{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1809", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1809, "subject": "Dear Dorcas", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "1999-10-01T16:47:15+00:00", "last": "1999-10-04T19:36:22+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "1999-10-01T16:47:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Dear Dorcas", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " I note that none of the responses to Carlton Greene's \"Dorcas as\noutcast?\" post addressed the larger question he raised: was Dorcas really\nthe \"nice Catholic girl\"--as I believe someone here once described her-- she\nseems to be, or was there something more sinister about her? I brought this\nissue up offlist to Robert Borski a few months ago but didn't post it here\nbecause I anticipated that it would go over like a--well--lead balloon.\nCarlton's post gives me the excuse to do so.\n\n\n BTW, welcome to Carlton and the slew of new posters; where are they\nall coming from?\n\n Obviously, any attempt I might make to cast Dorcas in a harsher\nlight than the commonly perceived one will be tenuous. Any evidence from the\ntext, if it exists, must be subtle or it would have been pointed out long\nago, by someone. My thoughts proceed from the largely negative tone of the\nfew memories and dreams she relates. Why should they be so bleak? Was she\nhappily married? Did she want and love her child(ren), or did she have a\nchoice in the matter? If Agia's estimate of her age is correct (16 or 17),\nand the age at which Agia began to menstruate (13) is typical for the times,\nthen Dorcas must have gotten married almost as soon as she had her first\nperiod, in order for her to have been married four years at the time of her\ndeath. Not only that, but if the boatman was in his seventies when he died,\nthen he had to be about thirty when he married the girl. The issue of their\nages alone makes their relationship suspect, an issue that was entirely\navoidable had Wolfe made her to be but a few years older. For her to have\nbeen nearer to Sev's own age would not have damaged the plot in any way.\nTherefore, Wolfe did it deliberately. Why, if not to call attention to the\nfact of it?\n\n All of the dreams that she relates are dark and dismal, freighted\nwith symbols of death. The one dream she mentions which was not\nnightmarish--but which she could not remember--was the one she was having\nwhen Sev woke her in the field where Dr. Talos's group was camped the\nmorning they left Nessus by the Piteous Gate. And even that event was\ntainted by the fact that she was alarmed about Sev bending over her. Sev,\nhis mouth reddened from eating a pomegranate, woke her: \"I should have known\nfrom the stains on your mouth. I thought you'd been sucking blood all night.\n... \"Well, you did look like a black bat bending over me.\" Indeed, Dorcas\nseems to have something of an obsession with bats, especially blood bats.\n\n Following their reunion at the House Absolute, she and Sev talked\ntogether in the Shakespearean garden, where she related to him two recurrent\ndreams. The first of these dreams is the one in which she becomes aware that\npeople regard her as \"an unclean spirit who has wrapped itself in the\nwoman's body they see.\" (II, XXII) In her dream she enters \"a tiny shop\nconducted by an old man and an old woman.\" The old woman is making lace and\n\"I hear the sound her thread makes behind me as it is pulled through the\nwork.\" Sev asks her what she is there to buy. \"Tiny clothes.\" \"Doll's\nclothing, perhaps.\" But when she goes to pay for them her money changes to a\nlump of filth and the hissing of the thread stops. The thread is a rather\nobvious reference to the thread of life spun and cut by the Greek Fates, but\nwhose thread? Notice that the tiny clothes, while of a doll's proportions,\nare not specifically said to be for a doll. The size of the clothes--half a\nspan--would be too small for a full-term baby. But if she has had a\nmiscarriage--whether unintended or not--or an abortion, the tiny clothes\nwould be of a proper size. If the tiny clothes had been intended for a doll\nit should not have the emotional impact that it does for her. Indeed, the\ndream evokes much more the sense of guilt than grief, as does the fact that\nthe doll-related dreams are recurrent. Her sub-conscious mind is preoccupied\nwith the subject, not just the nightmarish details of her interment.\n\n Her marriage may well not have been a romantic one; just as Ouen was\nfarmed out as a potboy at the age of ten, she may not have had a choice.\nLife is cheap in the Commonwealth and familial bonds even weaker. She may\nwell have been forced into marriage as a child and resented it. She probably\nhad no choice about becoming pregnant. Either she, or her husband, may not\nhave wanted or been able to support more mouths to feed. Who knows what\nproblems and disagreements they may have had? But her conscience is\nbothering her about something, something to do with a baby.\n\n The issue of age is raised once more in the second dream she\nrelates. She dreams of being \"in a boat poled across a spectral lake\" and\n\"An old man poles it, and I lie at his feet.\" What prompted this dream\nimage? Her dream cannot be prescient, because the dream is long after the\nfact of her interment. She can have no idea how much time has elapsed\nbetween her death and resurrection, even after figuring out that that is\nwhat has happened. The old man can't be her husband, because he wasn't an\nold man when she died. We have no reason to believe he even owned a boat\nthen: he was a shopkeeper. Who was this old man in the dream? The Lake's\nequivalent of a mortician who poled the boat she was \"buried\" from? The\nother elements in the dream do not fit that theory: \"Just as we are about to\ntouch shore, I fall from the boat, but the old man does not see me, and as I\nsink through the water I know that he has never known I was there at all.\"\nYet it *was* near the shore where her body was found--and her husband\ncouldn't find it in forty years of searching, though he was present when she\nwas \"buried\". Something is wrong here: it doesn't add up.\n\n After relating the dreams she remarks that the people in her dream\nmay be right, that in some sense she *is* a \"foul specter\". Sev answers:\n\"You could never be a foul specter, or anything foul.\" She replies: \"Oh,\nyes,\" she said seriously ... \"Oh, yes I could, Severian. Just as you can be\nwhat they call you. What you sometimes are.\" To interpret her statement as\nmeaning simply that all people have a dark side would have her stating a\nplatitude; she has to be implying something more tangible.\n\n The multifarious use of symbols in Wolfe's work being so pervasive,\nit seems to me that when he repeats or otherwise reinforces an image, that\nhe means something by it. My next point against Dorcas is one of these. (II,\nXXII) \"The whip mark Dorcas had carried from the Piteous Gate burned on her\ncheek like a brand.\" This comment comes immediately after she related the\ndream about the old man in the boat. Who else in the novels has branded\ncheeks? Morweena. For what crime was she branded and killed? Killing her\nhusband and child.\n\n She then recalled to Sev Dr. Talos's labeling him as Death, which\nSev said was a metaphor. She said it was a bad metaphor and, as they were\nwalking back to the others, Sev wondered to himself if \"Dr. Talos's calling\nDorcas \"Innocence\" had not been a metaphor of the same kind.\"\n\n Bad dreams, dolls, and bats all come together later in CLAW, on the\nnight that Jolenta suffered what turned out to be a mortal injury. While Sev\nwas lusting after the undine, Dorcas had another dream involving dolls. (II,\nXXVII) She enters a toyshop with shelves lined with dolls and a well in the\ncenter of the floor with more dolls on the coping. She says \"I remember\nthinking that my baby was too young for dolls, but they were so pretty, and\nI had not had one since I was a little girl,...\" Then, the doll turns into\nJolenta. That the Jolenta-doll falls down a well in the dream establishes,\none, that Jolenta was on her mind and, two, that Jolenta was cast into a\nlife-threatening scenario. Unless we are to grant that Dorcas is\nprescient--the dream coming before the knowledge of the alleged bat\nbite--then the dream indicates to me that she had hostile feelings for\nJolenta. Only two days before Sev had had sex with Jolenta. It was her\nrelating two incidents from her girlhood which causes Sev--and the\nreader--to leap to the unwarranted assumption that Jolenta had been bitten\nby a blood bat. The assumption is unwarranted because their geographical\nlocation and the behavior of the supposed blood bat does not agree with\nevidence presented elsewhere in the text. One of the incidents she relates\nis that, when a young child, someone used to frighten her by telling her\nabout blood bats. The second was when she was older and a common bat got\ninto the house. Someone killed it and she asked her \"father if it were a\nblood bat, and if there were really any such things.\" He told her that there\nwere, but that they lived in the north \"in the steaming forests at the\ncenter of the world.\" (II, XXVIII) She was alone with Jolenta when the\nwounds were made. The Cumaen indicated that Jolenta should recover from her\nwounds, just as Sev did when he was later bitten by a true blood bat, but\nshe didn't. And when Sev reached the roof of the tomb following the seance,\nJolenta was dead and Dorcas was alone with her and bending over the lifeless\nbody.\n\n At the inn in Thrax Sev was again bending over Dorcas when she woke,\nwhich she remarked on. He then recalled to her the earlier incident in\nNessus, but this time used the word vampire to describe how he must have\nlooked to her. When asked by Agia, in the Botanic Gardens, what was the last\nthing she remembered, Dorcas answered: \"Sitting by a window ... There were\npretty things in the window. Trays and boxes, and a rood.\" Was this last to\nkeep the vampires away? And which side of the window was she on? Why wasn't\nher weighted body where it was supposed to be? Why couldn't Caron (the name\nI am using for the boatman), who searched over and over almost daily for\nforty years, who had pulled some of the bodies up so often that he knew them\nby sight, find his wife's body? He was present when she was interred. He had\na \"map\". The most obvious answer is--she wasn't there.\n\n Caron, for all the sympathetic portrayal of his searching for his\ntoo-soon dead wife for forty years, has always struck me as a ne'er-do-well.\nBesides marrying a child half his age, he sponged off her family's labors,\nthen, when she died, squandered whatever fortunes they had not long after\nher death. If Dorcas died giving birth to a second child, as the text\nimplies, then he did not keep the child, for whatever reasons, because Ouen\nhas no memory of a sibling. Did the baby live? What became of the child?\nOuen, presumably because he was old enough to get by without his mother,\nCaron retained until the age of ten, then farmed out as a potboy, never,\napparently, to see him again until Ouen sought him out when he was grown.\nThat act does not say much for Caron's fatherly instincts. Yes, Caron may\nhave been poor and unable to afford to keep the boy, but that seems to be\nlargely his own fault. He makes a show of lamenting his dear-departed wife,\nbut admits to not retaining so much as a nail from their old home/shop. He\neven sinks so low as to hock his last momento of her, a locket with her\npictures in it. That is not the act of a grieving man devoted to his wife's\nmemory. He managed, after all, to obtain the resources to acquire a boat\nafter she died, to search for her body with. His quest for her body seems to\nme to have its origins more in guilt--or fear--than grief. He is haunted by\nthe memory of her eyes popping open when her body hit the water; his\nconscience will not let him rest until he sees her good and dead. Was he\ncomplicitous somehow in her death, whether overtly or by omission? We may\nnever know, but his conscience is bothering him about something, because\neven if she wasn't dead when she was interred, she would have been soon\nafter being sunk in the lake. When he can't find the body where it was\nsupposed to be when he first looked for it, he becomes obsessed with finding\nit. Why? Is he worried that she is still alive in some sense and will come\nback for retribution? Was it just coincidence that, when Sev last saw\nDorcas, the old man was dead and she was kneeling beside his body in their\nold home? While it is certainly possible that the old man just happened to\ndie about the same time that Dorcas found him, it strains credulity. It\nsmacks of melodrama. Did he die of natural causes, or was an old score\nsettled? Note that when she talks to Sev of returning to Nessus to find out\nwhat she can of her old life, she mentions her male child--but not her\nhusband. Curiously, she also never brings up the subject of how she came to\nbe in the lake. From her perspective, if she had been truly dead, no time\nshould have passed between her death and resurrection. Once she regained her\nmemories, as she was rapidly doing after seeing the chair in Thrax, for her\nonly a few months subjective time have elapsed since she died. She *has\" to\nknow *something* about her own death--but never mentions the second child\nshe supposedly died giving birth to. Very curious. Yet she remembers living\nabove the shop with her husband and first-born child.\n\n How did she find him, anyway? The quarter where they had lived has\nbeen long deserted--who was there to inquire of? The only clue she had to\nher past came from the note that Sev intercepted at the Inn Of Lost Loves,\nyet she clearly had not sought out Ouen. In my post about flowers I raised\nsome questions about the logistics of how the old man's body wound up on a\nbier on the second floor of their old, decayed home. Where did little Dorcas\nget the strength?\n\n Dorcas is sympathetically portrayed throughout the text as an\ninnocent child. For reasons not explained in the text she was allowed by her\nfamily to wed when she could barely have reached puberty, and was soon a\nmother. She was still a child when she died, as far as I am concerned, and\nwhy she died is unclear. The only testimony in the text is Ouen's statement\nthat his father said she died in childbirth. Women die in childbirth every\nday, especially in primitive societies, but they do so at a far higher rate\nin fiction than in reality. It's practically a cliche in literature and\nfilms. In any event, it may just have been a simplistic, catchall answer\nthat Caron gave Ouen to shut him up when the boy asked about his mother.\nCaron didn't mention to Sev and Agia how Cas died, or even that they had any\nchildren, only that they were married for nearly four years. For a man so\npreoccupied with his dead wife, he seems to have been strangely reticent\nabout her with the one person in the world who would want to know all about\nher--her son, Ouen.\n\n Most people who die in Nessus are not interred in the Lake of Birds.\nWhy did Caron--if the decision was his--elect to inter her there, rather\nthan in her native soil? Vampires traditionally do not like water, and\nDorcas was deathly afraid of water. Why *did* her eyes pop open when she hit\nthe water? Her eyelids had been cemented shut, and even if she had been in a\n\"com'er\", it isn't easy to force enough of anything down someone's throat to\nkeep their body in place in water. The act of stuffing the lead shot down\nher throat by itself would probably kill her, if she wasn't already dead.\n\n There is not enough direct evidence in the text for me to assert\nthat Dorcas was a vampire or that she and/or her husband were somehow\ninvolved in the death of a baby, but the subject of bats comes up too often\nto be dismissed out of hand and the death of Jolenta is suspect, as is the\ntiming of Caron's. Then there is the question of just how and why Dorcas\ndied and why Hildegrin was on the scene when Sev stumbled onto her body. He\nsaid he had done a favor or three for the Cumaen, who is linked to Inire,\nwho is an agent of Yesod, whose members know--and manipulate--future events.\nIt was no accident that Sev fell in the lake just where Dorcas' body was. I\ndo suggest that Caron couldn't find the body in all those years because it\nwasn't there. Her body was put there, but whether by an agent of Yesod or an\nundine, is unclear. And there is still the mystery of what happened between\nchapters, from the moment that a hand was pulling Sev *down* in the water\nuntil Dorcas' hand was pulling him *up* from the water.\n\nRoy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "1999-10-01T18:42:03+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Dear Dorcas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Very interesting idea. On the plus side, I think we can safely place the idea\nof the vampire as one of Wolfe's major motifs, only subtly present in New Sun,\nmore overt (and by the end one of the major mysteries) in Long Sun, and now\nbecoming a central theme of Short Sun.\n\nClearly, there is something more than is evident going on with Dorcas--there\nare enough hints and clues (especially in the strange scene(s) in Old Nessus)\nto suggest that an important and (even for Wolfe) difficult to elucidate\nmystery is at work. I also think that it is likely it casts Dorcas in a less\ninnocent light than might be obvious--Severian's comment about bad metaphors\nis apropos, indeed.\n\nOn the other hand, the vampire hypothesis seems to be very tenuous--and I think\nsome of the dream interpretation elements linked in are highly questionable.\nThe arguments based on Dorcas' dreams NOT being prescient are the root of the\nproblem--I think that in BOTNS this is an unsafe assumption. Because of her\ninteraction with Severian/the Claw and her resurrection, Dorcas is quite\npossibly on a little more \"stuck\" in time than Severian himself, who is a\nfountain of prophetic dreams. The dream of being\"in a boat poled across a \nspectral lake\" is most easily explained as a metaphor for Charon's search for\nher--the fact that she is with him indicates that somehow she has been right\nunder his nose all along, and is a measure of the frustration of her watery\ndeath (and Caron's frustration). It is true that Dorcas should have no direct\nknowledge of this, but to assume that her dreams are not capable of penetrating\nthings she has no normal way of knowing is, in the context of BOTNS, an unsafe\nassumption.\n\nSpeaking of ages, I think it would be interesting to try and gauge the best\nestimate we can make of the ages of the various players in BOTNS. Roy's\nestimate for Dorcas is plausible, although I tend to suspect that she looks\nyounger than she is, and this has lowered Agia's estimate (she also has some\nmotive for (a) jealousy of someone younger and (b) trying to make her look\nlike a mere child and thus perhaps undesirable to Severian). I think the other\neasiest people to peg are Severian and the Ag- twins (and little Severian, of\ncourse).\n\n\n\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "1999-10-02T04:30:55+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Re: Dear Dorcas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Alex wrote:\nSpeaking of ages, I think it would be interesting to try and gauge the\nbest estimate we can make of the ages of the various players in BOTNS." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Roy's estimate for Dorcas is plausible, although I tend to suspect that she\nlooks younger than she is, and this has lowered Agia's estimate (she also\nhas some motive for (a) jealousy of someone younger and (b) trying to make\nher look like a mere child and thus perhaps undesirable to Severian). I\nthink the other easiest people to peg are Severian and the Ag- twins (and\nlittle Severian, of course).<<\n\nIn the same scene that Agia made her estimate of Dorcas' age, Severian\nguessed Dorcas to be 18 or 19. Neither estimate changes the fact that she\nwas a teenage bride and mother, half Caron's age when they married. Someone\nhere (mantis?), IIRC, seemed to think Severian was 23, but that age is\nnowhere given in the text. I think the reasoning was that, after ruling for\nten years, Sev should be 33, the age traditionally given for Jesus at the\ntime of the crucifixion. I think. Myself, I thought him to be a few years\nless than that. As for Agia (and Agilus), Hildegrin makes several cutting\nremarks about her that indicate he believes her to be a seasoned tramp and\nsays to Sev: \"...you're a sight younger than what she is, for all you was\nprobably born only a couple years sooner.\" The wording is awkward, but I\nthink he meant that Sev was a couple of years the younger physically, but a\nbabe-in-the-woods compared to Agia. But if \"sooner\" is taken literally, then\nSev is a couple of years the older. I would guess the twins to be anywhere\nfrom 22 to 24. Little Sev is judged by Sev to be \"about of that growth when,\nif he had been one of our apprentices, he would first have entered Master\nPalaemon's schoolroom--that is to say, he was old enough to walk well, and\nto talk sufficiently to understand and to make himself understood.\" About\nfive, I think.\n\nRoy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jon Camfield", "address": "griffjon at austin.rr.com" }, "date": "1999-10-04T19:36:22+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Dear Dorcas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[I've been ABEND almost a year, my apologies. I've just recently started\nreading again; the Dorcas thread caught my eye. Re/Hi everybody; greets to\nthe new folks]\n\nThe early evidence in the book lead us to believe (our first read through,\nmany year ago) that Dorcas was never actually dead, just in a coma. We\nlater realize that she was brought back to life by Sev's unwitting use of\nthe Claw.\n\nWhat if both are true? What if she was in fact merely in a coma when she\nwas leaded and drowned? And what if she awoke from that coma, spewed some\nof the shot so as to be light enough to move from her marked location, and\nthen died? This would explain a handful of events; her dream of being\npoled across the lake, the lack of much shot in her stomach later on, her\nnot being in the right place in the lake...\n\nNow, as for Dorcas' history... her husband seemed incredibly fond of her at\nleast, poling for her for so many years. There's something to be said for\nthat level of devotion.\n\nI had always wondered at Wolfe's very brief mention of the Virgin who would\nwalk around Nessus unmolested. This story popped back up into my mind in\nrelation to Dorcas--what if she had given up that or a similar position to\nmarry, and was looked down upon for it? I can't offer any evidence, and,\nin truth, I like the suggestion she had an abortion--possibly due to poverty.\n\nIsn't there a syndrome, TSS or somesuch, that can result from unsanitary\nabortions? Couldn't it lead to a coma...\n\n\n______________________________________________________\n\nJon \"GriffJon\" Camfield http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~griffjon\n\nWeb R&D; eCertain.com\nChannel Manager, Undernet #Poetry: www.tripod.com/~ircpoetry, 1995-1999\n\n**\n\"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher\na hog, construct a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance\naccounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give\norders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch\nmanure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die\ngallantly. Specialization is for insects.\" --Robert A. Heinlein,\n_The_Notebooks_of_Lazarus_Long_" } ] } ] }