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breakinglight11Content note: spousal violence, sexual assault, spoilers for Mrs. Hawking parts 2 and 3
Normally when I write these little speculative scenelets from not-immediately-relevant points in the Hawking timeline, I post them to my journal with some musing about the story and how the piece at hand fits in. Often they are from points that will never actually feature in the main shows, but are still canonically part of the story and inform the events in the plays we do see.
This scene definitely count as an example, however, it stands apart from every other one I’ve ever written.
As I mentioned, I try to keep the Hawking shows more or less family friendly, without pulling punches with the drama. You could maybe debate me on that— Elena Zakharova is a drug addict, Christopher Austerlitz is understood to have sexually assaulted a maid —but we avoid vulgarity, excessive darkness, or much in the way of sexuality. Even when something like that is present, it tends to be alluded to obliquely— Justin and Miss Sherba, for example, are definitely have meant to have had sex at some point during the course of part three, but we let that fact remain an unspoken implication. I’ve joked that with an asexual protagonist and the rest of the cast made up mostly of Victorian prudes and goody-goodies, it’s easy to get away with nobody ever wanting to talk about sex!
But something that has always been part of the fabric of the story has been that Mrs. Hawking’s marriage to the Colonel involved rape. Neither of them exactly saw it this way— he couldn’t conceive of a woman enthusiastically consenting to sex, she filed it under “all the reasons marriage was abhorrent to me” —but any and all sexual activity between them is what we the modern audience would understand to be assault. This underlies a lot of Mrs. Hawking’s anger and antipathy at her husband and her position in life— but we have never made direct reference to it.
The daily reality of what their marriage must have been like took me literally years to conceive of. I kept tripping over the fact that they were unhappily bound together for nineteen years, and yet never had an honest conversation about their problems with each other. I knew such things did happen, so I know it wasn’t impossible, but it was hard to imagine that frank truth would never come out somehow— even if only in a moment where nerves were frayed so thin the parties involved couldn’t hold back their feelings anymore.
I balanced it by planning out the epochs of it, from the screaming fights of the early years, to the cold silence after they lost the baby, to the near-decade the Colonel spent abroad to get out of the house, to the final handful of years they basically lived around one another. But it really came down to having to adjust my mindset to imagine what people without a modern mentality and its bias toward openness and honesty about one’s feelings, particularly to one’s partner. These are Victorian people; they don’t always have the language and understanding to even grasp their own feelings, much less express them, and they are bound by proprieties that we may not be. These things combine to make it so honest communication might have been literally impossible, as they would not have known how to say these things to each other.
This scene is meant to sort of typify what their life together would have looked like. I think this was a fairly representative moment of at least the early few years of their marriage, before things grew so icy they didn’t even fight anymore. It’s heavier and darker than what I want the main shows to focus on; this will CERTAINLY never feature in any of them. But I believe it’s an important thing to understand when trying to grasp why Mrs. Hawking’s marriage was so damaging to her.
This was tough to write. And being a slightly squeamish writer, I’m always just a little embarrassed to create anything of this nature. But I think this is a meaningful piece. I think it’s emotionally honest— and true to the larger narrative I’ve created.
Content note for spousal violence and sexual assault.
Mustn’t Fight
From Mrs. Hawking
By Phoebe Roberts
CAPTAIN REGINALD PRESCOTT HAWKING, a decorated British soldier, early thirties
MRS. VICTORIA HAWKING, his wife, early twenties
Bombay, India, 1861
~~~
(REGINALD chases VICTORIA into the dressing room.)
REGINALD:
I don’t understand why you’re doing this. It’s one evening.
VICTORIA:
Because I don’t want to go. I hate all those people.
REGINALD:
They’ve never done anything to you.
VICTORIA:
I can’t bear any of them. I won’t go.
REGINALD:
We don’t have a choice. They’re expecting us. It’s not done.
VICTORIA:
Blast what’s done!
REGINALD:
What can I do? What can I do, to ease this for you?
VICTORIA:
Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.
REGINALD:
Then what do you want, Victoria?
VICTORIA:
To be left alone. For God’s sake, just to be left alone.
REGINALD:
We have responsibilities. We can’t always do as we like.
VICTORIA:
It seems I never can!
REGINALD:
Be reasonable, Victoria! You can’t just snub them all! Do you know what they’ll think?
VICTORIA:
They can all go hang!
REGINALD:
How can you say such a thing? Some of them have been very good friends to us.
VICTORIA:
To you, not me.
REGINALD:
Do you— do you think that they don’t like you? What can I say to put your mind at ease?
VICTORIA:
Do you think I care about that? That’s nothing to me.
REGINALD:
So what do you want me to do?
VICTORIA:
I told you— nothing.
REGINALD:
Then, my God, I don’t understand what you want.
VICTORIA:
Because you can’t even hear me!
REGINALD:
Because you make no sense!
(VICTORIA backhands him. He turns his head back and sets his jaw.)
REGINALD:
Now, see here.
(She hits him again. He breathes deep.)
REGINALD:
Enough of this.
VICTORIA:
Oh? And what are you going to do about it?
REGINALD:
I won’t do this, Victoria.
VICTORIA:
Then what will you do? Lock me in a room like my father? I wish you would!
REGINALD:
You are being quite ridiculous. You see that, don’t you?
VICTORIA:
Don’t talk to me that way! You sound just like him!
REGINALD:
I won’t have this row with you.
VICTORIA:
I loathe you. Do you know that? I wish I’d never met you!
REGINALD:
You sound like a child.
VICTORIA:
Why do you do this to me?
REGINALD:
Do what to you?
VICTORIA:
This! All this!
REGINALD:
I— I want what’s best for you. Because I love you.
(She strikes out to hit him again, but he catches her hand.)
VICTORIA:
No.
REGINALD:
I love you, Victoria.
(She struggles against him but he pulls her close and starts kissing her neck.)
VICTORIA:
You’re not listening to me.
REGINALD:
I won’t fight, darling. I won’t be angry.
(He pushes her down onto the chaise. She struggles beneath him, but he hikes her skirt and unbuckles his belt.)
VICTORIA:
Reginald!
REGINALD:
Shhhh. It’s all right, darling. It’s all right.
(VICTORIA stops struggling and goes still, turning her face away. She stares out stonily as he thrusts into her.)
REGINALD:
Because I love you. I love the shape of you, all your hard edges. I love the fire inside you. I love the fierce creature that you are. I love you, Victoria. You’re the light of my eyes, the pulse in my veins. No matter what, it’s all right, because I love you.
(He finishes with a gasp and collapses into her. He breathes heavily for a moment, then kisses her forehead.)
REGINALD:
We mustn’t fight. We’re one in this, you and I.
(He climbs off of her and buckles his belt. He kneels besides the chaise and takes her hand. VICTORIA turns her head back to stare at him.)
REGINALD:
It’s all right. We must forgive one another if we don’t always get it right.
(He stands as VICTORIA sits up on the chaise.)
REGINALD:
Come now. I’ll send for Lydia for you. We must make sure we’re ready soon.
(He exits, leaving VICTORIA alone to scowl and sink her fingers into the cushions on the couch.)
10/21/17
Normally when I write these little speculative scenelets from not-immediately-relevant points in the Hawking timeline, I post them to my journal with some musing about the story and how the piece at hand fits in. Often they are from points that will never actually feature in the main shows, but are still canonically part of the story and inform the events in the plays we do see.
This scene definitely count as an example, however, it stands apart from every other one I’ve ever written.
As I mentioned, I try to keep the Hawking shows more or less family friendly, without pulling punches with the drama. You could maybe debate me on that— Elena Zakharova is a drug addict, Christopher Austerlitz is understood to have sexually assaulted a maid —but we avoid vulgarity, excessive darkness, or much in the way of sexuality. Even when something like that is present, it tends to be alluded to obliquely— Justin and Miss Sherba, for example, are definitely have meant to have had sex at some point during the course of part three, but we let that fact remain an unspoken implication. I’ve joked that with an asexual protagonist and the rest of the cast made up mostly of Victorian prudes and goody-goodies, it’s easy to get away with nobody ever wanting to talk about sex!
But something that has always been part of the fabric of the story has been that Mrs. Hawking’s marriage to the Colonel involved rape. Neither of them exactly saw it this way— he couldn’t conceive of a woman enthusiastically consenting to sex, she filed it under “all the reasons marriage was abhorrent to me” —but any and all sexual activity between them is what we the modern audience would understand to be assault. This underlies a lot of Mrs. Hawking’s anger and antipathy at her husband and her position in life— but we have never made direct reference to it.
The daily reality of what their marriage must have been like took me literally years to conceive of. I kept tripping over the fact that they were unhappily bound together for nineteen years, and yet never had an honest conversation about their problems with each other. I knew such things did happen, so I know it wasn’t impossible, but it was hard to imagine that frank truth would never come out somehow— even if only in a moment where nerves were frayed so thin the parties involved couldn’t hold back their feelings anymore.
I balanced it by planning out the epochs of it, from the screaming fights of the early years, to the cold silence after they lost the baby, to the near-decade the Colonel spent abroad to get out of the house, to the final handful of years they basically lived around one another. But it really came down to having to adjust my mindset to imagine what people without a modern mentality and its bias toward openness and honesty about one’s feelings, particularly to one’s partner. These are Victorian people; they don’t always have the language and understanding to even grasp their own feelings, much less express them, and they are bound by proprieties that we may not be. These things combine to make it so honest communication might have been literally impossible, as they would not have known how to say these things to each other.
This scene is meant to sort of typify what their life together would have looked like. I think this was a fairly representative moment of at least the early few years of their marriage, before things grew so icy they didn’t even fight anymore. It’s heavier and darker than what I want the main shows to focus on; this will CERTAINLY never feature in any of them. But I believe it’s an important thing to understand when trying to grasp why Mrs. Hawking’s marriage was so damaging to her.
This was tough to write. And being a slightly squeamish writer, I’m always just a little embarrassed to create anything of this nature. But I think this is a meaningful piece. I think it’s emotionally honest— and true to the larger narrative I’ve created.
Content note for spousal violence and sexual assault.
Mustn’t Fight
From Mrs. Hawking
By Phoebe Roberts
CAPTAIN REGINALD PRESCOTT HAWKING, a decorated British soldier, early thirties
MRS. VICTORIA HAWKING, his wife, early twenties
Bombay, India, 1861
~~~
(REGINALD chases VICTORIA into the dressing room.)
REGINALD:
I don’t understand why you’re doing this. It’s one evening.
VICTORIA:
Because I don’t want to go. I hate all those people.
REGINALD:
They’ve never done anything to you.
VICTORIA:
I can’t bear any of them. I won’t go.
REGINALD:
We don’t have a choice. They’re expecting us. It’s not done.
VICTORIA:
Blast what’s done!
REGINALD:
What can I do? What can I do, to ease this for you?
VICTORIA:
Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.
REGINALD:
Then what do you want, Victoria?
VICTORIA:
To be left alone. For God’s sake, just to be left alone.
REGINALD:
We have responsibilities. We can’t always do as we like.
VICTORIA:
It seems I never can!
REGINALD:
Be reasonable, Victoria! You can’t just snub them all! Do you know what they’ll think?
VICTORIA:
They can all go hang!
REGINALD:
How can you say such a thing? Some of them have been very good friends to us.
VICTORIA:
To you, not me.
REGINALD:
Do you— do you think that they don’t like you? What can I say to put your mind at ease?
VICTORIA:
Do you think I care about that? That’s nothing to me.
REGINALD:
So what do you want me to do?
VICTORIA:
I told you— nothing.
REGINALD:
Then, my God, I don’t understand what you want.
VICTORIA:
Because you can’t even hear me!
REGINALD:
Because you make no sense!
(VICTORIA backhands him. He turns his head back and sets his jaw.)
REGINALD:
Now, see here.
(She hits him again. He breathes deep.)
REGINALD:
Enough of this.
VICTORIA:
Oh? And what are you going to do about it?
REGINALD:
I won’t do this, Victoria.
VICTORIA:
Then what will you do? Lock me in a room like my father? I wish you would!
REGINALD:
You are being quite ridiculous. You see that, don’t you?
VICTORIA:
Don’t talk to me that way! You sound just like him!
REGINALD:
I won’t have this row with you.
VICTORIA:
I loathe you. Do you know that? I wish I’d never met you!
REGINALD:
You sound like a child.
VICTORIA:
Why do you do this to me?
REGINALD:
Do what to you?
VICTORIA:
This! All this!
REGINALD:
I— I want what’s best for you. Because I love you.
(She strikes out to hit him again, but he catches her hand.)
VICTORIA:
No.
REGINALD:
I love you, Victoria.
(She struggles against him but he pulls her close and starts kissing her neck.)
VICTORIA:
You’re not listening to me.
REGINALD:
I won’t fight, darling. I won’t be angry.
(He pushes her down onto the chaise. She struggles beneath him, but he hikes her skirt and unbuckles his belt.)
VICTORIA:
Reginald!
REGINALD:
Shhhh. It’s all right, darling. It’s all right.
(VICTORIA stops struggling and goes still, turning her face away. She stares out stonily as he thrusts into her.)
REGINALD:
Because I love you. I love the shape of you, all your hard edges. I love the fire inside you. I love the fierce creature that you are. I love you, Victoria. You’re the light of my eyes, the pulse in my veins. No matter what, it’s all right, because I love you.
(He finishes with a gasp and collapses into her. He breathes heavily for a moment, then kisses her forehead.)
REGINALD:
We mustn’t fight. We’re one in this, you and I.
(He climbs off of her and buckles his belt. He kneels besides the chaise and takes her hand. VICTORIA turns her head back to stare at him.)
REGINALD:
It’s all right. We must forgive one another if we don’t always get it right.
(He stands as VICTORIA sits up on the chaise.)
REGINALD:
Come now. I’ll send for Lydia for you. We must make sure we’re ready soon.
(He exits, leaving VICTORIA alone to scowl and sink her fingers into the cushions on the couch.)
10/21/17
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