Marilla and Mrs Lynde
But physical punishment or ‘correction’ has been morally unproblematic until very recently, some of you retort.
I don’t buy it. I’m at least very skeptical. I agree that it’s been widespread – but not that it’s been morally unproblematic. Of course it was morally unproblematic to some people, to many people, but I’m claiming that to a substantial minority it was not. (I’m talking about the 19th century onwards, if only because there’s so much more literature for children and about children starting then. I could talk about Hogarth on cruelty – but I won’t, for now.)
After writing about Anne of Green Gables from memory I started wondering…wasn’t there a subsidiary character, who did recommend beating? That neighbor? Didn’t she say at some point ‘You ought to beat that child, that’s what’? In other words wasn’t the issue made explicit at some point – didn’t Marilla have a choice, which she made, for our edification?
So I re-read the first half or so. (Don’t scorn; it’s a good book; sentimental, yes, but not too cloyingly so, though I skip most of Anne’s long speeches about the fairies in the glen and whatnot – I’m as bored by them as Marilla is.) Yes, there is. Rachel Lynde comes up to Green Gables to meet Anne, and promptly points out how skinny and homely and red-haired she is, at which Anne loses her temper and shouts at her; Marilla rebukes her and sends her to her room. Mrs Lynde says to Marilla, among other things, ‘You’ll have your own troubles with that child. But if you’ll take my advice – which I suppose you won’t do, although I’ve brought up ten children and buried two – you’ll do that “talking to” you mention with a fair-sized birch switch.’ After she leaves Marilla wonders what she should do. ‘And how was she to punish her? The amiable suggestion of the birch switch – to the efficiency of which all of Mrs Rachel’s own children could have borne smarting testimony – did not appeal to Marilla. She did not believe she could whip a child. No, some other method must be found to bring Anne to a proper realization of the enormity of her offence.’
Well…why couldn’t Marilla whip a child? Or why did she not believe she could? Because she found it morally problematic. She’s a very unbending character, who conceals her affection for Anne for a long time, yet she can’t whip a child. This is apparently plausible, and not unreasonable, and in fact subtly admirable, in a very popular children’s book published in 1908. It can’t have been an extremely eccentric attitude. It wasn’t universal, but it wasn’t freakish, either.
Abuse of children was, at one time, very common. In the early Industrial Revolution, children were used as beasts from a very early age to do things that adults could not do – to open mine-shaft vents, for example, or to sweep chimneys – and in the latter case the children were the brushes, lowered into the chimney by a rope. And corporal punishment was fairly common too. Abusive punishment was a staple of English Public School discipline and sexuality. (I am told that very high class British civil servants – and possibly RAF officers – still have a flagellation fetish as a consequence.)
My own mother was particularly savage in that department. But it was considered, even at the time (in 1940s Canada), to be unacceptable, except in very minor instances. My mother knew it was wrong at the time, but did it anyway. She apologised in later life, but it wasn’t quite the same as not being beaten.
But talking about this relatively ‘normal’ parental abuse is missing the point of the systematic, endemic abuse of children in the church run institutions. Given the stuck Christian recording of Jesus’ voice: ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven,’ there was no excuse at all for the incredibly widespread abuse that these Christian priests and nuns were permitted to perpetrate on astonishingly young children. Some of the terrible things that Marie-Therese remembers do not belong to the repertoire of normal behaviour, and show a cruelty and inhumanity that needed religion or some other ideology to underwrite it.
The example of Marilla and Rachel Lynde is a telling contrast. Well played. My wife grew up with Anne, and learned the value of independence, determination, imagination and joy in life from her. Still a treasured memory.
No-one claimed that physical punishment is ‘not morally problematic’.
Anne of Green Gables is constructed, not reportage. Non-violent punishment is a signifier of a loving and Christian (or even quaker-ish) character in that person, in no way a moral absolute or representative of the days view on normal childraising.
There is plenty of literature of older times which gives the different standard accepted as normal (and acknowldged as brutal) in the past.
The ‘Onion’ is making my eyes all watery. Ha ha ha…?
To use an American expression > Go figure! B&W News :-)!
Grrrrrrrr
ChrisPer, Dave said exactly that – go back and look. I wouldn’t have argued with it otherwise!
Sigh. I know Anne of Green Gables is ‘constructed’ – how stupid do you think I am?! I said “This is apparently plausible, and not unreasonable, and in fact subtly admirable, in a very popular children’s book published in 1908.” Does that not make it sufficiently obvious that I’m talking about the ‘construction’ and the fact that the author did the constructing?
And no, Non-violent punishment is not a signifier of a loving and Christian (or even quaker-ish) character in Marilla: Rachel Lynde is at least as much of a Christian as Marilla is and Marilla is certainly not a Christian. Marilla’s reaction has nothing whatever to do with Christianity, loving or otherwise. (I suppose the Irish nuns and priests are signifiers of hating Christian character?)
I didn’t say Marilla’s reaction was a moral absolute, nor did I say it was representative – I said it can’t have been an extremely eccentric attitude and that it wasn’t universal, but it wasn’t freakish, either.
Does nuance just go right over your head, or what?
Quaker, I meant – Marilla is certainly not a Quaker.
On that not, LGF had a good one – lloks like me and OB in conversation:
Wanda: But you think you’re an intellectual, don’t you, ape?
Otto: [superior smile] Apes don’t read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don’t understand it! Let me correct you on a few things; Aristotle was not Belgian! The central message of Buddhism is not “Every man for himself!” And the London Underground is not a political movement! Those are all mistakes. I looked them up.
— A Fish Called Wanda
As a child, I read and re-read Anne of Green Gables. I remember there was one time Anne had to adjust her ideals when, as school ma’am of Avonlea, she found herself whipping Anthony Pye (or one of the Pyes) out of frustration. It was only then she won his respect and ensuing good behaviour. So I don’t think L.M. Montgomery was totally averse to using violence to punish children, but she certainly didn’t advocate it as a matter of course. I’m pretty sure she would have been revolted by the carryings on of the Christian Brothers in Ireland.
And anyway, even people in those days who advocated whipping children would have almost certainly been up in arms about the sexual abuse of children, so really the church hasn’t got a leg to stand on if it wants to pretend it was just “of its time”.
I don’t think its the church claiming that, I think its a number of individuals trying to put a mitigating view in the face of the very just outrage.
I’d love to get into a discussion about social policy and behaviour as shown in Anne of Green Gables. Evidently you could turn up at an orphanage and ask for a child, plus one for an acquaintance, and no questions asked. So some like Anne found kind homes, and others must have ended up as slaves and possibly sex slaves as that, unless their owners worst cruelties were checked by the opinions of their neighbours.
I saw a programme about Barnardo kids who were sent off to Australia, where some were miserably treated. This was happening up to the 1960s.
Legally, and morally, in the sense of the generally-accepted moral codes of society, things you would not be looked down upon for doing, clouting a wayward child was entirely acceptable, as late as the 1970s. Otherwise, if we’re resorting to anecdote, my own loving and gentle father would not have smacked my hand, hard, c.1975, when I performed some now-thankfully-forgotten major transgression.
Indeed, for a substantial segment of the population, there is still absolutely nothing wrong with such ‘correction’ – even though it is now legally wrong. This has nothing to do with the systematic regimes of abuse that are the subject of discussion, but then neither, really, does *Anne of Green Gables*, or the thoughts of any one other [cough]bleeding-heart[cough] author…
Children in Goldenbridge industrial school were lined up in a circle in the prison yard and ‘ladies’ as they were known as, irrespective of their sex, chose children that they would like to take out for weekends. if the Sisters of Mercy did not like the children that were selected by the visitors, the latter were then rejected and other children, whom the sisters had a gra for, were invariably selected by the nuns. The Sisters of Mercy advertised for ‘people’ (as they were also referred to by us) in the Irish newspapers to take poor orphanage out for week-ends
The Sisters of Mercy gave their ‘pets’ the best visitors. These would be the very wealthy people.
The irony of the whole thing is that children who went out with these ‘ladies’, ‘people’ were sometimes sexually abused by them.
There was no vetting of ‘people’ in place at all.
It was a paedophile’s paradise.
Illegitimate and black children were on the lowest rung of the ‘visitor’ ladder. It was already the children who had parent/s who seemed to fare better as well as the pets.
Some children who came from very marginalised, poor travelling backgrounds were placed with very rich people and children whose backgrounds were middle class went out with the poorest working class families. Never the twain did meet.
My Canadian Aunt sent me, a few years ago, Anne of the Green Gables book and doll
“I interpreted you to conflate the ‘Ooops, our bad’ construction of an excuse from the perpetrators, with people pointing out that what we now see as mildly abusive was once normal”
Well that’s a bad interpretation. It’s more complicated than that, and the perps didn’t say ‘oops, our bad,’ they said ‘oh, gee, we didn’t realize violence was bad for children,’ and various people pointed out various things, not all of which amounted to ‘what we now see as mildly abusive was once normal.’ If you can be bothered to look at what I actually did say, I offered two quotations, one a sarcastic invented paraphrase of what the congregations have been saying and the other a direct quote from Bill Donohue.
“For that reason, measuring abuse by the standards of an exceptional literary character is a bit too damned nuancey for me.”
Well don’t read what I write then, because it will all be too damned nuancey for you. I think it’s pretty apparent that I was engaging in moral thinking, not forensics – but if you want to equate it to ‘media (or real) lynch-mobs’ then you really won’t like much of anything that I write, so I don’t see why you bother.
“So some like Anne found kind homes, and others must have ended up as slaves”
Yeah. The latter was going to be Anne’s fate, since Marilla at first intended to send her back because they wanted a boy. But then the alternative for Anne turned out to be an obvious slave-driver, and Marilla changed her mind.
“This has nothing to do with the systematic regimes of abuse that are the subject of discussion, but then neither, really, does *Anne of Green Gables*, or the thoughts of any one other [cough]bleeding-heart[cough] author…”
Does too! It’s a spectrum – and the spectrum is interesting – and I don’t see why ruminations on the climate of opinion and what was ‘normal’ and what wasn’t are not relevant or worth engaging in.
I was spanked as a child, that was ‘normal,’ I don’t think it was any big deal, I don’t think it means my mother was cruel. I wasn’t hit with a birch switch though, and I think fictional disagreements over the value of whipping are of some interest.
Anyway it makes a change from fuming at publishers.
It is also relevant to this discussion, I think, that the climate of opinion regarding corporal punishment was (and still is) largely informed by religion. Recall that public flogging of adults was widely practiced until fairly recently, and still is practiced in Islamist states. It was outlawed in the British armed forces (in Britain?) – I believe – in 1948.
There was a widespread belief that change of the soul could only be achieved by means of bodily punishment. Hence burning at the stake, and refined means of torturing a person to death, as, for example Damiens’ being tortured to death for his pitiful attempt at regicide. Social class played a role here too, since corporal punishment was largely reserved to lower classes and the young. And all this brutality was intended to subdue the animal in man, tendencies most in evidence (it was believed) in lower classes and in children.
Dickens, Austen and Montgomery are really harbingers of a more secular attitude towards punishment, which is, in itself, more humane and compassionate. It it is done, it is done regretfully. So it should not surprise us to find that people whose development took place in the hothouse religious atmosphere of religious orders should have been amongst the last to have noticed that cruelty really is just cruelty, an expression of the animal in man. The fact that the new Archbishop of Westminster should consider atheism the worst of evils is a sign that they still haven’t noticed, not really. They still want to suppress the animal, and think that human beings can actually breathe in the rarefied air of the supernatural. They should try.
“amongst the last to have noticed that cruelty really is just cruelty”
Exactly.
And, look, EVEN IF corporal punishment was common, why do you suppose it was?
The Catholic Church was not some passive follower of Irish culture. It was a profoundly powerful shaper of Irish culture, especially on matters of child-rearing.
So if corporal punishment was common, it was at least in part the Church’s fault, and cannot be used as an excuse for the Church’s behavior.
Good point.
I have to put corporal punishment into historical context to understand from whence the religious in Goldenbridge came from indeed. It is said that it was not until the tenth century that monks and nuns began to scourge themselves on certain days of the year. The custom of scourging sinners as a penance was so well established that St. Louis’s confessor often gave him the whip. Children in Goldenbridge were seen as offspring of sinners and penitents and they too had to be flogged severely in order to create change in them and to allow the demons out of their bodies, which they inevitably would have inherited from their parent/s.. Children were always reminded by Sr X, when they were being lashed every single day that the
devil was in them. He was in their eyes, he was in their bodies, he was in their souls, he lurked everywhere and the nun had to free him from their bodies. That was part of her calling to God to free the sinners. The religious find it unfathomable that they would be accused of despicable brutalised acts towards vulnerable children in the past in industrial schools. Whipping and flogging children was normal and good for the soul and has been going on since time immemorial in religious life. As too with holy communion it purified and made sinners, the small children clean.
The pope once long ago showed great indulgence in not having the king himself whipped, but contented himself with commanding him, on pain of damnation, to pay to the apostolic chamber the amount of two years’ revenue.
The survivors should show great indulgence in not having the religious prosecuted, but be contented ourselves with commanding them on pain of damnation, to pay to the RIRB chamber the amount equalling to that which the Irish government had paid, in other words half a billion euro.
Oh, goddddddd…that all adds up. They were seen as offspring of sinners and penitents, and Sr X told them the devil was in them. Uggggggggggh.
There’s a bit in ch. 7 where one former inmate says her memory of G’bridge is the endless endless crying and screaming of children – all the time – she’s never gotten it out of her head. I wonder if to the religious that sound was the sound of devils – like an exorcism. Not children suffering but devils complaining. What a horrible thought.
The more they scream the more you are pleasing god? Yeah, consistent.
Perhaps one observation that puts corporal punishment in context is the range of things it was used for – the ambition of its scope. We were belted (the ‘tawse’) in school in Scotland until the mid-eighties for misbehaving in class. A friend of mine who went to a Catholic school told me that a teacher used to ask them if they’d been to Mass at the weekend. To catch them out lying, he would ask them what colour of cassock the priest was wearing on Sunday. If they got it wrong, they were belted. Here the tawse was used to control behaviour outwith the school too.
Somewhat off-topic, but I’ve been reading a fascinating and appalling history of the Baltic states (in what is otherwise a travel guide) and what Shuggy describes was used by the German Balt landowning and merchant class to control the indigenous peasantry almost into the 20th century. You attended church (lutheran, this time) or you WERE PUNISHED.
A friend of mine who teaches in Scotland was rather pissed off when he was told he couldn’t use the tawse any more.
The early RC missionaries to Congo, being introduced the system of penance among the natives who took to it like a duck to water. A Capuchin monk who was in the Congo in approximately 1667 says one evening he heard a sound of singing of a very doleful nature. He was informed that the people were disciplining themselves. Two hundred men were carrying great logs of wood for greater penance. After the short sermon from the priest on the benefits of penance, which must be endured either in this world or the next the candles were extinguished and the people disciplined themselves for one whole hour with with leather thongs and cords made from barks of trees.
Fast forward:
In Goldenbridge the religious head honcho always polished her pride and joy – which was a very thick bark of a tree. She cherished this weapon, which was, when not in use by her kept in the parlour. Every morning, very young children were lined up before her in a big queue in St Patrick’s and the line of children even extended into St Philomena’s, the next classroom and sometimes even beyond that into the washroom. All waited their turn to be flogged by her with this stick. Everybody lived in absolute fear of her, she was answerable to nobody, she flogged and she flogged and she flogged tiny, medium sized and large chidren. I can also still hear the screams of children as they hollered after their terrible ordeal. Most of the children would have wetted their beds. There was also secret types of punishment that went on behind the closed doors or down in the bathroom and a very special large stick was used for these purposes. The stick in measurement terms could have been as long as a broom handle and it was also thick in width and much more worse than the one used every day.
When the head honco of G’bridge did a telly programme some years ago (in response to the Dear Daughter documentary (which highlighted the atrocities of GB through the medium of Christine Buckley’s life) The Sisters of Mercy paid Carr Communications approximately €10,000 to soften the image of Sr X. Those of us from GB were nearly wetting ourselves when we saw her on the box in pastel coloured clothes, soft lighting, softer higher tone of voice, and exquisite flowers in the background. What a farce we thought – but then I was not surprised when CB told me that she had had the same interviewer. It was all staged to perfection by the nuns and the media were in cahoots. They ran with the big Dinosaurs and sat with the small rabbits.
Sr X ascertained that she had some sort of a slapper and that she never intentionally meant to hurt any children in her care.
Perhaps, like the missionary’s in the Congo of old, she should have gotten us to beat ourselves with barks of trees. It would have saved so much energy and what is more, she could have made us make them ourselves. After-all, boys in other institutions, such as Artane, put lead in leather straps that they were lashed with and repaired them over and over again.
There is an eastern proverb ” The stick came down from heaven a blessing from God.
The ‘bastinado” beats all, be-damned!