Friday, September 12, 2008
Live and Forget
After having read the first seven chapter of James Seaver's 'Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison' I came to realize the fact that Mary does not seem to remember or even know what happens to the people she meets throughout her lonesome, tragic, and horrendous early life. The narrative begins with Mary's confession on the fact that she does not know of her actual heritage/roots (where her parents were born). She later reveals that she has forgotten nearly all of her education and her religious teachings over the course of her life. She seems to be lost on why things are the way they are throughout the narrative. The most traumatic event in her discourse (up to chapter seven) comes when she parts from her family. At first she is unsure what is to happen to her family (although she later learns of their fate); it is clear that she is surrounded by a cloud of vagueness and inabsoluteness. She can only imagine the worst. At the same time she is forced to continue on "without complaining'; she has to hold on to the only possesion she has-her tragic life. Upon arriving at Fort Pitt, she loses her only other companions (the boy and the young man) and she admits that she never knew what happened to them. Once she is taken to the Shawanee town, she reveals that she never saw her captors ever again. Up to this point Mary's life is filled with inconsistency, and the only account in her life in which she actually spends some time is in her stay with the Shawanee Indians (about five years).
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2 comments:
Strangely enough, despite the fact that she forgets everything and has met numerous people only to never see them again, James E. Seaver seems able to tell a story with concrete chronology. He devotes at least one chapter (8) to Ebenezer Allen, a polygamist barbarian, who has very little bearing on Jemison's life. This indicates that Seaver, is indeed, writing a novel, not an autobiography, and in many ways it validates Stein's criticism of the autobiography (though Jemison is not cupable).
I agree with Andres' idea that she lives in a cloud of vagueness and inabsoluteness. Jumping off class discussion from last week, we can relate this idea back to the sheet scene in the first chapter. The sheet could forshadow not only her kidnapping or the medium through which Seaver tells her story, but could represent this uncertainty and shrouded life she lives. She does not belong with the whites, but does not completely belong with the Indians either.
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