Voice in the Wind: The End of Innocence

Voice in the Wind, pp. 354-360

Julia had had constant nightmares since Caius’ death. She made gifts to the household gods, as well as to Hera, but nothing helped her. She couldn’t stop seeing her husband’s face as it had looked a few minutes before he died. He had opened his eyes and looked at her, and she was sure he knew.

Last week, several readers complained that we heard nothing of Julia’s response to Caius’ death. This week, we learn more. Julia is going to Caius’ tomb outside the city every day; her mother things that’s unhealthy, and Marcus went once but was too distracted to be supportive, so usually Julia takes Octavia with her. Octavia is smugly pleased to see Julia in so much pain. Octavia knows Caius cheated on Julia and gambled away Julia’s money; she tells herself that if Caius had married her instead, things would have been different. Rivers tells us Octavia “relished her feelings of pity” for Julia.

And what of Julia? Julia is still refusing to see Calabah.

She wished she had never met Calabah. If not for her, she would never have murdered Caius.

Julia is also desperately afraid that Calabah will tell someone what she did. She grills Octavia, who still sees Calabah constantly, but Octavia knows nothing and tells Julia that Calabah isn’t one to talk about her behind her back.

But it’s not just that. Julia is a tortured soul.

Closing her eyes, she tried to think of something else, but she kept remembering Caius as he’d been the day before he died, telling her how much he loved her, how he’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen her, how sorry he was for his abuse and his affairs and his foul luck. He’d made her feel so guilty she had almost stopped giving him the poison, but by then he’d been so sick it wouldn’t have mattered.

Watching Julia work through all of this could have been moving (though still tragic) in the hands of another author. Of course Julia is tormented. Of course she struggles with guilt. Of course she questions what she could have done differently. The trouble is that I’m not sure that Rivers understands Julia as an abuse victim working through tragic circumstances and the desperate actions she took to protect herself.

For instance, have a look at this:

Caius had terrified her the night he had tried to kill her. She had thought his death would be the end of her fear. It was more like the beginning. She was more afraid now than ever before. It was as though she carried a dark presence everywhere with her, as though she couldn’t get away from him.

Does Rivers understand this as what is going on inside Julia’s head as she works through this, or is she, in the typical fashion of evangelical novels, moralizing about Julia’s choices? Is Julia, remember, is not a tragic hero. She’s an anti-hero.

…all of Calabah’s reasons for killing him were still valid. He had betrayed her with other women. He’d tormented her emotionally, beaten her physically. And he would have used up all her money. What other choice had she had but to kill him?

The rationalizations and self-justification roiled in her mind, but guilt bore her reasons to shred.

Can you see what Rivers does here? Julia didn’t go to Calabah in a panic because Caius was blowing through her money. She didn’t go to Calabah in a panic because Caius was sleeping with other women. She didn’t even go because he had hit her. She went because he had literally tried to kill her. Not only that, but when he left her that day he promised that he would come back and finish the job. And yet, that reality is curiously overlooked here.

I could understand someone in Julia’s circumstances cycling like this; she needs someone to sit her down and remind her that, regardless of whether her actions were right, she took them because Caius had literally tried to kill her. She needs someone to remind her of what is up and what is down. The problem is, I still don’t think Rivers views any of this as the understandable mental turmoil of an abuse victim who has just done something terrible in her own defense.

Has Julia ever done anything right, in Rivers’ eyes? She was obsessed with gladiators and the games. She didn’t want to marry Claudius and refused to be what he wanted her to be. She hung out with Calabah and her cult of followers even though her dad and brother told her not to. She threw herself at Caius, and followed her passions, drinking and going to the games with him and living a life of excess. She had an abortion. And then, when Caius abused her, she murdered him.

For Rivers, Julia isn’t a tragic hero, a flawed character brought to ruin as the result of a mistake. She’s an anti-hero, a character devoid of attractive qualities of any kind. The trouble is that the qualities Rivers finds attractive, writing for an evangelical audience, and the qualities others outside this culture find attractive are not the same thing. Julia’s quest for the freedom to make her own choices outside of the smothering influence of her father and brother is a positive quality in my eyes. Over the course of this review series, many of my readers have come to identify with Julia.

It’s not that Julia is perfect. It’s that she’s human. She’s relatable, and her wants are understandable. When Julia faced abuse at Caius’ hands, we felt for her. Did Rivers? Or did Rivers view the abuse Julia experienced as something she had brought on herself, by attending Calabah’s disreputable gatherings, where she met Caius, or by marrying for looks, passion, and shared interests rather than for stability, respect, and family? Julia didn’t listen to her father or her mother, and look—bad things happened to her. I don’t get the idea that Rivers thinks she’s simply a victim of unfortunate circumstances.

That disconnect, between Rivers, the book’s evangelical author, and the very different, more secular readership here is creating some interesting effects. When I read this book as an evangelical teen, I remember disliking Julia. In fact, on going through this book now, I’ve been surprised at how central Julia is. As a teen, my focus was on Hadassah.

One more thing from this week’s section, from Julia’s perspective:

She’d expected Hadassah’s songs and stories to be as pleasurable as they’d always been, but they disturbed her now, leaving her with a disquiet she couldn’t dispel. So did the slave girl. Her purity and pristine beliefs were a constant affront to Julia. Even more irritating was the sense of contentment Hadassah seemed to have—something Julia had never in her life experienced. How could a slave be happy when she, with everything, was not?

Sometimes she would be sitting and listening to Hadassah’s sweet voice and a wave of violent hatred for the girl would sweep over her. Yet, just as quickly, in its wake would come a deep sense of shame and longing, leaving her confused and yearning for something she couldn’t have.

I mean, what even is this. 

You know what it’s like? It’s like Rivers is trying and failing to get into the mind of a worldly, non-Christian person. In general, evangelical Christians do a terrible, terrible job describing atheists and their motivations and viewpoints, and I think something similar is happening here. This doesn’t read as real. At all. It feels forced and contrived.

We could try looking at this as Rivers’ flawed understanding of what is happening. We’re getting rather meta here, but let’s try going underneath and imagine that Rivers is writing about something that actually happened, and giving us her spin on it, filtered through her beliefs. What, then, was actually happening here?

It’s possible that Hadassah, upset by Julia’s abortion and by Julia’s sleeping with Antigonus (unless I’m very much mistaken, Hadssah doesn’t know Julia poisoned Caius). It’s possible that Hadassah is selectively choosing stories and songs that are meant to show Julia that she is a selfish, sinful person. Perhaps Hadassah has begun acting in a judgmental fashioned toward Julia, performing her duties but giving Julia some serious shade. In this context, I could see Julia becoming increasingly disturbed by and upset with Hadassah, especially if Julia is still working through all of these things herself.

All of that, of course, is the product of imagination. In Rivers’ telling, Hadassah does nothing but serve, and her purity and “pristine beliefs” are self-evident to all. Julia is disquieted by Hadassah because Hadassah’s purity reminds her of her own corruption and the terrible things she has done, and she responds by beginning to hate Hadassah (while secretly wanting what Hadassah has). This telling is so typically evangelical, but it’s built on a myriad of flawed assumptions.

Julia, by the way, is headed back to her father’s house, and back under her father’s authority, again, because Rivers really does have no idea what a “cum manu” marriage meant. We’ll see how that goes.

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