ACCIDENTS OF PROVIDENCE by Stacia Brown A Discussion Guide

Transcription

1 ACCIDENTS OF PROVIDENCE by Stacia Brown A Discussion Guide About the Book Accidents of Providence, by Stacia M. Brown, depicts the life of an ordinary woman living in early modern London during the Interregnum, the kind of person often overlooked by the history books and films centered in the period. Even in her own time, Rachel Lockyer is hardly noticed by others: she is an unmarried woman who struggles to support herself, living on the margins of society, and she cannot easily be slotted into one of the few roles available to women. But the novel opens up her life to us allowing us to glimpse her inner self, her passions and her humanity. When she falls in love with William Walwyn (a real historical figure), she finds herself swept up in the tide of history and a victim of Puritanical laws. These laws dismiss her worth and her humanity as much as the politicians who would use her as a symbol or the historians who would forget her story altogether. At the center of this story is the mystery of what happened to her infant daughter, a child whose illegitimate birth is a crime in itself, and whose death puts Rachel in the middle of a debate over morality, law, love, and betrayal. Discussion Questions 1. What do we know about Rachel Lockyer? They knew her less for who she was than for who and what she was not. She was not a matron. She was not a mother. She was not well educated. She was not much of a Christian (p. 39). Was she any of the things others thought she wasn t? What did Rachel believe in? By what standards did she define herself? By what sort of standards do you define yourself and others? 2. Why was the 1624 Act to Prevent the Destroying and Murdering of Bastard Children created? What are the details of it? What are its flaws and its loopholes? Was it right for Rachel to be prosecuted according to its writ? (See attached copy of the law.) 3. Criminal Investigator Thomas Bartwain firmly believes that "The law is itself the end. The law is beautiful; the law is order. If we have not law, we have nothing" (p. 94). Yet by the end of the novel he admits that "the law is wrong" (p. 179). In the course of reaching this conclusion Bartwain is influenced by a variety of experiences. Beyond his assessment of Rachel's case, he had some meaningful conversations with his wife, a distracting and distressing battle with the mice in his house, and increasingly severe physical ailments. What do you think most influenced his change of opinion? What do you think was his role in the novel?

2 4. Compare the infant-murder trials of early modern England to the witch hunts of colonial North America. What were their religious roots? Did they emphasize punishment for sin, or for the concealment of sin? What does that distinction mean? 5. You are a mother when you have lost something. When you have felt the change and cannot hold it, Mary tells Rachel (p. 183). When do you believe someone becomes a mother? Was Rachel a mother? How does her experience of motherhood differ from the other women in the book? 6. On page 72, Rachel and Walwyn have an argument about the punishment of a boy convicted of stealing food. Rachel doesn't seem to think it's as "barbaric" as Walwyn claims. Did her attitude on this issue and other political issues the Levelers take up surprise you? What did you think of Rachel s political views in general and how they, and her place in this tumultuous political period, were presented? 7. Rachel s friendship with Elizabeth Lilburne, her place in Mary du Gard s home and work, and her relationship with her mother all place her within reach of support from other women. Does she get this support? In what ways? Does this story make you think further about the level of responsibility we should feel for each other s lives and welfare? For the lives of the children in our communities? 8. On page 176, in a final desperate attempt to save her, Walwyn offers his life in exchange for Rachel's. Why does Bartwain believe Walwyn's life is "worth more"? When do you think one person s life is worth more than another s? Would your opinions be different if you lived during the period in which this book is set? 9. Rachel Lockyer has few connections to the world around her: her only strong family tie was to her brother Robert. How do you think Robert's death (described in chapter eight) affected her later decisions? What about her estranged relationship from her mother? How does Rachel s position in the community her work as a tradeswoman, her unmarried status affect how she is perceived by the other characters in the book? By her accusers and the public? 10. How would you characterize the romantic and married relationships in the book? What is the status of wife and woman in this period? What is the author telling us about the period through these relationships, and how do they differ from such relationships in contemporary America? Is this a feminist book? 11. Were you frustrated by Rachel's refusal to explain what had happened or to defend herself to Bartwain or in court? Why do you think she kept silent? 12. You saved me, Walwyn tells Rachel. You are wholly good (p. 152). How did Walwyn and Rachel save each other? Do you believe Rachel is good? Can anyone be wholly good? 13. Mary du Gard plays a small but vital role in Rachel's saga. The novel begins and ends with her perspective. Why do you think the author chose to have Mary bookend the story? 14. Are there parallels between the birth and death of Rachel's child (p. 209) and her own

3 "death"? If so, do you draw any significance from those parallels? What do you make of the role of miracles in this story, religiously, politically, and mythically? 15. for whatever green shoots might by some accident of providence have thrust their spindly arms up from the barren soil overnight (p. 73). Did you notice accidents of providence in the book? Is this an apt title? What does it mean for providence to admit to accidents, here and in your own life? For more information, please visit HUwww.staciabrown.comUH or HUwww.hmhtrade.com/accidentsofprovidenceUH. Historical Documents The attached documents are just a handful Stacia Brown used in her extensive research for Accidents of Providence. 1. Front page of a pamphlet telling the story of Anne Green, a young woman executed for infantmurder who went on to survive her hanging (I got the idea for Rachel s survival from this story). 2. A 1680 copy of the 1624 statute by which unmarried women who concealed their infants deaths could be convicted of murder. 3. First page of the Petition of Women organized by Leveler women trying to get Walwyn, Lilburne, & co. out of the Tower of London 4. Lockier, Robert, d The Army s martyr

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8 A Conversation with Stacia Brown Why the title? When we think of providence, we sometimes think of a divine hand guiding us, an overarching wisdom guiding the course of our lives. To call something an accident of providence is sort of an oxymoron: initially, it doesn t make sense, because providence is supposed to be the opposite of an accident. Providence is supposed to be purposeful. So the title raises a question that the novel tries to explore: does God make mistakes? I think this title fits the story. It fits the struggle to make sense of the loss of an innocent, regardless of how that loss took place or by whose hand. It also fits the characters, each of whom, I think, makes at least one major mistake, has at least one major accident that changes everything. Even the hangman makes a major mistake. He doesn t tie the noose tight enough. If we are God s creatures, and God is supposed to be watching over us with God s providence, what do such accidents say about the nature of God s love and the extent or limitations of God s sovereignty? So what s your answer? I think I ll let someone else try to tackle the theological questions! I can say, though, that the story of Rachel Lockyer is, in some ways, a story about how we do and don t bear moral responsibility for the decisions we make and for the actions we fail to take. Rachel s life is changed not just by what she did, but also by what she didn t do by her silence, by her failure to reach forward and help the newborn right away. Do we bear the same responsibility, to borrow the old-fashioned language, for sins of omission as well as sins of commission? What happens if our lives are ruined not by what we did but by what we failed to do? How do we navigate the silence that follows? I couldn t begin to answer any of these questions and I don t want to try. I find it more interesting to explore how persons, historical or fictional, have grappled with them in the everyday realities of their lives, in quiet ways. I think sometimes the questions are not answered so much as dissolved by the arc of a person s life, of their character. How much research did you do for the book and how long did it take you? The research is never done. I still wish I could do more. I had a head start, in some ways, because I did my doctoral research on seventeenth-century English political and theological history, so I knew certain aspects of the period who was arguing with whom and about what; how Hobbes became so influential; how martyrdom was undergoing a gradual shift from an act seen as purely religious to an act that could be radical, violent, and political in nature. All this intellectual history came in handy when it came to imagining how men like Thomas Bartwain or John Lilburne thought and wrote and what the Levelers in 1649 worried about. But it didn t serve me well when it came time to write about what they wore, how they moved from one place to another, what they ate and drank, how they treated injuries when they were sick, and so on. So I read widely social and cultural histories of London, looking especially at the situation of single women in the early modern period, and reading as much as I could on the child-murder trials that took place during the period and on into the early eighteenth century. I still have a great deal to learn. Who is Rachel Lockyer and why did you want to write about her? Well, Rachel is fictional, of course, although I borrowed the idea for her miraculous recovery from the gallows from a true story in 1651 about a woman who was hanged for killing her infant but went on to survive her own hanging. (See author s note at the end of the book.) But I wanted Rachel, even as a fictional character, to be placed in the world of real historical people. I like to interweave historical and fictional characters so closely in a narrative that you cannot easily separate them, that you cannot easily tell where the history ends and where the fiction begins. I also came up with the idea for Rachel when I read about Leveler Robert Lockyer s remarkable funeral procession. As I read, I wondered what it would be like to be a woman walking alone in the middle of that procession, in the middle of all that green, to be walking along under the sea of flags and ribbons and to have her thoughts divided to have her loves divided, for while on the one hand she is grieving her brother, on the other hand she has just realized that she is pregnant, and for the first time. And she has no idea how she s going to be able to accept this gift, if it comes, because she doesn t have a husband. From that initial image the story sort of took hold in fits and starts.

9 I wonder if you can talk about the female characters in the book, how you thought about them, what you were trying to accomplish with them. One of the most arresting aspects of the English civil wars and the Interregnum period of English history (roughly ) is the way in which some women briefly assumed new levels of autonomy, visibility, and influence. Leveler women did publish a few pamphlets although most of the time their writings were petitions asking for the release of their imprisoned men. I wanted to explore and imagine the lives of ordinary women that is, women who were not rich or of royal or noble birth and to think about how they navigated their moral world, how they made decisions. I found myself especially intrigued by the plight of women who gave birth out of wedlock. The 1624 law against the destroying and murdering of bastard children was really a piece of work. It assumed that if a woman buried a dead child in secret, then she could be convicted of murdering it. The law conflated concealment with murder, and it only applied to unmarried women. So the law was, on my reading, an attempt to maintain the moral standards and familial order of the broader society by policing a particular subset of women, usually those who stood at the margins. But even these women were not mere chattel. I remember a conversation I had with a psychology professor who insisted that most women in the early modern period could not be said to have selves in the same way that we do today. This professor argued that any historical fiction that tries to portray a complicated inner life for one of these women is doomed to failure. Women of that age did not have time to have complex subjectivities, she said. They were too busy trying to stay alive, trying to feed themselves. While I understood her point women of the early modern period lived very different lives than we do today I would argue that a different life is not a simplistic life or a simplistic subjectivity; it is simply different. I think these women the Elizabeths, the Rachels, the Marys of their day must have been more resourceful, strategic, thoughtful, and deliberate than many of us who enjoy the benefits of modern society today. And look what they were up against. You mean look what kind of men they had to deal with. Well, that too! Although I became very attached to the male characters in my book too, one of my friends told me when he read a draft of the story, That poor sap Walwyn, he tries, but he just can t get anything right! I actually hope that s not what the whole book suggests. I was interested in the plight of a man like Walwyn. Maybe plight isn t the right word. I was interested in his caughtness. In his culpability and his caughtness, both at the same time. His identity and his family depend in no small part on his reputation, and so to risk uprooting that reputation is to put his family at risk as well as himself. And Rachel knows this. But by the end of the book, I was kind of surprised to find myself arriving at this place I discovered that by the end of the book the one who finds her way out to some hope of a future is Rachel, while the one who remains caught, who remains unable to move, is Walwyn. He is the one character in the book who cannot write or live his way into a new life, into a new world. He and the child, rather. The infant that passes. Walwyn is a foolish man, but he is not a cruel one. He is bound, morally bound, bound by love and duty, to his family, because they came first, and because children, no matter what, always come first. So in some ways this story is about caughtness across family lines, and Rachel s caughtness with her infant, and Walwyn s caughtness with his children. And each of them makes a morally questionable, morally ambiguous choice. But only Walwyn stays trapped. Did you want your book to communicate some sort of enduring theme or statement that transcends its time period? If so, what was it? All I can say is that I wanted to explore the moral consequences of inaction as well as action. The consequences of waiting too long to do something, to become something, to say something can be disastrous. But we all have been in such situations. You wait too long for that perfect person, that ideal mate. You wait too long to put an offer on the house. You wait too long to pursue a dream and suddenly you can t travel any more, you can t afford to go back to school. You wait too long to apologize and suddenly a relationship that mattered is irreparably damaged. I guess I m interested in how lives are changed by waiting, by hesitation, by those moments when we think we should do something but we don t. Yes, this is a story about a doomed love affair, and in that sense it s a story we ve all heard before just like Bartwain complains, there s nothing new under the sun but I think it s also about how we are shaped by the loves we wind up letting go as well as the loves that refuse to leave us. I didn t know that s what I was exploring when I started writing. But I knew by the time I finished.