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

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Following an excerpt from Bee’s records of her dreams, “Lessons” begins with Bee musing bitterly on her first dinner with Lant in attendance, describing in some detail the many vexations she found at the meal and with its other attendees. She notes her infatuation with Lant and his own preoccupation with Shun. Conversation at the table proceeds around her, and she excuses herself to her own rooms once dinner is done.

Bee rehearses her day as she makes for her former chambers, and after some attempt to commune with what might be the messenger’s ghost, she enters the hidden corridors. Within them, she encounters the cat of her acquaintance, with whom she confers about the messenger and her effects. She also enters into an agreement with the cat, although the shadow of Nighteyes within her bristles at it and rebukes her for it.

The next morning, Bee rises and is attended to by a servant whose actions she dislikes. The servant remarks on the manner in which Bee has been kept previously and blushes at Bee’s compliments before sending her on to her day. Bee reports to breakfast, joining Fitz, and the two talk briefly uneasily, considering their respective statuses in the household. Shun enters, offering her jabs, and receives Bee’s rebuke in time for Lant to see it and grow wary of her.

After breakfast, Bee reports to class, startled to find as many students present as she does. She joins the class, and Lant begins to assess his pupils’ knowledge. Bee considers social situations as the assessment proceeds, and she faces close scrutiny when she is assessed. After some rebuke, instruction begins, and Bee finds herself under some onus as the lessons proceed.

After the lesson, Bee changes clothes and returns to the corridors, conferring with the cat therein once again. She reads some of Fitz’s work, puzzling over his annotations on a copy of an older work, and she is somewhat surprised when Fitz greets her at her work. The two confer, and Bee is momentarily worried about being unloved; Fitz is able to set the worry aside, and she reluctantly joins the household for dinner.

The meal passes uncomfortably for Bee, conversation once again flowing around her until Fitz addresses her directly about her readings. Bee shines in the conversation, forcing others to reassess her. Bee belatedly realizes that Fitz has guided conversation to that end, and she realizes to her surprise that the shadow of Nighteyes is in Fitz, as well. She recognizes more of the underlying social structures at work in the growing household, and she considers it through the rest of the evening.

The next day, after breakfast, Bee reports to the schoolroom, where she notes that Perseverance shows signs of having been in a fight. He asks for her help with letters, and she offers it gladly until interrupted by the arrival of Lant in the classroom. Lessons begin, and the absence of one particularly insouciant student is marked. Perseverance’s condition is explained as the result of a disagreement over words said by that student about his sister, and tension builds between teacher and students.

The present chapter is an unusually long one, over thirty pages in the edition I am reading. I make note of the fact because the idea of there being some information to mine out of the chapters’ lengths remains with me, although I have still not been able to conduct the kind of investigation into it that I would need to to find out what that information is. Someday, of course. Someday…

More usually, the present chapter provokes me to read with affect, if with perhaps more of it than is (unfortunately?) common for my reading. Some oblique reference is made to Fitz’s experience as Galen’s student amid the seeming disdain in which Lant holds Bee, which has the effect, I think, of reducing sympathy for Lant in many readers–and I am not immune to that effect, myself. But I do also have some sympathy for him that results from my own experience at the front of the classroom, having had unfortunate introductions to students because I first saw them acting other than at their best or because they saw no point to formalized learning, generally, or to the subject matter I was set to teach, specifically. And I know that I did not always present myself optimally in the classroom, on each first day or afterward, although I think I was better earlier in my teaching career than later; burnout is a thing, of course, and the situation in which I taught and that in which Lant does are dissimilar in ways other than the fiction of the latter makes manifest.

Too, I do find myself in continuing sympathy with Bee. Part of this is expected narrative effect; presentation from a first-person narrative perspective inclines toward the development of readerly sympathy / empathy as a matter of course, and Bee is also clearly the focal figure of the text. (It’s not uncommon in the novels centering on Fitz that the broader narrative is really about someone else. In the Farseer novels, it’s about Verity. In the Tawny Man, it’s about Dutiful. In both, the Fool is likely the real deuteragonist. That Fitz is the narrator complicates the analysis somewhat, but his actions are driven by his relationships to those figures rather than by himself. But to make that argument will require more time than I can currently afford making it, and I add another item to the ever-growing pile of scholarly somedays I will need to address.) Part, though, is my specific readerly situation. I have been the student on the receiving end of…particular expectations (if not those under which Bee initially labors), and, as I consider my own daughter, I know that she has also been that student. So far, my daughter has risen to them (for the most part, but we all have off days now and again), but I also know that awareness of those expectations creates its own burdens and anxieties. I have seen my daughter struggle with them, sometimes with intense feeling, and so to see that kind of struggle presented in the text…resonates with me. I don’t know that it is teaching me anything new, but it is perhaps reminding me of things I need to do better at keeping in mind.

I am proud of my daughter, of course. She gives me ample reason to be, and in a startling variety of ways; she is far from ungifted, academically, and she displays talents in skills in many other areas in addition to being generally of pleasant and engaging disposition. I do expect much from her, but if I do, it is because I believe she can do most anything she decides to do.

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