Book #208: Twelve Years a Slave

Book #208: Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

September 13, 2015

I technically finished Northup's memoir yesterday afternoon, but my day got so busy that I couldn't get to this entry. Anyway, Northup's story was recently adapted to film, and won much critical acclaim (including the Best Picture Oscar, I think?). I'd actually never heard of it until the film came out, and didn't know it was an autobiographical work until I found it in my elibrary. I wish I had realized it sooner, as Northup's story is written with such clarity and truth.

Northup was a free black man in New York state in the 19th century. He and his wife did all right for themselves, were good citizens and hard workers with a lovely family. Northup was educated, and had connection in his part of the world. But that didn't protect him from kidnappers, who tricked him into accompanying them to Washington, where they drugged him and sold him to a slave trader. 

I've read several slave narratives at this point, so unfortunately, none of the details of Northup's tale were shocking. Disheartening, yes. And Northup gives you the real deal, not beating around the bush when describing the ways that Patsey, a young woman, is victimized by their owners. The cruelest of base human emotions drive their interactions with her: lust and jealousy and pride, and Patsey is helpless against it. It is far too easy to imagine this happening to millions of other helpless people during this shameful time in our history.

Northup's perspective is especially valuable because of his lawful status as a freeman. His own father had been freed when he was young, his mother a free woman, so Soloman was never a slave until he was 30. He then had an outsiders' perspective on things. He could, for instance, call bullshit on the idea that black people are intellectually inferior. He being born free, with the ability to travel and to learn, was a stark contrast to his fellow slaves who had never known anything but cotton fields and swamps and degradation. How can intellect flourish in an environment designed to suppress it?

Northup was in Louisiana, in the bayous, where he states that treatment of slaves was harsher than anywhere else. I've read other sources that would support this. Still, he has a forgiving nature and makes a distinction between kind masters and cruel masters. I find the kind masters like Ford to be terrible hypocrites, but I'm sure that Northup much preferred Ford's ignorant but well-meaning management to Epps's drunken cruelty.

Northup got lucky and made a friend of a visiting Canadian nomad, who got in touch with Northup's New York connections. It was the son, or maybe grandson, of Northup's father's master (the one who freed him), who came to retrieve him. I found it kind of inappropriate that this Henry Northup guy didn't drop everything and go free someone he claims to call a friend, rather than wait several months to tie up some unrelated legal affairs. Like damn, don't offer to help the guy and then leave his family hanging that long. This does not affect Solomon's gratitude, but I found it messed up.

Northup attempts to have the men involved in his kidnapping prosecuted, but they all manage to get away with it. It's not difficult to imagine that they'd done this to other people, and maybe did it some more after they were acquitted. You see these other slave narratives, of getting to freedom and starting a new life of peace and freedom, but the danger wasn't truly over. Northup never was a slave before he was sucked in to that disgusting institution. And he acknowledges that he was lucky to have friends and the laws of New York to eventually get him out. 

Northup was home with his family as he wrote his memoirs. He was an active abolitionist for a while, but then dropped off the radar. He was rumored to have been kidnapped again, but historians don't buy into it and neither do I. He was kidnapped in the first place because he trusted two white strangers; I highly doubt he was ever so trusting again.

Book #207: Mansfield Park

Book #207: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

September 5, 2015

I was reading this book while reading The Dark Tower, so I crawled through the first half of it. I've been able to finish it more quickly since finishing the last one. I've now read all of Jane Austen's novels, and I must say that it's my least favorite of her works. While most of her others are considered timeless classics, especially Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park simply doesn't stand the test of time, for a number of reasons.

The biggest issue here is Fanny Price, our protagonist. Inevitably, I find myself comparing all of Austen's heroines to Elizabeth Bennett. Elizabeth is an easy character to root for because she's bold. She stands up for herself and her family, she does what she feels is right without too much regard for societal expectations, and she is smart. Fanny is almost her exact opposite. She's not dumb, but she's otherwise timid, dull, and ultra-virtuous. She's got a stick up her ass, too, and in spite of her sweetness, she's tough to like.

Fanny has rich relations, Lord and Lady Bertram, but her own parents are white trash. Apparently in Austen's time, even white trash families with too many kids can afford a servant or too, negligent though they may be. The Bertrams offer to take 10-year-old Fanny in to give her folks a little financial relief, and the main story finds us a few years later. Fanny isn't mistreated by her extended family in any respect, but there's a distinction between her and her cousins. Her other aunt, Mrs. Norris (I'm pretty sure that Filch's cat from the Harry Potter series was named after her) is a real bitch to Fanny, constantly putting her in her place. Nobody at Mansfield is very fond of aunt Norris, but she's always around.

If I didn't enjoy this particular story, I still have to admire the characterization. Lady Bertram is an interesting character. She's lazy, selfish, but not cruel-hearted. She's not outwardly affectionate to Fanny, but does love her. Lord Bertram is supposed to be this formidable figure, but he isn't half bad, and any neglect of Fanny prior to her coming of age was probably due to her being so quiet and submissive that he just never noticed her while he had four other children to attend to. There isn't a villain in this story, per se, but rather a distinction between the rational and the foolish. But it's Fanny being seen as the rational one here that bothers me...she's just so outdated in her values.

Take the whole play situation. Their cousins and some friends wanted to have a little fun, and while Lord Bertram was abroad they decided to put on a play. Yeah, the fact that Maria was flirting with another man in front of her fiancé was fucked up, but Fanny was a stick in the mud about the whole production right from the start. When Lord Bertram arrived home early and put the kabosh on the plan, it was acknowledged by several involved that Fanny had been right. Urg. Lighten up.

Fanny was right to spurn Henry Crawford's repeated attempts to woo her, but not totally for the right reasons. She saw that he was a player long before he actually noticed her, but he might have gotten through that barrier with his attentions and sincerely decent qualities were it not for one thing. Fanny had long been in love with her cousin Edmund. 

Okay, I get that cousins getting married wasn't exactly frowned upon in Austen's time. But throw in the fact that Edmund isn't a great character himself, and it's just bad chemistry all around. It just now strikes me that the boy who slept with his cousin in How I Live Now was named Edmond...another reference? Anyway, Edmund pays Fanny attention when no one else does, and she worships him. But while he's a fuddy duddy himself, he's also easily swayed. Hey, he's a man, and he falls for pretty Mary Crawford. I like her, personally, but she was all wrong for Edmund. She thought he was a good person, but she made fun of the fact that he would soon be a clergyman, and since Tom was the oldest Bertram he'd get the title and estate, Edmund wouldn't make enough money to maintain her lifestyle. I think there's nothing wrong with her recognizing that. 

So Fanny and Edmund end up together at the end of this slow drag of a story. I would have liked to have seen growth from Fanny, and it bothers me that the message of the story is that she didn't need to grow. Edmund patronizes her, and will continue to do so for the rest of her life. And she'll love it, and she'll listen to him talk about himself all the time, and happily ever after. Yuck. While I was never a huge fan of Mr. Darcy, I can now appreciate the way he grew as a character and smile at the thought of the challenging marriage he and Elizabeth surely had. I don't believe I'll ever think of Fanny Price again. She might appreciate that anyway; she never much liked attention.