Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff 2023 272 pg.

    This is a novel that covers about early European settlers in North America. The themes are history, hunger, survival, her education and treatment of women, her being a foundling. Plague and disease, travel on a ship, Religion and Mans domination. 16/3/24

1558 -1603 Elizabeth I

 1533   Henry VIII  divorced Catharine of Aragon then  Catholic Spain and England were enemies. 

1592 -1593 Plague of London

1583 Humphrey Gilbert got a charter and went to discover the north passage to China and settlement to America but his ship the Delight was lost at sea. Only Raleigh and the Golden Hind returned. 1584 Reached Roanoke Island and named the English colony Virginia 1587 Over 150 settlers arrived in Virginia and mostly starved 1588 Spanish Armada defeated trying to attack England. 1603 James 1 became king and wanted peace with Spain. Tobacco had become he main export from the colony but would not succeed with out the royal favor.

1588 Spanish Armada attacks England and is defeated

1603- 1625  James I

1606 London company set up to colonize without women, they chose the James river and named the town Jamestown in a place that Spanish ship could not raid. They grew, corn beans, squash and tobacco. Many died from malaria but mostly from famine.

John Smith who had fought in the 13 years war 1654 to 1657 between Prussia, Poland against the Teutonic Order. Became governor of Jamestown and the story of Pocahontas occurs here.

1608 other ships went out with women.

Hunger

She had on a pair of good boots from the son of a gentleman but were her size , the kid had  died of small pox and hunger. Leather gloves stolen from her own mistress. In fleeing she left behind her roof, home, country and language. She was unlettered but pious. So she was not alone as she had god in her heart. She had a stolen pewter cup (popular between 1600 and 1800) She was running northwards.

The horses that had been brought on the ships had all been eaten already in the famine. Hunger caused the most viscous of men to be indolent as there was no food to steal for a few days already. Any abandoned houses had been torn down to burn to warm the gentlefolk She tried to lie with  her charge the child Bess hot with fever to keep warm. Bess had died a slow intentional death.? When they could not get Bess's jaws open to feed her the second husband grabbed her bowl. All the livestock were eaten and even the vermin that crawled amongst the dead. A body that did not die of disease was a body that bore good meat. Bess died and the butchered her to eat.

Survival

She discovered a large fish  frozen within the ice which she ate. There was a soldier sent to find her and he had a musket and knives, he was the type that choked a prostitute with his hands and longed to do  it again. He was supposed to bring the girl back and hang her naked.    She went up the river and found a frozen place she could head north. Some Englishmen were prepared to become servile to the natives to survive the starvation?

Hearing footsteps she replaced them in her mind with those of a deer. She found the skeletons of 2 dead deer, their antler entangled so in  their anger they could not separate.

She took shelter in a cave where she envisioned a dragon a strange creature in a strange land.

She found as tired duck sitting ion its eggs and killed it and took its eggs and when she roasted it put the fat on her chapped hands. She found a frozen fish in the ice and grilled it on the fire as well a smoked it above the fire and kept it in her bag to eat later. She found good walnuts and a clutch of pigeon eggs that she ate. 

While the ground was frozen she cold move swiftly but with the thaw you get sucked into the mud. 

She took shelter in a hollow tree trunk and ate the wood grubs she found there. She could watch across the river and saw 2 girls playing together and women planting maize in the high fields

She frightened a fish out of the mouth of a crane and found cray fish in the river. She went into the river naked with her knife stabbed 2 fish, she saw her naked body that she had no fat upon her. She set up a platform to smoke the fish. . She knew how to determine north, by a stick marking the shadow direction in the morning and then again later.

A stag had died and one winter she dragged back the body and had food for the season and a skin dress for herself. The natives let her live they knew about her. She did not threaten them. Death touched every place that had been touched by man.

Her Education

The governor had a parchment map and it showed where the French settlements were in the north.  You had the Spanish in the south,  both  French and Spanish were Papist but she knew some French.

When she was small the mistresses son Kit did not torment her but showed her things in books, that educated boys knew. Fairies monsters in the forests she was advised to stay away from soldiers and mercenaries. She had seen bear baiting and the strength of a blind toothless bear. 

The mistress's first husband had been a goldsmith

.The Natives

The natives Powhatans knew the area well and when men went out  of the fort raiding they returned wounded. Initially amongst the settlers were gentlemen who refused to dirty their hands with work. One of the settler had raped a native woman and they caught him, tied him up in view of the fort and flayed him and cut off his parts while he was alive. This proved the godlessness of the natives. This type of behavior was not limited to here as under Queen Elizabeth  traitors head were hung on pikes on London Bridge. 

They had traded metal goods, linens sugar for heaps of dried corn and fish.

The natives would burn the underbrush in the forest so that they see the game through the trees. Hickory chestnut and hazelnut below the leaf  litter would find ample nuts. some of these trees had been planted. She had known none of the natural world as she was raised in the city. 

On the Ship

On the ship she was one of very few to find herself at peace with her stomach as other vomited and lost weight unable to take in food which was worm riddled peas.  At the age of 4 she had been taken to the mistress house from the parish poorhouse she had been a foundling. On the ship she had a friendship with a young Dutch glassblower who had given her an orange. Of all the  names she had he called her Mine Heliefda A storm had battered the  to all the people broken bones, her Dutch friend had been washed overboard vanished. Both nobleman and servants had died in the storm and their bodies were thrown overboard. Other ships of the fleet were missing. They the Blessing but later the saw the Falcon , the Lion and the Unitie, Lost forever the Diamond and Swallow.

The French had been amongst the lords and artist, writers that came to the mistresses' house. and had all worn perfume. She had picked up basic French .

She mistress married the minister and he was going to America and wanted her to follow when he had set up there but wanted to go with him as she was scared he would find a younger women. |Nobody asked the narrator if she wanted to go. 

The education she had was by chance the mistresses son Kit showed her pictures to display his superior education and could count till 999.

Religion

Jesuit priest who came out as a missionary, he had been an orphan child in the church and learn to speak Latin, he studied Powhatan on the long journey over and learned it from the  guide. However they had forced their customs on the natives who had burned down the mission killing al the priest except him, he fled and survived in the forest. Later other of his countrymen arrived and destroyed the natives villiage.in revenge and sailed off. He has lived in a cave and survived without fire in looks like a hairy jungle animal. Humans are not meant to live alone, they need company to survive. He had trained baby crow to be his pets and look out for him. He called himself sanctus ioannes cavae arboris  Saint John of the hollow tree

Purgatory a Papist concept that if you have not been baptized you go there instead of heaven, souls amongst the heathen, animals and slaughtered souls. 

Mans Domination

The Bible says escape to the mountains before you get consumed. In the bible Adam dominated everything.  He let them have dominion over the fish in the sea and fowl in the air and the cattle. God was not singular or triple but multiple in all creatures.  Where you Dominate you give things their names.

The Foundling

At the poorhouse she had been given the name Lamentations to remember that her mother was a whore. The first husband the goldsmith called her many things, girl wench, fool , child and Zed.(last to be counted) Just before she was brought to this rich house their pet monkey named Zed had died. The mistress had taught her to sing and accompany her on the lute to dance coranto la volta. Painter , players and artists visited the house. Z would sleep at the foot of the mattress to keep the mistress feet warm. Later her role was to look after the retarded daughter Bess(named after the Queen).  After the goldsmith dies the whole household to hear the new minister preaching

Kit now returned from university with his student friends and wanted her to be their servant "Wake up you lazy wentch , thou stupid slut , thou nimble mischance thou sooty mammet, why does thou sleep when a man needs thee" Afterwards the mistress told her to ask the cook for a kettle of tansy (ragwort) to drink every day for a week.

Bess had golden locks her strength went into her hair and nowhere else.

The mistress was an uninvolved mother and the wet nurse was always drunk and unreliable for nothing but milk.

In Italy people used lead paint called Venetian Ceruse to whiten their skins. Back in London she remembers the milliners shop and its pretty linens, the goldsmith shop , the saddler letter writer  next to the church. 

 She carried a staff which was the sigh of a pilgrim on the way to sacred lands to get salvation, A staff was also the sign of an old person. The mistress realized that her daughter Bess mentally had remained in her infancy and she did not like to be near the child so Z had to fulfill this role.  When Z had come from the poorhouse she had been treated like a sister and given sweets. as the mistress could not fall pregnant.

The nail in her boot is like the cilice worn around the leg by some Christians?

She started naming everything she could see thus she could identify them. She watched Indian men with bows and arrows. They shaved their long hair on one side so as not to imped using the bow. Surely their teeth were not blackened by eating sugar as in England. 

She undressed and went underwater and all black oil and lice and fleas came off her.

A wolf caused the stick of her tent to collapse onto the fire and the sudden flame chased the wolf away but nothing was left of her coverlet.

Plague and Disease

In the fort she had watched people die of bilious fluxes, shitty or bloody fluxes , brackish swellings scurvy , venereal lews and yaws different pox, fevers and malaria. A man went crazy from hunger and murdered his pregnant wife and was hung by the thumbs to freeze to death. 

She had small  pox and barely survived it by herself there out in the wild and was left covered with scars. A bear woke of from it hibernation and it cubs wanted to play with her they did not know about the terrible things that humans had done. Even the bear could smell the disease on her.

The summer of the most terrible plague the world had seen, the dogs had been caught and drowned. She had been locked into the room of the sick goldsmith and had to look after him till he died, the servants had fled the sick house for the stables. He had started an unlettered  Scottish lad and almost became elected the mayor twice. Dick Whittington?  There was nobody to do the work and cows died from not being milked and the libraries, homes deteriorated and collapsed and the Eden would overtake the world and the mistake of man would be forgotten.

The treatment of  women

When the minister decided to go to America he dragged along his wife and the girl in greed for riches, For what is a girl but a vessel to hold the desires of men.  The master of the house could punish everyone. This minister was also a pedophile?