A High Wind in Jamaica, by Richard Hughes

[lookfar]

I searched this book out because I saw, by chance one time when I was a young teen, the movie version on television and remembered it ever after. I wasn't able to find it anywhere again, but I found the book.

A High Wind in Jamaica was published in 1929 but takes place in the late 19th century, after Emancipation, in Jamaica and on the high seas.

Comments

[lookfar]

Man, you must remember everything you ever read!

I didn't realize that Margaret was abused, but it makes sense. She stops staying with the children and stays with the pirates instead elsewhere in the ship but I thought it was because she was so frightened by the near-abuse that she puts herself under the protection of one of the pirates. Your version makes more sense; she is now the property of one of them and that is why the children don't see her anymore. But it's told from their point of view, so they don't have any idea what has happened. Nor does Emily understand what almost happened to her, which is why she is ashamed of biting the captain's thumb.

I suppose the forgetting of John is deliberate. I thought of it as a sort of unconscious choice not to ponder what has happened to him, the better to free themselves of worry and sadness. But yes, the point is that the children are quite capable of some innocent barbarity under the right circumstances and not the little sentimentalists that their parents believe them to be at all.

One of my commenters above said she was set to reading it in school as an alternative to Lord of the Flies, and I had similar ideas. Although LotF is more of an adventure - social story and HWiJ is more of a psychological study. Hughes spends some time on Emily's inner world, her dawning awareness of herself as an individual person.

I think repression or selective memory is part of the theme, in answer to your question about the children being unaffected by their experiences. Certainly Margaret is damaged; in the period before the trial, it's clear that she has walled off some big part of her memories which makes her such a poor witness, but she appears just stupid and half-asleep. Similarly, the children don't think of John once he's gone, or wonder where they are going while they live with the pirates. It's their ability to do this that fascinates Hughes. The final scene has Emily twittering with her new school friends and comments that no one could pick her out from among them, but I feel a sort of old-school horror move title hanging over her that says "OR DOES SHE????"

[haggispatrol]

I have a good memory, but I also reread things a lot. I last reread A High Wind in Jamaica about a year ago, or maybe a bit less.

My impression of what happened to Margaret is that the pirates were abusing (probably raping) her and that she put herself under Otto's protection because he was kinder to her than the others and he was willing to protect her from the others. I mean, she was stuck in the situation and had to survive somehow, and that means of survival would have made sense given what her options were.

Then my guess is that her later breakdown is probably due to being brought face to face with the fact that in the terms of the era in which the story is set, she's lost her value as a woman. She's not a virgin anymore, and even if one presumes that she was raped, which would be the logical conclusion --- because pirates are rather known for that kind of thing --- that doesn't make up for the fact that she's now "spoiled goods". She knows that her future is pretty much shite by definition, and she has no hope for escape into anything better, poor lass. In her place I'd likely have gone a bit mad myself.

Part of the problem of reading a book like this so many decades after it was written is that all of the material that people at the time would have read between the lines is now lost, and we can only indulge in guesswork about what was meant. My guesses are a bit educated because my granny was of that generation and she had me read a number of rather tough books, including High Wind and A Scots Quair. I know what she read between the lines in those books, especially with regard to Margaret. Still and all, it's guesswork and not certain; she could have been wrong and so could I.

I'm quite sure that repressed/selective memory is part of the theme, but IMO Hughes doesn't handle it in a credible manner. Real living people with repressed or selected memories aren't generally all shiny and normal on the surface. They've got issues, and sometimes some of those issues stick out all over some of those people like knobs. It's just not so neat and tidy that nobody sees anything amiss. (I ought probably to mention that my housemates are close friends with an expert on false memory syndrome, so I've been part of several extended discussions of genuine repressed memories and how they affect people.) And children who have gone through severe trauma just don't pass for normal afterwards; they just don't. I've seen it happen to too many kids, and helped pick up the pieces for more than one, including my own eldest son.

TL;DR: Hughes gets a big fat DNC (does not convince) from me on that subject.

[lookfar]

I know what you mean about reading between the lines and understanding things. I have sometimes felt that way with Jane Austen; it's clear that something is meant, but I don't know what. Also somewhat with that Georgette Heyer you recced.

In that same vein, Temple Grandin, a famous brilliant autist, stated that she could not read novels at all because she could not understand what was happening. So that's "understanding from social context" at an even more granular level.

But perhaps what has happened to Margaret isn't that she knows her future is shite but that she is protecting her future by forgetting what happened to her, that is, that if she doesn't know she was raped, she never need worry that she is damaged? And in payment, she will just be stupid and dull for the rest of her life.

[haggispatrol]

If you look at the way the other characters treat Margaret in the final portion of the book, after the rescue, it's made very clear that society, including her family, isn't going to overlook what happened to her or let her forget it. Also, the fact that she's visibly pregnant at the interview with the attorney points out that her condition is publically noticeable, which in turn implies that the press will get hold of that bit of information (because she and the other children are being watched by reporters). At that period, premarital sex and illegitimate pregnancy came with a stigma that a woman or girl could rarely if ever escape by any means short of, say, emigrating someplace without her family. It didn't matter if she'd been complicit in the act or not.

I've actually helped a dear friend who is autistic to parse some of the unspoken subtext of novels. Ironically, she's very good at historical novels (being a history buff with a wealth of obscure knowledge), but very poor at modern ones written after about 1960 because she lacks the pop culture background necessary to catch most references.

[lookfar]

What? Margaret is pregnant at the end? How did I not see that? I assumed that because she could not answer whether the pirates ever did something "nasty" to her, that she had repressed everything. Although she could have done that even pregnant; i knew a woman who worked as a midwife in a city hospital and she told me about girls of 14 coming in occasionally in labor, having no idea what was happening to them and refusing to get into a safe birth position.

[haggispatrol]

Aye, Margaret's pregnant at the end. At the meeting with the attorney, Mathias, when Margaret refuses to say what the pirates did to her, "It's no good questioning Margaret," said the Aunt morosely, "but it ought to be perfectly clear to you what has happened." And then after the meeting, when Mathias is talking to the other children's father, Thornton, he says of Margaret testifying at the trial, "No, if I call her it will be simply to exhibit her condition." (Pages 181 and 185 in my Penguin Modern Classics copy, and yes I went and looked it up. I wanted to get it right. *grin*)

I know it does happen now and then that women or girls are completely unaware that they're pregnant. I've never understood how you could miss something like that --- I mean I've watched pregnant women's bellies change shape with the movement of the child inside, and how you could feel that and not realize it was a living thing, not just gas, I don't know --- but then it's not as though I'm exactly qualified to speak to the sensations of being pregnant, nor will I ever be in this lifetime, and I don't want to deny something that women do genuinely experience. However, that just doesn't smell right, somehow, to be what Margaret's going through. I think she knows.

Still and all, she's a fictional character and we can never really be certain.

[lookfar]

Oh, that's what was meant by her "condition." I thought it meant her psychological condition, to show that she was mistreated. So we're back to the issue of what is meant by shades of semantic understandings.

[haggispatrol]

Exactly.

[lookfar]

Also, I used to tell my husband that if he wanted to know the feeling of late pregnancy, just pay attention when the kid in the car seat is shoving his feet into the driver's seatback.

[haggispatrol]

Hah! I like that. It's very evocative.