A Rose by Any Other Name...

[porphyry]

Shortly after meeting Mme Malkhos many years ago I asked her about a small town in Southern Illinois called Mulberry Grove. She said she had been there once, on a buying expedition when she had worked in an antiques store. She thought it was the creepiest place she had ever been. The people reminded her of the Peacock family from the television show X-Files: looking inbred and dangerous.

I asked because some time before, I had known someone who came from that town. I am going to write not strictly of her, but of her father, or, rather, her perception of her father, because it was quite remarkable. When simply asked about her father, she would say that he had owned a tiny, miserable farm. That he worked when he had to as a day-laborer and that everything he made went to booze. All he wanted to do was drink till he passed out; it was just as well she remembered him so often sprawling unconscious since he was not one of those cheerful, happy drunks. Like St. Anthony, he had never learned to read, but had memorized most of the Biblical corpus from hearing it read aloud as a child and so became a lay-preacher in some sect that viewed itself as the purification of the liberal, modern, secularized 7th-Day Adventists.

Among the poverty and squalor of Mulberry Grove she had been mocked and tormented at school because even there she was an outcast—she had had to wear homemade clothes, and not well-made ones either; baths seem to have something of a luxury for her. Nevertheless, she made her escape. She was accepted at a University about a hundred miles away and completed a course of study there, majoring in drama and taking the certification to be a high school drama coach. To give you an idea of her talent, she was selected to act in just one play put on by her department in the 5 years she was there—taking in a murder mystery the role of a corpse lying on a bed before which two policemen discussed how she might have been killed (Mme. Malkhos, by contrast, attended the same school a few years later and, although she was not a drama major, auditioned and received the roles of Medea and Miranda in productions of the same department).

The refugee from Mulberry Grove also acquired a husband who, after graduation worked inspecting machinery at an oil refinery. She did not work but tried desperately to become pregnant. After a few years they went to a fertility doctor. After several months of fruitless treatment, the doctors finally discovered through a blood test that she was taking an anti-psychotic drug that was an abortificent. She has been pregnant many times, but the tiny embryos had been dislodged within a few hours or days, passing out unnoticed. She had not told the doctor about the medication since it wasn’t any of his business. Why she had needed and how she had started on this drug I never learned. After she went off of it, she did have a child, then a divorce, then a psychotic episode. She spent about a year in a mental hospital.

When she was released, she finally found a therapist who understood her. At the first session she realized something all the other doctors had missed: she suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder. Hypnosis soon brought back all the repressed memories, and recalled an entirely different father in Mulberry Gove.

Her father had begun to rape her almost as soon as the midwife left the house. Every year between menarche and the time she left for college she had been impregnated by him and delivered a baby.

Why didn’t the teachers notice? She wore baggy clothes and they didn’t like her anyway. Was she sure of this? Wouldn’t the fertility doctor have noticed some sign? He should have, but he was incompetent, look how he had mishandled her drugs (he had mishandled her drugs? Really?)

What happened to these babies? They had each been delivered at home and promptly sacrificed to Satan by her father.

Really? Yes. He was the high priest of a witchcraft cult. Not just in Mulberry Grove, but he had been the leader of all the witches throughout the Midwest. The babies of other ‘breeders’ like herself were brought to him along with countless others kidnapped from hospitals, daycares and preschools all over the country. He had sacrificed infants to Satan as fast as Julian had bulls to Zeus.

And how did he get away with this? Police captains, FBI Agents, Prosecuting Attorneys—they were all in the cult too. They were his servants.

Then why was he so poor? He didn’t want money, only to exercise the lusts to murder and rape.

If he got drunk and passed out every night, when did he have time to do all this? Those were on different nights.

Why did he let you go? Because I could have testified against him. But I thought you had forgotten it all? That was later. Why bother to ask about the Prosecutors he controlled who would hardly have used her testimony? Why not put her on the altar too?

You said he hated everyone in town because they humiliated him all the time. Why didn’t he use his power to take revenge, or at least get enough money to be free of the need to work for them? And his underlings must have been vicious, savage killers: utterly depraved; why didn’t one of them kill him while he was in a drunken stupor and take his place? That is about the time she would start to cry. 

_______________________

Once we watched an episode of the old televisions series Star Trek (the one based on The Tempest, oddly enough). After a few minutes, she described how the rest of the plot was going to unfold from having seen the episode before. I asked her if she was very certain about what she had said. She became adamant about it; for some reasons she was very defensive about having her memory questioned.

During the commercial, I told her that she had remembered some elements of the show, but had mixed them together with another episode and then I straightened out the plots of both for her. She watched for the next hour in bewilderment as we saw the falseness and distortion of her memory clearly demonstrated. Could she now admit that other memories might be confused and mixed up? That hypnosis might muddle memory rather than clarify it? That if she ‘remembered’ something that was impossible, then it might not be a true memory but some kind of confabulation? For a few minutes she admitted I was right, but then she burst into tears again. 

 

Comments

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

There is some interesting British material here:

http://www.bfms.org.uk/

[benicek.livejournal.com]

Interesting how the very concept of Satanism can only exist as an offshoot of fundamentalist Christianity. You can't believe in one unless you already believe the other. Similarly, fundamentalist Christianity is reliant on mainstream Christianity for recruits. Religion is a slippery slope.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

While he's been sick, I've been listening to stuff like this all week. I've instructed him to come here instead and post on LJ. Yesterday, for example, I caught him reading from the Flat Earth Society's website. I made sure I went to bed before he finished. :)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reference.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I think the connection between her father's actual fundamentalism and supposed satanism is rather a red herring.

Actually, if you go to the link in my post or the one Plancius kindly provided above, you will see that is not the case that these accusations are linked to fundamentalism. The majority of the therapists who implanted these false memories of satanic absue in their patients fit the profile of other modern academically trained professions: liberal and secular, even irreligious. A surprisng number of them are lesbians. That makes it all the more bizarre that they should propagate these medieval fatnasies.

I thought of all this a few months ago when I was Ginzberg's deeply flawed Ecstacies. The book begins quite well with an account of a panic that swept France in the early 1320s. based on accusations that began with bands of teen-agers wandering the countrysde in search of sins to scourge and expiate following the Great Famine, almost the enitre Leper population was arrested and executed and torture made them admit that they had taken money from the 'King of Babylon' to poison the wells and kill all the healthy people in Europe. Many lepers claimed that they had already selected among themselves which would therafter become the king of France, the duke of Blois, etc. The civic governments went ahead with the arrests, prosecutions, and executions becuase it allowed them to pick up the fat endowments of the local leper hosues. The king accepted a huge bribe from the Jewish community not to begin similar action against them. But a few months after those funds had been confiscated, the remaining lepers who were imprisoned (those few who had not confessed under torture)were suddenly released and a few letters were written among the prosecutors (one of whom was an inquisitor who later became Pope)saying how silly and bizarre the whole thing had been.

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

Such accusations of Satanic abuse do seem quite common in this context; perhaps this comes about not so much because the 'therapists' are implanting the notions, but because they are dredging around in the subconscious of the people whom they are examining, and such ideas can easily be found swimming around there for various psychological, cultural and historical reasons?

I get the impression that the Flat Earth Society has ceased to be a serious organization since it emigrated from England; its web-site is too humorous to be at all convincing.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I know. That's why he reads it, and cackles, and follows me all around the house reporting this nonsense to me.

By the way, I am immensely enjoying my rereading of Jane Eyre. I should not have waited twenty years to reread it.

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

Mrs. M: I love Jane Eyre, too. I read it in middle school and just "didn't get it." But a re-read about 3 years ago was highly enjoyable.

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

I'm with petrusplancius here. These "witchhunt waves" just seem to wash over a population, and when they go "viral," nothing is too weird or improbable to be believed. It's the same thing with UFO abductions, Big Foot sightings, stuff like that. The connection with fundamentalism IMO comes in because in the 1980s and early 1990s, various fundamentalist groups *were* obsessed with "satanism."

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

Catholicism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, fundamentalism - all have had their "witch crazes" / "satan-worshipping" crazes at one point or another. It's probably more common among fundamentalists now, because "mainstream" Christianity seems to be more embarrassed by devils, demon possessions, etc. However, at bottom I agree with you - the "satan" of the "satan sacrifice" obsession is pretty much a product of traditional folk Christianity, even if the "mainstream" denominations consider themselves too "sophisticated" for that stuff anymore.

[benicek.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the Orkney Islands 'satanic abuse' case which was quite big in the news here about 15 years ago. Social workers believed and acted on accusations of ritual torture, confiscating a number of children from their families. The whole case was thrown out by the courts for lack of real evidence and the children restored.

I don't think that religion was entirely a red herring in this case but maybe it exposes a flaw in liberalism and isn't so bizarre. A liberal approach demands that one respects other people's beliefs, no matter how ridiculous or primitive they may seem, thereby promoting a tolerant stable society. Or if not respect them then at least treat them in an objective serious way. This backfires when it instead lends credence to aggressive and dysfunctional delusions. I describe myself as a liberal , so it almost pains me to admit it.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes! It seems like I see so much more in it this time around.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

There is undoubtedly something in what you say, but the memories found and the asscuations amde seem to have very quickly follwoed a standard pattern established in the literature on the subject before the whole thing blew over, rather like the standardizing effect the malleus malificarum and similar publications had on witchraft confessions; although in this case the patients read the literature as avidly as the therapists.

You may be right about the flat-earthers; the claim that all the money not spent on the moon landing by NASA was isntead used to develope super comupters to animate the moon landings might be satirical, but its hard to tell anymore.

Interestingly, they actually claim that the earth is a cylindar, which was a Pre-Socratic theory, although they don't cite it (I can't recall which one held it). I'll have more to say about the flat earth in the up-coming Christian fundamentalism post.

[velvet-tipping.livejournal.com]

Hi! You seem like my kind of people, fersure, but I have no idea who you are.

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

For instance, Mr. Rochester seemed all old and unattractive (what *was* I thinking?) On the second go-around, however, he seemed very desirable. Then, when I saw the St. Louis Opera Theater version, and had an actor's face to fit the written description - well, that sealed it. ; )

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I was led to you through Paula Leopold's LJ, although it took a few jumps from one journal to another.

As for who I am, you can get some idea here:

http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/zpe/downloads/2000/133pdf/133149.pdf

[velvet-tipping.livejournal.com]

ahh, i see! So, er, how exactly did you think you might like me? just out of curiosity as to what makes people want to friend me, as I have no public entries.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I read your interest list. But it you want me to take it back...

[velvet-tipping.livejournal.com]

Not at all. You seem like a very fun read. Carry on :)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I also found Jane's character much more admirable this time around, rather than seeing her as a cold, dispassionate woman. Traits I didn't like about her when I was very young, I now find to be her best ones.

Is there a decent film version, do you know?

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

There is no film or tv adaptation that really does justice to the novel, they tend to stand in the same relation to the original as do adaptations of Jane Austen's novels to the originals, though those can be enjoyable enough if one accepts them on their own terms. The Jane Eyre film that I enjoyed the most is the 1996 version with Charlotte Gainsbourg as the heroine; she has the right tone of prim intensity and is not too glamorous; and the settings and qualities of light and colour are exceptionally beautiful. Though some think that William Hurt was miscast as Rochester, I find his portrayal quite touching. The best tv adaptation is the 1973 BBC version with Michael Jayston and Sorcha Cusack. Orson Welles is always worth watching (1944, with Joan Fontaine), although his film is hardly adequate as an interpretation of the novel; some moody and atmospheric black and white photography.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I think I'll have Malkhos purchase the 1996 version since our local DVD rental likely wouldn't even have a copy. While I can see why some might view Hurt miscast as Rochester (physically he couldn't resemble Rochester at all), as long as he captures the character of Rochester, I'll be satisfied. Thank you.

Malkhos, who adores most of Orson Welles's work, says he didn't care much for Welles's horrible, faked English accent in the 1944 version, and if it doesn't interpret the novel well, I wouldn't care for it.

I think the part of the madwoman in the attic would have been interesting to play. :) A bit part, true, but it might have been fun.