Action Refraction

Ch-ch-ch-ch Changelings

"For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king.
She never had so sweet a changeling."
(Puck, A Midsummer Night's Dream, I.ii)

"His mother was a votaress of my order,
And in the spicèd Indian air by night
Full often hath she gossiped by my side...
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die.
And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him."
(Titania, II.i)

So here's a perspective shift. In Puck's account of how Titania got her changeling boy, the child was "stolen from an Indian king." But several scenes later, Titania refuses Oberon's demand that she give him the boy, citing an obligation to his late mother, and leaving his father out of the picture entirely.

In Titania's mind, the fact that the child still has one living parent seems irrelevant. Maybe, like some people in our culture to this day, she believes that children need a mother (even a fairy godmother) more than they need a father. Maybe she longs for a child of her own, but is unable to have one. Or maybe she just thought the kid was cute, and exercised her magical powers to grab what she wanted. She certainly does so later in the play after falling in love with Bottom: "Out of this wood do not desire to go. Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no." And Puck's line, "She never had so sweet a changeling," suggests that this isn't her first baby-snatching rodeo, so who knows if her tale of the votaress mother is even true, or simply a cover story?

It's up to the production to flesh out the changeling's backstory, since Shakespeare's text doesn't tell us how old he is, or even require that the character appear onstage. And what happens to the boy after Oberon wins the battle, after the end of the play? Again, it's left to our imagination.

I'm most intrigued by the fact that nobody seems to care how the Indian king feels about losing his son, not even fellow king "jealous Oberon", who "would have the child knight of his train, to trace the forests wild." The sense seems to be that either Titania is right to take in a motherless child, or that she was right but now the boy is of an age where he should leave the maternal realm and join Oberon and the boy-fairy camp, or else that morality is irrelevant, because fairy royalty are capricious and all-powerful, and are known for simply taking what they want whether it's right or not.

Wikipedia explains the term "changeling" as:

"the offspring of a fairy, troll, elf or other legendary creature that has been secretly left in the place of a human child. Sometimes the term is also used to refer to the child who was taken. The apparent changeling could also be a stock or fetch, an enchanted piece of wood that would soon appear to grow sick and die. The theme of the swapped child is common among medieval literature and reflects concern over infants afflicted by as-then unknown diseases, disorders, or mental retardation."

In Shakespeare's play, there's no mention of a fairy or "stock" having been left in the changeling boy's place when he was abducted, though that is certainly possible.

D. L. Ashliman wrote a fascinating essay on changelings that elaborates on the practical benefits of this folk belief:

"Changeling folklore not only explained why some children fail to grow and develop normally and helped to justify the extreme actions that may have been taken (whether in fact or only in fantasy) to free the parents or society from the burden of caring for handicapped children, it also provided protective measures against demonic exchange.

"The most frequently mentioned preventative practice, and one that undoubtedly evolved because of its positive consequences, was the insistence that the newborn infant be watched very carefully until certain danger periods had passed. 'Women who have recently been delivered may not go to sleep until someone is watching over the child. Mothers who are overcome by sleep often have changelings laid in their cradles,' recorded Jacob Grimm in his German Mythology.... The fact that the mother (or her substitute) was expected to keep the baby close at hand for at least six weeks helped to protect it from environmental dangers, aided the child's psychological development, and contributed significantly to family cohesiveness.

"An added benefit of the six weeks of close watching was the relief thus granted to the mother from some of her most strenuous duties, thus aiding her recovery from pregnancy and delivery."

On the downside, Carole G. Silver's Strange and Secret Peoples "cites a sickeningly long list of crimes related to claims that the victim was believed to be a changeling." Ostensibly, the fairies will not want one of their kind to suffer, and will replace the changeling with the original. Whether fairies ever actually saved a "changeling" child left out in the woods, or held on a shovel over a fire, has not been scientifically verified.

Another, unrelated, crime the changeling story evokes is the modern phenomenon of adoption of international "orphans" who turn out to have parents after all. The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University hosts a website on serious irregularities in international adoption ("The Lie We Love", "The Baby Business"), with pages on specific countries such as India.

David M. Smolin of the Cumberland Law School at Samford University has written numerous articles on the subject after he and his wife adopted two girls from India who subsequently turned out not to have been orphans at all. His writings

"have focused particularly on baby-buying, childstealing, and similar abuses within the intercountry adoption system, under the rubric of 'child laundering.' Child laundering involves obtaining children illicitly through force, fraud, or financial inducement; providing false paperwork which identifies such illicitly obtained children as legally abandoned or relinquished 'orphans'; and offering or placing these so-called 'orphans' for adoption. The motivation for child laundering is usually financial, although for some there is a significant ideological component based on an overriding desire to save children."

According to Smolin,

"India’s creation of a Hague [Convention]-­like system even before the creation of the treaty creates a test case for the hope that the Convention will succeed in its stated objective to 'prevent the abduction, the sale of, or traffic in children.' Unfortunately, intercountry adoption from India presents a cautionary tale. Significant adoption scandals in Andhra Pradesh, India, have led to the shutdown of adoption from that Indian state since 2001....

"Receiving nations seem to only seriously investigate the unusual cases where their own nationals were knowingly involved in intentional misconduct. Thus, the most common situations, where the institutions and agencies in receiving nations are merely negligent, while the intentional misconduct is done by foreign facilitators, intermediaries, and orphanages, often escape real investigation by receiving nations. Further, even when investigations occur, receiving nations sometimes have a tendency to simply accept on faith the sometimes faulty assurances of authorities in sending nations. Sadly, in most child laundering cases the affected persons, including the original families, children, and adoptive parents, are left to largely fend for themselves...."

To my mind, the changeling boy's father is as important a part of this play as the child himself.

Posted by Alison Humphrey at August 21, 2012 05:37 PM