An Interview with Professor Molly McNett, Author of Child of These Tears
Earlier this year, the independent publisher Slant Books released the novel Child of These Tears. Focusing on a juvenile protagonist, Constance Baker, and set in colonial America at the beginning of the 1700s, the book is delivered in fragments, or little glimpses, in the form of letters, journal entries, and other brief snapshots into the characters’ lives, hearts, and minds. This delivery, while rather unique, allows both for a quick read and a depth of introspective development that might feel forced or a bit over-the-top in other works of fiction.
The child Constance is shaped by many influences: the way her parents treat her, the initial upbringing, the Calvinistic catechism, the trauma from the brutality of an attack on her hometown and her kidnapping, the trek to the Mohawk mission, her interactions with the native families and children there and, of course, the persistent but patient proselytizing of the French Jesuit Fr. Simon René Floquart.
In her youth, Constance’s thoughts and attitudes are quite malleable, as can be seen in the narrative. Throughout the novel, we see 18th-century characters attempt to come to terms with the distress and mental illness that result from deep loss and trauma. Sprinkled throughout the novel are snippets from ancient and contemporary thinkers and theologians, thanks to excerpts from the fictitious John Baker’s commonplace book.
This beautifully-written and deftly-told story comes from Molly McNett, professor of rhetoric, composition, and English at Northern Illinois University. Her other works include a collection of short stories, One Dog Happy. And she is married to Daniel Libman, who is also a writer and NIU professor. What follows is an interview with McNett, focusing on her new novel and on the writing craft.
John Tuttle: What gave you the idea to write Child of These Tears?
Molly McNett: In graduate school, I took a course called “The Wilderness in American Literature.” We read a captivity narrative by Mary Rowlandson, a colonist of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who was taken prisoner by Native Americans during King Phillip’s War in the 17th century. She made it back home and wrote what became the first best-seller in the new world. I always loved the language of the narrative, and when eventually I started writing short historical fiction, I played around with writing something in that style, the narrative of a woman who had been captured and marched through the wilderness. It took years for that original attempt to grow into a book with other characters, but I couldn’t stop wondering about the other people in the story, and eventually I wanted to give them voices, too.
JT: John Baker – father to the protagonist Constance – keeps a commonplace book. In it, he quotes a lot of philosophers, preachers, and early scientists. What’s your favorite quote from one of these thinkers, and what does it mean to you?
MM: One favorite entry is on the Whales Guide, which is originally from Montaigne. (Recently, I realized that it is also quoted in the Extracts section of Moby Dick!)
The Whale never swimmeth, unlesse she have a little fish going before her, called the Whales-guide; for, she doth ever follow him, for requitall of which good turne, all things else that comes within the horrible Chaos of this monstrous mouth, is presently lost and devoured, this little fish doth safely retire himselfe therin, and there sleepes verie quietly.
Having a child means bringing a vulnerable being into an uncertain world; there is no way to eliminate danger altogether. The little fish sleeping peacefully in the mouth of the whale is a wonderful metaphor of the child protected in this dangerous world by a loving creator. The girl Constance in this book is that little sleeping fish. She, too, has an effect on the adults around her, and what happens to her guides them, in a sense.
JT: Do you keep a commonplace book? If so, why? What do you record in it?
MM: I kept a commonplace book of my own, in order to write John Baker’s. I read many, many entires from the era from old books and from library databases such as Early English Books Online, and wrote whatever interested me by hand into a notebook. Later, I selected and culled those entries to try to echo narrative themes in the book, but I wasn’t too strict. Part of the point of this kind of book is that it is whimsical and wide-ranging. Since then, I have tried to keep my own commonplace book, without too much success. I still think it might be the best way to remember what you have read, and I will keep trying.
JT: While doing the research for the novel, what were some of the things you discovered that you didn’t know before?
MM: So many things! One source that taught me a lot was the book called Customs of the American Indians by the Jesuit priest, Lafitau. Although it’s important to remind yourself that you are seeing things through his worldview, he’s still a wonderful source of information on the Iroquois and the Mohawk specifically, since he lived among them for many years and was mostly quite open-minded. This book taught me about their language, for example, and how the grammar differs from our own, which I used in the book. Also, the belief in manifesting dreams. If someone dreamed something, the community worked to make whatever happened in the dream come to pass.
JT: In researching and depicting the early 18th century in the Americas, what characteristics of that time and place seem most backward to our modern sensibilities in 21st-century America?
MM: I think the idea of child-rearing might be the hardest to understand, as it is given by Cotton Mather or John Robinson in the Commoplace Book, or second hand through the memories that Constance has of being beaten for small transgression[s], or locked in a cellar for refusing food. I think anyone today would see this kind of treatment as child abuse. These Puritans believed in pre-destination, and yet along with this (or maybe even because of it) they had an anxiousness about salvation that seems counterintuitive to us today. We might even think that their conception doesn’t allow for grace, though I also read of their writings that counter that idea, too. At the same time, the Native Americans, according to Lafitau on the Iroquois, were very permissive and lax with their children and “barely knew what it was to punish them,” according to Lafitau.
JT: Compared to those living in colonial America, what would you say modern society could re-learn from our forebears?
MM: I read so many captivity narratives from this time, and in all of them, there was a beautiful resignation to God’s plan, and an idea that the individual human is not ultimately in control of anything, but that we are part of this larger order. It is not even up to us to truly understand it–it is beyond our understanding! They accepted our smallness and powerlessness and took refuge in God. (We can see this refuge in something higher in pre-Christian belief systems, too.) No matter what befell the Puritans (and they lived through many horrific things), they submitted to God in all things, or if they could not, at least they knew that this was where their real work lay. In contrast, everywhere around us today, we see all sorts of anxious biddings for our attention. Everything that is offered promises to make us happier or better versions of ourselves, to make life better and offers us control through some external modification. Still, these things don’t help us.
JT: How does faith, or religious belief, motivate the different characters in the novel?
MM: It is everything to them. This is what is so touching to me. Whether Puritan or Catholic, the characters want to commune with God and act according to His will. Still, they see each other as dangerously misguided! The native peoples have their faith as well, which is, in this case, Catholic mixed with some native beliefs in terms of creation and so on. Still, they are sincere in their devotion and in working with the Jesuit priest; they don’t resist his teachings.
JT: As a reader, you feel torn between the losses experienced by two grieving families who vie for Constance’s affections and the claims each family makes on the child. As the author, do your sympathies lean one way or the other?
MM: I love them all. They are flawed, of course, but that is because all humans are flawed. And each character wears a set of blinders, or has a ‘mote on the eye.’ One can never see one’s own mote, or maybe we get glimpses, some understanding of our own mote, and then return to our entrenched ways. It is a terrible thing to imagine a child being kidnapped and taken away like that; it is also terrible to imagine the priest’s lonely childhood, and this little girl offers him a way to love and to heal.
JT: Since the time when human beings first started to create things, many artifacts once revered for their beauty or historical significance – paintings, buildings, sculptures, written works, films – have been destroyed or otherwise lost to the past. Can you think of any such artifact or record that, if you could travel back in time, you’d rescue from oblivion?
MM: I think it’s the written works that I would love to rescue. The works of the Jesuits are so precious because they took great care to write, to report to their superiors, and these “relations” were so detailed. Think of all the letters or records throughout time that are lost to us, but would give us access to the minds of people who lived long ago. But I feel this maybe more deeply when I think about oral culture. I tried, but couldn’t really write the Mohawk characters in this book more fully than I did. They’re only known to us through what the priest says about them. If only we did have some record of what they thought about this time. I read many things about the Iroquois and the Mohawk specifically, legends and stories and so on, but their voices didn’t come to me the way the others did, because I had nothing they’d written, of course. So I feel that it’s a loss, and I hope to read something someday that imagines such a world view more fully than I was able to. There is Black Robe, a novel by Brian Moore, that gives some native points of view, and a book by Charles McNichols called Crazy Weather that does recreate a native world and a boy torn between that world and a white one. It is beautifully written.
JT: Lastly, why do you write?
MM: Probably the sound of it. I like the sound of other writers and carry the sound around in my head when I’m reading a good book, and when I am writing, I am also walking around talking to myself or imagining the words and their rhythm and sound. But also, if I could travel anywhere, I think it would be back in time. Since it’s impossible, I read and try to imagine, and if I get really interested in someone, I want to see if I get to know them by writing as them. Can we imagine the heart and mind of someone who lived long ago? If we read their writing, we can see that we have some things in common with the Greeks or Romans or Puritans or the Green Missionaries of the Jesuits. And then, there are some things we really won’t be able to comprehend because of our own “blinders.”
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