{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6605", "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": 6605, "subject": "Short Story 85: Redbeard", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2014-08-08T05:58:14+00:00", "last": "2014-08-08T05:58:14+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-08-08T05:58:14+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 85: Redbeard", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "“Redbeard” was first published in *Masques* in 1984 and is recollected\nin *Storeys\nfrom the Old Hotel.*\n\nSUMMARY:\n\nA man moves with his wife Mara and son John to a small Texas community\nwhere he feels a definite social separation between the “old stratum” and\nthe new, since he has only been there “since the end of the sixties or the\nTruman Administration or the Second World War. Since Something.” He becomes\nfriends with a man named Howie, and one day they go for a drive together,\ncoming across an old house the narrator remarks looks haunted.\n\nHowie says he can’t bring himself to enter it and proceeds to tell the\nstory of a man named Jackson from nearby Clinton, Texas who moved into the\narea. Jackson was twenty years older than his wife, Sara Sutter. After a\nbus crash resulted in several injured children, a deputy asked Jackson’s\nhelp in transporting some of the children to the doctor’s in his truck, and\nJackson suspiciously refused and tried to drive away. The Sheriff reached\nunder the tarp in the back of Jackson's truck and found a dead Italian girl\nwho might have been named Rosa, whose family owned a shoe store.\n\nWhen the cops came to Jackson’s house, in the basement they found a huge\nlocked door that the wife said was his “personal place” — the bodies of\nthree women were found within. During the trial the wife testified for her\nhusband’s character, and the prosecutor tore into her by saying him telling\nher not to enter the room was a cry for help. The narrator is bored at\nseveral places, thinking the story commonplace and lacking in\nsensationalism with only three victims. When Sarah went to visit Jackson in\njail, he had borrowed a razor to shave. He cut his own throat as she\narrived, killing himself as she looked on. She sold the house and married\nagain, having a child within the year. Howie speaks of the final victim,\nfound by children in her private sewing room. Sarah had killed herself.\nHowie asks who was morally responsible — her husband, the prosecutor, the\nfamily of the victims, or “baby blues?” The narrator says it scarcely\nmatters now, probably postpartum depression, and Howie reveals that she was\nhis mother.\n\nCOMMENTARY:\n\nThe subtlety we are used to in Wolfe does not seem to extend to plot\ndetails in this story, but rather to the assignation of blame and the\nartistic distance the narrator's voice has from Wolfe's narrative theme.\nThe narrator is bored and uninterested in the story with his “new”\nperspective, but he is wrong in believing it is irrelevant — it is the\norigin story of his friend, a deeply personal tale for him.\n\nObviously, as the text itself says, the story resonates with Bluebeard,\nwhich we will recap - the aristocrat Bluebeard has a vile reputation as\nwell as an ominous blue beard, and no one knew what happened to his wives.\nHe marries the younger of two sisters and gives her a key to his chambers,\nbut instructs her never to enter his private room. When he is away and her\nsister is present, she enters, finding his dead wives on hooks and the\nfloor drenched in blood, in which she drops the key. When he returns, he\nsees the blood on the key which his wife dropped and threatens to behead\nher, but she implores him for time to say her prayers and flees with her\nsister to a locked room in the tower, and in the time she gains her\nbrothers come and kill Bluebeard, leaving her with all his wealth.\n\nIn Wolfe's “Redbeard”, the wife winds up on a hook of her own design, and\nher unwillingness to press into her husband’s affairs leads her down a path\nof self-destruction. However, the difference between old and new is\nestablished constantly throughout the text and is worth examining. We will\nreturn to an older story behind the Bluebeard myth soon.\n\nPOSSIBLE AMBIGUITIES:\n\nThis seems to be a pretty straightforward Wolfe story, but there are a few\nthings that might be subtle and suspicious, though I don't think they point\nto plot trickery in this case. The narrator calls his friendship unusual,\nbut this could only be because of the thematic separation between the “old\nstratum” and the “new” people; there is usually no connection between new\nand old in the town.\n\nThe attitudes of the narrator are clearly displayed when he pigeonholes the\nmurder as commonplace and pathetic with only three victims, which seems\npedestrian in comparison to the murders of Gacy or Jack the Ripper. This\ndisplays the attitudes of the “new” people — the story isn’t significant\nenough to be engrossing and doesn't matter anymore, even though it resulted\nin at least six deaths . Interestingly, the narrators claim that the\nmurders don't matter echo his opening statement: “It doesn’t matter how\nHowie and I became friends, except that our friendship was unusual.”\n\nRather than indicate that our narrator is murderous or that some spirit of\nevil lurks throughout this story as it did in “Kevin Malone”, we should see\nthe callous nature of the narrator as the difference between old and new.\nRight from the beginning, the “new” people in town cut the grass on Sunday\nmorning rather than go to church as the “old” people do. This is not the\nonly juxtaposition.\n\nSome examples of “new” philosophy in the text: the idea that Jackson was\ncrying for help and his wife was an accomplice, the concept that the deputy\ncould never have searched the vehicle without a warrant and made an arrest\nnow, the feeling that three murders make a boring, commonplace story, all\nthese ideas culminate in the ideology that “It doesn’t matter now.”\n\nThese are directly juxtaposed with “old” philosophy: Jackson would have\nconfessed if he wanted to stop, the deputy did a good job in pulling off\nthat tarp and seeing the evidence, the murders have the power of a horror\nstory — those human lives mattered.\n\nThe beginning of the story says of the old ones: “Those people are still\nhere, practically all of them, like the old trees that stand among the new\nhouses.”\n\nThe final line says, “To our right was another ruined gate, another\noutdated house collapsing slowly among young trees.”\n\nThis is about as clear a statement as we can get — the new people, or the\nyoung trees, exist among houses that are falling apart and ancient, living\nin untenable circumstances with a destructive philosophy that casts blame\neverywhere at once. The old are among livable houses — their philosophy did\nnot perpetuate an unending cycle of decay and shifting blame.\n\nThe moral question asked by Howie begging for responsibility for his\nmother’s suicide is perhaps the place where the new ideas are interesting:\n\n“I thought you said she'd killed herself.”\n\n“That's what they would have said, back when she married Jackson. But who\nkilled her now” Jackson — Redbeard — when he killed those other girls and\ncut his throat like that? Or was it when he loved her? Or that district\nattorney? Or the sheriff? Or the mothers and fathers and brothers and\nsisters of the girls Jackson got? Or her other husband, maybe some things\nhe said to her? Or maybe it was just having her baby that killed her — baby\nblues, they call it. ...\n\n“Postnatal depression .. I don't suppose it makes much difference now.”\n\nThe blame here for his mother's suicide winds up being placed on Howie's\nshoulders, the teller of the tale. It clearly isn't his fault, and the\nassignation of blame becomes impossible in a system which must consider all\nof these external forces — it almost precludes the idea of free will.\n\nThe Wolfe-Wiki posits that the second house mentioned with its ruined gate\nis that of Sarah's second family.\n\nWhile plot-wise it doesn't seem as if there are many unresolved questions,\nthere are still a few details that are perhaps not fully fleshed out:\n\n“There had been a certain amount of trouble around Clinton going on for\nyears, and people were concerned about it. I don’t believe I said this\nJackson was from Clinton, but he was. His dad had run a store there and had\na farm.”\n\nIs the trouble in Clinton just a continuing part of the cycle that carries\nblame forward from the past to the new generation?\n\nA POTENTIAL WOLF:\n\nThe internet makes research significantly easier in some ways for general\npurposes than Wolfe might have enjoyed during the composition of this\nstory, and there is a possible source for the Bluebeard story that deals\nwith the Breton King Conomor the Accursed, who was also reputed to be a\nwerewolf. In this story, Conomor murders his wives when they become\npregnant, and the ghosts of his dead wives warn his new one when she\nbecomes pregnant. She is beheaded anyway, but miraculously returned to life\nby a Saint, and the castle crumbles around Conomor and destroys him.\n\nIt isn't clear that Wolfe would be aware of this source story, but there\nare several hints that he might have been. When ascribing guilt for the\ndeath of the mother, our narrator asserts that it is post-natal depression,\neffectively blaming Howie. The wife in the story above will be killed for\nbecoming pregnant. In the story of Conomir, she is somehow killed and\nsurvives, while in Wolfe's story she survives but kills herself.\n\nWhether or not Wolfe knew of the evolution of the Bluebeard story is open\nto speculation. However, the werewolf angle certainly might have impelled\nhim to structure a tale around it.\n\nSETTING: Highway 27 runs from Lubbock to Amarillo.\n\nNAMES:\n\nRosa, the name of the Italian girl found under the tarp, is the latin form\nof Rose\n\nThe narrator’s wife’s name, Mara, implies “bitter” or “strong”.\n\nHoward means “defender” but the family name Howie means “hollow”.\n\nSarah Sutter has the most interesting name as her first name implies\n“lady”, but the family name implies “shoemaker.” The dead Italian girl's\nfamily owned a shoestore.\n\nJackson means God has been gracious. It is based on the name John — and,\nnot coincidentally ...\n\nJohn is the name of the narrator's son. This creates a cyclical impression\n— shifting blame from one generation and family to the next.\n\nWolfe has made two different comments on the story in his afterword and\nintroduction:\n\n“Redbeard” is a horror story based upon a house I used to drive past every\nso often. It has since burned to the ground, which may be a good thing.\nMaybe I should write a story about John Gacy, the killer clown; he lived a\nfew miles from here, and my friend Jerry Bauer used to take pictures for\nhim.\"\n\n\n From *The Best of Gene Wolfe*:\n\nLong, long ago, when Rosemary and I were still a young couple with small\nchildren, we moved to a tiny town out in the country. If I remember right,\nthe population was under three hundred. Everyone in town — except for us —\nknew everyone else. Half the time, they were at least distantly related.\nRosemary and I were outsiders, and very much so. It was much lonelier than\nan isolated house would have been, and lonelier too than any city\napartment.\n\nOften I drove past a big white house in which no one lived. Most of its\nwindows were broken; one shutter hung from a single hinge. The yard was\nfull of weeds. I never found out why the house had been abandoned or who\nhad abandoned it, but it has come to haunt my fiction.\n\nIt is fascinating that Wolfe casts his own portion of the experience of\nbeing “new” in the character of the narrator, whose entire mental attitude\nis clearly being criticized by the story.\n\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\n\nWhy are both the wife and the first victim related to shoes? Sarah’s last\nname means shoe-maker, and the first victim’s family owned a shoe store.\nWhat symbolic association should we assume, save that they protect feet\nfrom the outside world and separate man from nature? Are they somehow the\nsymbolic “sisters” from the Bluebeard story? One of the versions of the\ntale identifies one of the previous dead wives as Rosalinde, but there are\nmany different versions and names.\n\nCONNECTION TO OTHER WORKS:\n\nExcept for the narrator’s callous attitude, which I think is thematically\nrelated to the callous nature of the modern world rather than a murderous\ncurse or a scourge of werewolves, the sinister does not seem concealed in\nthis tale. Wolfe's recasting of fairy stories will also occur in “The Death\nof Koschei the Deathless”, “In the House of Gingerbread”, “The Little\nStranger”, and in many other tales as he moved toward fairy tales and away\nfrom the science fictional and social elements many of his stories\nmaintained throughout the 1970s." } ] } ] }