his friend as he stretched his long, big-boned fingers to select a volume, pull it down, and flip quickly through to find a place, Bothwell thought that there was something Lincolnesque about Tom, although it was a resemblance in type rather that in detail, since his features had a different sort of homely beauty. His mouth was as mobile as Honest Abe’s, his nose as hooked, and he had as many moles; but his head was rounder, his brow slanted, and while it was not weak, his chin did recede.
“Here it is,” he said. “Listen to this. ‘In Miss America’s glowingly healthy smile, her openly sexual but officially virgin figure, and in the brand-name gadgets around her, she personifies the stunted aspirations and ambivalent fears of her culture. There she goes, she is your ideal.’ How’s that? Maybe Sheila’s life of glamorous consumerism didn’t prepare her for being the wife of a seminarian.”
“I’ve read that, too, Tom,” Bothwell replied. “I found Cox’s analysis very interesting, but not convincing. I was at the Brady’s for dinner one night several years ago when the Miss America pageant was held, and we watched it on TV. While anyone with a brain in his head can figure out that the main activity of the reigning Miss America will be to advertise consumer products, few people ever attend the events at which she does that advertising. Far more watch the pageant on TV, and it is in the context of the pageant that they understand her. For all of the promotion of products done by former Misses America during the commercial breaks, the contestants seem removed from it all.
“The social value that she embodies is our ‘look but don’t touch’ approach to sex, in which we say that all of our post-pubescent children should be hyper-developed in their secondary sexual characteristics, but not do anything with them. I’ve heard that the Bunnies in Playboy clubs are not even allowed to date the customers. We live in an atmosphere of great erotic stimulation for the young and yet permit them no outlets except fantasy and autoeroticism, practices that are hidden in the dark. Cox should have developed his point about the virgin goddess instead. And I would not be surprised if our Miss Sheila has not grown up with the idea that the rules call for everyone to admire her looks, but no one to make demands on her. That’s at least the way that it looks to me at six p.m. on Monday, this fifth day of January, in 1970.”
Mary had sat quietly listening to this conversation with a bemused expression and finally spoke up.
“Oh, you men! Long academic speeches that have nothing to do with the way people actually live. Don’t you know what it’s like for those girls living over at the Hutches? Most of them drive miles to work after they’ve prepared breakfast for the family and gotten the kids on the school bus. Then they drive back at the end of a long day to cook supper and spend their evenings with housecleaning, laundry, and mothering while their husbands are off with their noses in books and their heads in a theological air that is not sullied by the sordid realities of daily life. I don’t blame Sheila. I would rebel too.”
“Except that you haven’t,” Tom said. “It has amazed me that for thirty years you have made a wonderful home for the kids and me and seldom complained that my long hours kept me from bearing my load at home.”
“But you’ve never acted as though it was only what was expected of me, and that it was beneath you. And you have always recognized that painting is as much of a vocation for me as the priesthood is for you, even if we couldn’t arrange for me to spend as much time at it. I still think you had better have those boys read Betty Friedan, because there is a new day coming. Yes, and the two of you need to prepare your colleagues for the day when they will have women students.”
Like many artists, Mary showed great interest in the design and fabric texture of her clothes, but she never let concern for the well-cut lines of a garment override considerations of comfort and practicality. She had too strong of a sense of her own identity and worth to squeeze her ample torso into girdles. Her hair dressers had tried to persuade her to do something with her nicely textured hair other than the pageboy cut she had worn for years, but she told them she did not want to waste time fooling with it. “What a truly good person she is,” Bothwell thought as she brought over the decanter to offer another drink. Although tempted, he remembered his housekeeper’s dinner orders.
“No, thank you,” he said, “while my bond to Katrina is commercial rather than sacramental, I have learned not to abuse her patience. She told me not later than six-thirty, and it’s almost that now. Besides, I’ve got to introduce the meaning of history to the Juniors tomorrow, so I must be fortified by preparation and sleep.”
Rising from his chair, he added, “I’m glad that there is one place on this campus where I can be confident that something offered as sherry will be from Spain. There are many excellent American wines, but the most expensive domestic sherry does not taste like the same beverage as the cheapest import from Jerez.” He wrapped his cloak around him, pecked Mary on the cheek, and left.
2
Roderick Bothwell removed his handkerchief to wipe chalk dust from his hands, hating not only the gritty feel of it on his fingers but also the awareness that he dare not touch anything for fear of leaving a white smudge. Turning to the lectern at his desk, he grasped the lapels of his gown. New students at Chase had to learn from oral tradition that his was not the robe of someone holding an American Master’s degree, but instead what Cambridge doctors wore for occasions not considered ceremonial. Faculty at the seminary still wore gowns for class and chapel from their Anglophile inheritance as Episcopalians, even though the students wore them only in chapel, one of the fruits so far of the student protest movement at the Clergy Training College.
He was nearing the end of his lecture, sketching in the various contemporary schools of historiography. Some still practiced “the great man” interpretation while others went in for social history. Some historians understood everything in terms of the categories of Freud, while others used those of Marx. Collingwood had said that events must be credible as the acts of human agents. Now there were many who called themselves “revisionists” who satirized the work of those they called “Whig” historians, scholars who viewed evolution in society from authoritarian monarchies to the rise of the modern democratic state as progress. The revisionists called attention to the dark side of American history, arguing that its past was devoted unrelentingly to the exploitation of blacks, Indians, native peoples in its colonial empire, the poor, and women.
“There have been contributions of undoubted worth from all of these schools,” the Canon concluded, “but I must confess that I have serious questions about any method that tries to impose a pattern on the shape of history. This seems to me like knowing what your research will prove before you begin your investigation. Or, to change the metaphor, it seems like a detective’s understanding his task to be proving the guilt of a certain suspect rather than finding out who committed the crime. Why bother to go to all the trouble if you know in advance where you are going to end up?
“While we have lost much of our naive confidence in the objectivity of facts, I am nevertheless convinced that there is such a thing as historical evidence, and that if we make our facts fit our theories rather than let our interpretation emerge from our data, we are doomed to willful self-delusion. Collingwood may be right in saying that we have to understand events as the acts of human agents, but often the only access we have to the motives of people is through their external behavior. To return to the analogy of criminal investigation—an analogy that many historians have used to explain their work—no amount of guesswork about motive can ever make up for a lack of material evidence that links the suspect to the crime.
“We ignore physical evidence to our peril. In my courses, therefore, you may expect more respect to be paid to the careful gathering of data than to fashionable theories about what history ought to prove. I hope that this word to the wise will be sufficient for all of you. Now, are there any questions?”
After he clarified
