(urth) Ouen and Dorcas and ??

[Jeff Wilson]

On 12/6/2010 6:31 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> I have noticed this as well, but in a society in which quantification is
> not precise, and a mother can die several days after giving birth, this
> may be exactly correct as far as Ouen knows.
>
> However, if this were a Gothic mystery, we would assume the father was
> at least hiding something to protect his son---such as, she killed
> herself some time during Ouen's first year. Most people raised on such
> half-truths would not question such a small discrepancy.
>
> What else could this hide?

The boatman's story about her eyes opening as she is dropped in suggests 
he has some anxiety that she was still alive somehow. This might mean 
that she died mysteriously with no marks, or that she happened to die 
while he was out from some lingering, markless cause and he is wracked 
with guilt that his neglect did her in and desperately hopes that she is 
just doing the Madeline Usher so he can be forgiven.

This would make him still a deceiver, but a more human self-deceiver 
above all. And if she simply never regained her full health after Ouen's 
difficult birth, the "in childbirth" lie keeps to the Book's theme of 
liars revealing the truth despite themselves, and would explain why the 
Claw would rewind her to pre-parity.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >