II. HER THEMES
In order, however, to understand on the one hand just how she uses her
technique, and on the other how she succeeds in giving such poignant reality
to her people and her scenes, it is necessary to examine in somewhat more detail at
least a portion of her books. And
The Battle-Ground, as one of her earlier
works, and also one that reaches back historically to the time of the Civil War,
forms a convenient starting point. It is besides one of the most obvious instances of
Miss Glasgow's characteristic method of epic structure. In the first place, it deals
with the wide, general theme suggested by the title—and in this wider sense the
central figure is not a person but a State, the State of Virginia; and the story is the
story of that State before, during and immediately after the four years of devastating
struggle. But more specifically
The Battle-Ground is the intimate history of
one Southern family, the Lightfoots, or rather of one member of that family, Dan
Montjoy, whose mother, old Major Lightfoot's only daughter, had made a runaway
match with a hot-headed, mean-natured scamp, who had cost her a brief misery and
an early death. Dan Montjoy comes naturally by his hot temper, but for the most
part he is a true Lightfoot, and the idol of his grandfather's old age. But there
comes a day when impetuous youth leads Dan into certain foolish escapades that his
grandfather takes too seriously; angry, unforgettable words are exchanged, and the
young man goes forth penniless, to fight his way in the world alone, leaving home,
friends and the girl he loves. What he might have made of himself under other
conditions is a question that Miss Glasgow does not even touch upon; but it
happens that this quarrel occurs on the eve of the Civil War; Dan's secession from
the family circle coincides with the South's withdrawal from the Union. And so,
throughout the rest of this powerful war novel, we see a double struggle waged
upon a double battle-ground—the struggle of a family of federal States at war with
each other; and the struggle of a human being for independence of the ties of blood.
And in the end, when the South as a whole is brought to accept defeat, Dan has
learned still another and more personal lesson, and returns once more, wiser and
happier with the sober happiness of maturity, to those at home who have never
ceased to hope for his coming.
Similarly, in The Deliverance there is a double significance of title
and of plot. "After the battle come the vultures," says a Union soldier in The
Battle-Ground—and in a broad, general way, The Deliverance may be
said to symbolise the sufferings of the South in the years immediately following the
war, when so many of those who had constituted the wealth and pride and
aristocracy of the country saw their remaining possessions wrested from them by
corruption and by fraud. Christopher Blake is only a single instance of this
widespread injustice and robbery. He has seen his father die, broken in body and in
mind; has seen the magnificent estate, that had been for two centuries the property
of the Blakes, sold at auction and bought in for a beggarly sum by Bill Fletcher, his
father's former overseer. Nothing can be done in a legal way; for Fletcher has been
careful to see that all documents and account books that might serve as evidence
against him were destroyed by fire. Christopher, a mere boy, with a crippled
mother and two sisters on his hands, finds himself turned adrift, with no refuge save
the overseer's former cabin and a few acres of tobacco fields, down in one corner of
the estate which should have been his own. The mother, paralysed and blind, is
transferred, all unaware of the change, one day when she is carried out for her
accustomed airing. Knowing nothing of the fall of the Confederacy, of the death of
Lincoln, of the freedom of the slaves, she lives on in a world of her own
imaginings, nurtured on an elaborate tissue of lies, daily issuing orders to an army
of slaves who no longer exist, and delicately partaking of broiled chicken and
sipping rare old port, while son and daughters exist painfully on hoe-cake and fat
bacon. Such is the tragic and impressive symbolism by which Miss Glasgow
pictures to us the contrast between the hopes and the humiliations of the South.
And in the story of the Blakes we see not merely a single family tragedy, but behind
it an entire country given over to desolation,
with countless estates passing
into unworthy hands, countless impoverished families taking up unaccustomed
burdens and cherishing in their hearts a mortal bitterness because of the dead dream
of the confederacy that refuses to be forgotten. But in the case of Christopher Blake
there is another and more specific story. As a boy, his first mad impulse after being
turned from his home, was to murder Fletcher; but the impulse once checked had
turned to a smouldering hatred, a fixed and secret determination for revenge.
Fletcher has two grand-children, a girl and a boy. The girl, Maria, marries and goes
abroad, before Christopher has had time to determine whether his feeling for her is
hatred or love. Toward the boy, Will, he has but one feeling, and that is a steadfast
longing to use him as an instrument of vengeance. The boy is the one living thing
that old Fletcher loves; therefore, by making him a liar, a coward and a drunkard,
Christopher feels that he is paying back with interest the wrongs the Blakes have
suffered. He never once realises the unworthiness of his own conduct until Maria,
after some years of marriage and widowhood, returns home, and they meet once
more and know that they love each other, that in fact the feeling they had cherished
as boy and girl had needed only a word to make it flame into love and not hatred.
But Christopher has himself done a vulture's deed, in accomplishing the ruin of
Maria's brother; and when the lad in a drunken frenzy kills his grandfather,
Christopher, realising his own moral responsibility, aids the other to escape and
gives himself up as the murderer. Deliverance finally comes, so the book seems to
preach—deliverance of the land from vultures like old Fletcher, deliverance of men
like Christopher from the curse of their own mad deeds—but neither the one nor the
other may be hurried; they come only with patience, in the fulness of time.
