Hereville Page 33 is Online
| July 2nd, 2008Just slightly over two years since I posted page 32.
Page 33 is also the first “Hereville” page drawn 100% on computer, by the way.
16 Responses to “Hereville Page 33 is Online”
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July 2nd, 2008 at 2:19 am
After a mere two years. It’s a great page, though, worth the wait. Hard to know exactly what to say about it, between the art, the multiple layers of conflict, and different ways it pulls your sympathies (and anger.) So I’ll leave it at wow.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:58 am
I had been cheering Mirka all the way up till this point. Now we see her torturing her younger brother in order to coerce a promise out of him, and the only problem with it is that it conflicts with her upbringing. I guess so long it’s not Christians victimising girls it’s OK.
I’m skeptical about how her upbringing is depicted too. You got the age dynamic right - children are taught to protect their younger siblings - but the gender dynamic is reversed as far as protection is concerned: I totally buy it that in traditionalist cultures such as orthodox Judaism, females are taught to serve males with domestic labour, but that males protect females is a universal gender norm, which, of course, is simply what Zindel has been trying to do.
I’m not criticising the depiction of domestic violence. It’s the social commentary that sucks.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:52 am
Daran, I strongly suggest you wait for a couple pages before drawing conclusions about how it’s portrayed.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:48 pm
You know, I was thinking that myself, after I posted the comment. Well not exactly those words, or that timeframe in particular, just that I ought to defer judgment a while.
So yeah, judgement deferred. We’ll see.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:31 am
I haven’t read page 34+ yet*, but here’s what I see going on in this page:
1. Zindel is not a chronically abused younger brother. He has shown no signs of fearing Mirka and is happy to tell her she’s full of it when he thinks she is. He is also her confidante and co-conspirator. She is probably usually the ringleader, but I would bet that Zindel is a willing conspirator in a lot of childhood mischief.
2. That being so, Zindel has just insulted and betrayed Mirka: he is threatening to take things she has told him in confidence to their parents. He is about to prevent her from having the opportunity to get something that she wants very much and fulfilling a long standing ambition. Unsuprisingly, she’s pissed. The culture is also one in which violence is apparently accepted at at least some level. Remember the high school kids beating up the witch? And Mirka’s response? She’s used violence–successfully–to solve a problem at least once before.
3. However, she is not entirely at ease with what she is doing as is clear from the flashbacks to scenes of small Zindel and her mother. Mirka remembers that she has made a promise (to her probably dead mother no less–does orthodox Judaism even allow divorce?) to take care of and protect the brother she is bullying.
4. The memory may be ambiguous in its effect. She probably feels guilty about abusing her younger brother, but does she also feel resentful at having her little brother be her eternal “job” (at least until she can dump responsibility on some other poor girl)?
Like Daran, I felt a lot of loss of empathy with Mirka in this scene. At least at first. Considering it in more detail…well, if I were Fruma and discovered her at that point she’d be in mild trouble for sneaking out and extremely big trouble for bullying her brother. But I don’t see it as a sign that she’s anything other than a normal preadolescent either. Kids do fight periodically. I don’t think that Amp is going to pull an abrupt twist in the story and reveal that Mirka is really a crazed killer or anything.
Incidentally, how old are Mirka and Zindel? I thought that they were 1-2 years apart, but little Mirka in the flashback scene looks 3 or 4 compared to apparently less than 1 year old Zindel.
*Yes, I have the book, but for complicated reasons I probably won’t be able to read it before August.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:39 am
Daran, please do withhold judgment for even longer than a couple of pages. :-) Mirka’s bullying of Zindel on this page is referred to not only in this scene, but in a couple of forthcoming scenes.
Even though you’ve agreed to withhold judgment for now, which I appreciate, I’m still going to respond to aspects of your original, critical comment. I d0 realize that you may no longer stand by that comment, at least until you’ve read more.
I think comparing a blog post I wrote to how a character of mine behaves in a work of fiction is unfair, because it assumes - wrongly — that I approve of Mirka’s behavior on this page in any way at all. I don’t, and by the end of this storyline I think that will be clear to most readers.
I’m not saying that you can’t criticize a work of fiction for its political views; of course you can, and I often have. But I think that to be worthwhile, the critique has to go deeper than implicitly assuming that the author condones every act and statement of the protagonist.
(In fact, my revulsion to Mirka’s bullying here is a significant part of why I hit a huge creative block when it came to be time to draw this page.)
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:59 am
Dianne, thanks for your comment. I feel bad that I don’t have much to say in response, since it was a long and thoughtful comment, but I want you to know I appreciated it.
I also feel a great loss of sympathy with Mirka on this page, as I think most readers will (and should).
Zindel is a young 9, Mirka 11 almost 12. Mirka is almost three in the flashback scene; she was a big two-year-old.
There is divorce in Orthodox Judaism, but it’s relatively uncommon and strongly discouraged.
A woman cannot divorce her husband unilaterally; he has to agree to be divorced by issuing her a get. She, in turn, may prevent the divorce by refusing to accept the get if offered. Although that sounds even-handed, in practice this rule has been far more to husbands’ advantage than to wives’. Plus, there are fine details to the laws which, overall, work to men’s advantage. (Read more about it here.)
If the community believes that the husband is wrong for not offering a get to a wife wanting a divorce, there are ways of coercing him to offer the get. Traditionally, a group of men beat the crap out of him until he relents. In modern-day Israel, judges sometimes put stubborn husbands in jail until they agree to issue a get.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
“A woman cannot divorce her husband unilaterally; he has to agree to be divorced by issuing her a get. ”
Which leads to a really creepy practice where some orthodox men get revenge on estranged wives by taking it out on their daughters — young girls, like 12 years old. They find a man who is willing to marry the daughter in absentia, and then never tell the daughter or mother who it is, so they can’t obtain a get. There are ways for the man married in this way to take a real wife, but there are no religiously sanctioned ways for the daughter to become free of this “marriage” without finding the identity of her husband and convincing him to issue a get.
I should add: this is very rare.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Are stubborn women who refuse to accept the get, beaten up or jailed?
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I’ve never heard of such a case.
In fact, before I ran across an essay mentioning it earlier today, I didn’t even know that women had the option of not accepting the get. No doubt it’s occurred, but I suspect it’s very uncommon.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Ampersand:
I was upset when I wrote that, which perhaps doesn’t come across in what I wrote.
I made no assumption about what you thought (or think) about it. My criticism was directed at the social commentary, i.e., what you expressed. The two flashback panels show that she is conflicted, yes, but the implied social commentary was critical of traditionalist gender-roleing of women as servants (agree) and protectors (disagree) of men. Far from criticising her action, you criticised the social norm she was departing from. That’s an implied endorsement of her action, regardless of your private thoughts on the matter.
My error was to treat the page out of the context of the pages yet to be seen.
I make no such assumption, either about your work, or fiction in general.
I’m sorry if my ill-thought out reaction caused you distress.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
I can just imagine the reaction, in the context of a discussion about domestic violence against a woman, a remark to the effect that the victim was “not chronically abused” would get.
She’s probably never beaten him up before.
I never said it was surprising, nor was my complaint about the depiction per se
Violence in self-defence (or in this case, the defense of others) is generally accepted. That non-defensive violence exists within a culture does not imply that it’s accepted.
Not really a loss of empathy - I understand her motivation. I can’t cheer her for it, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t see where she’s coming from.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I’m not convinced that most will. Consider this exchange, in the comments at hereville.com, which hardly evinces a loss of sympathy:
Patrick:
Dani:
As I observed here domestic violence by female characters against male is likely to be applauded rather than condemned.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Daren, I’m surprised you can look at that page and not think it shows mirka very negatively.
This comment was written by Joe.Report this comment to the moderators
July 4th, 2008 at 1:25 am
I can just imagine the reaction, in the context of a discussion about domestic violence against a woman, a remark to the effect that the victim was “not chronically abused” would get.
My comment wasn’t meant to imply approval as in, “Oh, well, Mirka can beat up her little brother as long as it’s only every once in a while. That’s perfectly fine.” but rather that her behavior, though wrong, is in the context of a severe emotional upset, not her normal way of getting what she wants from her brother. Also they’re kids and so shouldn’t be held to the same standards of behavior as adults. I’d feel pretty much the same way if this were the story of Zindel getting his sword and he was the one beating up Mirka in this scene. Nonetheless, if I heard of a case where a person hit his/her spouse after the spouse threatened to do something overwhelmingly horrible to the person–say, for example, if the spouse threatened to destroy a book that the person had worked on for the past 10 years and had just gotten a publisher for or threatened to make it impossible for the person to do something they had always dreamed of doing–I would find it still wrong but far more understandable than a person who simply beat up his/her spouse every time s/he was having a bad day. I would still expect an adult to walk away rather than abusing the person, of course. Regardless of the genders of the people involved.
Violence in self-defence (or in this case, the defense of others) is generally accepted. That non-defensive violence exists within a culture does not imply that it’s accepted
I may have been overreading the scene, but several points make me think that violence is relatively accepted, at least in some contexts, in the society described*. First, the boys who were abusing the witch seemed to have so little fear of getting caught. They weren’t concerned that they had been seem abusing someone and their only thought when Zindel intervened was to beat him up too. (On the other hand, they were afraid of getting into trouble with Mirka’s father, suggesting that beating an outcast up is ok, beating up the child of a prominant figure in the community less so.) Second, neither Mirka nor Zindel ever considered going to an authority figure and telling him what happened. That implies that this sort of thing is expected to happen (though could also simply mean that they are young kids who don’t yet think things through the way adults do…on the other hand, the witch had no interest in going to the authorities either, as far as we know.)
As far as Mirka’s actions, yes, she was acting in defense of her brother and a woman who was being attacked and that’s a different thing from attacking someone unprovoked (or with provokation for that matter.) However, she did use violence and it did solve her problem. And particularly for a kid that age, that’s got to tell her, on some level, that violence is a way to solve problems. Which it is, of course. It’s just not usually a good way.
*That is not to say that I think that it is more violent than or even as violent as, say, modern US society. But some level of violence seems to be accepted in the society potrayed in Hereville.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
July 4th, 2008 at 1:36 am
Metacomment on the page: The fact that it is possible to argue about what Mirka’s behavior means or what life in Hereville in general is like is a compliment to Amp’s ability to make the characters and the setting alive and compelling.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators