(urth) Ouen and Dorcas and ??

[Jane Delawney]

On 04/12/10 21:04, Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> Ryan Dunn wrote:
>    
>> If the old boatman (in his 70's?) is looking for his wife, Dorcas, who is
>>      
> mid-to-late-teens when resurrected. That would suggest at least fifty years
> have passed since she died, thereabouts.<
>
> He had been searching for her body for "forty years".  (SHADOW. chap. XXII)
> Ouen is about forty-two.
>    
I concur. Also, it is deducible from the text (Dorcas remembers going to 
buy clothes for her child, remembers looking after a child and so forth) 
that if Dorcas died in childbirth, as is usually assumed, it was in 
bearing her *second* child, ie. Ouen's sibling.

What I can't remember right now is whether there is much textual 
evidence that Dorcas did in fact die in childbirth. All the old boatman 
tells us is that they'd been married four or five years, then 'Cas died. 
It's entirely possible she died of other natural causes when Ouen was a 
toddler.

But if she did die in childbirth, Ouen was two or three years old at the 
time, which would indeed make him forty-two/three when Sev sends him 
back to find his mother in Oldgate. But there's no information about 
what might have happened to any theoretical sibling. Are we to 
understand that the second child died with his/her mother? Or is there 
anyone around who might be identified as Severian's paternal uncle or 
aunt? I think Borski had a theory on this, but without my books to hand 
I can't remember what this theory was alas, and it's far too late right 
now for me to come up with any fresh suggestion.

be interested to know if anyone else has any ideas on this though.

cheers

jd