THG Reread: A ramble about Rory, tesserae, and the Hawthornes in general
Disclaimer: Iāve never taken part in any official THG reread/discussion and I essentially read the book in isolation, so anything I say in these posts may well have been discussed and dismissed years ago.
I know weāre not quite on Catching Fire at present but the quote pictured above fits neatly into something I wanted to remark on in Ch 1 of THG, and this way I can preempt the forthcoming discussion aboutĀ something that drives me crazy: Rory Hawthorneās age.
(Minor rant may ensue. Apologies in advance.)
Iāve had fandom folk tell me that Rory and Prim have the same age gap as Gale and Katniss, and my best guess is that this comes from the THG Wiki (screenshot above). To be fair, we get almost no details about Galeās family in THG and then CF kicks off and BOOM, they have names and ages. In particular, we find out that Rory is twelve at the time of the Victory Tour (i.e., midway between the 74th and 75th Games but before January, because Posy is still four and sheāll turn five shortly after the anniversary of the mine explosion).
Unpopular opinion: I firmly believe that Rory is - at the very least - a few months younger than Prim, in part because of the age reference in CF and also because of the complete lack of mention of Rory in the reaping lead-up of THG. If Rory is twelve sixish months after the reaping, then either the 74th Games was his first reaping (and heās going to turn 13 in the next sixish months, making him the same age as Prim) or the 75th/Quarter Quell was supposed to be his first reaping. And while I know that this is effectively argument from ignorance, I have a hard time believing that the 74th was Roryās first reaping when there wasnāt one speck of mention, not in all that tesserae narrative from Katniss nor at any point from Gale. In fact, Galeās pretty darned focused on Katniss come reaping day, and thereās no shared anxiety or anger about their siblings going into the pool for the first time. Yes, in CF Katniss imagines Gale volunteering for Rory as she did for Prim (in that awful post-whipping Galeniss time We Do Not Talk About), but based on the absence of references to Rory in the reaping from THG, I donāt believe he was eligible for those Games.
Speaking of the Hawthorne children: while working on Six Months to Strawberry Time (my parallel Gadge fic to WtM), my interest was piqued by the gaps in the lineup. At the time of that age reference from CF, Gale is somewhere between 18-19, Rory is 12, Vick is 10, and Posy is 4. Were there miscarriages/stillbirths/children who simply didnāt survive during those 6-7 years between Gale and Rory (prime childbearing years for Hazelle, one imagines) and the 5-6 years between Vick and Posy? (For that matter, was Posy a longed-for girl after a line-up of boys - or a surprise pregnancy?) I think itās likely there were/were supposed to be more Hawthorne children (in fact, I might have a related headcanon simmering...), but as in all of this speculation, I could be entirely wrong.Ā
Further: are the Hawthornes a good representative sample of a Seam family, with children born over 14-15 years (resulting in TWENTY reapings for Hazelle to endure, if my math is correct, with another child going into the bowl right around the time their predecessor ages out), and does this say something about family planning and/or birth control in Twelve - or the lack thereof? (I suspect that fertility awareness practices like cervical mucus checks were likely a part of the process - not foolproof, of course, but the price is right, and itās a method accessible to the population with a little education from the local apothecary.)Ā
And hereās something I find particularly interesting: Gale took tesserae for every member of his family when he was twelve, at which point his father was still alive and Posy hadnāt yet been born. Now, Katniss points out that her mother receivedĀ āa small amount of money as compensation for [Mr. Everdeenās] death, enough to cover one month of grieving at which time [Mrs. Everdeen] would be expected to get a job,ā and presumably the same was true for Hazelle, whoĀ āwas out hunting the streets for workāĀ āless than a week after she gave birthā (a subject for a future post!).Ā So Iām wondering: just how much did a miner earn, and was it unusual for a Seam wife to work outside the home, unless her husband had died? (I know the presence of too-small-for-school children would certainly be a factor, as it was with baby Posy.) With Katniss, tesserae was a matter of survival after her father died, especially as her mother wasnāt bringing in any income, but Gale signed up for tesserae as soon as he was eligible, and his family was only one child larger than the Everdeensā (and his father was still alive and working). Would Hazelle have been out working if not for Vick (who wouldāve been somewhere around 3-4 at the time of Galeās first reaping) and thatās why they needed the resource stream of tesserae? And do you think Katniss would have signed up for tesserae at twelve if her father was still alive, or were the Everdeens minutely better off than the Hawthornes in some way (ex. Mrs. Everdeenās apothecary business)?
