Re: JCO: The Gravediggers Daughter - SPOILERS INCLUDED

Hi, Nicole.  The Jewish identity, as I observed in my earlier post, is not at all about religion in GDD.  It's about bloodlines torn apart by a historical catastrophe.  it's not really about cultural identity either since R and her cousin never meet in person in GDD, and we readers have only the cousin's letters to clue us about what that momentous Jewish experience of exile and subsequent professional success was like for the cousin, who appears to have been raised in a Jewish culture. Yes, the cemetery is a highly symbolic territory -- both for death and rebirth.  GGD leaves readers on the threshold

of a vital meeting between the two women, much as Marya's imminent meeting with her longlost mother ended the novel "Marya."

 

As for the otherness theme.  In JCO's fiction, as in life, I've found, all persons are "other" -- separated by all kinds of historical/social/class/gender forces, and most importantly by each person's distinctly individual egos.  Any connection -- whether it involves falling in love or in hate with another person -- has explosive potential.

Cyrano

 

In a message dated 8/17/2007 4:49:52 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, ndprovencher@lake.ollusa.edu writes:

Cyrano -

I wonder if the Jewish Identity in the book is less about religion (as you suggest) and more about simply being the "other" as the time and setting of the book would make it.  The idea of the family at loss for religion in a Christian cemetery might say all that needs to be said about the family's heritage. 

I think we see this otherness in many of her other works - mostly dealing with class and the heritage surrounding class - it seems that the most explosive situations arise when these classes or others connect - what do you think?


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