Blackbird Pond IRL

Thanks to Constance for passing this article along.

The Boston Globe has a piece on literary places in New England to take kids during spring vacation. And one of them is Wethersfield, where the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum occupies the house that served as the inspiration for The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

And the library has a map (PDF warning) of places mentioned in the book, showing their contemporary locations.

Chapter 10: Guess Who's Back

Hannah, it turns out, is a Quaker. Which is just a bit outside the norm for Puritan New England. ("The Quakers are queer stubborn people.") "Just a bit" translates into "Hannah and her husband were branded and exiled from Massachusetts." There was just a wee bit of prejudice against the egalitarian sects in those days.

(This gives me a chance to plug an excellent-but-overlooked book, Ann Turnbull's No Shame, No Fear. Does not stint on the details of the early days of the Society of Friends.)

This is a detail Kit decides not to share with William, who's still showing up at the house and courting-without-actually-saying-so. In fact, she doesn't tell him about Hannah at all, because Miss Unobservant has started to notice the signs that reveal when she's scandalizing him:

"She could never be sure what thoughts were hidden behind that impassive face, but she had learned to recognize the sudden stiffening of his jaw muscles that meant she had said something shocking."

John Holbrook is also continuing to show up at the house, and is also not showing any actual interest in Judith, though everyone assumes he's after her. Unfortunately -- as far as Kit and Matthew are concerned -- he's also started subverting his own opinions to those of his teacher -- and we know Gershom Bulkeley is unpopular in the Wood house.

And while all the not-quite-romantic-intrigue is going on, Kit continues to visit Hannah. If it were up to her, she would probably just move in there, since it's the only place in Wethersfield she actually likes.

Oh, and remember the "seafaring friend" introduced in the last chapter? He makes an appearance here, only he's not the withered old man Kit imagined:
"There, unbelievably, was Nathaniel Eaton, the captain's son, leaning easily against the doorpost, with that well-remembered mocking smile in his blue eyes."
Here's what we learn about Nat in this chapter:

• He's good with the elderly, particularly when they have occasional memory issues: "He seemed not to have noticed anything amiss, but very casually he reached out his hand and covered Hannah's worn fingers with his own."
• He has blue eyes. Very blue: "She had forgotten the intense blue of his eyes, like the sea itself."
• He has a softer side. Or at least he did when he was eight: "'Tis a strange thing, that the only friends I have I found in the same way, lying flat in the meadows, crying as though their hearts would break."
• He can irk Kit without even trying: "She might have told him, but looking up she caught a hint of 'I told you so' in those blue eyes that silenced her."
• He has layers. Like an onion: "What a contradictory person he was, she thought, hurrying along South Road. Always putting her at a disadvantage somehow, and yet, now and then, surprising her, letting her peek through a door that always seemed to slam shut again before she could actually see inside."

Odds we're going to be seeing more of Mr. Eaton? Pretty good, I'd say.

Chapter 9: A Tempest in the School Teapot

Yes, totally stealing from Anne of Green Gables here. This is what management gurus call "synergy."

Kit's got a real paid job now, helping Mercy teach Wethersfield's youngest kids how to read. And oh my is she glad Mercy is handling the hornbook-reading beginners. Kit may not think much of the primers her kids use, but at least she gets to skip phonics.

Ten days into the session, Kit feels like she's found her niche. And it's totally because of her fancy dresses:

"The children admired her pretty clothes, they brought her strawberries and daisies, they argued over who would sit next to her, and every day they waited with delighted anticipation to see what she would do and say next."

Again, Speare throws in a line here that makes me wonder how sheltered and/or unobservant Kit was back on Barbados. Because here's how she thinks of the students:

"Sober little adults they had appeared on that first day, dressed in fashions much like their parents'."

I don't claim to be an expert in seventeenth-century fashion, but dressing kids in miniature versions of adult clothing was a pretty standard practice (up into the twentieth century, in fact). Presumably all the other children Kit has encountered have been wearing "fashions much like their parents'," so is it just the fact that these kids are in more Puritan styles that jumps out at her?

Moving on: The other reason Kit finds herself enjoying teaching is that she's managed to incorporate stories into her day. Mercy is still a little reluctant ("Was it right, she questioned Kit, to bribe children into good behavior by these stories?"), but the kids love it.

However. Kit's next experiment, in which she decides to have her students act out the day's story, adds another point in the "Kit's totally unobservant" column.

"By chance she had chosen the three most obstreperous pupils in the school to be her thieves and robbers, and the hapless boy who represented the traveler was the priggish little scholar they most cordially disliked."

This, out of the half-dozen students she works with. Apparently she hasn't been paying much attention to their personalities.

Not surprising, then, that the experiment turns into a disaster. Not only does she demonstrate that she can't keep the students in line -- just as the superintendent walks in -- she does it via one of the Puritans' taboos, something she's already run into ("Play-acting!").

Kit's response is to run away. To the Meadow. Which is where the title character -- or at least a person who one would assume is the title character -- gets her first close-up. Hannah Tupper is "a woman with short-cropped white hair and faded, almost colorless eyes set deep in an incredibly wrinkled face," and she and Kit click straight off.

The way Speare phrases it, you really get the sense that it's the people not in positions of power that fall for Kit's charms:

"Like the school children, she had accepted Kit without a question or suspicion, and like a child she scuttled ahead now, confident that Kit would accept her in the same way."

Hannah gives Kit the doting she needs right then, and a cake and a kitten to go along with it. Suddenly Kit's feeling worlds better, to the extent that she's even able to imagine that there's a little something going on between Hannah and the sailor who brings her coral and other trinkets:

"Kit almost laughed. Of all the unlikely things -- a romance! She could imagine him, this seafaring friend, white-haired and weatherbeaten, coming shyly to the door with his small treasures from some distant shore."

Future chapters will show that that's not exactly the case. Hmm. How many sailors have been introduced in the text so far?

Chapter 8: New Clothes Solve Everything

Or at least they make the little things better. In this case, Kit gets a new homespun dress that she can actually work in, and Judith starts being almost friendly.

And while that's happening, Kit's first actual friend makes an appearance, though it's at a distance for now. We're given a bit of foreshadowing:

"How often she would come back she had no way of foreseeing, nor could she know that never, in the months to come, would the Meadows break the promise they held for her at this moment, a promise of peace and quietness and of comfort for a troubled heart."

Kit thinks the Meadows are pretty excellent, but Judith points out the practical things, like the fact that it floods on a regular basis, which is why it's the perfect home for the local outcast.

"Nobody but Hannah Tupper would live there by Blackbird Pond."

And Speare points out that everyone loves a good bit of hyperbole. (Spoiler alert: There are no actual witches in this book. But we still get stuck with the imagery.)

"that lonely figure in the ragged flapping shawl - it was easy enough to imagine any sort of mysterious brew in the pot!"

And so to work.

"Kit could never get over her amazement at her cousin. Judith, so proud and uppity, so vain of the curls that fell just so on her shoulder, so finicky about the snowy linen collar that was the only vanity allowed her, kneeling in the dirt doing work that a high-class slave in Barbados would rebel at. What a strange country this was!"

Once again, Kit's attitude toward slavery is totally unexamined. The closest thing we get to breaking it down here is the acknowledgement that she accepts the existence of different classes of slaves, just like we know she's cool with different classes of Englishmen.

"What was she doing here anyway, Sir Francis Tyler's granddaughter, squatting in an onion patch?"

Which is why she starts thinking about the appeal of William Ashby. There's still nothing to write home about in William himself, but Kit knows this is her chance to move back toward the caste she occupied before leaving Barbados.

"Did it seem likely that his mother, who sat so elegantly in meeting, had ever touched a chokeweed? There were no blisters under those soft gloves, Kit wagered. She knew by now that the humble folk who sat in the very back of the Meeting House were servants of the fine families of Wethersfield. William would own servants himself, beyond a doubt."

A) Another indication that Kit's vision of her future includes slave ownership. This is something we'll have to return to in the last chapter. B) Why does no one ever talk about William's father? His mother gets a couple appearances, but Mr. Ashby Senior is mentioned precisely once in the book.

Finally, this chapter ends with some humanizing of Matthew. When Judith is chatty at the beginning of the chapter, she mentions that he's entitled to a bigger plot of land, but doesn't have anyone to help cultivate it. At the end, Mercy provides some context: there were sons, but they didn't make it out of childhood.

So now we see that the Wood family had the potential to be at least a bit better off economically, but the usual way of accumulating wealth through kinship networks (i.e. putting your sons to work for you) is unavailable to them. Plus, now Matthew and Rachel are both, on some level, tragic figures.

Which, as far as Kit's concerned, doesn't make her uncle any less of a grouch, though.

Chapter 7: How to Succeed in Romance without Really Trying

From this chapter, I think we can conclude that first dates in colonial times (or mid-twentieth-century depictions thereof) were no less awkward than their present-day counterparts.

Because William has come to call. And as that's about all he's done ("William seemed to feel that merely by coming he had done his share."), Kit's at a loss.

"When a young man came to call what did one talk about? Was it all up to the girl?"

Let me know when you figure that one out, Kit.

Rachel comes to the rescue, essentially giving Kit permission to end the tete-a-tete and join her cousins and John Holbrook, who are about to make popcorn.

"There was something irresistible about popcorn."

Indeed.

When the conversation once again turns to politics, William gets a rare chance to look good, and Kit takes notice:

"William Ashby was neither speechless nor dim-witted. He even dared to stand up to her uncle!"

But that doesn't mean she's starting to think well of him. Judith can't understand why Kit would hesitate.

"Don't you know William is able to build the finest house in Wethersfield if he wants to? Does he have to keep you amused as well?"

If it were me, and if I were going to be living in the house with him, I wouldn't think that a smattering of conversation now and then would be too much to ask.

A month goes by, and William doesn't appear to be hesitating. However, he also doesn't appear to have asked Kit if they're on the same page.

"Without even asking, he was reckoning on her as deliberately as he calculated his growing pile of lumber."

But even though Kit's not thinking warm fuzzy thoughts about William Ashby, she does notice the contrast that he provides to her new daily routine, of which she is not a fan:

"It was incredible that every day should be the same, varied only in the work that filled every hour from sunrise to dark."

Speare-as-narrator gives us a look into Kit's thoughts here, in a way that doesn't exactly present Kit in a good light.

"Her hands were unskillful not so much from inability as from the rebellion that stiffened her fingers. She was Katherine Tyler. She had not been reared to do the work of slaves."

I find the word choice interesting here -- "reared" instead of the more familiar "she had not been born to..." I wonder if that was a deliberate choice.

Also, we've returned once again to Kit's thoughts on slavery: She doesn't question the institution, or her relationship to it. She only objects to the idea that she's being asked to do the same work as the slaves her grandfather used to own.

Chapter 6: Love and Loyalty

That new-post-every-Wednesday thing? Yeah, sorry about that.

To return to the story: This chapter picks up not long after Kit's first church service, continuing our acquaintance with some of the characters introduced there. For instance:

"Reverend Gershom Bulkeley laid down his linen napkin, pushed back his heavy chair from the table, and expanded his straining waistcoat in a satisfied sigh."

Dunno about you, but I get the sense that he's not intended to be a sympathetic character. Especially not when the narrator goes into the list of all the preparations the family's been putting in for the past four days:

"Every inch of the great kitchen had been turned inside out. The floor had been fresh-sanded, the hearthstone polished, the pewter scoured. The brick oven had been heated for two nights in a row, and the whole family had gone without sugar since Sunday to make sure that the minister's notorious sweet tooth would be satisfied."

And then there's this:

"But the greatest part of his condescension he bestowed on Kit, once he had understood that her grandfather had been Sir Francis Tyler."

Speare's doing some signaling here, don't you think? People who appreciate Kit for herself = good. People who see her as a symbol of something = not to be trusted.

We also get a taste of colonial politics here, with Matthew and Bulkeley going at it. Matthew maintains that Kit's loyalty to the Crown "is in no danger in this house," but he also makes his own viewpoint clear:

"There are worse things than revolution!"

(Raise your hand if you get a whiff of Thomas Jefferson there, with his "I like a little rebellion now and then." Everyone with a hand up, your history geek status has been confirmed.)

And in the romance department, we have this development:

"Young William Ashby asked permission today to pay his respects to my niece."

Kit can't imagine why a guy who looked at her for two minutes on Sunday seems to be making a move already. Meanwhile, Judith is just as quick to deny that there was ever anything going on at her end:

"William never asked to call on me. I just said he was getting around to it."

Grain of salt, anyone?

Time-shifted narratives

The Ian McKellan production of Richard III is beautiful. (Well, beautiful aside from the scenes of gratuitous violence, but when you're talking about the Wars of the Roses, that's kind of hard to escape.)

What I love about it is that it takes a story written about a specific period of history and, without explanation or even acknowledgement, drops it seamlessly into the 1930s. And it works. For me, it works because:

• Who cares if cigarettes weren't invented until centuries after Richard III was around? McKellan makes the cigarette (and Richard's difficulties in handling it) as much a part of the character as the hunchback.
• Oswald Mosley and co. never got their hands on any real power in pre-WWII England, but the idea of a pro-fascist England is both plausible and intriguing (see Jo Walton's Small Change series, for one), and you can't help seeing overtones of it in the movie. This is the 1930s, but the biggest threat to England isn't from Germany, it's from within. Think of it as the dark side of The King's Speech.
• Did I mention that it's beautiful? The 1930s were a great time for fashion, and the costumes a big part of what makes the movie work. (They were Oscar-nominated, but lost out to Restoration.)

So go, watch it. (Fair warning: I picked this out because I needed a break from Downton Abbey overload -- and then realized that both Maggie Smith and Jim Carter are in it. If you find yourself wondering why Bates is plotting against the king, don't blame me.)

But here's my question: Is there any way this kind of time-shifting could work in a book?

There's a long tradition of moving Shakespeare's works to other eras, even in books. There is no shortage of Romeo and Juliet retellings, or Hamlet-set-in-high-school. And biblical retellings can work in the present day -- Queen of Secrets is one that comes to mind.

But none of those are tied to specific parts of history the way Richard III is. Would it be possible to write the book equivalent of this production, just plopping historical characters down in a different era? Or would it get too caught up in logic, the need to explain away the monarchy's impotence in the 1930s and the simple fact that this wasn't the way it happened?

I haven't been able to think of an example that shows this kind of time-shifting can work in prose, but I'd love to be proven wrong.