I was fortunate enough to have attended Dr. Joseph Brownell’s
lecture on the Gillette murder case of 1906. He had many interesting things to say that would be of interest to us
considering our reading A NORTHERN LIGHT.
First off, I wanted to mention that he was, without a doubt,
extremely pleased with Donnelly’s novel. On the other hand, he made his distaste for Theodore Dreiser’s AN
AMERICAN TRAGEDY very evident. He
thought that Donnelly’s book was brilliant, and he said that “if it was made
for children, then I don’t know what that says about me!”
After he spoke about the two books and a movie (which was
also a version of this same case), he then moved on to remind us that A
NORTHERN LIGHT was a historical fiction. He said it was his job to try to fill us in on the facts of the
case. This case was a huge part of his
life for a long time now.
The first interesting thing that he said was about the name
Gokey. Where he is from, there is an old
folklore with a man named Joe Gauthier or Joe Gokey, just like Mattie and her
father in the novel. Brownell told us
the old story that he loves very much, and that when he spoke to Donnelly, she
said she was unaware of this tale and the name. “That’s a great coincidence if you ask me!” Brownell said. I’d say so.
He then told us about the letters. He said that in the book, as we all know,
Grace gives Mattie the letters while at Big Moose Lake. Well, Brownell assures us that this would be impossible because the real
letters were in Cortland,
as they were picked up on East Main Street; however, he appreciates the novel and
Donnelly’s necessity to do this.
The rest of the lecture was Brownell giving a vivid
description of the entire situation. He
spoke about the Gillette family, how Grace Brown met Chester Gillette, and how
Grace wrote about four letters a week and Gillette only returned approximately
one for every four of hers.
Brownell also shed some light on why Chester finally decided to take Grace on
vacation, after he impregnated her. One
night, while Chester
was at work, Grace grew antsy from her isolation from him and called him at
work. The way the phone was situated, a
lot of the people in the factory could decipher most of the conversation. This made Gillette angry and is when he
decided to take her on a “vacation.”
He then told everyone about how Chester, under a fake name, rented the boat
and murdered Grace. Then, for a while,
he spoke about the trial. After Gillette
was found (he was found because he was having his cousin forward his mail and
laundry to him), he was arrested and put on trial for murder. All of the evidence in this case was
circumstantial, though; no one saw the two out on the river in the boat. Then he spoke of the most important part of
the case: the emotion. He spoke of how
the courtroom was flooded with powerful emotions when reading Grace’s letters. He even told us that there is evidence that
the judge was caught crying. He then
concluded his lecture by talking about Chester’s
death, the letters he wrote on death row, and why this story meant so much to
him.
One more fun fact, Brownell mentioned that Grace lived
on Wheeler Ave. in Cortland. She lived in the same house that the woman
was caught with having an exorbitant amount of cats this year. How bizarre.
This lecture was taped by the library. I’m not sure if it will be available on the
website, but I would assume that they taped it to share it. If we do have access I would recommend giving
this lecture a listen. It was awesome,
and Brownell was very passionate about this topic, making it that much better.
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