We light candles and give gifts so that this year may remind of former abundance, when time seemed endless and the planet was a horizonless platform for our whims. Gradually, the plan shifted from expanding unquestionable goodness to giving less and questioning more. In the United States, some of us have traded illusions of strength for clarifying doubt.
As a writer, I’ve had faith in the goodness of my creative imagination. I produced without interrogating the privledge whence it sprang. Maturing, there are more trades: bold youth for honest fragility and the concept of eternity for biological and geological time. Whether trading up or down, losing the center does not mean permanent confusion. The light returns without my being there to submit a request. Author Margaret Renkl writes:
“Through it all, the sky will begin to brighten earlier in the morning, and the light will begin to linger longer in the evening. It will give us hope and help us to hold on.”
Looking for Light on the Longest Night of the Year by Margaret Renkl
Margaret Renkl compares the coming light of the season to steadfast friends who see us through whatever the cold world gives us. This winter, those friends stand several feet away, outdoors in the cold, and smile with their eyes. To cross the emotional distance, they override fears of loss and change that could rock our world off its runners. Finding ourselves “nearer to the ancients” is not a trade we expected.
Modern pagans still celebrate the solstice, but this year has brought fresh reminders to everyone else of just how close we remain to the earliest peoples, even deep into the 21st century. As we live with the fear of a rapidly spreading virus for which there is no cure and watch the apotheosis of political tribalism unfold on the national stage, we are forced to admit that we are nearer to the ancients than we may have cared to believe.
“Looking for Light” Margaret Renkl
It will be difficult to compromise when we are certain that societal changes are regressive, moving toward political tribalism. The light changes, the lines of power shift, and a cure may come soon. Increasing light, Renkl says, “…will give us hope and help us hold on.” But what will we hold?
The Story of Twenty Acres
The snow and wind kept coming. It blurred edges, took out trees with deep roots, and messed with the stars. It told us to make life harder or we all might disappear.
It is not so different in The Compromise when Mariah’s ill-fated marriage to George falls apart. In the scene called “The Story of Twenty Acres” Mariah discovers what happened. She traded her idea of equality in a marriage for no marriage at all. I wonder how common that is. Education gave her the dreams that she could not actualize. To her George seems exploitative and ignorant.
She traded her idea of equality in a marriage for no marriage at all.
Margaret, her tutor in the Gamble Library, introduced Mariah to the the literature on women’s rights, which formed the basis of her desire to read. But they did not discuss the practical barriers to those rights and the slow work of achieving them.
With gloved hands, she gently pulled out two books and a set of folded papers. Her voice was soft and self-assured.
“A Vindication of the Rights of Women is by Miss Mary Wollstonecraft. She says a woman has power over herself.” Margaret looked at me through squinted eyes. “Our submission is to reason, and not to man.”
“Making life harder than it is?” I asked.
“Yes, and better for everyone.”
I would not argue with that. Of course a woman has a mind and uses it for more than her own self.
The Compromise, “The Gamble Library 1841”
Mariah’s sense of equality came much earlier. Her mother and the women in her town demonstrated respect in their treatment of one another. The townsfolk instilled a belief that unfairness was wrong and that a woman’s intelligence and strength were natural and good.
Mrs. Smith took me aside one day. “You’ll never compare to Eliza, but pay no heed. You have a better head for reality. And you are equal to any man, Mariah, body and mind.”
The Compromise “Jebediah Roche 1839”
Mariah’s mother’s upbringing was in a matrilineal society, the Cherokee before they were fully colonized by the dominant culture. Inola earned family income until the fur trade moved west. In her native culture, she would have left her inheritance to her daughters. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 functioned to break that line and take the land for a different order. The human costs were beyond measure. Mariah lives through this loss embedded in the laws of marriage.
Perfect Storm
They stood on opposite sides of social and cultural movements– industrialization and bureaucracy on one side and communalism and equal rights on the other.
Our two horses nipped at each other with their ears pinned back, which was more communication than George and I could muster. But starting the next day, we disagreed about everything on those twenty acres. He wanted to shave trees off the hillside where my herbs grew. He fenced a larger pasture and his cattle made a mess of it until he sold them off in a few months to turn a profit.
The Compromise, “The Blizzard 1846”
A perfect storm was brewing. George expected to fatten cattle on the land that was her dowery. He had the new society’s dominant values and probably thought Mariah was regressive and tribal. He worked for large, hierarchical agencies: the Bureau of Indian Affairs founded in 1824, law enforcement, and the military. Naturally, he expected Mariah’s obedience and ordered her to work. He knew he had the power, and she had none, except through tactics of deceit. Love and loyal service cultivated over generations were laid to waste, as were the land and water she tried to steward. Mariah thwarted George’s ambition to earn from his own labor and share the prosperity US laws promoted. It was a classic power struggle.
He set traps for game, and I released them. He scratched his head wondering who took the bait. When it was necessary, I butchered, stretched pelts, tanned skins, and dried meat. I kept food on the table. My big sycamore was felled for a bigger house, which was never built. We needed a barn, but we disagreed on where it should be. His grand plans put it too far away from the cabin. He won the argument, and the horses had a better place to eat and sleep than we did.
The Compromise, “The Blizzard 1846”
Of course, the marriage of George and Mariah was unsustainable. They stood on opposite sides of social and cultural movements– industrialization and bureaucracy on one side and communalism and equal rights on the other. How many men and women have stood in this opposition? Compromise, painful and seemingly impossible, required skills they did not have.
Masters of Management
“But on plantations, the soft power of quantification supplemented the driving force of the whip.”
Catlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery
Historians can explain how the institution of slavery informed these modern practices. UC Berkeley Professor Catlin Rosenthal’s Accounting for Slavery: Masters of Management, shows how business practices on plantations became the strange legacy of slavery. She writes, “But on plantations, the soft power of quantification supplimented the driving force of the whip” (p.2). The legacy includes structural racism, of course, and the vast income inequality we see today. I suggest that more institutions bear responsibility.
In less than two years, Mariah lost the land she cherished along with the husband who had legal right to it. It happened before she understood the factors at play. The law did not allow women to own land in nearly all US states. I want my readers to feel the human costs of injustice. We are called to stand against it until we change it.
Brother-in-law, Richard Fowler comes to tell her the news. Her family has likely perished. In the scene, “The Story of Twenty Acres” she learns that she must leave her home. A boy of six has inherited the land and she is a squatter.
"....I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, Mariah. George went to Jebediah asking to be released from the agreement to marry you.”
“What do you mean?”
“He said the marriage was no good, that you were a shrew and no twenty acres could make him stay.”
“A shrew? That’s a rodent.”
...
"He thought I was an animal. He couldn’t tame me, so he gave up. That’s it, isn’t it?”
The Compromise, “The Story of Twenty Acres 1846”
Human Costs
After many days in the small cabin, Mariah loses her center. Unable to cope, she runs into the blizzard. Small things like splashed trousers and wet gloves could be fatal. The distance between the cabin and the barn, the torn out trees, the changed fences, and the strange light rising from the stone quarry almost end her life. Delirious, she reaches for the light, but it comes from more than one plane of existence. My protagonist sees when the veil lifts. She is not the only one reaching for life. The mystery protects her.
I pulled back at the edge of the cliff. It was the red-stone quarry seething with clouds like smoke rising from a fire below. A figure appeared and I lowered to my knees. My father, Jebediah rose from down in the pit, his beard curling in the updraft. His mouth was open in surprise and his pale eyes turned black as charcoal. I reached out for him. The red light grew as he lowered beyond my grasp. Pointing up at me he said, “Not your time, girl.” He sank into the swirling smoke and disappeared.
The Compromise, “The Blizzard 1847”
