birth of his older brother, William:

     The entries began with his parents’ marriage. Brian Fraser and Ellen MacKenzie. The names and the date were written in his mother’s fine round hand, with underneath, a brief notation in his father’s firmer, blacker scrawl. Marrit for love, it said— a pointed observation, in view of the next entry, which showed Willie’s birth, which had occurred scarcely two months past the date of the marriage.

Mention of William, and the record of his niece's death, encourage his consideration of all of the uncertainties, from the "what if" of his own inherited role as laird after his brother's death, to the "what if" of his inability to provide:

Closing the book, his eye caught the last entry— Caitlin Maisri Murray, born December 3, 1749, died December 3, 1749. Aye, if. If the Redcoats had not come on December 2, would Jenny have borne the child too early?  If they had had enough food, so that she, like the rest of them, was no more than skin and bones and the bulge of her belly, would that have helped?

Literacy, in these moments, causes introspection and torment.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander) Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Voyager: Jenny Reading Again - More Women's Literacy

In the early chapters of Voyager, in the aftermath of Culloden, when the people of Lallybroch are coping with hunger, grief, fear and oppression,  literacy takes on a more urgent kind of significance than the one it had for Jenny in Dragonfly in Amber.   In his hermit-like exile, Jamie depends on books, and Claire's medical training is not only book-based, but occasions her own use of books for coping.  Meanwhile, in her own, practical way, Jamie's sister Jenny also depends on books to cope with hardship--and not French novels and poetry this time (see here and here for Jenny reading in Dragonfly).

So it happens that, coming into the house with freshly killed rabbits, Jamie finds Jenny with a book that seems, to him, superfluous:

“Cut them into collops and break the bones for me, will ye, Jamie?” she said, frowning at Mrs. McClintock’s Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-Work, laid open on the table beside the pie pan.
     “Surely ye can make hare pie without looking in the wee book?” he said, obligingly taking the big bone-crushing wooden mallet from the top of the hutch where it was kept. He grimaced as he took it into his hand, feeling the weight of it. It was very like the one that had broken his right hand several years before, in an English prison, and he had a sudden vivid memory of the shattered bones in a hare pie, splintered and cracked, leaking salty blood and marrow-sweetness into the meat.
     “Aye, I can,” his sister answered abstractedly, thumbing through the pages. “It’s only that when ye havena got half the things ye need to make a dish, sometimes there’s something else you’ll come across in here, that ye can use instead.” (61-62)

This is an interesting moment, because it shows a book--a codex--that is not used for pleasure or propaganda.  Rather than providing spiritual nourishment (as Bibles are mentioned occasionally, though in Outlander mainly as an object signifying need for vengeance against Jack Randall), this book provides for physical nourishment.

This literacy moment is also interesting because it is another instance of gendered reading.  When Claire reads, it is without the same kind of gender marker as Jenny, simply because she is a different kind of woman than Jenny.  Claire, while marked by motherhood, can't really be called "domestic"--much to the chagrin of Frank.  Jenny's reading--in this and the other instance, in Dragonfly--is gendered, domestic reading.  By this I mean that in the narrative, it is specifically tied to her duties as the matriarch of the household, providing food and clothing and otherwise caring for her children and her men.  Beyond just the fact of being gendered and domestic, this women's reading is thrifty and useful.  She reads for reference, which is not common in the novels--even when Claire refers to reading medical texts, the emphasis is on the fact that she and her colleague are not reading professional materials.  She also reads as a matter of resourcefulness.  It is a hands-on, practical means of coping, showing that not all reading in the Outlander books is pie-in-the sky, escapist sort of stuff.  In fact, the uses of literacy are quite diverse (even if individual, intellectual uses of literacy are privileged).

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander) Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Literacy & Children's Fiction: A Running List

I have discovered some more books for my running list of children's lit books about literacy. It may be an overly ambitious or redundant project, since of course children's literature is concerned with conceptions of reading. But I do at least see different emphasis in some of the books. Is literacy primarily a social concern, or an individual concern--of primary use to individuals? That does seem to be something that different authors represent differently. I haven't managed to find a thematic list of children's fiction that includes literacy as I'm defining it, so my main question at this point is how to find books that relate to my topic?

But anyway, here are some:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge

Voices (Annals of the Western Shore) by Ursula Le Guin

Exchange by Paul Magrs

The Green Book by Jill Paton Walsh

The Day They Came to Arrest the Book by Nat Hentoff (An overt statement about censorship--dealing with it directly by portraying a battle with parents who want to ban Huck Finn. Yawn. But very representative of why this is an issue in children's lit in the first place.)

Some of the themes will no doubt make good comparisons with 1984 and Brave New World.

SF Stories: "The Bookshop" by Nelson Boyd (1946)

I have been trying to get the ball rolling on a research project I'm committed to. I'll be investigating representation of literacy in science fiction in the archives of the university where I live. Last Saturday I managed to squeeze in an hour before they closed up to talk to the Science Fiction archive librarian, a friend who has helped me a lot with knowing where to start looking! This Saturday, having taken his hints and gotten in my request of things for them to pull ahead of time, I still only managed to squeeze in a little while before they closed, but even so, I managed to look at a few things and read one short story. This truly is archival research, as some of the stories are not available in anthologies--ANY anthologies. Pretty exciting. If there was not already a glut of super-specialized Science Fiction anthologies, both in and out of print, that serve only about 5 science fiction readers and researchers each, I might have dreams of a "literacy in SF" anthology. Oh well. I'll stick to my dreams of a fantasy anthology that would actually work for the class I teach.

This weekend's story is "The Bookshop" by Nelson Boyd (1946), republished in Avon Fantasy Reader in 1951. The interesting thing about these early SF/F short stories is that they are very reminiscent of early Twilight Zone episodes. Maybe because they often became Twilight Zone episodes. Or Star Trek.

"The Bookshop" has that familiar feel about it. The narrator begins the tale trying to complete a novel--his best, he believes--but he is stuck, and feeling the heat. He gradually realizes he is sick--actually physically ill. In his illness, he comes to fixate on a bookshop where a poet friend of his stops suddenly during a bus ride--a bookshop our narrator has never noticed before--very shortly before the poet friend dies suddenly of a heart attack. The narrator is drawn to visit the place when he recovers, and finds a familiar-looking proprietor presiding over a very dark shop containing volumes upon volumes by many of the usual names--Shakespeare and Twain among them--but unusual titles: Shakespeare's Agamemnon, for example. He sees among the books, the work his poet friend told him he was writing before his death--supposedly, his masterpiece. The bookshop, then, contains the works that authors were unable to finish (or even begin) in their lifetimes, including the novel of our narrator, in all of its perfection.

The bookshop, then, is an allegory for heaven, suggesting a comparison to E. M. Forster's "The Celestial Omnibus," in which "heaven" is a literary creation--filled with the characters from literature as early as Homer and continuing through the 19th century with Dickens's Mrs. Gamp and Fielding's Tom Jones. The idea, I argue, is that literary enjoyment (as opposed to dispassionate "appreciation" of literary texts) transports one to heaven--though in retrospect, Forster's allegory suggests a disbelief in an actual Heaven in a way that "The Bookshop" does not. In "The Bookshop," one can not return from "heaven" where one's works exist in their perfection (much like Plato's realm of Forms). In "The Celestial Omnibus," one is transported back and forth between "heaven" and "the real world" by the authors themselves, who pilot the omnibuses. (Dante is one of the drivers, and his horses are black, grey, and white--the grey being the finest.) The idea of perfection isn't important for Forster, who seems to focus more on how the literary works act upon or are received by the reader rather than the writer's quest for perfection (which is largely irrelevant to the reader once the work has been published).

Some of the important ideas in "The Bookshop" from the perspective of literacy theory are some tidbits about the permanence of writing, curiously undermined by the ephemeral nature of the unwritten masterpiece. There is a kind of lonely near-despair that permeates the story, which clearly takes the solitary vision of the "writer writing in isolation" to heart. The idea of "the Story" as it could be or should be rather than the story that "IS" situates the perspective of "The Bookshop" as far removed from the theoretical reader, who doesn't really matter to the writer-as-artist. However much we might wish to read Shakespeare's Agamemnon (a singularly unlikely title), we realize, being left in the cold by the voice of Sarumon, that it (like Hamlet or Macbeth) was clearly not written for us.