crooked house

Babies in Literature: Breastfeeding (and Smoking) Toddlers in Pat Barker's The Eye in the Door

Pat Barker's The Eye in the Door is the second novel in her trilogy about British soldiers traumatized by World War I trench warfare. These particular passages, childhood memories of one of those soldiers, working class Billy Prior, struck me as particularly apropos in light of all the fuss last week about the breastfeeding mom on the cover of Time. Since the novel is set in 1918 when Billy is supposed to be twenty-three years old, this first memory would've taken place around 1900.

The bell of the shop rang as he pushed the door open. How old? Four? Five? A smell of cat pee and tarred string from the bundles in the corner. Beattie's cat had never been able to resist marking those bundles. Mrs Thorpe plonked their Alfie on the counter while she paid her bill. Alfie swung his short legs in their sturdy boots, puffing away at a fag end though he was only three. Between drags, he sucked his mother's breast, puffing and sucking alternately, peering round the white curve at Prior, who was a Big Boy and therefore an object of interest and suspicion. It was late in the afternoon. Mrs Thorpe would be far gone. Jugs of best bitter were her favourite, chased down by sips of something medicinal that she kept in a flask fastened to her thigh with a home-made elastic garter. Whiskey for the heart, brandy for the lungs, gin for the bladder. Alfie, guzzling away at his mother's milk, looked contented, and well he might, since it could hardly be less than 70 proof.

Shocking, isn't it? But it's the smoking and the drinking that are so shocking, not the breastfeeding. In Mrs Thorpe's defence, the dangers of smoking and alcohol to developing children weren't understood at the time -- and breastfeeding was just the way mothers fed their kids, for as long as they could. After all, she wouldn't have had to pay for that milk.

This next passage is about a brief encounter with Mrs Thorpe and another woman Billy has when he goes back to his own village in 1918.

Before the war, women used to sit on their steps in the warm evenings after dark, postponing the moment when the raging bedbug must be faced, and taking pleasure in the only social contact they could enjoy without fear of condemnation. A woman seen chatting to her neighbours during the day quickly felt the weight of public disapproval. 'Eeh, look at that Mrs Thorpe. Eleven kids. You'd think she could find herself summat to do, wouldn't you?' Now, looking up and down the street. Prior saw deserted doorsteps. Women were out and about, but walking purposefully, as if they had somewhere to go.

He supposed it was Mrs Thorpe's name that came particularly to mind because she'd been one of the worst offenders, with her lard-white breasts the size of footballs, and Georgie or Alfie or Bobby worrying away at them, breaking off now and then for a drag on a tab end. Or perhaps, subconsciously, he'd already identified her, for there she was, coming towards him, divested of the clogs and shawl he'd always seen her in and wearing not merely a coat and hat but flesh-coloured stockings and shoes. It was scarcely possible the attractive woman with her should be Mrs Riley, but he didn't know who else it could be.

They greeted him with cries of delight, hugging, kissing, standing back, flashing their incredible smiles. There was a saying round here: for every child born a tooth lost, and certainly, before the war, Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had advertised their fecundity every time they opened their mouths. Now, in place of gaps and blackened stumps was this even, flashing whiteness. 'What white teeth you have, Grandma,' he said.

'All the better to eat you with,' said Mrs Riley. 'And who are you calling Grandma?'

Mrs Thorpe asked, 'How long have you got, love?' And then, before he had time to answer, 'Eeh, aren't we awful, always asking that?'

'Two days.'

'Well, make the most of it. Don't do anything we wouldn't do, mind.'

He smiled. 'How much scope does that give me?'

'Fair bit, these days,' said Mrs Riley.

He remembered, suddenly, that he'd sucked the breasts of both these women. His mother had been very ill for two months after his birth, and he'd been fed on tins of condensed milk from the corner shop, the same milk adults used in their tea. Babies in these streets were regularly fed on it. Babies fed on it regularly died. Then Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had appeared, at that time, he supposed, lively young girls each with her own first baby at her breast. They had taken it in turns to feed him and, in doing so, had probably saved his life.

Babies in Literature: Troll Babies

From the fascinating D'Aulaires' Book of Trolls:

[The troll children] screamed and yelled from morning to night, and that was just the time when the trolls wanted to sleep.

No wonder the troll-hags looked with envy at the good little babies on the farms down in the valleys! They did their crying at night and slept peacefully during the days.

Whenever a troll-hag had a chance, she would snatch an infant from his cradle and put one of her troll-brats in his place. Then there was just one way for the mother to get her own child back. She had to take the ugly changeling behind the barn on a dark Thursday night and spank him soundly. If she was lucky, his howls would melt the stony heart of the troll-hag and she would come running back, toss the human child to his mother, grab his own and storm back into the mountain with him. If this did not work, her poor mother had to live for the rest of her life with a troll in her house.

Beckett's Fail Better

Although this is the finished print, if I were still teaching the first grade, I think I'd make up similar work sheets for my class to complete. They'd make a fun display. (See also Beckett for Babies, one of my own failure, of which there are many.)

Things That Caught My Eye This Week

Apparently Mary Hedderwick, author of the Katie Morag books, has had trouble with her publishers over her pictures of breastfeeding mothers. That's what breasts are for, people! Breastfeeding would be much, much easier if breasts weren't so sexualized and therefore hidden in polite company.

When Intense Belief Kills via Gwenda. Some research for the novel for children I believe I will write. (I think I can, I think I can...)

Ann Patchett's new e-book on writing. Also from Gwenda.

Miss Buncle's Book -- Thomas at My Porch made me want to read it. So I did and it was good. Ihad a sore throat last night so I took it to bed with me at suppertime. Better than chicken soup.

As a child reading the Narnia books, I remember wishing  the series would never end. Lev Grossman's books The Magicians and The Magician King are a magnificent gift to adults who were children like me. I cannot recommend these brilliant books highly enough.

Babies in Literature: Pat Barker's The Ghost Road

I've recently been riveted by Pat Barker's highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy about the first world war, which I somehow missed when the books were first published in the 90s -- I'd majored in History at university, mostly of the world wars and, having moved on to teaching small children, I suppose I was all warred out. (You don't know conflict until you have tried to get twenty five-year-olds to sit down and be quiet all at the same time.) I imagine these texts, which are a blend of fiction and non-fiction, are used widely in college history classes today. If they aren't, they should be. They center on William Rivers, a real person -- a noted anthropologist and psychiatrist who treated soldiers, including poet Siegfried Sassoon, for shell-shock. Many of them suffered from fascinating hysterical illnesses such as muteness and paralysis, brought on by prolonged terror.

There aren't many babies in Regeneration and The Ghost Road, the first and last in the series and the two books I've read so far -- they focus mainly on the experiences of men. Interestingly, Barker wrote many books about working class women before turning to this topic and it was only then that she began to receive accolades. I'm planning to search out these earlier books immediately as I'm guessing they may be just as good, if not as appealing to the usual male book critic.

The following description is taken from one of Rivers's memories of his time before the war studying headhunters in Melanesia:

A thread-like wail from the baby Njiru held in his hands, one palm cradling the head, the other the buttocks, a morself of black-eyed misery squirming in between.

Her name was Kwini and her mother was dead. Worse than that, she'd died in childbirth, which made her an evil spirit, likely to attempt to reclaim her child. The body had been dumped at sea, a bundle of rags strapped between the breasts to fool the mother into thinking she had her baby with her but still ... Kwini's failure to thrive was attributed to her mother's attempts to get her back.

She certainly wasn't thriving: skin hung in loose folds from her thighs. Rivers looked round the circle at her grandmother's wrinkled dugs, the flat chest of her nine-year-old sister, the highly developed pectoral muscles of her father. He asked what she was being fed on. Mashed up yams softened by spit was the answer. The tiny hands clawed the air as if she would wring life out of it.

Njiru passed the leaves he was holding several times between his legs and then, stretching to his full height, attached them to the rafters at the gable end, where the scare ghost shivered in the draught. "Come down and depart, you ghost, her mother; do not haunt this child and let her live."

"Will she live?" Rivers asked.

He had his own opinion, but wanted to know what Njiru would say. Njiru spread his hands.

On their way back to Narovo, Rivers questioned him about the ghosts of women who died in childbirth. This was not a rare form of death, since the custom was for women to give birth alone, and there was no tradition of midwifery. Such ghosts could not be named, he already knew that. In the genealogy they were referred to as evil spirits. It had startled him at first to be told quite casually that such and such a man had married "an evil spirit."

They were called tomate pa na savo --the ghosts of the confining house -- Njiru explained, and they were dreaded, since their chief aim was to ensure that as many other women as possible should die in that same way.

 

Babies in Literature: Jane Gardam's God on the Rocks

Just discovered Jane Gardam, via something Kerry Clare said on facebook, and am really enjoying her. Particularly this hilarious, unsentimental description, from her novel God on the Rocks of a new baby and his eight-year-old sister's reaction to him:

Mrs Marsh, dazed about times of day, detached herself from the baby, drawing herself back and mopping about with a cloth. She lifted the baby up on her shoulder where a huge towelling nappy lay, hanging a little way down her back for the baby to be sick on. She massaged its back which was like the back of a duck, oven-ready. The baby's unsteady head and swivelling eyes rolled on her shoulder, its round mouth slightly open, wet and red. It seemed, filmily, to be trying to take in Margaret who was fiddling with things on the mantelpiece behind her mother. She looked down at it with a realistic glare. The baby under the massage let air come out of its mouth in a long explosion and pale milk ran out and over its chin.

"Filthy," said Margaret.

"There's my little lovekin," said Mrs Marsh. She lifted the baby into the air before her, both hands under the armpits, and let it hang like dough about to drop. "What did you say, dear? It's your treat-day with Lydia, isn't it?"

"This afternoon," said Margaret, dropping the baby's bottle of gripe water and smashing it to bits on the mottled cream tiles of the fireplace. Glass flew everywhere in splinters and the baby after jerking as if it had received an electric shock began to cry like a new lamb. "Lair, lair, lair," it went, scarlet in the face and flushing quickly to purple all over its bald head, its eyes in two directions.

Mrs Marsh was not upset, though she had jumped as violently as her son. Margaret saw her take the decision to be understanding rather than annoyed. "There now," she said. Placing the lamenting child over her other, nappiless, shoulder she drew Margaret to her to lean upon the other one. "Never mind , dear. Just an accident."

Margaret -- her mother smelled of milk and baby powder -- pulled away and made a face. "It's like a pig," she said.

Mrs Marsh looked yet more understanding. "Darling, you do know we love you, don't you? He's your baby, too, you know, just as much as ours. Look -- you hold him. You're such a big girl. He's going to love you so much."

"What's so marvellous?"

"Marvellous?"

"About that? Why do I have to be pleased that he's going to love me? I don't need him."

"He will need you."

"No he won't. If I wasn't here he wouldn't know anything about me."

"But you are here."

"I'm not here for him. I managed without me. Nobody was here for me when I was born and I was all right."

Mrs Marsh, trying very slowly to digest this empirical point, wrapped the child very tight in a cloth with its arms crossed over its chest tight beneath it, then put it on its face in the flounced organdy of the crib.

It did not look up to its surroundings. More like a trussed duck than ever.

"It can't be good for it, bound up like that," said Margaret, and Mrs Marsh brightened at a sign of possible concern. "Oh yes it is, dear. It says so in Truby King. They like to feel safe."

"I don't see why you feel safe if you're tied up."

[...]

[Mrs Marsh] looked at the trussed baby, face down, its red head like a tilted orange rearing up and down on the undersheet as if desperately trying to escape. Giving up, it let its head drop into suffocation position and there was another explosion followed by a long, liquid spluttering from further down the cot: and a smell. "Oh dear," said Mrs Marsh contented, "now I'll have to start all over again with a new nappy. Could you hand me the bucket, darling?"

"His own image," said Margaret, watching the horrible unwrapping. "If God looks like us... What's the point?"

 

Babies In Literature: Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's

What's that? There are no babies in Breakfast at Tiffany's, you say? There is at least one, actually, if you count metaphorical ones. Check out this description of one of Holly Golightly's suitors, Rutherfurd "Rusty" Trawler:

He was a middle-aged child that had never shed its baby fat, though some gifted tailor had almost succeeded in camouflaging his plump and spankable bottom. There wasn't a suspicion of bone in his body; his face, a zero filled in with pretty miniature features, had an unused, a virginal quality: it was as if he'd been born, then expanded, his skin remaining unlined as a blown-up balloon, and his mouth, though ready for squalls and tantrums, a spoiled sweet puckering.

 

Babies in Literature: Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales

This is  a painting of Kakuarshuk, an Inuit woman who is digging for babies -- that's where they come from, didn't you know? It's by the artist Rima Staines who talks about the folktale that inspired her, which was collected in Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales, over here at her blog, The Hermitage. The painting is for sale.

Babies in Literature: Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography

According to Alexandra Popoff, author of Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography, Leo Tolstoy's wife has been maligned by history. Popoff, who had access to a great deal of previously inaccessible archival materials, explains that it all stems from Tolstoy's final years, when he experienced a religious conversion that led him to renounce his marriage, his family, and his property (or try to). However much Tolstoy may have believed in his principles of poverty and chastity, this renunciation put his wife in a completely untenable position. Sophia was left to look after the couple's eight surviving children pretty much on her own. Clearly Tolstoy felt some responsibility to his family, because he kept waffling on property and money matters. Admittedly, Sophia kept fighting him on these -- who wouldn't, when she had eight children to feed, clothe, and educate? He also kept waffling on the matter of sex -- he kept sleeping with Sophia and then blaming the matronly woman for being a seductress. Tolstoy's most famous follower, Vladimir Chertkoff, managed to insinuate himself between the couple in Tolstoy's final years and ended up controlling his literary works after his death. Popoff argues that it is he who is most responsible for discrediting Sophia Tolstoy's character. This book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in Tolstoy, and really, anyone who is interested in the concept of marriage and women's historical role within it.

Tolstoy was a literary genius, to be sure, but he also must have been infuriating to be married to. Sophia was not only Tolstoy's muse, she was a  tireless worker who devoted all her efforts to creating the proper environment for her husband to write in. She was Tolstoy's copyist and later his publisher. She managed his home and often his estate and related business matters. She made most of the childrearing and educational decisions on her own. (At one point, when she asked about appropriate education for one of their teenage sons, her husband brushed her off with a comment that he should become a street sweeper or the like because of his own religious beliefs against taking part in a money-based economy.) Sophia gave birth to thirteen children, although she wanted to stop after seven or so -- but Tolstoy wouldn't allow birth control. She breastfed all these babies herself at Tolstoy's insistence even though it never became easy for her (she often developed mastitis) and most women of her position employed wet nurses. And she watched six of her children die. Exhausted and completely emotionally and physically spent, at times Sophia wanted to end these pregnancies:

By now, she was certain of her [twelfth] pregnancy. As she wrote her sister, she felt like "screaming of despair and rage."

Told the news, Tolstoy wrote he was glad they would have a child; Sophia's unhappiness came from her revolté. It would be easier for her and people around her if she assumed a more accepting attitude: "Why can't you surrender?" Sophia thought his position was morally superior and felt crushed. "If I were bad before, now I am loathsome! And if you were good, you have become so much better!" Her pregnancy explained her abnormal state, Tolstoy replied: "I know, I've heard, that it's terribly oppressive for the soul."

Meanwhile, Sophia attempted to induce a miscarriage: she took scalding baths and jumped from a dresser. To a nanny who tried to talk her out of it, she said that Tolstoy considered leaving her and their children. When her attempts failed, she approached a midwife in Tula, asking for an abortion. The midwife, afraid of exposure, refused: she would perform an abortion for someone else, but not for Countess Tolstoy.

At times, Sophia Tolstoy wanted to end her own life.

You can read a brief excerpt from the biography here.

Babies in Literature: Audrey Thomas's Tattycoram

I have no idea if the actual Charles Dickens ever had an exchange like the following one that his fictional version has with his maid in Audrey Thomas's novel Tattycoram:

One afternoon [Mr. Dickens] said to me... "Hattie, how do you feel about children?"

"How do I feel about them, sir?"

"Yes. Do you like them?"

"I like them well enough. I'm particularly fond of the babies."

"I, too. I'm particularly fond of the babies. What a pity they can't be shot and stuffed before the age of five."

 I'm not familiar enough with Dickens's work to know if he ever really said anything like that or, perhaps, put those words into the mouth of one of his nastier characters. All a quick google would reveal about his thoughts on infants is that he said, "Every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last." That seems more in keeping with his reputation for sentiment. (Interestingly, from that same quick google I learned that Queen Victoria was supposed to have said, "An ugly baby is a very nasty object - and the prettiest is frightful." She had nine of her own. It's hard to tell from pictures whether they were ugly or pretty. They were certainly snugly buttoned into a lot of clothing. And surely she could have handed them off to a myriad of nursemaids before they'd started to seem too unattractive.)

Tattycoram is a beautifully written, deceptively light novel, almost a piece of Victoriana, centered on one of Dickens's characters, a maid in Little Dorrit. Thomas's version of the maid, Harriet Coram, was abandoned at the Foundling Hospital as a baby and later hired by the fictional Dickens to look after his growing family and then to teach in the home for fallen women he helped set up. After Harriet's marriage, she is dismayed to learn that Dickens has made her a character in his novel -- and an unpleasant one at that. This twist gives Thomas's novel a nice postmodern edge and leaves me wondering how much of her fictional Dickens is based on historical fact. Thanks to Sara O'Leary for suggesting the book in the comments to my post about the foundling tokens.