A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Our thanks go to all research participants who have contributed to this book through both our research studies. We would also like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for providing the grant to enable Judith Baxter to carry out fascinating research on the language of leaders.
CHAPTER 1
Women Leaders in the Middle East and the West
Abstract This chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book by presenting its purpose, theoretical framework, the cultural backgrounds to the UK and Bahraini studies, and a review of research literature on women in leadership that has been conducted in those two contexts. Drawing on three Bahraini and three UK case studies of women business leaders, the aim of this book is to explore the ways in which senior women perform leadership within their communities of practice, and to produce insights on the relationship between gender and leadership language within Bahraini and UK cultural contexts.
Keywords Leadership • Gender • Communities of practice • Identity • Discourses • Middle East
INTRODUCTION
Can you guess which of the two senior leadership meetings below is held by a Western European company based in central London, UK, and which is held by a Bahraini company in the Middle East? The following extracts are both taken from the very start of the meeting, each of which was conducted in English and chaired by the leader of the management team:
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 J. Baxter, H. Al A’ali, Speaking as Women Leaders, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-50621-4_1
1
2 J. BAXTER AND H. AL A’ALI
Meeting 1: Designing publicity
(C=Chair/leader; M=team member; B=team member. There is small talk between members of the meeting for around 5 minutes)
1 C: I think er it’s time to start (.) and er everybody↑ (eye contact with
2 all the participants to signal the beginning of the meeting) ah (.) I
3 did the er follow-up in the progress er meeting (.) in our er last
4 meeting we left with er certain action items (.) and I think the
5 designs is one of them (.) er have you looked at it from the PR
6 side↑?
7 M: yeah we have a few comments
8 C: can we see them from [er
9 M: [you have comments on the er drawings↑
10 C: yes Mona can we see er (Mona hands her the drawings)(3) now what is
11 this for↑ (.) can we take them one by one↑
12B: yeah let’s take the invitation first
Meeting 2: Launching the newsletter
(C=Chair/leader; A=team member; B=team member. There is small talk between members of the meeting for around 5 minutes)
1 C: okay (.) shall we start? um let’s at the end of each session do what
2 we said in terms of saying what communications are out to the rest of
3 the company in terms of through the line (.) what goes into the
4 newsletter (.)
5 anything else we said? what was the third one? newsletter? through
6 the line?
7 A: team meetings wasn’t it?
8 C: yeah (.) that’s through the line (.)=
9 B: =through the line
10 C: I thought there was a third? (2) I can’t remember (.) we’ll see as we
11 go anyway and phones on silent (.)=
12 A: =er if you’ve got them =
13 C: =if you’ve
14 got them
We imagine you might have some difficulty in deciding which meeting is based in a Bahraini company and which in a UK company. Furthermore, if you were to make a guess at the gender identity of the Chair, we would wager that their gender is not obviously signified by the language used in the extracts. This is not simply because the extracts are too brief to provide sufficient linguistic evidence; sociolinguists can learn a great deal about the identities of speakers from tiny ‘contextualisation cues’ (Gumperz 1982) supplied in short transcripts of interactional data. More likely, the
reason is that senior meetings in international companies increasingly follow generic patterns. In all probability, you could walk into a leadership meeting anywhere in the world and be able to follow their conventions and processes (Handford 2010). Such conventions often override aspects of cultural and gender identity, and yet such features may be subtly indicated. By conducting a brief analysis of the contextualisation cues in the two extracts, we can see that, in many ways, the interactions of participants are quite similar.
Both meetings begin with the female Chair using a metapragmatic signal to her team to start the meeting. In Meeting 1, the Bahraini leader follows her comment ‘it’s time to start’ with eye contact and use of the inclusive pronoun ‘everybody’. In Meeting 2, the UK leader uses the discourse marker ‘okay’ and follows this with a question to gain people’s attention. In Meeting 1, the Bahraini leader supplies some contextual information to locate the purpose of the meeting, while in Meeting 2, the UK leader also helps to orientate her team by saying what she expects the team to achieve. Both leaders set the scene in the space of a minute or so before they use questions to elicit responses from team members. After four or five lines, both leaders then open up discussion to the floor by means of a question. In the first case, the Bahraini leader issues a request and is quickly corrected by a colleague for not noting the answer to the request as it has already been provided to her on the drawings. In the second case, the UK leader has to correct one of her colleagues for not understanding the point behind her request. In both extracts, there are indications that the interaction is driven by the leader but that discussion is open, democratic and purposeful. Overall, each leader combines subtle interactive techniques with a strong sense of business purpose. In both cases, the leader opens their meeting apparently quite effortlessly, concealing the degree of skill it can take to get a team of people who are engaging in small talk to focus instantly on the task in hand (Holmes and Stubbe 2003).
Despite the subtle, generic skills shown by both leaders above, senior management positions for women remain the exception rather than the rule around the world. However, it might be reasonably supposed that certain countries, cultures and institutions support the participation and career progression of senior women more than others. From a western perspective, it might seem that Middle Eastern women leaders face more challenges and barriers than their counterparts in Western Europe. Although women business leaders are in a relatively small minority in
both geographical regions, Western European women appear to be faring better than those in the Middle East. While in the UK, 18 % of the top 250 executive positions are currently occupied by women, this figure remains substantially less at 2.2 % in the Middle East (Vinnicombe et al. 2015). Furthermore, westerners might associate countries in the Middle East with more traditional views about gender, emanating from the fusion of religion with personal, professional and national constructs of identity (Kelly and Breslin 2010; Metcalfe 2007). Western European women benefit from a range of political, educational and economic legislation that, in principle, supports career opportunities for women. However, we will question such Eurocentric assumptions in our book. Sadaqi (2003) powerfully argues that western perspectives on Middle Eastern women are often stereotyped and that these women are in many ways socially heterogeneous in ways that are under-appreciated by western scholars.
In line with our linguistic analysis of the two meetings above, this book is premised on the constitutive power of leadership language: that is, leaders construct their sense of ‘who they are’ through the medium of language. Authors from both sociolinguistics (e.g. Holmes 2006; Mullany 2007; Schnurr 2009) and organisation studies (e.g. Alvesson and Karreman 2000; Clifton 2012; Cunliffe 2001; Fairhurst 2007) contend that language is a principal means of constructing people’s professional identities. From this perspective, it should be possible to learn whether or not language is gendered in leadership settings, and whether this might have professional and career implications for women. Feminist linguists of a ‘postmodern turn’ (Cameron 2005: 487) argue that ‘discourses’ (‘ways of seeing the world’; Sunderland 2004: 6) generate gendered expectations of how senior women and men should speak and interact, to which individuals often conform, but can resist. This ‘discursive’ or ‘poststructuralist’ perspective of leadership identity views language as providing sets of ‘resources’ or strategies. Accordingly, certain individuals may have greater access to these resources than others, depending on approved identity factors such as their age, gender, ethnicity, education, professional status, and so on (see p. 10 below).
In this book, we explore the experience of leadership as performed by six women in senior positions (henceforth, ‘senior women’) working in international companies based in two different parts of the world: Bahrain
and the United Kingdom (UK). We conducted two entirely separate research studies in our respective countries (Al A’ali in Bahrain; Baxter in the UK), yet our aims, theoretical framework and many elements of the research design and delivery were very similar. Given these parallels, we wish to discover what reciprocal insights might emerge from bringing our two studies together. Overall, we want to find out what leadership ‘looks and sounds like’ for women leaders in each setting, and how women use language to perform leadership roles with their management teams on a daily basis. More specifically, we wish to find out about the challenges and opportunities women experience during routine linguistic interactions with colleagues. To what extent is the use of language a barrier or an enabler within contexts such as senior management meetings? Ultimately such an investigation leads to the question of perceived ‘effectiveness’: if a woman leader is considered effective by her colleagues and the organisation, she is more likely to progress to increasingly senior positions. What constitutes an ‘effective leader’ in contexts where women are in the minority, and to what extent are such measures of effectiveness likely to be gendered? This interest in understanding what ‘effectiveness’ means in each context, is a question that neither of us had originally considered in our separate studies.
We argue that senior women in both Bahrain and the UK learn to utilise complex leadership practices that must be approved by their maledominated companies. These versions of leadership are ‘indexed’ by a range of conventional and individually driven linguistic acts that women perform to accomplish their roles successfully within their own cultural contexts (Ochs 1992: 341). We propose that senior women in both regions experience greater challenges than men do at a senior level within their organisations, and learn to devote extra ‘linguistic work’ (Baxter 2010: 101), which is often very subtle, to meet expectations of effective leadership. Women in both regions are venturing into the unknown, and potentially creating new and ground-breaking versions of leadership, albeit within differing sociocultural contexts.
In the following sections, we situate our research within the sociolinguistic field of gender, language and leadership, and use this as a basis for refining our research aims, key concepts, theoretical framework and plan of action for the book.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
We first review key concepts and theories related to the field of gender, language and leadership, and to which we regularly refer throughout this book: gender, leadership, culture, communities of practice (‘CofPs’); and a feminist poststructuralist theory of language and identity. This is followed by a review of research literature in the field as it pertains to the Middle East and to western/UK contexts.
Gender
Our understanding of gender is in line with the ‘discursive’ perspective described above, which views our identities as culturally and discursively constructed through speech and actions. In other words, we negotiate who we are and the impression we wish to create by means of a range of culturally approved ways of using language and ‘discourses’ (Foucault 1972). Rather than the essentialist view that an individual is defined by their biological/sociocultural status as a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’, a discursive perspective considers that gender categories are fluid and unstable, enacted through discourses and repeatedly performed (Butler 1990; Cameron 2005). Butler (1990: 33) claims that ‘“feminine” and “masculine” are not what we are, nor traits we have, but effects we produce by way of particular things we do’. She further argues that femininity and masculinity conform to a ‘rigid regulatory frame’ that constrains the ways in which gendered identities can be performed. For example, individuals identifying as men are inculcated into masculinity by means of discourses that endorse the routine repetition of speech and behaviour: for example, the convention of wearing a suit to work is a crucial way in which men in the western world learn to be high-status, professional men.
It could be argued that if gender scholars also continue to use terms like ‘men’ and ‘women’ while purportedly critiquing dominant gender relations, they are simply legitimising heteronormative conceptions that gender binaries are natural and unchanging. An alternative perspective is that these symbolically loaded terms are strategically necessary to enable a minority group (such as ‘women leaders’) to identify itself, re-appropriate the terms, create support networks, and address specific problems. The gender ‘problem’ addressed in this book is that leadership is still viewed as a distinctly masculine construct (e.g. Vinnicombe et al. 2015), which continues to define itself on the basis of a person’s presumed gender. Women
are still viewed as outsiders in the business world, who are perceived to aspire inappropriately to the privileges of a male-dominated business world (Kanter 1993). Thus, gender, as one distinguishing aspect of professional identity (Holmes 2007), is made strongly relevant as a topic of research within the context of business leadership in the workplace.
The terms ‘women’ and ‘men’ in this book are used in recognition that this is an area where individuals continue to experience discrimination around the world on the basis of their presumed gender category. Our use of the conventional terms does not deny that many individuals would not label themselves accordingly, and it is important that we remain reflexive about this throughout the book. We would far rather conceptualise gender as encompassing a spectrum of identities (including those individuals who identify as transgendered, gender-fluid, or as no gender category at all), and currently, we consider the English language and the cultural systems supporting it, to be woefully inadequate in answering this challenge. On this point, Holmes (2007: 60) convincingly suggests that any study of the linguistic reasons why women are under-represented at leadership level may well require the selection of a ‘strategic essentialist’ approach that temporarily puts ‘women back at the centre of language and gender research’. As two poststructuralist scholars who value highly pragmatic approaches to achieve transformation in social practices, we consider this to be our way forward in this book.
Leadership
Leadership is a complex and much contested construct that has been studied from myriad perspectives both in sociolinguistic and organisational fields. A strong theme across these fields is to gain a better understanding of what constitutes leadership within real professional contexts, and which factors have an influence on leadership performance and its perceived ‘effectiveness’ (Singh 2008). Early assumptions that leaders were born rather than made, sometimes known without irony as ‘the great man theory’, were replaced by theories about different leadership styles. One of the most influential (e.g. Burns 1978) modelled effective leadership on the distinction between ‘transactional’ and ‘transformational’ styles of leadership. A leader with a predominantly transactional style views job performance as a series of short-term tasks to be accomplished by their subordinates, which are exchanged for ‘rewards’ for productive behaviour (e.g. higher pay, promotion) or ‘punishment’ for inadequate
performance (e.g. being demoted, passed over for promotion). A leader with a predominantly ‘transformational style’ is one who can motivate and ‘transform’ their own and their colleagues’ self-interests into the interest of the group in order to achieve longer-term, institutional goals. This is achieved through enthusiasm, energy, engagement with others, sharing authority and information, and encouraging participation from everyone. The ideal leader, according to Burns (1978) is one who can harness and balance both the transactional and transformational aspects, although the latter style is seen as significantly more commensurate with higher-level, strategic leadership.
An alternative, discursive approach to conceptualising leadership, and the one adopted in this book, is in terms of the ways leaders use language to accomplish their business goals on a daily basis. Leadership can be viewed as almost literally ‘constructed’ through the step-by-step linguistic choices that speakers make as they perform leadership in the course of key decision-making forums such as meetings. It is a commonsense observation that senior people no longer need to demonstrate their leadership primarily through physical or material actions such as leading people into battle, or seizing territory or building cities (although this still happens). Instead, modern-day business leadership is primarily achieved linguistically, through the power of discourse. From a discursive perspective, we can therefore (re)define leadership as the types of verbal and non-verbal actions (‘discursive practices’) that leaders accomplish in their daily, professional interactions, often in interactive forums such as leadership meetings. If language, both verbal and non-verbal, is viewed as sets of resources that leaders potentially have at their disposal, these can achieve leadership actions such as persuading people to do things, solving problems, making decisions, allocating responsibilities to colleagues, and so on.
For the purpose of this book, we define the term ‘leadership’ flexibly: ranging from discursive practices that constitute a formal or informal role enacted by one person who may take some form of authority over others, to socially situated sets of linguistic resources that are distributed and collaboratively enacted by members of a leadership team (e.g. Kets de Fries et al. 2010). In other words, leadership can be ‘owned’ by a single person, or it can be shared out and negotiated among a team of people. In principle, a leader may be nominally the head of a team and the Chair of a meeting, but in practice, s/he may operate within a more egalitarian
structure whereby some or all members of the team share the responsibility for devising and executing institutional policies.
Culture and Communities of Practice (CofPs)
Informed by Holliday’s (2013) theory of ‘small cultures’, we will not be seeking to compare Western European and Middle Eastern contexts explicitly, which would lead to simplistic generalisations about national or regional cultures. While we consider cases of women leaders from a range of international companies based in the UK, they do not necessarily represent companies and practices across the Western European world. While we explore several cases of women leaders from an international company based in Bahrain, these cannot represent what happens across the Middle East, and so, we will try not to present the cases in this way. Instead, we focus on the particularity, detail and richness of each case by utilising the Community of Practice (CofP) model (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1998; Lave and Wenger 1991), which offers an alternative to making sweeping generalisations about cultural differences between leaders who live and work in different parts of the world. The CofP approach is compatible with the discursive view of gender above, because of its interest in actions and processes as the means for constructing communities, such as a leadership team that meets regularly and works closely together. Cameron (1996: 45) explains why the two approaches are theoretically compatible:
Throughout our lives we go on entering new communities of practice: we must constantly produce our gendered identities by performing what are taken to be the appropriate acts in the communities we belong to – or else challenge prevailing gender norms by refusing to perform those acts.
While the original concept is attributed to Lave and Wenger (1991) in relation to ‘situated learning’, the CofP concept has been adapted to gender and language studies by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1998: 464) amongst others, who define it as:
An aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavour. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations – in short, practices – emerge in the course of mutual endeavour.
By highlighting the individual cases of senior women as they work within team meetings, this study should make visible the heterogeneous ways in which they perform their leadership roles, identities and relationships within their distinctive CofPs. However, following McElhinny (2003: 30), we also view CofPs as ‘determined by their place within larger social structures’. We harness the concept to refer to the regular context of senior management meetings as ‘workplace interactions [which] tend to be strongly embedded in the business and social context of a particular work group, the community of practice, as well as in a wider socio-cultural or institutional order’ (Holmes 2006: 13). Just as Holliday (2013: 163) considers that in ‘small culture formation’, there are always ‘underlying universal cultural processes’ that reflect ‘larger cultural profiles’, so in this book we expect to detect traces of discourses indicative of the wider culture within our analyses of the interactions in leadership team meetings (see Chaps. 3, 4 and 5).
As authors, another cultural consideration is that the Western European research context with its greater weight of research literature should not overshadow the research we conduct in the non-traditional and underresearched context of Bahrain, which may therefore be of greater interest and priority to scholars of gender, language and leadership worldwide. In order to overcome this anticipated predilection, we have a number of strategies in place. First, review and discussion of the Bahraini studies are placed before the UK-based studies in this chapter and throughout the book. Second, alongside the collective authorial voice (‘we’), we also give space to the voice of each individual author as appropriate. So, while we use the first person plural authorial voice (‘we’) in Chaps. 1, 2, 5 and 6 to explain our joint approaches and insights, we use the first person singular voice (‘I’) in the two case study chapters (Al A’ali in Chap. 3; Baxter in Chap. 4). Furthermore, the review of Middle Eastern literature in Chap. 1 is written by Al A’ali, while the review of western literature is written by Baxter. Thus the voice, tone and style of these chapters and sections will differ. Finally, Al A’ali has written a special section on her research for the Preface.
A Feminist Poststructuralist Theory of Language and Identity
The core concepts in this book are brought together by our use of feminist poststructuralist (FP) theory to explore the relationship between gender, language and leadership identities. A poststructuralist perspective has
much in common with the discursive perspective on language and identity (see above) in that both posit that individuals are never outside discourses but always subject to them. A poststructuralist perspective owes much to the work of Foucault (1972) with his interest in the relationship between discourses and ‘subjectivity’. According to this, people’s identities are governed by a range of ‘subject positions’ (‘ways of being’), legitimised by institutions, and made available to them by means of the particular discourses operating within their local contexts. In the corporate world, if people do not conform to approved discourses in terms of how they speak, interact and behave, they may be stigmatised by others by means of linguistic strategies such as put-downs, sarcasm, abusive humour, or exclusion from a key conversation. There are numerous ways in which both verbal and non-verbal language can act through institutional discourses as a regulatory force to pressurise individuals to conform to socially approved patterns of speech and behaviour (Foucault 1972; Weedon 1997).
The regulatory effects of discourses upon identity construction can be observed within leadership contexts. Here, leaders and their colleagues are subject to a range of institutional discourses offering knowledge about approved ‘ways of being’ in terms of their speech, behaviour and interactions with colleagues and clients. These discourses are interwoven with broader societal discourses, embracing dominant perspectives on age, gender, ethnicity, class, status, and so forth. Many approved discourses in the workplace offer competing positions for a women leader in contexts where leadership is perceived as a masculine construct (Still 2006). On one hand, she may find herself positioned by a ‘discourse of equal opportunities’ (Mullany 2007: 203) as a female employee who has benefitted from ‘diversity’ policies, and therefore is seen as a company ‘success story’. On the other hand, she may find herself positioned by senior colleagues according to a discourse of ‘emotionality/irrationality’ as ‘acting emotionally’ in board meetings (Litosseliti 2006: 49). This may work to negate the positive effects of the ‘success story’ discourse. Of course, not all discourses are institutionally approved or regulated. Leaders may invoke resistant discourses – such as a discourse of ‘feminism’ (Mullany 2007: 203) – in reaction to dominant institutional value systems, giving individuals a space in which to retrieve some agency and empowerment. All subject positions can be invoked or resisted within different contexts by a woman leader herself or by her associates. Indeed, a leader may be required to shift between competing subject positions in order to resist particular positions or, more positively, to achieve her diverse goals.
In such contexts, individuals are shaped by the possibility of multiple (though not limitless) subject positions within and across different and competing discourses. Belsey (1980: 132) claims that individuals must be thought of as ‘unfixed, unsatisfied…. not a unity, not autonomous, but a process, perpetually in construction, perpetually contradictory, perpetually open to change’.
The connection between poststructuralist and feminist perspectives lies in their mutual interest in deconstructing systems of power that work to deny individuals a ‘voice’ because they are women (or men) within particular contexts (Weedon 1997). Modernist feminists are concerned with the continued inequalities and injustices that women experience as a social category, which they consider amounts to systemic discrimination (Mills and Mullany 2011). As an example of this, we could include the systemic reasons why women internationally fail to get promoted to senior posts, and receive lower pay for the same work (Vinnicombe et al. 2015). In contrast, feminist poststructuralists critique the idea that women across the globe uniformly experience discrimination on this or any other gender issue (Mills and Mullany 2011). In the case of women leaders, a few do succeed in reaching very senior levels, yet many others continue to face discrimination principally on the grounds of their gender. To investigate why many women continue to experience discrimination in both Middle Eastern and western contexts, we now review research literature that theorises the relationship between gender, language and leadership.
RESEARCH ON GENDER, LANGUAGE AND LEADERSHIP
Most gender and language research on women in leadership has been conducted from a Western European, North American or Australasian perspective (e.g. Baxter 2010; Cameron 2005; Ford 2007; Holmes and Stubbe 2003; Holmes 2006; Koller 2004; Mullany 2007; Schnurr 2009; Wodak 1997), with a more limited literature on gender, language and Middle Eastern leadership (e.g. Metcalfe 2007; Rice 1999; Robertson et al. 2002; Sadiqi 2003; Weir 2000). This is partly because women leaders remain a relatively rare presence in Middle Eastern workplaces, although there is some evidence that this is changing, as we review below. As the two contexts vary so much, we have diverged in our approach to reviewing the literature in our fields. In terms of the Middle East and Bahrain,
Al A’ali discusses the relationship between the broader Arabic context and its gender ideologies, and follows this with a review of the relatively scant literature on women in leadership. In terms of western research, Baxter discusses the sociolinguistic problem of the lack of women leaders; she follows this with a review of three principal ways in which the field of gender, language and leadership is currently theorised.
Middle Eastern and Bahraini Contexts
The Middle East is a vast region encompassing Arab and non-Arab countries; it is highly diverse in many aspects among which are the ethnic composition of the population, the history, politics, economic resources, educational systems, literacy rates, and rules and norms governing public and private domains (Metcalfe 2007). According to Marmenout (2009: 4) ‘[r]ather than being a monolithic bloc, the Middle East can be seen as a cultural, economic, political, and religious mosaic. Diverse historical backgrounds, successive foreign influences, the disparities in natural resources and demographics have created a set of widely differing societies and economies’.
The Arab world, a sub-region of the Middle East in which Arabic is the native language, comprises 22 countries. Islam is the dominant religion; since its inception, it has played a major role in the formation of Middle Eastern societies and has become the main generator of meaning and values among Muslims (Marmenout 2009). In the majority of Muslim countries, there is no divide between the state and religion; state laws are often derived from Sharia law. The latter are varied interpretations of the Quran and the Sunna (the practices of the Prophet Muhammed), and they constitute the legal framework of most of the Muslim countries, including commercial, administrative, and human rights laws. Nevertheless, there are many sects and factions in Muslim communities that hold different understandings and interpretations of Islamic teachings, and vary in the extent to which they apply Sharia rules (Metcalfe 2009).
Despite this variation, there are many homogenous aspects stemming from the shared language, religion, and cultural heritage of the Arab world. Anthropological research in the region (e.g. Kabasakal and Bodur 2002) has found that Arab-Islamic societies are prominently masculinist, collectivist, and hierarchical. As Barakat (2004) reports, the most notable characteristic of Arab-Islamic society lies in its patriarchal or
male-governed practices. Scholars such as Keddie (2006) argue that patriarchy is a product of Arabic traditions which have existed long before Islam, and which have been maintained by the highly tribal and hierarchical system in the Arab world.
In recent times, Arab Gulf women’s positioning in society has gradually changed following the discovery of oil and gas in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region in the early twentieth century, which resulted in an unprecedented economic boom in the area. Parallel to the changes in economy, Gulf states underwent a dramatic shift in all aspects of society especially in relation to gender dynamics. Their rise into wealth and a central role in the world’s economy have placed the Gulf states under scrutiny by the international community. Owing to international pressure, governments in the region have rewritten labour market policies to ensure the inclusion of women in the workplace; in countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, political leaders have placed pressure on corporations to put forward a plan for women’s empowerment. For example, in the highly traditional, patriarchal society of the UAE, the government’s cabinet issued a ruling in 2012 instructing that a minimum of one woman should be appointed a member on the board of all government and semi-government establishments (McKinsey & Company 2014). These changing practices have certainly affected the ways in which some aspects of leadership are practised in the country of Bahrain, the particular focus of the three case studies in this book.
Bahrain, a small country comprising a series of islands in the Arabian Gulf, is considered a highly progressive state with a mixture of cultures and religious backgrounds, and is proving to be an exemplar for the empowerment of women in the region (Al Gharaibeh 2011). Bahraini women were the first among the Arabian Gulf states to be given the right to vote, to have full participation in elections, and to be elected as Members of Parliament (MPs). According to the Economic Development Board’s 2013 report, there are 15 female MPs in the National Assembly. In the workplace, women account for 35 % of the overall labour force and 37 % in the financial sector. Furthermore, a recent study to index women’s advancement found that the socio-economic parity between men and women in Bahrain was the closest in the region. The research, which measured educational attainment, employment opportunities and political participation, concluded that Bahraini women were the most empowered in the Middle East (Chong 2013).
Fundamentally, the dominant Islamic gender system, along with traditional Arabic values and practices, constitute the two main value systems that work together to shape the dynamics of social structures in ArabIslamic societies, and co-construct and maintain women’s positioning in public and private domains. Middle Eastern research literature focuses on the fusion of personal, professional, religious and cultural values that have affected women’s positioning in these societies and the nature of their participation in the workplace. Islam, as the dominant religion in most (if not all) Middle Eastern countries, is seen as a system that governs the ‘wellbeing’ of men and women in society (Ali et al. 2003; Metcalfe 2007). It is arguably the main generator of meaning in all aspects of individuals’ lives – in both the public and private spheres.
In most Islamic states, laws (especially family laws) are derived from Islamic Sharia law – the set of rules based on the interpretation of divine laws as expressed in the Quran and by the Prophet (Vikør 1998). With regard to women, these rules are perceived by many to be ‘gender-biased’. Metcalfe (2007: 60) argues that ‘[t]he Quran, although it promotes equality, does emphasise difference’. In other words, while Islamic Sharia laws call for sameness of treatment for all people, regardless of their gender, they denote an essentialist notion of biological difference between men and women, who are believed to be naturally capable of playing distinct roles in society and carrying out different responsibilities. Thus, men and women are assigned different but complementary roles, rights and responsibilities in society (Metcalfe 2007). This view, which has long been the guiding principle behind the gender system in Middle Eastern societies, has created and shaped predominant traditions of gender difference which have worked to restrict women’s participation in the workplace (Al-Lail 1996). Throughout Islamic history, women have been traditionally associated with the private sphere of family (maintaining the household, raising children, etc.), and men with the public sphere of business (e.g. El-Rahmony 2002).
Yet perhaps the most influential factor and limitation in Middle Eastern women’s experiences is perceived to be the cultural element. Traditionally, Middle Eastern societies are, and have always been, patriarchal. The patriarchal system privileges males and elders, and therefore the most powerful individuals in society are often the eldest males (Barakat 2004). Another influential aspect of Middle Eastern societies lies in their collectivist nature. Individuals, especially women, are considered as inseparable from their families and communities (Joseph and Slyomovices 2001). In fact, notions
of personal autonomy and independence are often regarded negatively by traditional Arabs. In such collectively-oriented societies, the notion of loyalty is essential, as there is pressure to conform and sacrifice one’s personal wishes for the interest of the whole (that is, the family, community, organisation, etc. [Whitaker 2009]).
The opportunities and aspirations of Middle Eastern women vary tremendously according to the specific country with its political, historical, economic, and social dynamics (Al-Wer 2014). Scholars caution against making grand generalisations about women in such a diverse region as the Middle East. For example, the inhabitants of the GCC were Bedouins who have a long history as traditionally male-dominated communities and tribes (Abu Bakr 2002). Al-Lamky (2007: 49) describes countries in this region as ‘bastions of patriarchy and male chauvinism’ where leadership is strictly reserved to men, especially in the public sphere of politics and the workplace which, until just recently, has been a predominantly male arena.
The Bahraini government has also shown commitment to women’s rights by supporting a newly established women’s organisation, the Supreme Council for Women (SCW), which is currently under the leadership of Shaikha Sabeekha, King Hamid’s wife, and directly reports to him (Metcalfe 2011). Since its inception in 2001, the SCW has been working to empower Bahraini women in all aspects of their lives, stepping over the pre-existing boundaries that have worked for years to limit women in the Gulf region. Following the King’s national strategy for the advancement of women, SCW has initiated a number of empowerment programmes targeting women’s advancement in all fields, with a special focus on economic, political and family stability programmes; the latter is considered crucial, bearing in mind the cultural context (The Supreme Council for Women 2014). These programmes include creating equal opportunities, or what has become known as ‘gender mainstreaming’. The idea behind gender mainstreaming is to develop a society in which men and women are equally involved in all aspects of society, both public and private. This necessitates taking drastic measures to ensure women’s rights as equal partners, including reformulating development programmes, allocating funds, rewriting laws, etc. It is a collective effort which requires full support of authorities and governmental and non-governmental establishments, especially in the workplace domain.
Middle Eastern Research
Research on gender as a social construct in the Middle East is developing, and it primarily addresses issues related to gender equality and women’s rights, rather than language. Al-Wer (2014) notes that the few existing studies in the region adopt a ‘gender difference’ perspective based on the view of language as a polarised set of speech styles denoting men’s and women’s language (e.g. Coates 2004; Holmes 1990; Tannen 1990). When the gender -difference-based Islamic principle combines with a traditionally male-dominated, patriarchal, collectivist society, they construct women’s position as inferior and restrict their participation in the public spheres of politics and the workplace (Sabbagh 2005). Patriarchy, which is prevalent in all aspects of society, family, and organisations, obviously works to disempower women. Also, as a consequence of the prevailing gender difference discourse, women’s work in the Middle East is considered less necessary. Their ‘natural’ place is seen to be in the confines of their homes. When women work, they are perceived as less proficient, being placed out of their ‘natural’ element, and they are therefore marked as deviant (El-Rahmony 2002).
Despite some recent changes in the empowerment of women (see above), research in the Arabian Gulf region has found that the private domain of the family is still perceived as women’s main priority. The reform plans implemented by some countries have faced significant resistance to women’s equality (Freedom House 2010; Walby 2009). This is due to the prevailing patriarchal and traditional masculinist attitudes in Gulf countries, despite the ongoing debate on the interpretation of Islamic Sharia law with regard to women’s role in the public sphere (Ramadan 2009). As reported by Marmenout (2009), while the late Sheik Zayed of the United Arab Emirates was known for his support of women’s career progression to leadership, he also encouraged Emirati women to keep to roles which are more compatible with their ‘nature’. Therefore, even with the new labour market policies, women still hold positions which are deemed appropriate for their gender, such as in the education and health care sectors (Metcalfe et al. 2010).
In fact, research has found that women themselves are not challenging the Islamic gender regime (Gulf Centre for Strategic Studies 2004; Metcalfe 2011; Ramadan 2009). Many studies in the region call for
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from me. It would kill me—an’ I hev stood yer frien’ from the fust, even whenst they all made out ez ye war in league with Satan an’ gin over ter witchments. It would kill me, bodaciously! Don’t ye steal my one leetle lamb—thar’s plenty o’ gals in the worl’, ready an’ willin’—steal them—steal them! I want my darter ter live hyar with me, married an’ single,—ter live hyar with me. We ain’t got but the one lone, lorn leetle chile. Don’t—don’t”—The tears stood in all her dimples and she was speechless.
“Well, upon my word!” exclaimed Royce indignantly, but pausing, with that care which he bestowed upon all manner of possessions representing property, however meagre, to right the table and restore the imperiled crockery. “What sort of a frenzy is this, Mrs. Sims? Am I going to run away with your daughter? Have I shown any symptoms of decamping? Strikes me I have come to stay. I make a point of telling you—because I know that I am not here under your roof for any small profit to you, but as a matter of kindness and courtesy—of telling you all about it within the hour that I know it myself, and this is my reward!”
Poor Mrs. Sims, having sunk back in her chair, and the young man still remaining standing, could only look up at him with piteous contrition and anxious appeal.
“I hope Mr. Sims won’t give me any reason to contemplate elopement. Wasn’t he willing for his daughter to marry Owen Haines, they having been ‘keepin’ comp’ny,’ as I understand?” She silently nodded.
“My Lord! what have I come to!” Royce cried, lifting his hands, then letting them fall to his sides, as if calling on heaven and earth to witness the absurdity of the situation. “I think I might be considered at least as desirable a parti as that pious monkey praying for the power!” He gave that short laugh of his which so expressed ridicule, turned, secured the end of tallow candle placed for him on the shelf, and, lighting it, ascended the rickety stairs to the roof-room.
The suggestion of an elopement was not altogether unacceptable to him. If there should be any objection urged against him,—and he
could hardly restrain his mirth at the idea,—an elopement into some other retired cove in these regions of nowhere would result not infelicitously, affording still further disguise and an adequate reason for both him and his wife to be strangers in a strange land. “A runaway match would account for everything: so bring on your veto and welcome!” he said to himself.
Next morning, however, he found his disclosure to Tubal Cain Sims postponed. His host had left the house before dawn, and although he did not return for any of the three meals Mrs. Sims felt no uneasiness, it being a practice of Tubal Cain Sims’s, in order to assert his independence of petticoat government, to deal much in small mysteries about his affairs. All day—her equanimity restored by the half-jocular, half-affectionate raillery of Royce, who had roused himself to the realization that it was well to continue friends with her—she canvassed her husband’s errand, and guessed at the time of his probable return, and speculated upon his reasons for secrecy. Night did not bring him, and Royce, who had been now laughing at Mrs. Sims’s various theories, and now wearying of their futile inconsistencies, began to share her curiosity.
It was the merest curiosity. He did not dream that he was the chief factor in his host’s schemes and absence.
IX.
T C S still continued to harbor the theory that the juggler’s unexplained and lingering stay in Etowah Cove betokened that he sought immunity here from the consequences of crime, and that he was a fugitive from justice. In no other way could he interpret those strange words, “—But the one who lives—for his life!—his life! —his life!” cried out from troubled dreams in the silence of the dark midnight. Although this view had been shared by the lime-burners when first he had sought to enlist their prejudice, for he would fain rid his house of this ill-flavored association, of late their antagonism had flagged. Only Peter Knowles seemed to abide by their earlier impression, but Peter Knowles was now absorbed heart and soul in burning lime, as the time for its use was drawing near. Sims began to understand the luke-warmness of the others when he noted the interest of the young man in his beautiful daughter: they deemed him now merely a lover. This discovery had come but lately to Sims, for he was of a slow and plodding intelligence, and hard upon it followed the revelations he had overheard through the open door the previous evening. It was evidently an occasion for haste. While he loitered, this stranger, encouraged by the vicarious coquetry of Jane Ann Sims, might marry Euphemia; and when the juggler should be haled to the bar of justice for his crimes, the Cove would probably perceive in the dispensation only a judgment upon her parents for having made an idol of their own flesh and blood.
He realized, as many another man has done, that in extreme crises, involving risk, quondam friendships are but as broken reeds, and he was leaning stoutly only upon his own fealty to his own best interests, as he jogged along on his old brown mare, with her frisky colt at her heels, down the red clay roads of the cove, and through rugged mountain passes into still other coves, on his way to Colbury, the county town. His heart burned hot within him against Jane Ann Sims when he recalled her advice to the man to say nothing to him,
the head of the house and the father of the girl! She’d settle him! Would she, indeed? And he relished with a grim zest, as a sort of reparation, the fright she had suffered at the bare possibility of an elopement. Then this recollection, reacting on his own heart, set it all a-plunging, as he toiled on wearily in the hot sun, lest this disaster might chance during his absence, and he found himself leaning appealingly, forlornly, on the honor of the very man whom his mission was to ruin if he could. It was he who had refused to dispense with the father’s consent could it be obtained, and the perfidious Jane Ann Sims had counseled otherwise; he who had taken note of hospitality and courtesy,—much of which, in truth, had been mere seeming. More than once it almost gave Sims pause to reflect to whom he was indebted for any show of consideration. He had, however, but one daughter. This plea, he felt, might serve to excuse unfounded suspicion, and make righteous a breach of hospitality, and even justify cruelty. “One darter!” he often said to himself as he went along, all unaware that if he had had six his cares, his solicitude, his paternal affection, would have been meted out six-fold, so elastic is the heart to the strain upon its resources.
For this cause, despite his softened judgment toward the juggler, he did not flinch when he reached Colbury, and made his way across the “Square,” where every eye seemed to his anxious consciousness fixed upon him, as if attributing to him some nefarious designs on the liberty of an innocent man. But in reality the town folks of Colbury were far too sophisticated in their own esteem to accord the slightest note to an old codger from the mountains,—a region as remote to the majority, save now and then for a glimpse of an awe-stricken visitor from the backwoods, as the mythical island of Atlantis. For such explorations into the world at large as the ambitious citizens of Colbury adventured led them not into the scorned rural wilds comprehensively known to them as “’way up in the Cove.”
Tubal Cain Sims had been here but twice before: once when there was a political rally early after the war, and later as a witness for the defense in a case of murder. The crowded, confused, jostling political experience still thronged unintelligibly the retina of his mind’s eye, but order and quiet distinguished the glimpse vouchsafed him of
the workings of justice. He had evolved a great respect for judicial methods, and he felt something like a glow of pride to see the courthouse still standing so spacious and stately, as it seemed to him, within its inclosures, the surrounding grass green and new, and the oak boughs clustering above the columns of the porch. He was not aware how long he stood and gazed at it, his eyes alight, his cheek flushed. If the question had been raised, he would have known, of course, that the Juggernaut car of justice had held steadily on its inexorable way through all the years that had since intervened, and that his individual lack of a use for it had not banished it from the earth; but Tubal Cain was not a man of speculation, and it smote him with a sort of gratified surprise to see the court-house on its stanch stone foundations as it was in the days when he and it conserved so intimate a relation. There were two or three lawyers on the steps or passing in at the gate, but he eyed these members of the tribe askance. The value which he placed on counsel was such confidence as he might repose in a shooting-iron with a muzzle at both ends,—as liable to go off in one direction as in the other; and thus it was that, with a hitch of the reins, he reminded himself anew of his errand, and took his way down the declivity of a straggling little street, where presently the houses grew few and small, dwindling first to shabby tumble-down old cottages, then to sundry dilapidated blacksmith shops, beyond which stretched a rocky untenanted space, as if all habitation shrunk from neighboring the little jail which stood alone between the outer confines of the town and the creek.
Here also he came to a halt, looking at the surly building with recognizing eyes. And to it too these years had not been vacant. All the time of his absence, in the far-away liberties of the mountains, with the unshackled wind and the free clouds and the spontaneous growths of the earth out of its own untrammeled impulse, this grim place had been making its record of constraints, and captives, and limits, and locks, and longing bursting hearts, and baffled denied eyes, and yearning covetings of freedom, the bitterness of which perhaps no free creature can know. Surely, surely, these darkening elements of the moral atmosphere had turned the bricks to their dingy hue. The barred windows gave on vague black interiors. A cloud was in the air above, with now and then a mutter of thunder,
and the sullen jail lay in a shadow, and the water ran black in the green-fringed creek at the foot of the hill, while behind him at its summit, where the street intersected the open square, the sunlight fell in such golden suffusions that a clay-bank horse with his rider motionless against the blue sky beyond might have seemed an equestrian statue in bronze, commemorating the valiance of some bold cavalry leader. Tubal Cain wondered to see the jail so still and solitary; and where could be the man whom he had pictured sitting in all the luxury of possession on the front doorsteps, smoking his pipe?
This man of his imagination was the sheriff of the county, who did not avail himself of his privilege to appoint a jailer, but turned the keys himself and dwelt in his stronghold. He was of an over-exacting cast of mind. He could never believe a prisoner secure unless with his own hands he had drawn the bolts. On account of the great vogue attained by various crimes at this period, and the consequent overcrowding of the prisons throughout the State, a considerable number of captured moonshiners had been billeted on the Kildeer County jail while awaiting trial in the Federal Court, and by reason of this addition to his charge his vigilance was redoubled. In all the details of his office he carried the traits of a precisian, and was in some sort a thorn in the side of the more easy-going county officers with whom his official duties brought him into contact. Even the judge in his high estate on the bench was now and again nettled by the difficult questions of punctilio with which this servant of the court could contrive to invest some trifling matter, and was known to incline favorably to the salutary theory of rotation in office,—barring, of course, the judicial office. But the sheriff had three minie balls in him which he had collected on various battlefields in the South; and although he had fought on a side not altogether popular in this region, they counted for him at the polls in successive elections, without the formalities of statutory qualifications and with a wondrous power of reduplication in the number of resulting votes. He was reputed of an extraordinary valor on those hard-contested fields where he had found his bullets, but there were advanced occasionally caviling criticisms of his record on the score that, being incapable of originating a course of action, it never occurred to him
to run away when his command was ordered to advance, and that his bravery was simply the fixed stolidity of adhering to another man’s idea in default of any ideas of his own. In proof of this it was cited that when he was among a guard detailed to hold a gin-house full of cotton, and the enemy surprised the sentinel and captured the building, he alone stood like a stock with his rifle still at a serene “shoulder-arms,” where it was ordered to be, while his comrades undertook a deploying evolution of their own invention at a mad double-quick, without a word of command, showing the cleanest of nimble heels across the country But he was esteemed by these depreciators a lucky fool, for since the war, having an affinity for the office of sheriff, he had more than once been obliged to decline to make the race, and lie off a term or two, because of the law which will not permit the office to be held by the same person eight years without an interval. His fad for being in the direct line of the enemy’s fire had not resulted more disastrously than to give him some painful hospital experience; the balls had come to stay, and apparently the hard metal of his constitution served to assimilate them easily enough, for he was hale and hearty, and bade fair to live to a green old age, and they never made themselves heard of save at election times, when in effect they stuffed the ballot-box.
Having voted for him so often, and with that immense estimate of the value of a single ballot common to the backwoodsman little conversant with the power of numbers, Tubal Cain Sims felt a possessory claim on the sheriff as having made him such. He stood in dismay and doubt for a moment, gazing at the stout closed door that opened, when it opened at all, directly on the descending flight of steps, without any ceremonial porch or other introduction to entrance; then, after the manner of Etowah Cove, he lifted up his voice in a stentorian halloo and hailed the grim and silent house.
The sound seemed a spell to waken it into life. The echo of his shouts came back from the brick walls so promptly as to simulate two imperative voices rather than acoustic mimicry. Sudden pale faces showed at the bars, wearing the inquiring startled mien of alarm and surprise. The rattle of a chain heralded the approach of a great guard-dog dragging a block from around the corner. With his
big bull-like head lowered and his fangs showing between his elastic lips, he stood fiercely surveying the stranger for a short time; then— and Tubal Cain Sims could have more readily forgiven a frantic assault, for he had his pistol in his hand—the sagacious brute sat down abruptly, and continued to contemplate the visitor, but with a certain air of non-committal curiosity, evidently realizing that his vocation was not to deter people from getting into jail, but to prevent them from getting out. The pallid faces at the windows were laughing, despite the bars; and although nettled by the ridicule they expressed, Tubal Sims made bold to lift up his voice again: “Hello, Enott! Enott Blake! Lemme in! Lemme in, I say! Hello, Enott!”
The faces of the spectators were distended anew. At those windows where there was more than one, they were turned toward each other for the luxury of an exchange of winks and leers. When a face was alone it grinned jocular satisfaction to itself, and one man, with a large red and facetious countenance, now and again showed a lifted hand smiting an unseen leg, in the extremity of solitary joy. The dog, with his big head still lowered and his drooping lips a-quiver, gave a surly growl of displeasure, when the colt, having somewhat recovered from the fatigues of its long journey, began to frisk nimbly, and to curvet and caracole; the mare turned her head anxiously about as she watched these gyrations. Tubal Cain glared at the men at the windows. They had little to laugh at, doubtless, but why should they so gratuitously laugh at him? A tide of abashed mortification carried the blood to his head. His stanch self-respect had heretofore precluded the suspicion that he was ever the object of ridicule, and now his pride revolted at his plight; but since he could not get at his mockers and inflict condign punishment, naught remained but to manfully persist in his course as if they were not. He dismounted, threw the reins over a hitching-post, advanced through the gate of the narrow yard, his pistol in his hand for fear of the formidable dog, and ascended the steps with a resolute tread. He dealt a resounding double-knock with the butt end of his shooting-iron, crying as he did so upon Enott Blake as a “dad-burned buzzard” to unlock the door or he would break it down. Suddenly it opened, and by the force of his expectant blow he fell forward into the hall; then it closed behind him with a bang that shook the house.
“What does this mean?” exclaimed an irate voice. “Jeemes, take his weepon.”
And albeit Tubal Sims stoutly held on to it, a scientific crack on the knuckles administered by a dapper light-haired young man caused the stiff old fingers to relax and yield the pistol to the custody of the law.
Tubal Sims confronted a tall, spare, vigorous man about fifty-five years of age, with iron-gray hair worn with a certain straight lank effect and parted far on the side, a florid complexion, and a bright yellowish-gray eye which delivered the kind of glance popularly held to resemble an eagle’s. His look was very intent as he gazed in the twilight of the grimy hall at Tubal Cain Sims, who began to feel a quiver at the lack of recognition it expressed. To be sure, Tubal Sims knew that he had no acquaintance with the man, but somehow he had not counted on this total unresponsiveness to his claim upon the officer.
“I hev voted fur you-uns fur sher’ff nine time out’n ten,” he said, with the rancor of reproach for benefits conferred unworthily.
He stood with a very large majority of the enlightened citizens of the county. Enott Blake had been but recently reëlected, but if his canvass were to be made anew it is barely possible that he would have fancied he might have weathered it without the support of this ancient adherent. His office was of the sort which is not compatible with any show of personal favor, and he resented the reminder of political services as an imputation.
“Well, ye have got a sheriff that knows what attempted housebreaking is,” he said severely. “And unless ye can show a good reason for tryin’ to break into that door, ye’ll find ye have got a sheriff that will take a power o’ pains ye don’t break out again soon.”
Tubal Cain’s face, all wind-blown and red with the sun, and rugged with hard grooved wrinkles, and nervous with the untoward complications of achieving an audience with the man he had ridden so far to see, was shattered from the congruity of his gravity into a
sort of fragmentary laughter out of keeping with the light of anxiety in his eyes.
“Did ye ever hear of a man tryin’ ter break inter a jail?” he demanded.
“I caught you doin’ it to the best of your ability,” returned the literalminded sheriff.
Tubal Cain would have felt as if he were dreaming had it not been for sundry recollections of stories of the matter-of-fact tendencies of the officer which were far from reassuring. He felt that he could hardly have faced the situation had not the dapper round-visaged young deputy, whose blond hair curled like a baby’s in tendrils on his red, freckled forehead, glanced up at him with a jocose wink as he proceeded to draw the cartridges from the mountaineer’s shootingiron; the triumph of capture was still in his eye, while he lounged carelessly over the banisters of the staircase to evade the responsibility and labor of standing upright.
“Own up, daddy,” he cavalierly admonished the elder. “Tell what you were aimin’ to do. To rescue prisoners”—his superior snorted at the very word—“or rob us of our vally’bles?” The sheriff turned upon the deputy with a stare of inquiry as if wondering what these might be; then, vaguely apprehending the banter, said severely:—
“Cuttin’ jokes about your bizness, Jeemes, so constant, makes me ’feard it’s a leetle bit too confinin’ for such a gay bird as you. Barkeepin’ in a saloon would fit your build better’n the sort o’ bar-keepin’ we do here, I’m thinkin’.”
Enott Blake might be laughed at on occasion, but he had a trick of making other men as serious as himself when he sought to play upon their foibles. The blond deputy’s countenance showed that it had another and deeper tinge of red in its capacity; he came to the perpendicular suddenly as, without lifting his eyes, he continued to revolve the cylinder of the pistol and to draw the cartridges seriatim. He was but newly appointed, and zealous of the favor of his superior.
“I dunno how I could bear up, though,” he said, with apology in the cadence of his voice, “if I didn’t crack a joke wunst in a while,
considering I’m just broke into harness.”
“That’s a fact,” admitted the martial elder, visibly and solemnly placated. “Do you know what we were doin’ while you yelled, an’ capered, an’ cut up them monkey-shines in front of the jail?” he demanded sternly, turning to Tubal Cain Sims. “We were cuttin’ a man down that tried to hang himself.”
“Suicidin’,” put in the deputy, as if making a nice distinction between this voluntary suspension and the legal execution.
“An’ we were bringin’ the man to himself agin.”
“He’s crazy, crazy as a loon,” interpolated the deputy in a mutter, pulling the trigger and snapping the hammer of the empty weapon, and sighting it unpleasantly down the hall, aiming alternately at the sheriff and at Tubal Cain Sims, who could scarcely repress an admonition, but for awe’s sake desisted.
“Or more likely, simulatin’ insanity,” said the sheriff; “it’s plumb epidemic nowadays ’mongst the crim’nals.”
“Well, he come mighty nigh lightin’ out for a country where no vain pretenses avail,” remarked the loquacious deputy, one eye closed, and drawing a very fine line from the bridge of old Sims’s nose with the empty pistol.
“This is a country where they don’t avail, either,” retorted the sheriff, “not with any reasonable jury. And twelve men, though liable to be fools, ain’t fools o’ the same pattern. That’s the main thing: impanel a variety o’ fools, an’ the verdic’ is generally horse sense. Now, sir,” turning on Tubal Cain Sims, who could feel his hat rising up on his hair, “what do you want, anyhow?”
“Ter git out,—that’s all; ter git out o’ hyar!” exclaimed Tubal Sims, sickened with a ghastly horror of the presentment of the scene they had left, the walls that harbored it, the roof that sheltered it. Oh for the free pure mountain air, the wild untrodden lengths of the mountain wilderness, fresh with the sun and the dew, and the vigor of natural growths, and the sweet scent of woodland ways! As he cast up his eyes to the high window above the staircase he could have cried out aloud to see the bars, and he gazed at the door in a
desperation that started the drops on his brow and brought the blood to his face, as if the intensity of his emotion had been some strong physical effort.
“What did you get in here for, then?” demanded the sheriff. “Most folks have to be fetched.”
Tubal Cain Sim’s heart failed him. Could it be possible that he had ever designed a fate like this for the man who had slept under his roof; who had eaten his bread; who had refused to maintain secrecy against him; who considered him and his claims, when his own, his very own, passed them by? He could not realize it. He refused to credit his cherished scheme; he felt that if once away from the paralyzing sight of the place, invention would rouse itself anew. Some other device would serve to rid the Cove of the man, and to frustrate his elopement with Euphemia. Tubal Sims was sure he could compass a new plan if once more he were free in the clear and open air.
The eagle eye of the sheriff marked the alert turning of Sims’s head toward the door. “What did you come here for, then?” he again demanded.
With hot eyes glancing hither and thither like a wild thing’s in a trap, Tubal Sims replied, with the inspiration of the moment, “I wanted ter view the man I hev voted fur so often an’ so constant.”
Now, the sheriff, like many other great men in their several places, had his vanity, and it is not hard to convince one who has been before the public eye that he fills that orb to the exclusion of any less worthy object. That Tubal Cain Sims should have journeyed fully thirty-five miles from the mountains to contemplate the resplendent dignity of the sheriff in his oft-resumed incumbency seemed possibly no disproportionate tribute to Enott Blake’s estimate of his own merits. But this view, however flattering, was hardly compatible with the lordly manner in which the old mountaineer had beaten upon the door of the jail, and the imperative tones with which he had summoned forth the servant of the public who owed his high estate to the suffrages of him aided by the likes of him.
A wonderful change is wrought in the moral atmosphere of a man by the event of an election. The candidate’s estate is vested by the announcement of the result. He owns his office for the time, and he breathes a free man. It is interesting to see how the muscles of his metaphorical knees straighten out, for the day of genuflection is over. Independence is reasserted in his eye; he bears himself as one who conquers by the prowess of his own bow and spear; and men whom he would fain conciliate last week need to search his eye for an expression they can recognize. They will be treated no more to that mollifying demonstration, the candidate’s smile.
The defeated aspirant’s once bland countenance, however, has assumed all the contours of the cynic’s. A bitter sort of nonchalance with a frequent forced laugh goes better combined with peanuts, if the place is not too high in the official scale and the candidate of no great social pretensions, since the hulls can be cast off with a flouting gesture which aids the general implication that the constituency may appropriately go hang, for all he cares. He is not hurt,—not he! He made the race to oblige his friends and party, and he now and again throws out intimations of a bigger piece of pie saving for him as a reward for filling the breach. Meantime peanuts perforce suffice.
Enott Blake, through much place-holding, had become imbued with the candidate’s antagonism to that assumption of all the power residing in the voting masses common to the arrogant but impotent unit. He was never elected by any one man, nor through any definitely exerted political influence. He served the people, and incidentally his own interest, and mighty glad they ought to be to get him, and this was what he felt especially after elections. If ever in the course of a canvass he had a qualm,—and it is said that the least imaginative of men are capable of nightmare,—he had the satisfaction of calling himself a fool thereafter, to think less of himself than people thought of him, and of counting endearingly his minie balls. He was a rare instance of a great personal popularity, and he had no mind to abate his pretensions before the preposterous patronage of this old mountaineer who possibly had not paid poll-tax for twenty years. He could no more be said to possess an
enlightened curiosity than the hound trained to trail game could be accredited with an inquisitive interest in the natural history of the subject of his quest. It was only with a similar rudimentary instinct of the pursuit of prey that he felt stirring an intention to wring from the intruder the real reason for this strange entrance.
“No, no, my friend,” he said, with a kindling of his keen eye which expressed a degree of ferocity, “you can’t come it that-a-way on me. I’m a mighty fine man, I know, but folks ain’t got to sech a pass yet as to break into jail for a glimpse of me. You don’t get out of that door”—he nodded his head at it—“till you give me a reasonable reason for your extraordinary conduc’.”
Tubal Cain Sims was silent. His hard old lips suddenly shut fast. His eyes gleamed with a dogged light. He would not speak had he no will to speak, and the officer should see which could hold out the longest at this game. He remembered how often he had hearkened to the complaints of the preternatural quality of his obstinacy with which Jane Ann Sims had beguiled the conjugal way since, a quarter of a century ago, they had left the doorstep of Parson Greenought’s house man and wife. Surely, if it had time and again vanquished Jane Ann Sims, how could the sheriff, a mere man, abide it? He had not, however, reckoned on certain means of compulsion which were not within the power of the doughty contestant for domestic supremacy.
There was no visible communication between the older officer and the deputy when the young man said appealingly, “Ye won’t need handcuffs, Mr. Blake? Leastwise not till after we come from the jestice’s?”
“Handcuffs!” screeched Tubal Sims, as violently cast out from the stronghold of his obstinate silence as if he had been hurtled thence by a catapult. “Ye hev got no right to handcuff me! I kem hyar of my own free will an’ accord. I ain’t no prisoner. Open that thar door,” he continued, lowering his voice to a tone of command and turning majestically to the sheriff. “Open that door, or I’ll hev the law of ye.”
“Not till I have had the law of you,” replied the imperturbable functionary. “But, Jeemes,”—he turned with a disaffected aside to his
young colleague,—“what d’ye go namin’ irons for? ’Tain’t polite to talk ’bout ironin’ a man old enough to be your father.”
The deputy looked about in vague despair He had but sought the effect upon the imagination of the mention of shackles, and indeed his words had potently affected the fancy of the only man in the room who possessed that illusive pictorial faculty. The stanch old mountaineer was all a-tremble. What would Jane Ann Sims think of this? He might have known that this journeying abroad in secret and without her advice would result disastrously! What indeed would Jane Ann Sims think of this?
“Open that door!” he vociferated. “Ye hev got no right ter detain M !”
“What for not?” demanded the sheriff sternly. “What d’ye call this fix’n’?” He opposed to Tubal Cain Sims’s nose, with the trifling intervenient space of an inch, his own pistol.
“Shootin’-iron!” sputtered Tubal, squinting fearfully at it.
“Worn in defiance o’ the law and to the terror o’ the people,” said the sheriff frowningly. “I have got to be indicted myself or to arrest you on that charge. And I reckon you know you ain’t got no right to carry concealed weepons.”
“Ain’t got no right ter w’ar a shootin’-iron!” exclaimed Tubal Sims, his eyes starting out of his head.
“Agin the law,” said the deputy airily.
“Agin the law!” echoed Tubal Sims, his back against the wall, and his eyes turning first to one, then to the other of his companions. “Lord! Lord! I never knowed afore how fur the flat-woods war abint the mountings! How air ye goin’ ter pertec’ yerself agin yer neighbor ’thout no shootin’-iron?” he asked cogently.
“By the law,” said both officers in unison.
“Thar ain’t no law in the mountings, thank Gawd!” cried Tubal Sims.
“There is law here,” declared the sheriff, “and a plenty of it to go round.”
“Thank Gawd!” echoed the pious deputy.
“Come, old man!” said the sheriff. “Come in here an’ set down, an’ sorter straighten out, an’ tell me what in hell ailed ye to come bangin’ on the jail door with a weepon called a shootin’-iron till you git yourself arrested for crim’nal offense. Surely, surely, you have got some reason in you.”
He flung open a door close at hand, and Tubal Cain Sims, his knees trembling under him, so great was the nervous reaction in his metamorphosis from the masterful accuser to the despairing accused, was ushered into a room which seemed to him dark despite the glare of sunlight that fell broadside half across the bare floor from two tall windows,—a gaunt and haggard apartment suggestive of the intention of the building of which it was a part. These windows were not grated, but the fleckings of moving clouds barred the sunlight on the floor, and the mutter of thunder came renewed to the ear. The dust lay thick on the table in the centre of the room. A lounge covered with a startlingly gay quilt was in one corner, where Tubal Cain presumed the sheriff, in moments of fatigue which might be supposed to overpower even his stiff military figure in the deep midnight, slept with one eye open. A desk in the jamb by the fireplace held several bulky books, a large inkstand, a bag of fine-cut tobacco, a coarse glass tumbler which had nothing in it but a rank smell of a strong grade of corn whiskey, and a pipe half full of dead ashes, which the sheriff had hastily laid aside when summoned to the scene of the horrors perpetrated by a forlorn human being in the desperation of the fear of still greater horrors to come.
Tubal Cain Sims’s mind, unaccustomed to morbid influences, could not detach itself from the idea. Despite his absorptions on his own account, he followed as an independent train of thought futile speculations as to where in the building this man might be,—close at hand, and he felt a nervous thrill at the possible propinquity, or in some remote cell and out of hearing; what had he guiltily done, or was he falsely accused; had he been really resuscitated, or had the potentialities of life merely flickered up like the spurious quickening of a failing candle before the moment of extinction, and was he even now, while the officers lingered here, dead again, and this time
beyond recall; or would he not, left to his own devices, once more attempt his life? The old mountaineer could not forbear. He turned to the sheriff with an excited eye.
“Ain’t ye ’feard he’ll hang hisself again?” he said huskily.
The officer stared. “Who?” he inquired, with knitted brow, as if he had forgotten the occurrence absolutely; then with renewing recollection, “You can bet your life he won’t.”
“Why not?” asked Sims, the clatter of his boots on the bare floor silent as he stopped short.
The deputy gave a fleering laugh, ending in a “ki-yi” of the extremity of derision. He had flung himself into a chair, and, with his elbows on the table, looked up with a scornful grin at Tubal Cain Sims, who seemed to entertain solicitude as to the capacities for management and discipline of Enott Blake, famous as the veriest martinet of a drill-sergeant years before he ever saw the inside of Kildeer County jail.
This absurd officiousness, however, met with more leniency from the sheriff. Whether it was that, from his steady diet of commendation, his vanity could afford to dispense with such poor crumbs as Tubal Cain Sims might have it in his power to offer, or whether he was desirous of the emollient effects of indulgence to loosen his visitor’s tongue, he apparently took no heed of this breach of the proprieties.
“He’s all right now. You needn’t have no anxiety ’bout him,” he said, as if it were a matter of course to be brought to book in this way.
“He can’t hurt himself nor any one else now,” echoed the deputy, taking his cue.
Sims turned from one to the other inquiringly.
“Got him in a cage,” said the sheriff grimly.
For one moment Tubal Cain Sims silently cursed his curiosity that had elicited this fact for his knowledge and provision for future nightmares. It was of the order of things that sets the natural impulses of humanity and sympathy adverse to all the necessities of law and justice. He stared at the two officers, as if they were
monsters. Perhaps only his weapon, empty in the deputy’s pistolpocket, persuaded his apparent acquiescence.
“Good Lord!” he gasped, “that’s powerful tur’ble,—powerful tur’ble!”
The sheriff was no mind-reader. He deemed that the allusion applied to the unjudicial hanging.
“Not so very,” he said, seating himself in a splint-bottomed chair, and elevating his boots to the topmost bar of the rusty, fireless grate.
“’Tain’t nigh so bad as havin’ ’em fire the jail,” he added gloomily.
“They have played that joke on me five times. All this part o’ the buildin’ is new. Burnt spang down the last time we had a fire.”
“Take a chair, sir, take a chair,” said the conformable deputy, perceiving that politeness had come to be the order of the day.
Tubal Sims, almost paralyzed by the number and character of the new impressions crowded upon his unaccustomed old brain, still stood staring from one to the other, his sunburned, grooved, lankjawed face showing a sharp contrast with his shock of tow hair, which, having been yellow and growing partially gray, seemed to have reverted to the lighter tint that it had affected when he came into the world. His hat was perched on the back of his head, and now and then he reached up to readjust it there; some subtle connection surely exists between the hat of a man and his brain, some obscure ganglion, for never does embarrassment beset his intellect but the solicitous hand travels straight to the outer integument. His creased boots moved slowly forward with the jeans-clothed continuations above them. He doubtfully seized on the back of a chair, and, still gazing from one to the other of his companions, deposited himself with exaggerated caution on the stanch wooden seat as if he half expected it to collapse beneath him.
“Now,” said the sheriff smoothly, “you are a sensible man, I know, an’ I wish you well.”
“How ’bout that thar pistol?” said Tubal Cain Sims, instantly presuming upon this expression of amity.
“I didn’t make that law,” said Enott Blake testily. “But I’m here to enforce it, and you’ll find that I know my duty an’ will do it.”
Tubal Sims relapsed into his friendless despair And once more the deputy essayed a new device.
He turned his round, red, freckled, good-natured face full upon the visitor across the table, and, pushing back his black hat from the blond tendrils that overhung his forehead like an overgrown infant’s, he said, fixing a grave blue eye upon Tubal Sims, “You came here to tell us about some crime you’ve s’picioned.”
The sheriff plucked up his faculties as if an inspiration had smitten him. “You were going to give us the names an’ fac’s as far as you knew or they had developed,” he followed hard on the heels of the pioneering deputy.
“You caved after you got here, ’cause you wished the man no harm, and the sight o’ the jail sorter staggered you,” pursued the subordinate.
“But you had some personal motive,” interjected the sheriff, suddenly solicitous for the verisimilitude of the sketch of the interior workings of Tubal Cain’s astounded intellect. “It has to be a mighty plain, open case, with no s’picion ’bout it, when information ain’t got some personal motive,—justifiable, maybe, and without direct malice, but personal motive.”
Tubal Cain Sims’s head turned from one to the other with a pivotal action which was less suggestive of muscles than of machinery. His eyes were starting from beneath his shaggy, overhanging eyebrows. His lower jaw had dropped. Thus dangled before him, his own identity was as recognizable to him as to their divination. If he had had time to think, there might have seemed something uncanny in this facile meddling with the secrets of his inner consciousness, hardly so plain to his own prognosis as in their exposition, but moment by moment he was hurried on.
“Your personal motive in giving this information,” continued the deputy, “is because you are afraid of the man.”
“Not for myse’f,” blurted out Tubal Sims. “Before Gawd, I’ll swear, not for myse’f.” He was all unaware of an impending disclosure of the facts that he had resolved to hide, since the horrors of the jail, the
true, visible presentment of the abstract idea of imprisonment, had burst upon his shuddering realization. He had forgotten his caution. His obstinate reticence relaxed. All the manhood within him roused to the alarm of the possibility that these officers should impute to him fear of any man for his own sake. He lifted a trembling, stiffened old hand with a deprecatory gesture. “Jes’ one—jes’ one darter!” He lowered his voice in expostulation.
“One daughter!” echoed the sheriff in surprise.
“Gittin’ interestin’,” murmured the flippant deputy.
“An’ this hyar man wants ter marry her, an’ she is willin’ ter marry him, an’—an’ he spoke of runnin’ away.” Tubal Cain Sims brought this enormity out with a sudden dilation of the eyes irresistible to the impudent deputy.
“Powerful painful to the survivors!” he snorted in a choking chuckle, “but not even a misdemeanor agin the law o’ the land.”
The sheriff’s countenance changed. Not that he apprehended any cause for mirth, for it might be safely said that he had not laughed at a joke for the past six years, and it would have been a matter of some interest to know how he appraised the cachinnation habitually going on all around about him, and which he was temperamentally debarred from sharing. His face merely took on a perplexed and keenly inquisitive expression as he bent his brow as to a worthy mystery.
“You know a man can’t be arrested for runnin’ away with a young woman an’ marryin’ her,” he expostulated. “You ain’t such a fool as to think you can take the law to him to prevent that.”
There are few people in this world who do not arrogate to themselves special mental supremacy. Folly is like unto the jewel in the forehead of the toad in that the creature thus endowed is unaware of its possession. Tubal Cain Sims had perceived subacutely the acumen of both the officers, and was emulous of demonstrating his own intellectual gifts. The word “fool” is a lash that stings, and, smarting, he protested:—
