ART, LAW, AND TRUTH, PART 1

MARGARET GARNER

Perhaps all history has to be fictionalized to some extent. The way it's fictionalized, however, may tell us more about the writers than about the history.

A new opera called Margaret Garner premiered in 2005, based on the Tony Morrison novel Beloved, which was also made into a movie produced by and starring Oprah Winfrey. I have read little of the actual history, although I saw the movie. Didn't see the opera, since they don't have cheap seats here, like they do in Boston.

Margaret Garner is based on the true story of a fugitive slave who killed her baby daughter and attempted to kill her other three children in order to keep them from being forced to return to a life of slavery. The real Margaret Garner accused her owner of being the father of at least some of the children, although she was married to another slave.

The opera plot alters history in some significant detail. As Tony Morrison said, "There are so many Margaret Garner stories.... It's a whole virgin territory now before the imagination." Composer Richard Danielpour said they were not writing a history lesson, but wanted to convey "the spirit in the largest sense possible." What does it matter if the facts are changed in a work of art? Does "truth" require "facts"? It matters in this case, because the story determines "the spirit" for audiences, and most people will leave with the impression that the plot of the opera is the true story.

Apparently the courts weren't sure at first whether the real Margaret Garner was to be tried for destroying property per Kentucky law (the baby was her master's property), or tried for murder according to the law of the free state of Ohio (positing her and her baby as human beings, making Margaret morally liable). This was an important distinction, not only for the punitive outcome but for the philosophical and moral implications. But while the opera does have her charged with destruction of property, it also has her sentenced to be hanged, as if for murder. Then the judge grants her clemency just as she hangs herself; a very Hollywood ending.

In real life, she was tried according to the slave property law, and not sentenced to hang, but returned to her owner in Kentucky, who sold her down the river to Mississippi. On the steamboat trip, she leapt overboard with a surviving infant daughter, in an attempted suicide and murder. She survived, but the baby drowned, so she accomplished another murder. Margaret died a couple of years later of typhoid fever. Once again she was not convicted of murder.

It would have been better for her dignity as a human being to have her tried for murder, as a morally responsible human being. She was, in the end, always treated as property. But by changing the sentencing, the authors seem to still want to say that Margaret Garner was only a tragic victim, not capable of moral choice.

The authors also don't deal with these questions: Would Margaret Garner have killed her children if they had been her husband's, rather than the half-white offspring of what may have been rape? And if she was willing to make the supreme sacrifice for freedom ~ murdering her children ~ why didn't she try murdering her owner, or the slave-catchers? No doubt she would have been hanged for that.

Some people say that because she had joined a church, she felt remorse for an adulterous relationship with the white owner. This presumes it wasn't rape, but I don't think that is known. However, if her newly formed religious conscience smote her, I think it might have caused her to refrain from murdering her children and to embrace the virtue of hope. Danielpour said it's taboo to discuss the rape of slave women by their owners, and that history has ignored it. Not so, though it remains a sensitive subject.

Nowadays I think it's still more controversial to say that a slave could commit murder, in the morally and legally responsible sense of the word. Possibly Margaret Garner went mad and killed impulsively, without premeditation, but her evil solution sounds like a family pathology. She herself may have had a white father. Call it the white blood in her if you want. Someone will. Anyway, she was on her way to making a habit of it. Today, she would be tried as a human being, for killing a human being, but probably would have gotten off on an insanity clause.

In the movie Beloved, Danny Glover plays the part of Robert Garner, and in one scene when his wife seems to reproach him for not saving her from rape, he says he's just a man, and he was in fact powerless to do anything, at least in that probably invented scene. The real Robert Garner was not a superman either, but he had the strengths of persistence, faithfulness, and hope.

In the opera, her husband, Robert Garner, does kill the evil overseer, and is lynched along with Margaret. In real life, there was no overseer. Robert Garner had led the whole family, including the children who were not his own natural children, on a long, arduous, and dangerous escape to freedom in the middle of winter. After the trial, he lived to fight in the Civil War, and raised two surviving children. He was really a hero. His story would better convey "the spirit in the largest sense possible" ~ but that depends on what spirit the authors wanted to convey. Robert Garner lived and struggled and persevered. Though a slave, he can't be considered just a victim.

It's not clear to me why the writers wanted to change the important details of the story. Surely it's not to make slavery look even worse than it was; it's bad enough, but there are undoubtedly even more horrible stories than Margaret Garner's. The tragic story was subtly falsified. I think we could learn more from speculation on Robert Garner's life than from the melodrama of a mad woman.

Classical tragedies were supposed to produce catharsis, the purging of emotions, particularly pity and fear. "Catharsis" has a Greek root meaning "pure". Margaret Garner, the opera, only tells us to despair, as if she's crying out to us, "Look what you made me do!" No purging there. Robert Garner says, "Look what I did."

What is the difference in the effect on the audience of the true story and the fictionalized story? What is the difference to you?

You can find more on the story online, particularly from Steven Weisenberger, who wrote a detailed account of the history called Modern Medea.

Next week. Art and Truth Part 2: Bob Dylan's Chronicles

PLUS THE USUAL ODDS AND ENDS.

Retreat: The Essence of Christian Mysticism

Bernadette Roberts

I am organizing a workshop with Bernadette Roberts, a remarkable Christian contemplative and author of three books:

The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center

The Experience of No-Self: A Contemplative Journey

What is Self? : A Study of the Spiritual Journey in Terms of Consciousness

This retreat, called The Essence of Christian Mysticism, will be held on the weekend of May 5-7, 2006, in Loveland, Ohio. For more information, go to Bernadette Roberts Retreat (www.keithops.us/brretreat.htm). The site may be updated from time to time.

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