A Bloodsmoor Romance: Analysis of Major Characters
"A Bloodsmoor Romance: Analysis of Major Characters" explores a complex interplay of personalities set against the backdrop of 19th-century societal expectations. Central to the narrative is John Quincy Zinn, a gentleman inventor whose radical past and commitment to progress lead him to engage in morally ambiguous scientific endeavors. His wife, Prudence Kiddemaster Zinn, transitions from a headstrong educator to a matron confined by the trials of motherhood, ultimately reclaiming her independence later in life. The adopted daughter, Deirdre Louisa Bonner Zinn, experiences a dramatic transformation from a troubled child to a renowned trance medium, revealing deeper family secrets and connections to wealth.
Other notable characters include Constance Philippa Zinn, who defies social conventions by rejecting an oppressive marriage, embarking on a journey of self-discovery that leads to a gender transition and adventurous life. Malvinia Zinn represents beauty and rebellion, making choices that ultimately lead to redemption. Octavia Zinn embodies traditional values, navigating personal tragedies before finding fulfillment in a second marriage. Lastly, Samantha Zinn, an inventive daughter, balances familial expectations with her aspirations, challenging societal norms around femininity and ambition. Together, these characters illustrate themes of identity, societal constraints, and the pursuit of authenticity in a changing world.
A Bloodsmoor Romance: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
First published: 1982
Genre: Novel
Locale: Bloodsmoor, a valley in eastern Pennsylvania
Plot: Alternative history
Time: 1879–1900
John Quincy Zinn, a gentleman inventor, fifty-two years old in 1879. John is tall, wide-shouldered, and handsome despite the dagger-shaped birthmark on his left temple. He is the son of a dishonest peddler whom, as a child, he saw tarred, feathered, and burned. John was adopted by a farm family, became a radical schoolmaster influenced by transcendentalism, and finally, after being lionized by Philadelphia society, married into the wealthy Kiddemaster family, which supports his experimental laboratory and large family. Convinced of the inevitability of progress, John believes that inventions will bring the perfectibility of humankind. At his death, he is engaged, under government patronage, in devising weapons of destruction, including the basis of nuclear weaponry. Despite the radicalism of his early years, he regards Deirdre, Constance Philippa, and Samantha as dead when they run away to live their own lives in violation of the conventions of the Kiddemaster class.
Prudence Kiddemaster Zinn, John's wife, who is stout, stern, matronly, and conventional. She once was the highly independent headmistress of a girls' school. Renouncing her independence to pursue John, her spirit is broken by a series of pregnancies, sometimes difficult labors, miscarriages, and occasional deaths. In old age, however, she leaves John to return to militant feminist causes.
Deirdre Louisa Bonner Zinn, an adopted Zinn daughter. She is sixteen years old in 1879, when she is abducted in a mysterious black balloon. Deirdre is dark-haired, pale, and small; she has a marked widow's peak and piercing silvery-gray eyes. She is disliked by the Zinn sisters and unhappy in her adopted home. Spiritual manifestations have plagued her since childhood. After her abduction, she reappears as Deirdre of the Shadows, a distinguished and successful trance medium. When she is investigated by the Society of Psychical Research, her spirits drive three men to their deaths, thus convincing even the most skeptical of the powers that control her. She suffers a breakdown in 1895 and retires. When she returns to Bloodsmoor because of Edwina Kiddemaster's will, she is revealed to be Edwina's daughter by a secret early marriage, and she is named heir to the vast Kiddemaster wealth, which she shares with her adopted family.
Constance Philippa Zinn, later Philippe Fox, the oldest Zinn daughter. Twenty-two years old in 1879, she is tall, striking, and satiric. Because her family desires socially impressive marriages, she becomes engaged to a twice-widowed, sinister German Baron. On her wedding night, she flees their hotel, leaving her husband to consummate the marriage with a dressmaker's dummy. Going west, she becomes a gambler, journalist, and law officer, among many other things. She undergoes a sex change. When she returns to Bloodsmoor because of Edwina's will, she is the masculine Philippe Fox, who then elopes with a childhood friend imprisoned by her vicious husband and again disappears.
Malvinia Zinn, the daughter who is the family beauty. Twenty years old in 1879, Malvinia is tall, blue-eyed, and vain, with rich, dark hair. Courted by a man of wealth, she runs off with an actor and launches a successful stage career, to her family's horror. After a life of dissipation, marred by the hereditary Zinn Mark of the Beast, she repents, becomes a teacher, and marries a man whose life she had harmed in her childhood.
Octavia Zinn, the Christian and conventional Zinn daughter. Twenty-one years old in 1879, placid and plump, she is a born lady. She has a warm smile, plump cheeks, and brown eyes. She marries a tyrannical and narrow retired Lutheran minister, Lucius Rumford, whose exotic sexual practices she, in her innocence, regards as normal. These practices cause his death. She bears three children; two die young, one perhaps killed by another. She finds a happy second marriage with Sean McInnes, a successful investor, attorney, and U.S. congressman whom she had once adored when he was merely the son of their Irish coachman.
Samantha Zinn, the daughter who serves as John's laboratory assistant. Small, immature, red-haired, and freckled, Samantha frightens off suitors with her intelligence. Pressured by her mother to marry a decadent aristocrat, she runs off with Nahum Hareton, her father's other assistant, a man of dubious background. As a small boy, he had disappeared from a time machine John Zinn had manufactured when a schoolmaster. She is an inventor, focusing on time-saving devices for housewives such as disposable diapers.
Edwina Kiddemaster, Prudence's aunt, the author of more than seventy etiquette books. Enormously wealthy, she is conservative in her writing but less so in her private life. Her will stipulates that the Zinn daughters must be reunited at Bloodsmoor, where Deirdre is revealed to be her daughter by a disastrous marriage.
Sarah Whitton Kiddemaster, Prudence's mother. She is conventionally female, but an autopsy reveals that she has virtually no internal organs. She has sewn an antimacassar 1,358 yards long.