A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates

First published: 1982

Type of plot: Historical romance fantasy

Time of work: 1879-1900

Locale: Bloodsmoor, a valley in Eastern Pennsylvania

Principal Characters:

• John Quincey Zinn, a gentleman-inventor and the father of a large family
• Prudence Kiddemaster Zinn, his wife, mother of the Zinn daughters
• Constance Philippa, their oldest daughter who later becomes a son
• Malvinia, another daughter, later a famous actress
• Octavia, another daughter, later a wife and mother
• Samantha, another daughter who serves as her father’s laboratory assistant
• Deirdre, an adopted daughter and spiritualist

The Novel

Joyce Carol Oates’s book A Bloodsmoor Romance is not a kind of fiction that is easily named, although it is not hard to recognize. The work combines both realism and fantasy in a display of authorial skill: Oates uses several techniques to achieve this effect. First, she sets her romance in a past that closely resembles the historical past; in that setting one finds both fictional characters and characters who bear the names of figures from history. In addition, the characters of the work are interested in many of the things that interested the real nineteenth century: spiritualism, the theater, the westward movement, experimental science, abnormal psychology, female sexuality, and the nature of marriage.

It is Oates’s second technique that sets the work apart from historical romances per se: She freely manipulates the order of historical events and even adds events that could not possibly occur. John Quincey Zinn demonstrates both of these intrusions of fantasy: He invents the ballpoint pen and solar heating but dismisses them as useless. He invents an operating time machine, but he destroys it after he uses it to misplace one of his pupils. Similarly, Zinn’s daughter Constance combines fantasy with history. Reared for marriage, Constance spends her early life accumulating household linens, but when the wedding night comes, she panics, and placing in her groom’s bed the dress form used to fit her trousseau, she runs away. Disguising herself as a man, she heads west and tries her hand at being a cowboy, an outlaw, a deputy sheriff, and a gambler. During her masquerade, she turns physically into a man as well, and when she returns to the family home at Bloodsmoor, she poses as Philippe Fox, Constance’s agent. Eventually, “he” apparently elopes with a childhood girlfriend.

The plot of the book unfolds by following the lives of the daughters as they grow up. In their adventures, the reader meets several characters drawn from history. For example, Deirdre, the Zinns’ adopted daughter, is kidnapped by a mysterious stranger in a black balloon who deposits her on the lawn of a character named Madame Elena Blavatsky. This Madame Blavatsky shares the quirks of the historical Madame Blavatsky, cofounder of the American Theosophical Society. Recognizing Deirdre’s talents, Oates’s Blavatsky teaches Deirdre to become a medium, contacting spirits beyond the grave, and takes her on a world tour. The reader meets other fictional characters with real counterparts as well: Mark Twain, for one.

As may be inferred from the events recounted above, A Bloodsmoor Romance is an often hilariously comic work, yet one that at the same time attempts to capture some of the boundless enthusiasm of the late nineteenth century, an enthusiasm that was often as undiscriminating as it was energetic.

The Characters

Each of the characters seems specially chosen to exemplify many of the attitudes and interests—both common and bizarre—of the nineteenth century.

Deirdre, as has been seen, illustrates the fascination of the time with the occult, but the century had an equal passion for the stage. This love is shown through Malvinia, who runs away as a girl to join a troupe of actors. She becomes a star, attracts her leading man, and, in the first turning point of her life, discovers a horrible secret: She likes sex. Malvinia, like many people of the nineteenth century, thinks that women are too fine and high-minded to possess sexual feelings. Thus she is caught in the ironic situation in which she delights in her sexuality while despising herself for having zest for what she calls “the beast.” Although she regards her lustiness as unwomanly, she is unable, as she puts it, to “control herself.” Only later, when she reforms and marries a clergyman, is she freed from her “burden.” She then becomes the kind of obedient and pure wife celebrated in nineteenth century domestic literature.

Her sister Octavia, on the other hand, from her earliest age wants only to be a wife and mother and through her story shows the century’s commitment to a stern duty and an almost equally stern religion. The taboos of the time prevent frank instruction in reproduction, and she searches unsuccessfully for the facts of life in books. Even her mother is worse than useless: Mrs. Zinn, clearly uncomfortable at the question, scolds Octavia and tells her simply to do whatever her husband wants. This advice has unforeseen consequences when an older man, a jaded deviant, becomes Octavia’s husband. He ties her up; he puts a bag over her head; he does strange things to her. Octavia, however, is rewarded: She bears two babies, whom she cherishes. When they and her husband die, she is then freed for what she calls a “higher calling,” giving herself over to prayer, good works, and the care of her aged parents.

Two of the family members show the optimism of the age, an enthusiastic conquest of nature through both exploration and understanding. In Constance Philippa and her adoption of the advice to go west, the reader sees the work of the nation in consolidating its continent-wide borders and its taming of a wild environment. In her father, the reader sees the gentleman-scientist, the chief actor in the drama of scientific discovery in the time before Thomas Edison established the research laboratory. Even here, though, one finds the tendency of the age to be lured from its path by golden yet quirky goals. Despite inventing myriad useful devices, Zinn quests for one grail only—the perpetual motion machine (and only his daughter Samantha believes that he can do it).

One last character deserves description—Oates’s narrator. She is the filter through which the reader sees the story, an elderly and sheltered virgin, self-effacing and innocent. She happily absorbs every piece of received wisdom of the time: For example, she is never happier than when describing Octavia or the converted Malvinia in their roles of traditional wife and mother. If the Zinn daughters try to escape from the roles society has decreed for them, they find little sympathy from the narrator. Indeed, she is so much of a type that the reader never even learns her name.

Critical Context

A Bloodsmoor Romance attempts to re-create a period novel form that no longer exists. Contemporary fiction is generally either realistic or fantastic. In the nineteenth century, however, fantasy and reality could mix freely in what was known as the romance. Contemporary novelists who try to insert fantasy in reality are often misunderstood or scolded by critics for mixing their genres. When British novelist Nevil Shute added some fantasy to one of his novels, the critics advised him to stick to the type of realism that his readers had come to expect in his works.

Joyce Carol Oates, by calling her novel a romance, is clearly signaling her readers that there will be certain elements of fantasy in addition to the real-seeming story that she is trying to tell. Some of the fantasy includes the mysterious balloonist who kidnaps Deirdre Zinn, the time machine invented and destroyed by Mr. Zinn, and the mysterious change by which Constance Philippa becomes a man in body as she becomes more masculine and assertive in character.

The realistic story line includes the poor but loving family, the real inventions of an age of inventiveness, as well as the enthusiasm with which the nation moved from the innocence of a primarily agrarian culture into the somewhat jaded technological realities of the twentieth century.

Of all the writers who might try to create a romance, Oates is one of the ablest. She is a prolific writer of more than thirteen novels, including them (1969), the winner of the National Book Award. In addition, she has published volumes of short stories, poems, and essays, as well as several plays.

Besides being a writer, Oates is a teacher, too, with credentials in literature. She has written much criticism in which she often takes male writers to task for their limited views on women’s potential, both intellectual and sexual. She portrays in her own intellectual life the sorts of honors that gifted women can accomplish. Oates is the winner of awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Lotos Club.

Bibliography

Creighton, Joanne V. Joyce Carol Oates: Novels of the Middle Years. New York: Twayne, 1992. Creighton presents the first critical study of the novels Oates published between 1977 and 1990, including the mystery novels published under the name of Rosamund Smith. Includes analysis of A Bloodsmoor Romance.

Daly, Brenda. Lavish Self-Divisions: The Novels of Joyce Carol Oates. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1996. An excellent study that argues that the “father-identified daughters in her early novels have become, in the novels of the 1980s, self-authoring women who seek alliances with their culturally devalued mothers.” Offers a perceptive reading of the evolution of feminist elements in Oates’s work and includes critical analysis of A Bloodsmoor Romance.

Harper’s Magazine. CCLXV, September, 1982, p. 67.

Johnson, Greg. Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates. New York: Dutton, 1998. An illuminating look at the novelist once dubbed “the dark lady of American letters.” Drawing on Oates’s private letters and journals, as well as interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, Johnson offers a definitive study of one of America’s most gifted novelists.

Library Journal. August, 1982, p. 1482.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. September 19, 1982, p. 1.

The New York Times Book Review. LXXXVII, September 5, 1982, p. 1.

The New Yorker. LVIII, September 27, 1982, p. 145. Newsweek. C, September 20, 1982, p. 91.

Time. CXX, October 4, 1982, p. 79.

Wesley, Marilyn C. Refusal and Transgression in Joyce Carol Oates’ Fiction. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993. An interesting study spanning the spectrum of Oates’s work. Includes a helpful bibliography and index.

West Coast Review of Books. VIII, November, 1982, p. 31.