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Authors: Bharati Mukherjee
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have seized upon its implied sexism. No one, however, identified Hannah Easton as Hannah Fitch aka Precious-as-Pearl and the Salem Bibi. If Solomon Pynchon’s marital overture had been accepted, the history of the United States would have been profoundly altered.
But there was a response.
“My dear Pynchon,” writes Robert Fitch, revealing a tone that seems slightly warmer, or at least indicative of earlier contact,
the Child to whom you refer and wish to welcome to your Family if by her leave she be so willing, is not my rightful Daughter, as might be ascertain’d at a glance, but is our Daughter none the less. Her father, an educated gentleman late of England, Cultivator and town Clerk, perish’d fifteen years ago most suddenly, still in the prime of his manhood, leaving the young wife and infant daughter without physical or pecuniary Protection in that most perilous and misbegotten of Townships, the Village of Brookfield. God’s bountiful Mercy spared the Father and Husband the sight of slaughter and Abduction that Haunt the few Survivors even unto this Day .
The Child came into our family on the night of her mother’s Abduction, and never in the intervening years has Word been rec’d of her Christian burial. The sauvages treat the body of their fallen with no more Courtesy than the carcass of a skinn’d bear, preferring their Dogs supp upon the remnants than they Bee commended to the Throne of God. I Believe the Ghost of the Girl’s Mother still Dwells in the Heart and treads the Breast of our Daughter. She can never truly permit herself to Be Our Daughter .
It is the Ghost’s teaching and there is nothing She has learned from my Goodwife or the Salem Congregation that causes her Fingers to be so infected, that so pollutes her Eye with infamous design, to make of the plain and simple Necessities that might cover the shame of Nakedness in Man and Woman a Proud and Unseemly Decorativeness, as Unneeded as Paints and feathers on a sauvage .
Allow me, my dear Pynchon, to spare your Son the Agonie we have known, and such can never be known by Those who have but Commercial Intercourse with Her; if the Angel of Death marks His Brides not with the Pain of physical Suffering, but is made known through Disruption of the Humours, Infections of the Very Soul, then we have been Warned of His evil Intent to claim Her as His Bride, and we shall Warn others in our Turn .
It is not from Scorn, but by Respect that we must now Act and humbly decline the further Approach of your most esteemed Son. Our Daughter rests comfortably as she is able with us and we Guard her remaining Days. We do not seek to more deeply Arouse yr. Son’s Resolve through our contrary Position, as is the Case with so many young Men these last Days, but only to Spare him the Confusions and the Sadness that caring for nervous Invalids must surely Impose .
We trust this Ardour shall pass in one so young and Strong as your Son, and we have not intimated his Feelings to our Daughter, lest it Disrupt her Balance further .
I want to think of Robert Fitch as a man ahead of his time, or at the very least, a decent embodiment of the tolerant forces in his age. He had suffered, yet survived; his type has endured and is alive today, living by values they trust, disturbed and finally confused by events larger than any system they can put them into.
He could not understand Hannah. What she had witnessed, what she suppressed. It is just that Hannah is a person undreamed of in Puritan society. Of course she must suffer “spells” and be judged an invalid. Outside agencies—the devil, the forest, the Indians—must be blamed. She is from a different time, the first person, let alone the first woman, to have had these thoughts, and this experience, to have been formed in this particular crucible. Either she will take society with her to a new level, or she will perish in the attempt. Either people will follow, or they will kill her.
Looking at Hannah through the lens
But there was a response.
“My dear Pynchon,” writes Robert Fitch, revealing a tone that seems slightly warmer, or at least indicative of earlier contact,
the Child to whom you refer and wish to welcome to your Family if by her leave she be so willing, is not my rightful Daughter, as might be ascertain’d at a glance, but is our Daughter none the less. Her father, an educated gentleman late of England, Cultivator and town Clerk, perish’d fifteen years ago most suddenly, still in the prime of his manhood, leaving the young wife and infant daughter without physical or pecuniary Protection in that most perilous and misbegotten of Townships, the Village of Brookfield. God’s bountiful Mercy spared the Father and Husband the sight of slaughter and Abduction that Haunt the few Survivors even unto this Day .
The Child came into our family on the night of her mother’s Abduction, and never in the intervening years has Word been rec’d of her Christian burial. The sauvages treat the body of their fallen with no more Courtesy than the carcass of a skinn’d bear, preferring their Dogs supp upon the remnants than they Bee commended to the Throne of God. I Believe the Ghost of the Girl’s Mother still Dwells in the Heart and treads the Breast of our Daughter. She can never truly permit herself to Be Our Daughter .
It is the Ghost’s teaching and there is nothing She has learned from my Goodwife or the Salem Congregation that causes her Fingers to be so infected, that so pollutes her Eye with infamous design, to make of the plain and simple Necessities that might cover the shame of Nakedness in Man and Woman a Proud and Unseemly Decorativeness, as Unneeded as Paints and feathers on a sauvage .
Allow me, my dear Pynchon, to spare your Son the Agonie we have known, and such can never be known by Those who have but Commercial Intercourse with Her; if the Angel of Death marks His Brides not with the Pain of physical Suffering, but is made known through Disruption of the Humours, Infections of the Very Soul, then we have been Warned of His evil Intent to claim Her as His Bride, and we shall Warn others in our Turn .
It is not from Scorn, but by Respect that we must now Act and humbly decline the further Approach of your most esteemed Son. Our Daughter rests comfortably as she is able with us and we Guard her remaining Days. We do not seek to more deeply Arouse yr. Son’s Resolve through our contrary Position, as is the Case with so many young Men these last Days, but only to Spare him the Confusions and the Sadness that caring for nervous Invalids must surely Impose .
We trust this Ardour shall pass in one so young and Strong as your Son, and we have not intimated his Feelings to our Daughter, lest it Disrupt her Balance further .
I want to think of Robert Fitch as a man ahead of his time, or at the very least, a decent embodiment of the tolerant forces in his age. He had suffered, yet survived; his type has endured and is alive today, living by values they trust, disturbed and finally confused by events larger than any system they can put them into.
He could not understand Hannah. What she had witnessed, what she suppressed. It is just that Hannah is a person undreamed of in Puritan society. Of course she must suffer “spells” and be judged an invalid. Outside agencies—the devil, the forest, the Indians—must be blamed. She is from a different time, the first person, let alone the first woman, to have had these thoughts, and this experience, to have been formed in this particular crucible. Either she will take society with her to a new level, or she will perish in the attempt. Either people will follow, or they will kill her.
Looking at Hannah through the lens
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