{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/755", "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": 755, "subject": "The Shadow of Aubrey Veil", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-06-09T00:13:35+00:00", "last": "1998-06-09T07:53:06+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Robert Borski", "address": "rborski at coredcs.com" }, "date": "1998-06-09T00:13:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The Shadow of Aubrey Veil", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Prologue: those of you who have not read my post entitled NOTES FROM CLIFF\nmight consider doing so now because it lays the groundwork as to how I\napproach FIFTH HEAD on an interpretive level. It's extremely germane.\n\nI call my analysis the Secret Shadow approach because I believe that while\nthe novel's grand theme involves the search for identity, its central\nconceit is that no one is simply who he or she seems. \n\nIts antithesis, on the other hand, and with all apologies to Sigmund Freud,\nI call the Modified Cigar approach: i.e., \"Sometimes a cigar is just a\ncigar, even when it explodes.\" \n\nLupines eager to critique what follows as anything other than it is--a\npostulate of my own critical manifesto--please be advised I do not smoke,\nalthough I have been known to explode. \n\n\n\nIn all of Gene Wolfe's FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, my favorite character has\nalways been Aunt Jeannine. This is because many, many mysteries obtain to\nher that Gene Wolfe never seems to address anywhere. What are we to make,\nfor example, of her crippled nature? How did it result--either congenitally\nor through misfortune? Why hasn't she had her legs--which are described as\nbeing withered--fixed? After all, we know from events in V.R.T. that\ncryobanks carrying replacement limbs exist. We also know that Maitre has\nthe capabilities to transplant supernumerary limbs--witness the four-armed\nslave seen in the warehouse caper. And yet Jeannine remains crippled. \n\nThere also seems to be some question as to how old she is. She's described\nas being a little gray-haired old lady, whereas Maitre seems more\nvigorously middle-aged. Is she older? And how does she die by the end of\nthe novel? Apart from her invalidness she seems otherwise healthy.\n\nStill another aspect I always found puzzling is her desire for money. Why\nwould she need it when all her material needs are being taken care of?\nDespite what is later revealed to be financial difficulties, surely, from\nthe descriptions we are given of the Maison du Chien with its fountains and\nrooftop gardens, the whorehouse is no dump. Why then this need for\nadditional funds? A gold-plated wheelchair? What would she do with the\nmoney? Retire to the Florida equivalent of Port-Mimizon? And does the\nquarrel that is mentioned as being responsible for Jeannine and Maitre no\nlonger speaking to one another and having separate quarters result from\ngreed?\n\nAnother thing I found curious is that she also attends the first play\nNumber Five and his cronies put on--why does Wolfe have her do this, since\nher presence at the play adds nothing in the way of plot advancement? Yes,\nit allows us to glimpse her withered legs pre-departure, but this could\njust as easily be conveyed by having Number Five notice them as she\nlevitates up the spiral stairwell? \n\nThen there is her scientific persona of Aubrey Veil, the originator of\nVeil's Hypothesis. Whatever would possess the madam of a whorehouse to\nundertake the study of aboriginal aliens on a completely different world?\nWhat leads her to formulate her intriguing hypothesis--that the abos of\nSainte Anne have killed and replaced the humans? What is the significance\nof 'Aubrey Veil?' Remember how important decoding names is to a complete\nunderstanding of Wolfe; surely she has been given the pseudonym for some\npotent reason.\n\nLastly then, we have an additional mystery to consider and here I need to\nquote it direct. Victor, cast in the prison darkness of the citadel, is\nreminiscing about his get-togethers with Jeannine. Notice exactly how he\nstates it:\n\nShe possessed real intelligence as well as a fascinating mind, and we had a\nnumber of long talks--often with one or more of her \"girls,\" as she called\nthem, for audience. (p.230)\n\nApart from the slightly ludicrous notion of a bunch of vaginas-for-hire\nsitting around listening to two scholars chew the anthropological fat, the\nsentence is preposterously redundant. No editor worth his or her salt would\n*ever* let a writer use both quote marks and the appending 'as she called\nthem.' In fact, there is no need to use either. Cross out the quote marks,\nthe 'as she called them' and maybe add a \"present\" and the sentence still\nreads absolutely the same. Remember the old saw from Creative Writing\n101--\"Never say things twice or be redundant\"? Well, this is Wolfe saying\nit three times and it's a clue--one of his patent tricks that he uses\nfrequently, and over and over again --i.e.,\nthat the tea-and-Leakey get-togethers discussed above are anything but what\nthey appear to be.\n\nIn fact, as we all know, Gene Wolfe is an extremely sly and tricky writer.\nWitness, for example, how we're able to glean Number Five's true name--Gene\nWolfe. Witness the delicious irony as well that VRT's long sought-after\nmother turns up unbeknownst right next to him in prison. My Secret Shadow\napproach maintains that 5HofC is *filled* with these sly, ironic gems,\nwhereas to assume as others have that these are the only two such examples\nof mischief in the entire book severely underestimates Wolfe's gift for\ndeviltry.\n\nIn light of the above paragraph and to continue with what has been a long\nseries of similar suppositions I would like to make the following proposal:\nwouldn't it be exquisitely apposite if Jeannine Wolfe herself validated\nVeil's Hypothesis? But then, yes--wouldn't this mean that Jeannine's an\nabo?\n\nAbsolutely. But how can this be?\n\nLet us consider the evidence, especially in regards to some of the earlier\nquestions I posed above. Whenever possible I will try to mention parallel\nexamples of what I'm proposing. This is another artistic conceit of\nWolfe's, using what appears to be simple color or interesting detail for\nechopraxic effect (as mantis has demonstrated several times over, the book\nfairly roars with echos, faint though they may appear on initial\nobservation).\n\nThe scene I think which best exemplifies this is the play scene I mentioned\nabove. Remember that the wheelchair-bound Jeannine sits in the audience. On\nstage is Phaedria, who will play \"the crippled daughter of the French\ngovernor,\" with David playing her lover. *Crippled* here has two valences,\none of which I'll present now, the other later. Who is the only other\ncrippled person present? Aunt Jeannine. Surely, we are meant to draw the\nparallel. (Notice too how both Phaedria and Jeannine share the same lust\nfor money--it's Phaedria who later suggests David and his friends\npickpocket the play's attendees). Also note somewhat later this seeming bit\nof color: in the middle of the play the sisterworld of Sainte Anne rises in\nthe sky and casts its green light upon the play. Given the earlier parallel\nI suggested, I maintain this is meant to suggest the following: Jeannine at\none time was romantically involved with someone of political stature on\nSainte Anne. \n\nAha, you say, even if true so what? How does this mean she's an abo? How\ndoes it tie into anything else?\n\nWell, here go the first of many bold suppositions. If you find them\nponderously difficult to accept, so be it. Sit back, relax and smoke a\ncigar, while I attempt to blow my own torus of interlinked smoke rings and\nweave my tale fantastic.\n\nI submit to you that the person we known as Aunt Jeannine is much, much,\nmuch older than we all believe. In fact, she is the baby in the picture she\nshows Number Five of his \"true\" parents--i.e., the original Gene Wolfe and\nhis wife, who emigrated to Sainte Croix and built the Maison du Chien.\nNotice how when he sees the picture Number Five assumes the child is a\nmale, but has difficulty seeing the face because it's nearly smothered by\n*white* wool blankets. This is standard Wolfe misdirection. Compare as well\nthe account of Mrs. Blount, who is born just before the penal colony ship\nNine-Eight-Six takes off; I believe this is the echopraxic parallel, and\none of several ways Mrs. Blount's account reprises that of Jeannine's.\n\nSo let's assume the baby in photo is Jeannine. She grows to become an\nattractive young woman on Sainte Croix. But remember Maitre's chagrin about\nhow the Wolfe clan has never risen up to leadership positions on the\nplanet? What better way to get your political foot into the door than\nmarrying your daughter off to the son of the French governor of Sainte\nAnne? This is a time-honored conceit--marrying into politics--and has been\naround since the days of Hellas and Rome (remember Sejanus' proposed\nmarital link in I, Claudius?) And I do believe that Sainte Anne rising over\nthe play featuring Phaedria/Jeannine as the governor's \"daughter-[in-law]\"\nallows us to suppose this.\n\nHow this comes about is entirely speculative. Gene Wolfe 1 apparently has\nsome money if he can pay his and the Mrs.' way 20 light years across space,\nthen establish the Maison du Chien. Perhaps it's de rigeur to send your\ndaughter off to finishing school on Sainte Anne the same way rich Americans\nsend their daughters off to Paris (e.g., Jane Fonda and Candace Bergen,\nboth of whom schooled in France). On Sainte Anne she meets the Governor's\nson or perhaps an arranged marriage has been made. At any rate Jeannine is\nmarried to the governor's son, who, if we are to accept the evidence of the\nplay, where David is \"a dashing captain of chasseurs,\" is in the military.\nBecause he's away playing soldier, the bored Jeannine, who is the daughter\nof a scientist, is intrigued by certain notions about the native Annese,\nwho in these days are still quite numerous. Again here I cite the account\nof Mrs. Blount, who mentions having abo children for playmates. Jeannine\neither invites one of these abo children to come live with her or has a\nsummer home in the country, where the Governor can go a la Camp David for\nthe American President to get away from politics and the heat of the city.\n\nUnfortunately, it is not much longer after this point that the war breaks\nout.\n\nSlight obligatory break to discuss history and Wolfe's naming conventions.\nOn Sainte Anne there are two cities that have the same names as French\ncities here on Earth: Laon and St.-Dizier.\nWhy does Gene Wolfe appropriate the names of these cities? Well, Laon for\nstarters is the capital of Aisne Department, which is why I've made Laon\ncapital of Sainte Anne. Stands to reason, doesn't it? An even more\npertinent reason for Wolfe's picking Laon I'll reveal later. As for\nSt.-Dizier, Earth, it's regional headquarters for its area and hence the\nlocal repository for documents. Recall now that on Sainte Anne, during the\nwar, St.-Dizier is \"fused,\" and all the records are destroyed. Whether\nnuked or lasered, the fact that it has been chosen over Laon parallels\nWorld War Two, in that while Tokyo, the capital, was heavily bombed, it was\nHiroshima, a regional headquarter, that was nuked. Also recall that\nHiroshima had one of the larger Catholic presences in all of Japan--hence\n*Saint*-Dizier.\n\nMeanwhile, back in Laon (the Annese equivalent of Tokyo), bombs destroy the\nGovernor's Palace or Summer Villa, wherever Jeannine has been undertaking\nher Jane Goodall-like study of the Annese. (Dianne Fossey of \"Gorilla in\nthe Mist\" offers another suggestive female parallel.)\n\nTragically, however, she's killed in the bombing, but one of her abo\nfamiliars lives, though her legs are horribly mangled.\n\nRecall again the words of Mrs. Blount: \"Yes, there was still quite a few\nFrench left here when we came, most all except the littlest children had\ntheir arms or their legs gone or was scarred terrible.\" Again, I believe\nthis is meant as parallel; recall as well the earlier cited \"crippled\"\nreference in the play. Now it applies to another soon-to-become Jeannine.\n\nThis unknown abo girl--I have been unable to deduce her name--decides that\nshe will impersonate the beautiful daughter-in-law of the Governor because\nit's a better life than eating swamp rats and snails in the back of beyond,\nwhere we're told half of all children die and foraging groups must be kept\nto subsistence levels. Here's where the Laon angle again is especially\nimportant. Remember how I told you it had additional significance? Well,\nLaon, France, is home to the secondmost important Catholic relic in all of\nEurope (the first is the Turin Shroud): a *copy* of the **Veil** of\nVeronica, which in itself purports to be a replica of Jesus's face. Note\nhere that it is only a *copy*, however, as well as the *Veil* aspect (the\noriginal Veil is in St. Petersburg). Now we begin to see why Wolfe has\nchosen both Laon and Veil to use in FIFTH HEAD. The abo girl becomes a copy\nof the original, Veil-who-once-was-Jeannine.\n\nThe new Jeannine, like her brother in disguise, Victor Trenchard, is able\nto pull off the old switcheroo, and even to regenerate her lower\nextremities, but because of Dollo's Law is unable to produce functioning\nlegs. That's why they're withered. (Also why as well Roy Trenchard can't\nuse his hands post-train loss). And it's also why she can't get them fixed\nor a transplant. She's Annese, not human.\n\nMeanwhile, after the fusing of St.-Dizier, the French sue for peace the\nsame way the Japanese did after we vaporized Hiroshima and Nagasaki.\n\nBut because life on Sainte Anne is now no picnic for the disenfranchised\nFrench, when Jeannine/abo is contacted by her father (or vice-versa) and\npresented with the chance to return to Sainte Croix, she avails herself of\nthe opportunity.\n\nLife begins anew for Jeannine back on Sainte Croix. Because she is an abo\nlike Victor's mother or Cassilla she can affect how old she appears. She\nalso now postulates the autobiographical Veil's Hypothesis. And remember\nhow Victor generates his own Liev's Postpostulate? Liev and Veil in real\nlife are mirror as well as anagrammatic images of each other.\n\nAlso note the fractious nature of the various Wolfe siblings. She and\nMaitre (who in reality is one generation younger) at one point argue so\nviolently they no longer want anything to do with each other, and perhaps\nher name is even anathema to bring up in his presence. Recall also Number\nFive's description of Aunt Jeannine as the Black Queen in chess: \"a chess\nqueen neither sinister nor beneficent, and Black only as distinguished from\nsome White Queen I would never encounter.\" The White Queen Number Five\nnever encounters, I submit, is the real Jeannine--remember the *white* wool\nblanket that smother's the baby's face in the picture? Given how Jeannine\nhas no inkling that both Number Five and David exist, might we not suppose\nthe same thing may have happened a generation earlier with Maitre--that he\nassumes she is merely an older sibling he's never heard about? (Remember,\nshe can keep looking younger, or at least maintain a less ageful aspect.)\n\nAs for the money she desires I suspect she wishes to return to Sainte Anne\nand die among her own kind rather than spend the last of her days in a\nwhorehouse (Maitre simply doesn't have it to give her). Unfortunately, this\nis exactly what happens, and I submit she dies of old age at the novella's\nend.\n\nAnd the mysterious scene involving her, John Marsch and her \"girls,\" as she\ncalls them? \n\nLet us recall the Shadow Children of \"A Story.\" Not only are they able to\ngenerate eidola akin to New Sun aquastars--the Old Wise One is one such\naquastar, and we also have mention by one of the marshmen that whenever you\nattack a group of Shadow Children there always appear to be more of them\nthan there actually are--in fact, the Shadow Children have names that are\nbased on how many in number their group comprises. But the numbers are only\nvalid when the configuration is odd--1, 3, 5 or 7--suggesting that whenever\nthe group is even numbered there are eidolic aquastars present.\n\nRecall too that the Shadow Children are childlike in size. Now let us\nattempt to explicate Dr. Veil's first name: it's Aubrey, which means 'elf +\nruler.' Elfin as in childlike, eh?\n\nI submit to you Aubrey Veil is an abo of the Shadow Child variety. And her\n\"girls, as she calls them\" are aquastars, mind-generated eidola. Because\nremember the name of a single Shadow Child when its group is reduced to\none? It's Wolf. Jeannine Wolfe, to be more precise.\n\n(The parallel to this scene is the one in which Maitre explains to Dr.\nMarsch about the naked giantess walking through walls: she's an image too,\na hologram.)\n\nOne last point I'd like to make in regards to the sensefulness of the\nabove.\n\nReaders of my CAVE CANEM may recall how I puzzled over what I thought was\nan editorial or auctorial miscue in \"A Story\" and \"VRT.\" This is because in\nthe former the abo constellation is called Shadow Child, but in the latter\nit's called Shadow Children, and features twice as many paired eyes (binary\nstars, probably). Also in \"VRT,\" Dr. Marsh, despite having been shown its\nlocation earlier, is unable later to find the Shadow Children\nconstellation.\n\nHe does however find it eventually, or rather his own shadow does.\n\nShe's Jeannine Wolfe of Sainte Croix, the abo proponent of Veil's\nHypothesis.\n\n\n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Stephenson", "address": "pws at ifh.de" }, "date": "1998-06-09T07:53:06+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) The Shadow of Aubrey Veil", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Robert Borski\" wrote:\nI call my analysis the Secret Shadow approach because I believe that while\nthe novel's grand theme involves the search for identity, its central\nconceit is that no one is simply who he or she seems. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I would say this is a very Wolfean theme altogether, or to put it\nanother way, torturers have shadows too. (Readers of this list may\nstill dimly remember Wolfe wrote another series of novels under the title\n`The Book of the New Sun'...) Severian hides in his cloak and behind\nhis mask, Thecla for much of the time hides in Severian, Dorcas has been\ntemporally shifted, Jolenta --- 'nuff said, Talos and Baldanders fit\ntogether differently from how it looks, the Autarch is in some sense his\nancestors too, the alzabo pretends to be little Severian's father...\nthe list goes on and on. I think the difference is that in the Book\nit's only one of the great universal strands. On the other hand, is\nthere any first rate novel which does not involve the search for identity?\nWolfe's gift is in wrapping the inside and outside round one another, so\nyou don't know any more quite what identity means.\n\npws" } ] } ] }