Chapter 22 – Settling
A chapter with things artfully falling into place – at least for while – with Lady Isobel and Tuerquelle, amid the footnotery of history and politics and local colour and moeurs. It is as if life and prose continues to be polished (even as we read it), just like the banisters.
Lady Isobel is a sympathetic character, loving towards our heroine - but with tinges of amoral selfishness, where she cannot have relations with a slave who is deemed by the vet to have pox, but is able then to recommend the same slave to have relations with a concubine.
Some telling passages:-
After a moment to take stock, I outlined what had befallen me – Berenice's camp, Tuerquelle's birth, the Red Hill sale, the Laughing Phallus, and Sam's establishment. Most of the details were glossed over. Sometimes Lady Isobel asked me to expand. Several times, I saw tears in her eyes.
Gauzy fabrics, especially with strategically-placed slits, can leave a slave far more naked than a plain harness. The effect was achieved more subtly than at the Laughing Phallus but, to my mind, more powerfully.
My words, alas, were blocked by the nervous constriction Surrey folk call a toad in the throat – but known as a frog in Essex – either way it croaks.
A long passage below for especial note that sheds more light on Lady Isobel and on Tuerqui's own subconscious complex person-ality::
The luxury of breakfast in bed scarcely seemed possible. Passibelle climbed back under the covers to share the meal. It was all that breakfast should be – hot buttered toast, sausages and eggs, washed down with a refreshing green herb tea. Before taking the first delicious bite, I kissed Passibelle tenderly.
No doubt I should have been blissfully happy – a tasty breakfast in an exquisite bed; my love for Passibelle, for my mistress, for Tuerquelle – better still, love returned by each of them. For all of that, my contentment was evaporating, something was wrong. It took me a few minutes to realise that my malaise lay in being spoilt, treated as a person rather than a slave. A growing ache gripped me – to become what Tuerquelle thought I already was – to cease to be not only a poor slave but one who would, while so indulged, grow worse.
With this in mind, I requested an audience with Lady Isobel. In her indulgence, she saw me almost at once. A good mistress will listen to a slave's petition, but only at her own convenience – certainly not at the slave's. While having no wish to reject Lady Isobel's love, I yearned for it to reflect our places as mistress and slave.
"Yes Tuerqui?" she asked, smiling upon me as I entered. "Is everything all right?"
"No, mistress. I'm afraid not."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Tell me… Is there anything I can do?"
"Last night, mistress, you spoke of the need to respect a slave. You must know that respect relies on treating a slave as a slave. Treating a slave as a person is like dressing an animal in human clothes."
Query:
I am myself a great employer of the dash in punctuating prose (en dash or em dash), but I noticed in recent chapters what I considered to be an over-use of these in 'Odalisque'. They are used in great numbers. For example, I would have placed a comma after 'anything', not a dash:
"My bladder is rather full – and before I drink anything – I need the slave's convenience, only I don't know where it is, mistress."
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Word docs of the actual chapters are freely available to readers of this blog.
The links to all Chapter comments by me are here: http://weirdmonger.blogspot.com/2008/06/odalisque.html
Posted by: newdfl on 8/25/2008 6:53:00 AM , 8 comments
Submitted by Pet at 8/25/2008 9:44:11 AM
Thank you.
Your query:
"My bladder is rather full – and before I drink anything – I need the slave's convenience, only I don't know where it is, mistress."
is a rather complex sentence with four clauses. Looking at it now, my feeling is that the punctuation mark would be better placed before the word "and" thus:
"My bladder is rather full and – before I drink anything – I need the slave's convenience, only I don't know where it is, mistress."
Furthermore, I feel that the clause "before I drink anything" should be introduced and followed by the same punctuation mark. The following seems to me an acceptable (perhaps better) variant:
"My bladder is rather full and, before I drink anything, I need the slave's convenience - only I don't know where it is, mistress."
Any further thoughts?
Submitted by des at 8/25/2008 10:09:11 AM
I prefer your last attempt (penultimate para of your comment).
In the last couple of chapters, I think I noticed an increase in use of dashes, almost to the point of overkill (irrespective of correct use or not). I may have imagined this increase, however.
Submitted by Pet at 8/25/2008 10:20:54 AM
The nearest Tuerqui comes to criticising Lady Isobel's attitudes or actions comes in the long passage you quote -- introducing the idea that she is spoiling Tuerqui. (Tuerqui, subsequently, voices similar criticisms [albeit in more subdued ways] on more than one occasion.) All of Tuerqui's criticisms seem to amount to Lady Isobel being too indulgent to her. The reader may well feel otherwise.
In fact, the reader may find fault with Lady Isobel at several points at which Tuerqui does not -- one example of which is the passage you summarise thus: "where she cannot have relations with a slave who is deemed by the vet to have pox, but is able then to recommend the same slave to have relations with a concubine". Another point, at which the reader may find fault with Lady Isobel, passed unremarked at the end of Chapter 20, where Lady Isobel subjects Tuerqui to the distressing experience of trying in vain to keep pace with her carriage slaves. The reason for doing so seems to be to avoid losing face in (and after) her dealings with Sam the carter.
At these points (both where Tuerqui is critical of Lady Isobel, and where she is not) Tuerqui's and the reader's feelings are (I think) likely to be diametrically opposite. Several things occur to me here:
1) Tuerqui is in love with Lady Isobel, the reader (presumably) is not.
2) Tuerqui's cultural assumptions are very different from those that the reader is likely to harbour. The reader may note, for example, that Tuerqui never once implies that there is anything wrong with the institution of slavery as such.
3) As we will see, Tuerqui is Lady Isobel's slave whilst writing her memoirs -- their mistress/slave relationship cannot but colour the text.
The reader is likely to find her or himself simultaneouly taking two viewpoints -- her/his own and that of Tuerqui. The conflict between these viewpoints is not, I think, reconcilable. Neither, perhaps, should it be reconcilable.
This brings us very close to the heart of the book.
Submitted by Pet at 8/25/2008 10:33:20 AM
In writing "Odalisque" I put to one side my attitudes arising from being raised in mid-20th Century Britain. Without doing so, the book could not have been written. The reader is not, I feel, called upon to make such a leap -- but to adopt the uneasy position of a foot in each of two radically different sets of cultural norms.
Submitted by Pet at 8/25/2008 10:41:13 AM
Oh -- and I've now altered the paragraph to read:
"My bladder is rather full and, before I drink anything, I need the slave's convenience - only I don't know where it is, mistress."
Submitted by des at 8/25/2008 10:43:10 AM
Fascinating stuff about this possible 'heart of the novel'. Thanks. Should assist readers. Perhaps some of these comments should be incorporated in an Author's Preface??
Submitted by Pet at 8/25/2008 10:48:31 AM
I think the book is already quite long enough without an Author's Preface! Of course, I could write short essay on my own work. But should I?
Submitted by des at 8/25/2008 10:51:05 AM
A rhetorical question, I hope.
I'm not the best person to answer that.