Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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After an excerpt from an instructional text, “Settling In” opens with Bee holding still and attempting, without success, to evade detection by Fitz. He summons her to confer with her about Lant and his situation, and talk turns to Bee’s Farseer status. The two discuss her knowledge of her heritage, and Chade’s motivations for sending Lant to Fitz are noted. Bee intuits similar motivations regarding Shun, and she considers what she has learned and how. Fitz notes his neglect of her, and the two make shift to repair their relationship.

Life at Withywoods slowly begins to adjust to the presence of both Shun and Lant, and Bee continues to call on Per, who notes with some annoyance that he and the other children of the manor will be included in lessons. Per also notes local gossip surrounding Fitz–as Badgerlock–and Shun, much of which takes Bee aback. She is left fuming about her situation and the changes to it, and she moves to address them with Fitz, only to find him in the final stages of enacting changes to her bedroom that had not been discussed with her. She intuits the reasoning for Fitz’s actions and plays along in front of others, realizing unexpectedly the place she has in their lives.

Somewhat overwhelmed, Bee withdraws to her old rooms, assessing them and the loss of things made by her mother’s hands for her. Fitz soon joins her, and she rages at him for not having consulted her in his haste to address the issue of the messenger. He accepts the rebuke, to her chagrin, and he lays out plans for the coming days. Bee’s anger is not assuaged, but she accompanies him as he makes to see about his next tasks.

As I reread the chapter, I was put in mind both of Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. While it has, admittedly, been some time since I read either piece–they’re both both earlier and later than my usual studies–and there is a tension between them, and neither is an exact parallel for Bee’s situation in the present chapter, there are echoes of both in it. Add to the list of scholarly someday projects, or to the list of “I’m not the right kind of scholar for this, but I’d read it” projects that have come up throughout this rereading series (and other parts of this webspace I yet maintain).

I noted, too, that the present chapter is of a more “normal” length than the previous–or than a number of other chapters that focus on Bee. Again, I am not sure what pattern is present or what can emerge from identifying such a pattern, but I cannot shake the feeling that there is some information to be gleaned from investigating it. But that’s already been a scholarly someday for a while, now, and I don’t think I need to belabor that point at this point.

Further, and again again, I found myself reading with no small affect as the narrative followed Bee and her vexation at both the public perception of her father and at being treated as a child. It’s not easy to realize the ways in which beloved family members are seen by those outside the family; while public perception of my parents has been more or less in line with how they are at home, I’ve got any number of cousins and other collateral relatives for whom so much is not true. (I know what my reputation has been among several publics, as well; there’ve been times I’ve been more or less at ease with it and its alignment with how I am when in less public situations. But that’s another matter entirely.) And I learned early on that I do not appreciate being spoken for without being consulted; there were more than a few heated arguments about that point in my youth, and it was an early source of friction in my marriage. (My wife and I have long since addressed the issue, however.) My own daughter is not much more fond of it than I was (or am), and while I try to consult her for things before making decisions, I know I don’t always do well at it–and her vexation with me at such times is not unjustified.

I found myself more touched by Bee’s longing for the things her mother’s hands had made, not all of which were preserved by her father. I’m not as good about being unsentimental in my life as I ought to be, I know; even if I do try not to be so attached to things, I would weep to lose some of the stuff that I have, and for no more reason than that it was given me by my parents. I know the same is true for my daughter–perhaps more so, because she does not have the hang-ups about expressing emotion that I do. (“We live in a society,” after all.) She’s long demonstrated that she keeps a detailed inventory of her stuff in her head, and she’s complained to her parents more than once about the loss of some thing or another that really did need to go to the garbage or really was a better fit for some donation bin than for her then-current needs. And all that’s without the overlay of the loss of a parent–really, the parent, given Fitz’s own issues with parenting–that Bee suffers…I’ve got a frame of reference, but I’m still looking at it from some remove.

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