MDDM Washington & Gershom & Martha

[jbor]

Sam wrote:

> I think "none of you" refers to all present... meaning that she does serve
> Gersh, though who can know... he does get to smoke and converse... so why
> not eat?
> 
> on 281 Gersh shows that he has a good understanding of the political
> situation and he is acting as an advisor to GW... maybe not a formal
> advisor... but GW listens and in the presense of a guest from the Royal
> Society.  How would a normal slave be able to make a statement like "They
> fail'd to get the Bishop-of-Durham Clause"?  (top 282)
> 
> Cherrycoke is presenting Gersh as free to join in the conversation and as
> capable of doing so...
> 
> I am probably at fault for thinking of Cherrycoke as a real person... I
> wonder what is motivating this particular story... and where did he learn
> about what was said?  From Dixon I assume... Mason was busy talking with
> Martha (which is why she singles him out with an offer of food).  So
> logically Dixon reports the conversation to Wicks and he retells it 12 years
> later to an audience of relatives, some of whom he depends upon for food and
> shelter.
> 
> I think if we imagine ourselves in that Philadelphia room eating dough nuts
> and drinking coffee/ whisky... and listening to the good Reverend, we'd
> probably understand what he was really up to... and I think he is commenting
> upon the worth / (god-given equality) of Blacks to a crowd that may not
> quite agree with him, but knowing afterall, that this is the Wicks who was
> arrested in his youth for exposing crimes of the stronger against the
> weaker....  and Wicks uses the most popular figure he can (GW) in presenting
> that equality...
> 
> I am sure my argument isn't iron-clad... but I hope we can move away from
> the historical GW who did own and work slaves... but is clearly presented as
> forward thinking in the novel.

I agree that Martha serves all four men. Her complaint at the bottom of p.
280 is that males aren't *capable* of "run[ning] a House for more than ten
minutes", and then at the top of p. 281 George explains the reason for
"doughty" Martha's gentle rebuke. He was "suppos'd to be watching a Pot upon
the fire" (i.e. someone, probably Martha, asked him to help cook, and he
agreed to do it) - a recent, and not uncommon, event in the household, I
assume - but he stuffed up.

I still don't know that Wicks is actually telling this story, or that it's
he who is embellishing on the historical record here. And, you'd think that
if Wicks was just pandering to the parlour crowd with this portrait of GW,
then Ben Franklin wouldn't have been painted as the deceitful, womanising,
egotistical maniac he is: "Philadelphia's own *Poor Richard*, in the part of
Death." (294) But I'm not really sure what the prevailing attitudes to GW or
BF were in Philadelphia at this time (and have only just realised that GW
didn't become President until a couple of years later!)

Like Otto, scanning the links which have been posted overnight, it certainly
does appear to me that, in the context of his time, GW was a very
progressive slaveholder, generally quite solicitous for his slaves'
well-being, and ahead of his time, which are the aspects that Pynchon's text
picks up on in showing how well Gershom is treated and regarded by George.

What stood out most to me, and it was in the more negative of the cited
essays about GW, were these two quotes:

"There are, however, in the vast record of his correspondence no explicit
statements by Washington that blacks were innately inferior to whites."

"While Washington never referred to his slaves as his children, he did refer
to them as part of his family. [And virtually never as slaves - they were
usually my servants or my Negroes or my people or my black labourers]
Washington recognized that slaves experienced the same range of emotions as
the unenslaved and attempted to make accommodations where possible.
Whatever their legal status as human chattel, Washington knew they were
human beings."

Indeed, the title of the essay is revealing in itself: George's statement
that slavery was "the only unavoidable subject of regret." And GW granting
his slaves freedom in his will is an amazingly generous, considerate and
symbolic bequeath, all things considered!

While the author of the essay labels GW's attitude as "paternalistic" it
would be just as accurate to consider it as benevolent and progressive.
Semantic quibbles about equality/paternalism and liberty/privilege aside,
the novel, and the primary source material itself, do cast GW in a
complimentary light. Imo.

best