The Fate of a Man and his Soul in Maria McCann’s 17th Century England
The 21st century North American outlook on life can generally be summed up by the American tenets of success as a direct result of one’s own hard work and in the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In Maria McCann’s novel As Meat Loves Salt, it can be seen that the British of 400 years ago shared these same values and desires. However, there are key differences between then and now that distinguish the definitions of these values, as well as the conditions affecting access to them. The variation in one individual’s manner of living to the next, the determination of a person’s ability to act and live in freedom, and, most importantly for this novel, to what lengths a person can decide upon and realize his own happiness are but some of the thought-provoking ideas that As Meat Loves Salt demands its readers question through its protagonist Jacob Cullen and his peers.
When comparing 17th and 21st century beliefs, it is important to consider the environment in which those beliefs were bred and fostered. The Stuart British do not share the modern luxury of television or internet to connect themselves to the doings and sayings of people around the country and the world. When the servants of the Roche household want updates on the civil war, they rely on word of mouth, as servants from each household pass on news from one to the next as they go visiting with their masters (McCann 13). Books are one of the only mediums through which ideas can be distributed, yet their expense limits them to ownership by the wealthy, and their content is strictly overseen by political and religious leaders with their own agendas. Thus, the importance of the printing press cannot be overestimated in Stuart culture. Common and privileged people alike rely on the printing press’s ability to mass produce pamphlets with relative speed, spreading news, ideas, and propaganda across a land where news otherwise travels very slowly. The printing press and the pamphlets it produces come to be associated with the passion and fervour of the ideas they contain. Ferris, melancholy and listless as a widower, finds a rejuvenated life and purpose as he prints pamphlets, promoting the ideals he works for and giving himself a reason to live (McCann 267). The importance of the distribution of the written word also serves as a means of empowerment for those who produce it. At a meeting regarding the colony they hope to build, Jacob announces that he will soon start work on printing a new pamphlet, causing the others to view him with respect (McCann 285).
A strong contributor to the construction of a person’s identity is the societal class to which he or she belongs. One’s social rank dictates every aspect of one’s life, including with whom one associates, the food one eats, personal appearance, and appropriate behaviour.
The novel begins with Jacob’s position as a manservant. This position of servitude is shared by his siblings, and it is from this class that Jacob chooses his spouse and finds his friends and peers. It is uncommon for members of differing social classes to associate as equals. Jacob notices “women of quality” looking on his handsome brother with attraction, which he considers very high praise in its cross-class abnormality (McCann 8). As a servant, Jacob is expected to show humility and speak with deference not only to his employers, but to other servants who outrank him, as well (McCann 4, 12). McCann describes discontent among the serving class as they endure the ill-treatment of their employers and relish in pamphlets describing a utopian, egalitarian society where “no class of persons [is] obliged to serve others merely to live” (McCann 16).
Jacob’s social position and the expectations that come with it change when he becomes a soldier in the New Model Army. Military service is appealing to many men in the 17th century. In a world in which most individuals are powerless under the whims of their hierarchical superiors, the army offers men an opportunity to take action in defence of their political and/or religious causes. It can also be seen as a quick change of pace from the social position one is currently in, which Jacob experiences with his rapid enlistment, and of which Ferris takes advantage to escape his sorrows as a widower. While many men see the army favourably for these reasons, the soldiers are generally despised by the population. The free quarter they demand forces the common people to sacrifice their food, shelter, women, and general sense of security to the roguish soldiers—a far cry from the respectful and dutiful image shared by many of soldiers today.
The position in which Jacob is most happy is as a citizen rubbing shoulders with the merchant class in London. A negative result of this change in rank is that Jacob begins to liken himself to his hated past employer, “Sir Bastard,” as he accustoms himself to being waited on and shouts at Becs, the maid, as he was once shouted at (McCann 289). This lofty attitude contrasts starkly with his rank as a labourer in the colony, when he and his fellows are threatened and beaten by members of the gentry (McCann 451, 556).
Material culture is a tangible factor in determining a person’s social status. The type of food one eats as well as how one eats it is a marker of rank. The Roches’ servants eat their dinner from the leftovers of their masters’ meals in the basement, out of sight of their superiors and after their serving duties are complete. However, as they are the ones preparing the food, they eat what they prepared themselves, though not of the same quality as what they serve. In the army, Jacob notices the quality of his diet drop dramatically. Only minimal rations of bread are relied upon for consistent sustenance. Although the bread is hard and the cheese has mites, Jacob “grabs at it” eagerly (McCann 96). At Ferris’ merchant-class household in London, Jacob is treated to an abundance of food and is picky with his tastes once more. In contrast to the coarse, dark bread of the army that must be softened in water before it can be eaten, the bread eaten in Cheapside is “fine, white manchet,” referring to the luxurious quality of the flour.
In the 17th century, social status can be seen as well as tasted. Clothing is an immediate marker of a person’s place on the social ladder. The usually plainly dressed servant-Jacob is given special honours on his wedding day, and is dressed in a beautiful coat. His colleagues give him a gift of hose made of fine white wool that make him feel like a nobleman (McCann 59). After running away and being picked up by the army, Jacob trades in his shoes for sturdy, practical boots; his wedding coat is either lost or stolen, and Jacob wears, instead, a coat he describes as “botched together” (McCann 201). McCann uses this change of attire to symbolise Jacob’s new life as a soldier named Rupert and the abandonment of his old servant life, as lost and irretrievable as his wedding coat. Upon his initiation into Ferris’ London life, Jacob dons the respectable clothes of Ferris’ dead uncle before his own tailor-made outfits transform him into a Londoner. It is when he looks at Ferris in his civilized outfit, “translated from soldier to merchant,” that he realizes for the first time how Ferris had led an entire life before the army of which he has no idea. The appearance of a person’s body can tell almost as much about someone’s rank as the clothes they dress it in. Jacob imagines Ferris’ army-roughened hands slowly reverting to the softness of his merchant lifestyle, while the clear, un-pocked faces of the Domremy women identify them as milkmaids, immune to smallpox through their trade.
Gender is a factor that dictates behaviour and social rank along with class. For a 17th century woman, virtue is her most valuable quality. Many qualifications come with the characteristic of virtue. Firstly, virtue comes with virginity. Jacob says that he has no desire for women who “fell over backwards if you so much as blew on them” and is proud of the virginity and mild manners of his fiancée, Caro (McCann 17, 18). Pre-marital pregnancy is a shameful taboo; Izzy warns Zeb about Patience’s pregnancy, as it “is the first thing thought on if a lass be found drowned,” however Patience needn’t fear for her reputation, since Zeb agreed to marry her, which would spare her some shame (McCann 6). This society shows great concern for the virtue of its women, but real-life practices and their consequences conflict with the cultural values. The men of Ferris’ colony express concern that the women will “run wild” if removed from the “civilized” legal and social restrictions of the city. The Domremy women refute this point, claiming that working for their own livelihood on the colony is no different from what they are doing now, and that they are none the less moral or virtuous for it (McCann 338).
The standard, traditional concepts of gender in this time period are strength in men and weakness in women. However, as in all cultural constructions, there is a difference between what is accepted as reality and what is practiced. Since fighting belongs to the masculine domain, women are not permitted to fight in the army. However, that doesn’t mean that women never fight for their causes. In the New Model, Jacob witnesses women attacking soldiers by throwing staves at them from windows. Since this behaviour conflicts with his society’s gendered idea of femininity, he calls them “unnatural” (McCann 145). Aunt, too, makes note of the strength of women in childbirth, but that does not lead her to the conclusion that women are strong. Instead, she applies this to her cultural understanding of female weakness and male strength, and maintains that if women have any strength, men’s superior, masculine strength must be incredible (McCann 256). Women are believed to be weaker than men in mind as well as in body. Jacob questions this during colony meetings, noting that the Domremys “showed more sense than some of the men, for they could undoubtedly do useful work” (McCann 307, 333).
Marriage in modern-day North America is perceived as a legal institution binding the lives of two lovers together. Marriage among common people in 17th century England has the much more practical function of binding a man and a woman for the advantages of family alliance, wealth, social advancement, and security, in addition to mutual affection, should there be any at all. Despite his lack of romantic feeling for her, Jacob is confused at the proposition of marriage to Becs, for he cannot see where the “profit” in such a union lies (McCann 308). A line is drawn between love and marriage, with sex falling idealistically in the sole realm of marriage. This distinction can be seen in Jacob’s boast, “I treated Caro always with the respect which is due from a lover and never assumed the privileges of a husband” (McCann 8). The role of a wife is submission to her husband in all things and in the meeting of all his domestic needs, demonstrated by Becs in her courting of Jacob by skilfully preparing his meals and ensuring his comfort whenever she can (McCann 254). The husband’s role in the marriage is to provide his wife with personal as well as material security. Ferris, who feels genuine affection for his wife, is disgusted over the obligation of buying her from her father, and challenges the notion of wives as property by wondering if marriage would be better with the husband acting as the wife’s friend more than as her owner (McCann 122).
Jacob’s sense of identity is built of internal and external factors. Physically, Jacob has always been taller, broader, and stronger than other men. This has particularly negative consequences for him, as he suffers from a dangerously violent temper. While the modern reader would observe this and call it a mental instability, tameable with treatment and understanding, Jacob himself lives in a pervasively Christian world where such a quality is considered the deadly sin of wrath (McCann 508).
Jacob’s wrathful temperament and jealous personality hamper his ability to develop close relationships with other characters in the novel. The exception to this is Christopher Ferris, with whom Jacob eventually falls in love. Their relationship begins as friendship, but is quickly complicated when the two have a physically intimate encounter in a moment of distress. Jacob, extraordinarily uncomfortable with what he has done, tries to ignore the implications of homosexuality involved in the encounter and refers to it only as comfort between friends. It is easy to understand Jacob’s reluctance to recognize the incident for what it was, for in 17th century England, homosexual acts are known as the crime of sodomy, punishable with death by burning (McCann 375). Homosexual partnerships are much more freely accepted in society today, and while universal tolerance continues to be a work in progress, it is unthinkable that the consequence of homosexuality would be capital punishment.
Jacob’s struggle to reconcile his romantic, sexual relationship with the despicable crime taught to him through his religion forms the primary conflict of the book, epitomized through the positions postulated first by Jacob, that sin is their condition, then by Ferris, that love is their rightful condition (McCann 316). Jacob is at his best when he is loved by Ferris; their love calms his raging temper and he feels as though he would never need to fight another again (McCann 328). However, the Bible states that for a man to lie with another man is an abomination, and not only will secular law put him to death in this life, but his soul will burn in hell for his sin (McCann 401). Confirming Jacob’s fears of hell is the Voice of Satan that he hears in his mind, spurring him toward sinful acts and taunting him with threats of hellfire (McCann 440). While these, too, could be written off as mental illness to a modern observer, they are very fitting and plausible to a person living in the pervasive Christianity of Stuart England. Fearing for both himself and for Ferris, Jacob prays for God to forgive him. In accordance to his faith, Jacob’s acts label him a “fornicator, of unnatural appetite, in thrall to an Atheist” ; from a secular perspective, the man concedes himself simply in love (McCann 317). The rationale behind Jacob’s fears crumbles somewhat, as he considers the goodness and kindness of Ferris as a person, leading him to the conclusion that Ferris’s soul could not possibly be damned (McCann 377). Unfortunately, Jacob can not use the same argument to save his own wrathful soul from damnation.
“I was not made to be loved,” Jacob laments at the novel’s end (McCann), a heartbreaking assertion that evokes sympathy in the reader despite the character’s imperfections. McCann has created a character, unpleasantly human with his anti-heroic flaws, and set him in an environment that offers him no chance at true happiness at all. Skilled in his trade, faithful to his religion, and more or less correct in his observance of social expectations, Jacob essentially follows the rules demanded of him by his world. However, his uncontrollable temper inevitably leads to trouble, and once he finds love, his society turns it into a crime. He admits that marriage to Becs would offer him a very fair fortune with a kind mistress, a good wife, and a respectable position in civilized society, yet he knows that deprived of his true love, that “prosperous” life would never make him happy—a concept widely agreed upon by modern-day romantics (McCann 309).
Perhaps had the character of Jacob Cullen existed in the 21st century, his story might have found a happy ending. His mental instability—the modern association with hearing voices and irrational tempers—could have been treated with therapy and medicine. He could have freely loved another man without fear of capital punishment and eternal damnation. Unfortunately, it was not to be, and thus a happy ending is impossible for him. This truth is accepted even by Jacob himself. “I deserved it,” he says, “I was wrathful, and my very love a violation” (McCann 208). Few modern readers can justify the condemnation of a man for his love, and thus, with Jacob’s steadfast view of himself as an abomination, McCann challenges her readers to consider the consequences of modern, as well as early modern, constructions of social identity and to question to what degree the fate of a man’s soul is at the mercy of the world in which he lives.
Sources
McCann, Maria. As Meat Loves Salt. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2001.
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