It's difficult to imagine her sympathy for a character like Allen, thus I suspect that the Seaver has either exaggerated the degree of Allen's misdeeds or misunderstood Jemison's attitude toward him. Anyone have other examples of similarly baffling stories?
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Possible Disconnects between Jemison and Seaver
This is a topic we returned to frequently in class, but I'd like to solicit some explicit examples where someone thought that Seaver was willfully (or not, I suppose) misrepresenting Jemison's relation of a particular view or story. For my part, I was dubious that such a phenomenon was occurring with any significance, but I did feel that the story of Ebenezer Allen could be such an example. Simply put, the story doesn't make sense--Allen, to Jemison's knowledge, is a murderer, a thief, an opportunistic sadist who values human life about as much as he values women's rights. Why then, does she defend him, not only through her actions, but in the way she speaks of his deeds, his remorse for his wrongdoings? At the very least, her tone towards Allen is objective; for comparison's sake, she openly abhors her "cousin" George Jemison, who, while despicable, is nowhere near as diabolical as Allen.
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I was thinking something similar about the chapter dedicated to the cruelty of her husband. She mentions a few times that she loved him, and yet she talks about his "thirst for blood". What makes it even more confusing is that when she talks about Crawford later in the chapter, instead of talking about his violence (and he probably was no less violent than Hiokatoo), she refers to him as "a patriot and hero". It feels like Seaver might have changed the story a little bit here as well...
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