Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [78]
Before moving on, it might be a good idea to consider one other entry from the dream diary of early August. Although this is by no means the most detailed or explicit entry, it does sum up Juliette’s night-time experiences best. Not only that, there are also overtones of events in Saint-Domingue and the other West Indian colonies:
I was paralyzed as if I were rooted in the Earth like a tree although I knew I had been there longer than any tree. I could feel myself bleeding but when I bled it was as the whole of the ground had split open… I was in the jungle that was burning and I could feel my skin prickling when they tore at me. The animals were watching from the darkness and I knew they were apes though I could not explain how I knew it. The apes were clawing over my flesh and tearing at me as they ran over my body to pull at the dead men who had fallen in the fighting.
This description is confusing, until one realises what Juliette doesn’t seem to have been able to express in words. The underlying theme here is that in some way Juliette is the Earth. The apes, as they spread over the planet, are described as swarming over Juliette’s skin.
This shouldn’t be misconstrued. The decades that followed would see the birth in the human psyche of the ‘Gaia myth’, the idea – which evolved from the ‘natural whole’ theories of eighteenth-century writers like Rousseau – that the Earth is a single evolving organism, and that all forms of life are merely extensions of its body. Of course, the Gaia myth is simply a kind of latter-day folk story, a mythical oversimplification of the concept of evolving ecosystems. But consider the nature of the Henrietta Street House. The women had been brought in tune with a single biological cycle, just as the women in older witch-cults attempted to put themselves in tune with the moon itself. So there’s a suggestion, in Juliette’s dreams, that Juliette was being deliberately exposed to influences which could somehow bring her in line with the whole planet… scientifically ridiculous, of course, but rituals like the wedding were symbolic rather than scientific.
(The Doctor told many stories of his travels, most of them involving fabulous creatures and bordering on the inexplicable. Notably, the Doctor had told Scarlette that two of his most recent adventures had taken place in two most remarkable worlds… one called Ceresalpha, where the children were as ghosts, and another where faerie-tales came true’. And the Doctor had described both these worlds as being in some way ‘alive’. Whether to believe these unlikely tales of the Doctor’s exploits is for the individual to decide, but if taken literally it could be argued that the Doctor had travelled to both of these peculiar realms, subconsciously or otherwise, in order to get himself into the right frame of mind for the ritual he was to perform at Henrietta Street.)
One final point is worth mentioning. The more Juliette dwelt on her dreams the more intense they became, and – not surprisingly for someone of her age – there’s an increasing amount of sexual imagery as the diary goes on. On the night of August 15, she records:
I was once again rooted to the ground and unable to move but this time there was cold Earth on all sides of me. I was not afraid. It was as if I had been put in the grave and I was dressed all in black. This time there was no scratching from the animals but when I looked up I saw _____ standing over me. [She uses a proper name here, but her symbol is impossible to decipher.] _____ nodded at me and told me that I had done well to be so calm in my tomb. It was then that he lowered himself into the ground with me and so we lay together for a while… not touching though his expressions to me were most intimate. I found that the ring had