When, the research was feeling very far away,

especially in the beginning, you know, there were

horses clip clopping, and it all seemed like

something I could see, but I wasn't in.

I read this editorial, and editorials were the best,

or the letters to the editor were the best things

to read, because you could hear the average person's voice,

on the page, and hear what they were concerned about.

and it was about flight and air travel, and

I had expected, because this was a new thing.

First, you know, the Wright Brothers made their little hop,

and then, you know, things were going a little bit better

and people were going further and then we started dreaming of,

you know, flying from New York to Florida, is it possible.

You know, all this stuff, and.

And, there was this one letter, where a man just objected to all of this.

Not because it was scary, which I expected, but on

a moral basis.

Because why do we want to always be going further, faster?

Why do we have to feel, you know, compelled to see the world?

Why can't we just, stay home and raise our

families in a good Christian way and be happy.

>> Hm.

>> And it I thought like, that, felt so much like the

things you know my parent's generation has said about things like social media.

You know, we just apply the same objections.

You know, to a different set of circumstances.

And that made me realize, in that one

little snippet that we haven't changed that much.

You know, we're still scared of new things.

We still find sort of a moral objection to

make to everything that's new and different and faster.

And that made them all seem very close, to me.

And I thought, that was a day that gave me courage, in a way.

When the research was overwhelming, I

thought they're actually not that different.

I also found this little treasure of essays, written by people who

worked on, on staff for, for some of New York's fine homes.

and this was really, really difficult to find because if you were the, the head

of your household, you wouldn't have a lot of time to you know, whip out your

[FOREIGN].

And your thoughts on, on life and stuff.

But if you were the person working in the

laundry, you didn't have any time to do that.

And so this, this newspaper editor took down people's stories.

And, the things that they wrote about, I thought they

would be writing about, you know, a mechanics of how you

get a short clean, you know, when you don't have any

of course, they didn't, because they didn't know any other way.

You know, that wasn't what was interesting to them.

What was interesting were,

the little jealousies they had, you know, the scullery maid

was in a fight with the, you know, the, the

nurse and they were getting revenge on each other by,

you know, spilling a glass of water in the hall.

And things like that, I thought, that's it.

[LAUGH]

>> People are the same.

[CROSSTALK]

[LAUGH]

That's how it is.

A woman came from Germany to be the nanny for a child who she couldn't

stand, so she would take him to Central Park, and like basically let him run away.

And she wrote you know she let this man write all this, and publish it.

She's like, and I'm quitting my job tomorrow

so, by the way, you can publish all this.

I hate these people.

[LAUGH]

>> This girl, you know things like that.

You know, I just didn't suddenly, you know, the clip clop of horses faded.

And I thought, you know, the, the years, abridged, so.

>> Hm, I just, going back to, you know, whether or not we feel sympathy

for Mary, what struck me particularly, the most deeply in the novel, is that the

characters within the novel don't feel any sympathy towards her.

Like they're, I mean, this isn't a word, but they almost villainize her.

and on page 159 even John does that and

[SOUND]

it's the first little chunk of paragraph.

are you avoiding me, she asks, smiling, hoping to disarm him.

She didn't want to leave them angry with her and she didn't want

to leave without him accepting that he had no reason to be angry.

Note to Dino I'm leaving tomorrow. I heard something about that.

Well, aren't you going to say goodbye? I was going away.

He stamped his boots and left treads of snow outside her door.

You still have another day,

don't get ahead of yourself.

John, besides, it's like you said, these people are tricky and

they might change their minds at the last minute, and then, and

[INAUDIBLE]

having said goodbye.

I think John. >> Hm.

>> Is posing like a really interesting

perspective for Mary, because he's making this

life seem like it's so much better than what her life looked in New York.

Like you were saying how New York is not. >> Yeah.

>> The fancy city. >> Right.

>> You see in photographs. Emily Dickinson would have loved

[LAUGH]

living here. >>

[LAUGH]

>> but, you know, looking back on the novel, having finished it,

it almost does seem like she would have had a better life.

>> Well, Emily Dickinson could have left if she wanted to.

>> Yeah.

>> Mary can't leave. And I think that's the thing.

She got a lot of that at the time.

Like I don't know what she's complaining about.

I think I have one of the nurses say this to her.

Like you don't have a brother to support, and all this, and kids running.

But it's still not your life, you know, even my own mother said that.

I showed her a picture

of the hut, and she's like, it's lovely. I was all like.

[LAUGH]

>> Am like Ma, she can't go anywhere. she's like, is she allowed to take walks?

I said yes, she said,

[SOUND]

what's all the fuss about? >>

[LAUGH]

>> So, but, it wasn't. >>

[LAUGH]

>> You know, it, it was wasn't her life.

I think part of the thing was, that troubled

me about her case was that she had all

these people who couldn't possibly have understood her perspective,

deciding what was good for her and what what wasn't.

And deciding what she should be happy with and what she shouldn't.

You know.

And that's just, it's just not okay.

You know, and so even though she wasn't in prison, you know, she wasn't in a dungeon.

>> Hm.

>> With bars, she still wasn't allowed to do what she wanted to do.

For no apparent reason, you know, a, according to her.

And really truly, I mean later one when they found healthy carriers,

they gave them stipends, they supported them, they trained them for other jobs.

They did think, they didn't just take them out

of their lives and put them on an island.

and so. You're right, she would've had a comfy.

Life maybe, but.

>> I'm glad she didn't stay there, don't get me wrong.

>> Yeah.

>> I just thought it was interesting that

this life was, you know, portrayed as being comfortable.

[LAUGH]

>> Yeah, in a weird way, it's kind

of irony between this concept of forced isolation

that she has to experience in the latter half of her life, but then when she first.

It's to where it was this element of forced assimilation.

>> Yeah.

>> Into American culture. On page 87,

[SOUND]

there was a really wonderful moment where her aunt

is, her aunt Kate, is kind of giving her all

these tips on all the ways, all of these ways

she needs to behave in order to get a job.

And she says, it says after learning that no one understood her

when she spoke, except for other Irish teaching her how to enunciate.

Speak slowly.

Try to talk more like an American.

Keep following as to this time to go to the agency and let,

see what kind of job Mary can get for herself.

So, the, the question of Mary's agency is

talk a lot more of discussions and it seems

that she operates sort of more of a

vessel as whatever situation that she's in, she's not.

She had a strong personality, yeah, so does that make her active?

Does having all these things happen to her sort of make her passive?

And so here again she's kind of operating in this function where she just has to fit

in, in and blend in and want to

[INAUDIBLE]

be an American to lose whatever Irishness that she

has so to impede her process of getting employed.

But then, you know, later down the line, like she's now been ripped out

of that, where she's now completely cut off from any sort of sense of community.

And she operates as this sort of vessel of death without really realizing it.

So is it really a question of, I guess

it's one of those things where who's really to blame?

You know,

there's. Is there really,

[INAUDIBLE]

kind, kind of like what she talks about in the Epilogue, when she's reflecting.

It's really, it's everyone's fault and no one's fault at the same time.

So, I'm curious as to what your thoughts are here in terms of her role.

Is she more of a vessel, or is she more of an active agent?

>> Well.

[COUGH]

>> I think I'll turn that back to you all.

I have not thought of that, of her being agent in her own life.

I mean, I suppose I've thought of her, as a person who would lean

toward having a lot of agency in her own life, but that was taken away.

but I'm hearing that maybe, other people felt otherwise.

You know, that she's just a vessel. >> Mm-hm.

>> A vessel for,

what?

>> I kind of see her as, like we, we talked about this a little

bit on Tuesday, like is she like a kind of like a vessel of death?

Because she's this carrier of.

>> Mm-hm.

>> This disease, and yet she's not infected, herself.

And that kind of seems to be, for that very reason that,

that seems to be why her punishment seems to be that much greater.

At least those who were unhealthy carriers of typhoid.

>> Mm-hm. >>

[UNKNOWN]

to give it.

Like, they have to deal with having the disease themselves.

But she, it seems unfair. >> Mm-hm.

>> That she's going about carrying this illness, and hurting other people.

>> Mm-hm.

>> In the process, without any personal physical consequence of her own

body, so, yeah, she's a carrier, but is there maybe a larger,

more meta way of looking at it, of her sort of being

just kind of placed in all these different situations where she's expected

to conform a certain way.

You know, okay, assimilate now, because it's what

you need to do now to survive okay.

>> Mm-hm.

>> we need the greater society to survive, we need you to

survive, so now we're ripping you out of society and we're isolating.

What, like, whose fault is that?

>> She's a vessel, but she's also a, a vector.

>> Yeah.

>> An important word for her, and a victim.

>> Yeah.

>> She has a voice, the four V's. >>

[LAUGH]

[INAUDIBLE]

Again.

She has to sort of assimilate again, except now not, with a different identity,

[INAUDIBLE]

Yeah. >> Okay.

>> Yeah, I had not thought about that for one minute before this moment.

>> I think her choice to get back to

cooking was her way of asserting her own agency.

I mean, like there are a lot of flashbacks in the

book, which are really useful for getting a glimpse of her personality.

But, when they make her become a laundress, it's, it's.

She's very much like being forced to live

her whole life like it's one of these flashbacks.

>> Mm-hm.

>> And she's just not okay with that. And I,

that's something that some people could use to make her into a

villain, but I think that's what makes her a human and a protagonist.

Because she's taking a stand in her own life.

So.

>> I mean, I think the victim, villain thing is, is,

is the thing that I was drawn to in this story.

I don't think there's an answer, because I think when

you put yourself on either side, you agree with that side.

There's a case

of a man his name was Robert Daniels, I

don't know if any of you followed this 2007.

He, came out of a hospital, he was wearing, he came out into the street.

He had Tuberculosis.

He knew he had Tuberculosis. He wasn't wearing a mask.

And he went, I think, to a CVS or whatever the equivalent was in Arizona.

He knew he really wasn't supposed to do that.

They put him in an isolation ward where he had no TV.

He had no means

of washing himself.

He had to use baby wipes, he had no internet, he had nothing.

And, it was such an extreme response.

The ACLU picked up his case, and he

was given more humane conditions after 11 months.

But this is Arizona in 2007. And the things that came up when they,

took him and put him in isolation were his appearance, his background.

He was a Russian immigrant who had had

drug and alcohol problems in the past, and this was the stuff that kept coming up.

And, I thought like, it was just so jarring, that not that

the people have changed but the situation has not changed, and I think.

On the one hand, you know, did he have to be in this particular room?

Could it not have been more humane?

On the other hand, if I'm with my infant or even by myself on

a city bus and this man gets on, you know, do I think he

should be allowed to ride a city bus? You know, then the answer is different.

And so this conundrum, over personals, you know, a,

a person's individual rights versus the health of everybody else

and the safety of everybody else, I think is

one that, is really, really, more complicated than it seems.

It all depends on whether you are the one person or if you're the everybody else.

so, you know, Mary's case, I never really just, I never really felt like

it was my job to decide whether she was a victim or a villain.

I think she was just in a set of circumstances

that, she couldn't help, and couldn't really get out of.

>> There's one sentence that almost, that really brilliantly encapsulates that.

It comes right in the middle of the novel, page 153

and one of you all brought it up the other day.

because it's, it's, it's almost the access of

the novel in some ways, and it's, it's a moment of great humor.

>> Yeah.

>> And I wondered if maybe you could, I, I, I think we're almost out

of time, so maybe you could close by

talking about this, this moment in the novel.

So she's sitting, Alfred Wright has just left in the ferry.

She's bleakly sitting at the edge of the island, and it's raining, it's at night.

And two nurses approached her and put their umbrellas

together to cover her as they walked her back.

What are you thinking, Mary, the one asked.

What are doing? The other said, you'll make yourself sick.

>> Yeah.

[LAUGH]

>> So tell us about that, that moment in your.

>> Well.

>> That moment in your writing and, and the levels of irony.

The end of it.

>> Actually, I remember.

This was a day that is just, was coming,

you know, sort of quickly, and it just seemed right.

Like this is the way life works, right?

That you are on, it, it just seems so ridiculous, but true to me.

>> Mm-hm.

>> You know, I think this is the test for writing.

In your gut, does it ring true? Does it not ring true?

And it seemed like, something that someone would really

say to her and she's just like well that's the all-out.

You know, like.

[LAUGH]

>> This has happened this day, this whole

thing has happened to me over these course of

years and now this woman has said this to me and that's, and there's no one around.

Who, she can even have eye contact with to

be like, do you believe that this just happened?

[LAUGH]

[CROSSTALK]

didn't follow, but that's how it ends. >> Yeah.

[CROSSTALK]

Well, I'm out there just like, looking at the sky and, this is, you know, I'm done.

You know, it just, and life seems to work that way.

You know, just when the most, crazy thing happens.

You know, one final other thing also happens.

[LAUGH]

>> And, you know, a, again, this was not, I wasn't thinking this, I need

a moment of levity here, but it just seemed like a true thing, you know.

>> Mm-hm.

>> That would've, you know, interaction that would've taken place.

>> Mm-hm.

>> And the nurses never quite seemed to get her anger, her situation.

You know, they were attentive and they did the testing but I don't think

they ever tried to really understand the unfairness of what was happening to her.

And that underlined that as

well, I hoped.

>> Well, let's thank our guest, Mary Beth Keane.

>> Thank you for having me. >>

[NOISE]

Mary Beth Keane session wrap up

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