Sev's silence about Catherine

Dave Tallman · 24 Jun 2008, 08:20 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:20:31 -0600
Subject: (urth) Sev's silence about Catherine
In-Reply-To: <BAY103-W36750528E05B20ABC9DB64D7A70 at phx.gbl>
References: <BAY103-W36750528E05B20ABC9DB64D7A70 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4860AE4F.2090804 at gmail.com>

b sharp wrote:
> I find one VERY indirect clue of sexuality between Severian and Catherine.  
> It takes some convoluted explaining.  I credit Robert Borski for noting that in UotNS, 
> when Severian is cruising through the Secret House, he feels some deja vu when he
> looks down upon the Path Of Air from a loggia and sees a woman with "raven-dark" 
> hair being escorted by soldiers. This woman's olive skin and "raven" hair is a very 
> good match for Catherine. Her oval face suggests Pelerines.  Only two characters 
> (that I know of) have "dark" hair and a "pale" gown: this one and the corpse with 
> a livid face (Allowin's necklace?) Hildegrin digs up from the grave yard in the very 
> first chapter.  
>
> This woman's face has something in it that "tore at my heart" says Severian.  This phrase 
> clearly invokes Valeria, who lives off the Atrium of Time which is definitely a time portal
> like Master Ash's house.  So perhaps this woman is Severian's mother, Catherine, who 
> somehow got to the future but is being escorted back to her proper time.
It might help to revive another Robert Borski theory: that Catherine was 
Valeria's daughter by her second husband. There's another clue I haven't 
seen mentioned. In Chapter IX Sev sees a resemblance between the khabits 
"Chatelaine Barbea" and "Chatelaine Gracia."  He says:

"There was something in the eyes of both women, in the expression of 
their mouths, their carriage and the fluidity of their gestures, that 
was one. It recalled something I had seen elsewhere (I could not 
remember where), and yet it was new, and I felt somehow that the other 
thing, that which I had known earlier, was to be preferred."

I take this to mean that he had noticed a strong resemblance between two 
other women he had met. They could have  been Thecla and Thea, but that 
would be too obvious. I think was Valeria and "Katharine."

The woman being escorted was probably of high rank (a Contessa, as in 
the play), which is reasonable for the daughter of the Autarch. She 
might have used Father Inre's mirrors or other House Absolute features 
to escape from the flood into the past. As an unprotected woman in that 
time the Pelerines might have looked like a good option at first. If 
they didn't suit her, she might escape them and fall in with Ouen, and 
so on.

If Sev in fact slept with his other grandmother, Valeria, then he had 
two excellent reasons for silence about Catherine. The first was to 
avoid a scandal. It was one thing to admit about Dorcas; he had broken 
up with her. But Valeria was still his wife at the time he wrote "The 
Book of the New Sun."  But even more critical for him was the fact that 
Catherine wasn't born yet. To write about her might jeopardize her 
existence, and therefore his own.

One problem with this theory is that Sev said the woman on the Path of 
Air had a face that was "strange to me" and that "She was as lovely and 
unknown at that final glimpse as at the first." Perhaps the "Katharine" 
maid was a khabit  (or series of khabits) provided for the real 
Catherine. Another problem is that the existence of the first Severian 
shouldn't depend on a time loop.

I saw in some earlier messages that people are concerned that Talos' 
play mentioned the Contessa sighting and the appearance of Baldanders 
that last day of the autarchy.  That was "out of the loop" of the time 
trip where Sev became the Conciliator, since he only saw it after that 
trip and could not have told Canog about it (the first time, at least). 
That's not an insurmountable problem. Sev said that he planned to make 
more trips back to Os; on one of them he could have told someone about 
the flood day. Canog might have picked up that information when looking 
for more teachings of the Conciliator to flesh out his book.

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