Post by dgriffin on Oct 17, 2009 8:56:03 GMT -5
Character-wise, just some random thoughts. None of them historically accurate. And as an aside, I hope to not piss off any remaining family of the Woods and Millers. I guess.
I'm thinking Sarah is very strong willed. John is not so. Even without health problems, in the strongly competitive world of late 19th century lawyering, John would not have made a great showing. Mary is somewhat like her mother, but more egalitarian, warmer and certainly more spontaneous.
Sarah may have been most responsible for their return to Utica. We'll be in the dark almost as much as their friends and family as to how John's successful law career devolved to running an orange farm in California, and then home to the maternal family where he lost his wife and daughter to the tragic fire.
We don't know what John's health issues were, but if I were fashioning the entire story from whole cloth, so to speak, I would add some tension and intrigue. Perhaps Sarah made arrangements to return to Utica with her daughter, offering John the option to follow them if he promised to give up his opium habit, a fairly common addiction in that time among many classes of people.
Sarah and Mary often clash, and the rough edge lately has been John. As Sarah draws away from her husband, Mary in the latter phases of her "I love Daddy" girlhood draws closer to John. Enter Annie, hired as a do-all maid and oft times companion, but a person uniquely gifted with insights into human behavior. Annie's deficit is her lack of experience in the world of the Woods, and her habit of assuming the rich are always stupid and uncaring, which after all was true enough in her world.
This all comes together in a smoky hallway at the Genesee Flats in the early morning hours of March 3. Annie is beside herself with fear, trapped in a building "bigger than the train station," filled with smoke and the sounds of people crying and shouting. The Woods take the time to dress properly as Annie runs back and forth from the front balcony to the back hall, afraid to leave without the family, since she figures they will somehow save her. They appear capable of that much, anyway. Finally crying out, she begs them to hurry. They get started, but John decides he must go back "for the box." He'll later say Sarah sent him. He'll never discuss it further. The three women wait for him to return and fall to arguing over whether to continue to wait or to go, and if the latter, by what route.
Then the other party comes along and the picture of who goes where gets even more chaotic.
Mother, daughter and maid drop all pretense as if on a sinking ship, which indeed they are. Sarah attempts to make the decision for the three of them, but Annie knows to trust no one but herself and immediately goes with the party, but then also separates from them later. Mary insists they go back for her father. But Sarah literally drags the girl with her in the opposite directions. To their deaths.
Well, that's one possibility.
Anyone have any ideas?
I'm thinking Sarah is very strong willed. John is not so. Even without health problems, in the strongly competitive world of late 19th century lawyering, John would not have made a great showing. Mary is somewhat like her mother, but more egalitarian, warmer and certainly more spontaneous.
Sarah may have been most responsible for their return to Utica. We'll be in the dark almost as much as their friends and family as to how John's successful law career devolved to running an orange farm in California, and then home to the maternal family where he lost his wife and daughter to the tragic fire.
We don't know what John's health issues were, but if I were fashioning the entire story from whole cloth, so to speak, I would add some tension and intrigue. Perhaps Sarah made arrangements to return to Utica with her daughter, offering John the option to follow them if he promised to give up his opium habit, a fairly common addiction in that time among many classes of people.
Sarah and Mary often clash, and the rough edge lately has been John. As Sarah draws away from her husband, Mary in the latter phases of her "I love Daddy" girlhood draws closer to John. Enter Annie, hired as a do-all maid and oft times companion, but a person uniquely gifted with insights into human behavior. Annie's deficit is her lack of experience in the world of the Woods, and her habit of assuming the rich are always stupid and uncaring, which after all was true enough in her world.
This all comes together in a smoky hallway at the Genesee Flats in the early morning hours of March 3. Annie is beside herself with fear, trapped in a building "bigger than the train station," filled with smoke and the sounds of people crying and shouting. The Woods take the time to dress properly as Annie runs back and forth from the front balcony to the back hall, afraid to leave without the family, since she figures they will somehow save her. They appear capable of that much, anyway. Finally crying out, she begs them to hurry. They get started, but John decides he must go back "for the box." He'll later say Sarah sent him. He'll never discuss it further. The three women wait for him to return and fall to arguing over whether to continue to wait or to go, and if the latter, by what route.
Then the other party comes along and the picture of who goes where gets even more chaotic.
Mother, daughter and maid drop all pretense as if on a sinking ship, which indeed they are. Sarah attempts to make the decision for the three of them, but Annie knows to trust no one but herself and immediately goes with the party, but then also separates from them later. Mary insists they go back for her father. But Sarah literally drags the girl with her in the opposite directions. To their deaths.
Well, that's one possibility.
Anyone have any ideas?
