I am on record as having dismissed Chapter 70 of MMMD as “filler” and “low comic relief,” principally due to the character of Mrs. Hogden who I found tedious and superfluous. After reading Lori’s posting on that chapter, I have revised my opinion. Her posting along with a random opening of the novel to the page where Mrs Hogden is assuming her role as arithmetic instructor, has shown me how shortsighted my criticism was. Mrs. Hogden invents a situation familiar to every elementary school student who ever lived: “If Farmer Brown had four apples,” Mrs. Hogden said, seraphically, licking her lips, “and you took two apples away from him—dear, dear, that would be unkind!—how many apples would Farmer Brown have left? There is no Farmer Brown, of course.“ Immediately, my mind flashed back to Chapter One, where we as readers believe our narrator Vera is riding on a train and observing the other passengers. This is the passage: “I had been too long half sleeping, cut off from communication with others, asking no more reasonable questions than a patient asks under the ether mask which seems like a train riding among the trackless stars or where there are no stars, no signposts any longer, and no one has ever seen the other person. All the other passengers, Negroes with white roosters crowing in their laps, beings unseen, merely sensed, each with his own dark and private heart, the darkness everlasting, their questions like my own, and no answer heard, for God is the loneliest of all, and there is perhaps no God but what we dreamed, and there is no train.” There is no train because Vera was half asleep and compares herself to an etherized patient on a table and further compares the situation as being “like” a train riding “among the stars.” Once the train materializes in her fantasy it immediately begins to be filled with passengers, all of whom, of course, are imaginary, the product of one with an “over active imagination.” While Mrs Hogden’s rudimentary imagination is no match for Vera’s, it still is operative in the most commonplace way: illustrating a math problem by inventing a scenario. Somehow Mrs. Hogden’s brain began to travel toward a modicum of self-awareness as she says, “There is no Farmer Brown, of course.” For a brief moment, the imagined became real as Mrs. Hogden began to feel sorry for Farmer Brown who had two apples taken away from him. Then quickly she recovers by exposing the tale as merely an instructive fiction:” There is no Farmer Brown, of course.” And, the reader might add, no apples and no Mrs. Hogden licking her lips, seraphically, or any other way. And there is no train. Or Vera Cartwheel, whose job as narrator is to use her over active imagination to tell tall tales, the kind that are crucial for our genuine existence and well being. —MS
She's a hoot! But remember what happens to everyone who spends any time in the great mansion by the sea... XD
Yes, I'm guessing we won't be able to say, "and she lived happily ever after" there!
I am on record as having dismissed Chapter 70 of MMMD as “filler” and “low comic relief,” principally due to the character of Mrs. Hogden who I found tedious and superfluous. After reading Lori’s posting on that chapter, I have revised my opinion. Her posting along with a random opening of the novel to the page where Mrs Hogden is assuming her role as arithmetic instructor, has shown me how shortsighted my criticism was. Mrs. Hogden invents a situation familiar to every elementary school student who ever lived: “If Farmer Brown had four apples,” Mrs. Hogden said, seraphically, licking her lips, “and you took two apples away from him—dear, dear, that would be unkind!—how many apples would Farmer Brown have left? There is no Farmer Brown, of course.“ Immediately, my mind flashed back to Chapter One, where we as readers believe our narrator Vera is riding on a train and observing the other passengers. This is the passage: “I had been too long half sleeping, cut off from communication with others, asking no more reasonable questions than a patient asks under the ether mask which seems like a train riding among the trackless stars or where there are no stars, no signposts any longer, and no one has ever seen the other person. All the other passengers, Negroes with white roosters crowing in their laps, beings unseen, merely sensed, each with his own dark and private heart, the darkness everlasting, their questions like my own, and no answer heard, for God is the loneliest of all, and there is perhaps no God but what we dreamed, and there is no train.” There is no train because Vera was half asleep and compares herself to an etherized patient on a table and further compares the situation as being “like” a train riding “among the stars.” Once the train materializes in her fantasy it immediately begins to be filled with passengers, all of whom, of course, are imaginary, the product of one with an “over active imagination.” While Mrs Hogden’s rudimentary imagination is no match for Vera’s, it still is operative in the most commonplace way: illustrating a math problem by inventing a scenario. Somehow Mrs. Hogden’s brain began to travel toward a modicum of self-awareness as she says, “There is no Farmer Brown, of course.” For a brief moment, the imagined became real as Mrs. Hogden began to feel sorry for Farmer Brown who had two apples taken away from him. Then quickly she recovers by exposing the tale as merely an instructive fiction:” There is no Farmer Brown, of course.” And, the reader might add, no apples and no Mrs. Hogden licking her lips, seraphically, or any other way. And there is no train. Or Vera Cartwheel, whose job as narrator is to use her over active imagination to tell tall tales, the kind that are crucial for our genuine existence and well being. —MS