What if we really never totally pass on? What if our souls remain in our bodies? What if even though we were dead we could still see our surroundings? This is what is is being portrayed in the story of Truganinny. We go to museums and zoos. We go to circuses. I mean who hasn't gone to the fair and seen the freak shows? I think this story is more of an insight into what we do then what Truganinny sees through her glass box. I think it's unfair to look at the husband as a villain if people didn't pay to see her he wouldn't have used her to make money. We don't think about the family of the woman or the person in the box. We think " What a freak. What's wrong with her?". Is ever so different from what she would've been through while she was alive? So who is the author really speaking to? Is it just a story about what Truganinny would be saying if she could see herself and whats going on around her? Or is it more of a question to us the reader. Do we think of this freak show as a person or something to gawk and stare at? Do we truly understand what she had to endure and is still enduring inside her box? I think this piece can be used for a past, present and future look at the state of which we treat people especially those who are different from us.
Who of us have not gone to the museum and looked at the stuffed animals and corpses? How many of us went to the Erie county fair and haven't paid the dollar to go into one of the side show huts? I know I have. Many may argue it's just for entertainment or scientific research. Well who has done the scientific research on how it has affected these people? I bet no one. Today we don't need to go to a traveling circus to see these oddities we now have them shown to us in a daily basis on the television. We all watch. We watch real-life television shows now. The question I'd like to post to you, is staring at our glass boxes (t.v.'s) in our homes watching reality unfold on t.v. really any different nowadays from staring into the glass case of a dead woman?
Thomas Moss (post 8)
Very powerful response to Rose's work, though I think you confuse Truganinny with Julia at times. Your post raises a very important question: Why is it that we have the desire to look, or to stare at those who are "different"? What purpose does it serve for us? I love your observation that the glass boxes that we as a culture want to stare into have shifted from display cases to televisions.
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