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Date Posted: 05:57:32 02/26/09 Thu
Author: HollyC
Subject: This is very off topic - but in reading this excellent intro (thanks Jessie and Catherine) the crossing the line bit also reminded me of a line Claire tries not to cross: having as little as possible to do with slavery. River Run would have made a home full of creature comforts for her, and given Jamie a place to run in a Lallybroch type of manner, yet Claire just knows to stay away from the poisened fruit, so to speak. And maybe thats why I have a hard time with the 2 relationships we are discussing here. No matter how DG weaves in the love angle (Jocasta freeing Ulysses years before he leaves, etc) there was something about these plots that left me queasy. I'll admit my US history/slavery knowledge is weak, but the players are coming from such unlevel fields I have a hard time thinking that without freedom of choice on all sides, there could have been 'true' relationships.
In reply to: JessieR 's message, " Lines, Love, and Race in A Breath of Snow and Ashes" on 20:31:28 02/22/09 Sun


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[> [> Bravo, Holly. And perhaps that's Jocasta's greatest wrong, she was a slave owner. I'll grant that a person can't change the society, but a person can, like Claire, refuse to participate in a great wrong. The queasiness you speak of was made real for me when Jamie explained to Claire why he couldn't take Jocasta's offer. He said he couldn't live knowing there was a man who thought of him as he had thought of those who owned Himself. -- Carol P, 11:09:31 02/26/09 Thu


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[> [> [> Carol—I go back and forth about Jocasta. She’s a slaveholder, which is repugnant, but she’s also a victimized woman who has fought back, albeit in ways not always honorable. I dislike her ethics, but I admire her guts. So, my question is this: would a woman like this be in a long-term sexual relationship with her manservant, and if so, why? What do we know about Jocasta prior to the revelation of this relationship that suggests her true companion in life would be Ulysses? Or is there something in the novel that indicates she chose him because she never again would be subordinate to a man? -- JessieR, 18:30:51 02/26/09 Thu


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[> [> [> [> I can't think of anything conclusively stated to answer your questions, but I have trouble seeing subtle psychological clues. I fear my ideas about Jo are the result of my engaging in affective fallacy again. *g* I find it believable that Jo would have such a relationship. Like all people, Jo would want, and respond to, love. U was there all day every day, kind, considerate, helpful. I can see the relationship developing over time. Remembering Kathleen M's point about Jo's blindness, that might have been a big factor in removing the race question for both Jo and U. Remember the scene on the stair when Claire (or Bree?) came down the stairs all dressed up and surprised Ulysses giving her an unguarded stare of male appreciation? There's no indication ever that Jo was unkind to any of the slaves, so they both could have privately ignored the slavery issue. I doubt Jo deliberately chose U because she wouldn't be subordinate, but that certainly would be a plus factor she'd appreciate. -- Carol P, 09:24:55 02/27/09 Fri


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[> [> [> CarolP -- about your insight that Jocasta's greatest wrong was that she was a slaveowner. I meant to reply last week, but it took me a while to remember why your observation was so meaningful to me, and now I realize that it has reactivated a debate from my earliest exposure to American lit. (I'm a Canadian, so I'm no expert!) Going long>>> -- CatherineM., 10:39:05 03/06/09 Fri

When I first encountered Twain's Huckleberry Finn, I remember a controversy among critics about the ending of the book -- the long-drawn out nonsense in Tom Sawyer's scheme to "rescue" Jim in a fanciful way, all derivative from his reading of things like the Count of Monte Cristo. The argument was that Twain bungled the ending. The silliness at the Phelpses' farm undermines the pattern established earlier, in which the episodes clearly imply stronger and stronger social criticism and a deeper preoccupation with the nature of and need for freedom, and it trivializes Huck and Jim's harrowing quest for liberty. It's a striking and persuasive argument, but so is the rebuttal -- that by placing Jim's capture at the Phelpses' farm, after the sequence of events that represents human nature (or at least American frontier society) as worse and worse (the Duke and Dauphin's frauds, the shooting of Old Boggs etc.) the further they go south, Twain is actually implying that the sins of the middle-class Bible-reading Phelpses (they actually do go down to read the Bible to Jim after imprisoning him) are even worse than those of their precursors in the narrative: the greatest obscenity is not the abuse of slaves, but the simple fact of owning slaves in the first place, even by kindly simpletons like the Phelpses. Like the Phelpses, Jocasta feeds and clothes her slaves well, and it is true that they have a materially more comfortable life that they might have had even if free, and yet it's clear, I think, that we are meant to share J and C's discomfort with the entire institution. And I'm still mystified by Jocasta's motives in having Phaedre as her own body servant.

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[> [> [> [> Golly, it's been ages since I read or thought about Huck Finn. Having grown up in the segregated South, I knew lots of Phelpses. I'm tempted to say that kind of person is the worst when injustice walks the land, although that may be a bit harsh. Still, it's easy to recognize and fight the Simon Legrees. It's much harder to see and overcome apathy and rationalization. And it's hard for me to be impartial on the question of freedom since I just can't abide anyone telling me what to do. I wouldn't do well in a retirement home, the idea of someone deciding what I eat and when I eat it, what I do today, just infuriates me. So when I read of a real evil like slavery, my imagination fills in the details all too clearly. I too am mystified by Jocasta's motives in keeping Phaedre so close. Did she mean to pamper Phaedre or humiliate Betty? Either one gives me the willies. -- Carol P, 19:11:44 03/06/09 Fri


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[> [> Bear in mind that the simple fact of being a woman in the 18th century meant that you often didn't have freedom of choice. Jocasta didn't; she was bartered to the Camerons by her brothers, and didn't have any true freedom until her third husband died. Yet we don't assume on those grounds that it would be impossible for a man and woman to love each other. I think we should perhaps try not to impose modern concepts (like the notion that a relationship of honesty and emotion simply can't exist unless all parties have social parity; that would be patently ridiculous if we were talking about any situation *other* than slavery) on historical situations. JMHO, though. -- maddiej, 13:06:41 02/26/09 Thu


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[> [> [> I understand what you are saying maddie, and for that reason I don't judge a character like Jocasta for going along with attitudes of the time. ( But, I'm curious - did outright slavery exist in Scotland in the 1700's? I didn't think so, but perhaps) Anyway, my point is more that I have trouble imagining what kind of love Ulysses could have for someone who held absolute life and death control over him. Maybe he stayed around because where else could he go and have the limited influence he had within the day to day running of River Run. There's a line in the last rereading chapter where Jamie asks him if he has any children, and Ulysses says words like 'not that I could claim'. This is an example of what has been taken from him by people like Jamie - imo those powerful wrongs are somehow glossed over in these subplots. I'm not criticizing, thats not what DG's book are about. inside>> -- HollyC, 14:22:30 02/26/09 Thu

I just think its not imposing modern sensibilities to imagine strong characters like Phaedre and Ulysses chafing under the control of Jocasta etc. I'd imagine any tender feelings they may have for her & Duncan are mixed with a much more complex stir of emotions like resentment and anger.

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[> [> [> An interesting point about the status of women in this period and the power that men had over them. In the “Bees and Switches” chapter of ABOSAA, the same chapter where Jamie proclaims his definition of manhood, Claire acknowledges that wives were the property of their husbands: “I was, for the most part, able to ignore the fact that I was legally [Jamie’s] property. That didn’t alter that fact that is was a fact—and he knew it” (412). The chapter ends with Jamie’s ruminations on “owning” Claire, but ends with his acknowledgement that she owns him, too. So despite the power that men had over women, couples were able to establish loving relationships based on mutual trust and respect. HollyC’s question, then, is whether a slave and his master could do the same. In “The Smell of Light” chapter, we finally get a glimpse of Jocasta and Ulysses’s take on their relationship. Do their accounts reveal affection genuinely given and received? -- JessieR, 17:46:08 02/26/09 Thu


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[> [> [> Love between unequals is possible. I think Ulysses loved Jo and Jo felt some kind of great affections for Ulysses, I just don't think her keeping him in slavery was loving behavior. One of the great delights of this whole series is how love and grand passion is so realistically mixed with aggravation, anger, disgust, disappointmet, etc. of one lover for the other. I too think Phaedre and Ulysses had to feel resentment, anger and a sense of fultility at times, even if, like Claire, they managed to ignore it some of the time. The difference in the slavery question here and Jamie owning Claire is that Jamie voluntarily relinquished that power. Remember the vow he gave her not to ever thrash her again? In private, Jamie doesn't act as an owner, he claims Claire as his property only to protect her from others (the witch trial, Wylie). In "The Smell of Light" chapter, I'm confused about why Ulysses made the decision to leave, especially without talking to Jo. Went long, inside>> -- Carol P, 19:25:49 02/26/09 Thu

Apparently he was going to Canada with Jo and Duncan, so why change his mind? Wouldn't he have been a free man in Canada, or is the time too early? I'm sure Jo could have prevailed on Duncan to let Ulysses travel with them and then give him new manumission papers so he would be free and safe.
I don't know how historically accurate it is, haven't had a chance to check, but in A Place Called Freedom by Ken Follett, 1760s, a Scots law is cited that a coal miner who worked for a mine owner for a year and a day was legally bound to that owner for the life of the miner and could not change jobs unless the mine owner agreed. The miner in the story thought that was slavery.

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[> [> [> [> But she *didn't* keep him in slavery. She freed him, and left him the choice whether to stay or go. He stayed, possibly because of his power and comfortable conditions, but also possibly because he loved her. I think that he didn't go to Canada because his relationship with her had been revealed, and Duncan would now know it. Imagine the dynamics of *that* little trio on the road! Also, he may have felt that with Duncan's decision to stay, Duncan had supplanted him as Jocasta's protector. -- maddiej, 03:37:46 02/27/09 Fri


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[> [> [> [> I think he left after Jamie talked to him because he knew now, for certain, that Duncan would know about him and Jo, and also that he was the one who sold Phaedre. He no longer would have the respect or power he once had with Jo. Maybe the unequal part of the relationship was not with Jo as the slave owner, but with Ulysses over Jo because she was blind and needed U to carry out the workings of RR. -- LisaW, 07:09:20 02/27/09 Fri


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