A rather wonderful new play at the National Theatre, The Welkin, examines the ostensibly straightforward question of a woman sentenced to death for murder who claims to be pregnant - which would mean that her sentence is commuted to transportation. A jury of 12 women is then empanelled to make the decision about whether she is indeed with child or is seeking to evade the gallows through a ruse.
The piece brings together Enlightenment rationality, traditional medicine and midwifery, communal bonds and jealousies, class dynamics, an impersonal judicial system focused on property and authority, and the fearful power of a ravening mob - all mediated via the female body.
The central focus might be taken as the relative importance of facts and feelings in forming judgements and the baggage that each individual brings which influences the question that they think they are answering. Is it a simple factual question or a wider one about motive and character? Moreover all of this is set in 1759 at the very point at which the British Empire is set to expand exponentially with baleful consequences for the future.
So absolutely no contemporary parallels here then. Whatsoever.
However, into this otherwise quite time specific piece, several anachronisms are inserted. In particular at one point the defendant mentions an aeroplane.
So, just what is the point of the anachronism? Why, so to speak, is this plane being flown?
Here are four theories.
1. Whilst the play has a very specific historical and cultural context, the themes are ones that are directly relevant today. The use of anachronism is therefore just a way of nudging us to consider the universality of the issues.
2. Given that the contemporary legal system would dispense rapid and to our eyes largely capricious judgement trusting rather more to the welkin (the firmament) is an understandable reaction and there are, as the poet says, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. The return of Halley's Comet being one of them. So why not another flying machine?
3. There is a parallel with the way that the defendant is portrayed - unapologetic and unafraid to say the unsayable even when it would jar unsympathetically with most of her listeners. The anachronism is therefore one more element of her unintelligibility to her interlocutors, her refusal to be bound by norms and her free thinking ways (always a cause of mistrust, particularly to those in authority). Indeed there are still expectations about how to appear in court and aggressive and hard as opposed to meek and soft doesn’t tend to go down well.
4. Maybe her demon lover (or the devil) has bewitched her and since he would clearly not be bound by time the aeroplane shows her magical and malign relationships which have allowed one or both of them to time travel and indeed witness an aeroplane.
I looked up the etymology of 'aeroplane'. It means, broadly, wandering in the air.
At that point a few things become apparent. Wandering in the air would make complete sense of the defendant's character: she has been brutalised since birth. Her response - rough manners, free thinking, a ready recourse to verbal and physical violence and a personal life which is at one remove from contemporary norms makes a lot of sense. She is indeed a devil.
Wandering in the firmament may be far preferable to living in mid-18th century East Anglia. The devil and the witch are supposed to fly. But an ordinary woman for whom transportation feels a better life outcome than most others that are available might understandably wish to do so too.
As I was finishing this piece a headline flashed up: "Pregnant women may be blocked from visiting the United States if they are believed to be travelling to give birth".
So even the aeroplane doesn't help these days.
