In this chapter, James sends Kathleen off to boarding school at Holy Angels when she is only a young girl, on account of the fact that all the children in the area are getting sick with various life threatening illnesses. There is a crisis of a strike, that is ongoing with the miners in the town as well. James and Maternia pay for Kathleen's expensive boarding school by both acquiring new jobs. Firstly, Maternia gets a job presumably to play the piano in the orchestra pit in the prosperous movie theatre, while James goes against his mother's only wish, and makes some extra money in the now-vacant mines.
When Maternia is playing the piano for the orchestra some excellent personification and imagery is used: "hurtling over the keys until all erupts in chaos, notes and birds flies asunder...the music creeps down the winding stairs" (MacDonald 46).
A comical part of this chapter was when James satirically thinks "Who's to help me do that? The piano teacher's union? The piano-tuners-of-the-world unite party? Jesus Christ on the cross no. I'm on my own" (MacDonald 48). I like Ann-marie MacDonald; she is very witty sometimes.
On a more serious note, the character of James is given a sense of humility in this chapter. From one point of view, he is betraying his mother's wishes, and his own sense of pride by entering the mines. However, I believe I was wrong as to his initial intentions with Kathleen. He of course, goes into the mines because he wants to provide for her, whilst Maternia seemingly only works because she is required to. While naturally, the reader has a preference for Maternia's character of James's, one cannot argue that she is the better parent. It seems as though James is accepting the fact that one day he will have to let go of Kathleen, as he says "'You're going to sing for people all over the world. I won't always be there, but i'll always be your daddy'" (MacDonald 45). He also has "consecrated his life to being a worthy caretaker of God's gift" (MacDonald 45). Could this love for his daughter become overbearing? Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe I judged James too harshly?
Unfortunately James and Maternia have not patched their marriage in any way. A mixture of fear, entrapment, helplessness, denial and shame seem to be the only glue keeping these two together (as is the glue in most failed marriages, I would assume.) He is still incredibly conscious of her intellectual, physical and religious inferiority to him, and is still embarrassed of her. Though he wants Maternia to obtain job so that she can make money to support the family, "It mustn't be known that Kathleen Piper's mother was a maid" (MacDonald 46). Though it was once believed that maternia was immature, we can now see that the obvious immaturity culprit is James. He believes he can have all he wants with no consequence, becomes infatuated and then disenchanted in the blink of an eye, is generally selfish and a bit of a "stage mom" to the unsuspecting Kathleen. He himself has a lot of growing up to do. Maybe I didn't Judge James too harshly...
More obvious stabs at religion were made in this chapter, including when the narrator describes how the Catholic Bishop ordered the striking miner's starving families out of the schools, convents, rectories and churches. For a religion that believes in "Love thy neighbour," the jaded narrator point out that not a lot of loving is occurring. I also see that many of the deeply religious characters in this novel, including James and an anonymous woman who "said a prayer for him, then hurled an iron door-stopper, missing him by a hair" (MacDonald 49) often house the most internal demons.
I think a prominent theme demonstrated in this chapter is that there are many sides to every person. For example, James is (so far) a very loving father, but also a racist self-important emotionally abusive husband. Maternia is a kind-hearted and gentle young woman, but is also a whiny and naive little girl. The anonymous woman James meets coming back from the mine loves God, and her family (for she is willing to stand up for them towards James) yet she is also capable of hurling an iron doorstopper at a man she's never met.
Though I couldn't recall the author, I can apply this quote to the chapter and the novel as a whole: "The greatest evil that has existed on this planet has not been advanced by people with evil intentions or lust for blood, but by people with good intentions." Both James and Maternia have had very good intentions; the shortcomings in their personalities have led them down the path of trauma.
At the end of this chapter, James is said to have felt the need to "get on his knees, fold his hands and beg his mother's forgiveness for going underground" (MacDonald 49). This is the first act of falling on one's knees in the book so far. I have a feeling it won't be the last...
Interesting Vocabulary:
-Bourgeoisie (An offensive term for a social class, classified by their preference for Marxism; it is used against Maternia by James.)
-All Ist Klar (Roughly "All is Obvious" in German. Another German reference!)
-Ceilidhs (A social gathering.)
-Hunkered
-Envoy
-Tommies (Slang for a soldier in the British Army)
-Gauntlet
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