In an era in which much of children’s literature borrows
liberally from the fantasy genre or from tired old formulas of teen melodrama, it
is refreshing to come upon a novel that undertakes an engaging imaginative
leap, setting its story in a historical epoch that is distant but also alluring
and immediate. Such is the case with Karen Cushman, a novelist who undertakes
serious research into the details of everyday life in different epochs, and who
has been writing a collection of novels that can be categorized within this
genre of historical fiction. She has gained much recognition in the process,
and her novel The Midwife’s Apprentice was a winner of the Newberry Prize.
What constitutes a work of children’s literature? One thinks
immediately of the presence of a child protagonist, in conjunction with a style
and a diction that is sparse while also being accessible and immediate. One certainly
thinks as well of an essential intimacy, one necessary to engage the reader who
is not necessarily a child but who yearns for a simpler style of narration that
depends on an immediacy of impression as well as on sensorial description. We
find these elements frequently in children’s literature, and these combine with
themes that have to do with exploring the place of the outsider, one looking for
a new sense of belonging. These are narratives, then, that reflect an awakening
on the part of the protagonist. They are combined with a sympathetic narrator
who hovers over it all, weaving a protective spell.
This novel is set in medieval England, in a brief interlude
that represents an idyllic moment of peace, far from the civil conflicts of the
age. It details the story of Beetle, a young girl who is an orphan, not knowing
who her parents were nor where she came from, adrift in the world and in
desperate straits. She is starving and
cold in addition to being nameless, and is trying to find a way to reincorporate
herself into society. As the novel begins she is found desperately trying to
stay warm by taking refuge in a steaming pile of dung, half buried and content
to disappear, if she weren’t rescued by Jane Sharp, an irascible, loud and
domineering woman who happens to pass by the trash heap and offers her a
lifeline.
This isn’t done willingly. Beetle has little sense of value,
and can be considered as little more than a throwaway object. Is she an insect, then? Of course she would be
christened by that name, a term of scorn used by all the villagers, for she is unwanted,
a beggar who is a nuisance to all. This feeling of being outcast is a familiar
trope of children’s literature, and we see it over and over again, the
mistreated child who suffers from the torments of bullies, mean teachers and
absent or distant parents.
This is a genre, after all, which emphasizes the reincorporation
of the outsider, in this case, the child. The novel will narrate the slow
awakening of the protagonist, who is placed within a narrative framework that
proceeds in stages to provide her with the elements she lacks: a name, a place,
a trade, self-confidence and, ultimately, an identity.
Jane Sharp is one of the few women of this period who has a
modicum of power. She is a midwife and loner, living without a family, a woman,
self-confident and mean-spirited at times, able to take pride in her trade for
she is needed by all. She is, thus, accorded a certain amount of grudging
respect by all. She has the power to lessen the burden of child-bearing, and to
save lives from time to time. She also happens to be a woman who is inquisitive
as well as systematic, preserving a body of lore that is obtained in an almost scientific
way. She is an amateur botanist as well as chemist, nurse, surgeon, psychologist
and counselor, with a little of the con man in her as well. She also makes
liberal use of the suggestion of witchcraft, an association that has the power
to mystify and frighten the others. She must nonetheless tread carefully here,
for of course this is a very superstitious time, and a witch is not only an
emblem of malice and temptation that recalls the biblical role assigned to
women, but also, one may say, a catchword for a woman who has transgressed too
far in the exercise of power. In a patriarchal society, the witch as woman of
power necessarily invites punishment.
Slowly, while being mistreated and exploited by the midwife,
the child comes to learn the midwife’s craft. A process of apprenticeship is
also a trope of children’s literature, and it helps to highlight the value of
endurance, patience and one must say submission (for the outsider is always
rebellious). These are, of course, bourgeois values, and one may be forgiven
for asserting that this genre is one in which the protagonist is initiated into
an economy of consumption. Everything is a product, after all, and without the
fantasy elements of fairy tales, in which work and accumulation are a matter of
spells and secret weapons are offered by helpers (fairy godmothers, magical
animals, etc.), a key role that was of course described by Vladimir Propp in
his seminal work on the semiotics of fairy tales, we have then the birth of the
new consumer.
This is a time of heavy labor and widespread disease as well
as warfare, with the pomp of a ruling class of kings and barons and knights amply
celebrated in the literature and lore of that period. The rulers had, after
all, accumulated both the social and material capital of the land, and the
scribes wrote chronicles of their deeds, and not those of the everyman, the farmer,
the merchant, the miller or the baker. However, curiously, the rulers are not
present in this novel, and the only time we have any mention of them is when
the protagonist, now christened with the name of Alyce, goes to the manor to
visit another waif who she has taken under her wing and adopted as her “brother”,
one she has christened with the name of Edward. Both of them, tellingly enough,
appropriate their names in a form of aspirational fulfillment.
Alyce has her run-ins with the local bullys, one of which is
a red-headed boy by the name of Will who would have drowned if not for her help.
In other works this would have signaled a turning point, one in which the world
would magically change and take on a rosier color, in which things would be
settled in favor of the protagonist, and in a fairy tale the tormenter would
naturally have met a grisly and deserved death, for so was justice
conceptualized in the popular mind that is reflected in fairy tales. One has to
give credit to Cushman for emphasizing that things are rarely so simple, making
use of her authorial reflection to insert a remonstration that questions the
notion of justice as a capital that is earned: “If the world were sweet and
fair, Alyce (she must be called Alyce now) and Will would become friends and
the village applaud her for her bravery, and the midwife be more generous with
her cheese and onions. Since this is not so, and the world is just as it is and
no more, nothing changed.” (p. 40) Nonetheless, the girl continues to learn the
skills of the midwife, even though Jane Sharp doesn’t offer them freely and
instead seems bent on hoarding her secrets. She wants to make sure that Alyce,
who has yet to earn the role of apprentice, is kept in the dark. (What is she,
then? The proletariat who should remain invisible and willing to accept their
abuse? An ungrateful victim born to suffer? In any case, she is an intermediate
creature, powerless but in the process of becoming a subject.)
She will have many adventures, accompanied most of the time
by another orphaned creature that she has adopted, an orange cat named Purr. There
will be episode that reveals the progress she is making as she takes on a more
active role. There will be a week in which the Devil who comes to the town, ironically
dispensing justice to those who most tormented the protagonist. (This Devil is
an engaging and comical artifice, however.) And, she will help a struggling cow
give birth to twin calves, something that would represent quite an achievement
if it weren’t merely the prelude to a metaphorical fall that will present
another lesson that must be learned.
The novel is told in a language that is beautiful in its
plainness. It introduces a cast of characters who seem at times a little too
romanticized, but then again, the object of this type of narrative is to convey
the outlines of a transformation, in which the protagonist achieves a sense of
self, and not to present a world that is lacking in meaning or is actively
malevolent, degrading the protagonist. She will have to be incorporated into
society as a productive (and thus valued) member. The orphan will need to find
a family, where family means role and place and institutional incorporation,
and this is an eternal need that is timeless precisely because it is
paradigmatic. Set as it is in a different historical epoch, the novel
nonetheless details in a deeply sympathetic way a process that is familiar to
all of us, the awakening of the self. It would not be the place to complain if
the novel failed to touch on more complex issues, such as an exhaustive
exploration of the meaning of isolation, angst and anger.
Like Magister Reese, the solitary man who keeps house at the
inn and who helps Alyce recover what she had lost, we strive desperately to
reach through the book and help the protagonist, for we are emphatic readers
and children’s literature awakens empathy. As the sole literate character, he
is a sympathetic character, another outsider who watches and writes, forsaking
the cloistered realms of Oxford college to stake himself in a humble inn,
observing the lives of the wretched and the poor. He is rumored to be writing a
“great and holy book” (p. 77). What could be more holy than a story of
redemption?
Copyright 2015 (C) Oscar Romero
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