The Least of These: Exploitation in Anne Rice's Mayfair Trilogy

Anne Rice's Mayfair trilogy, The Witching Hour, Lasher, and Taltos, presents the reader with a tale of a dynasty of witches from the origin of the family in Donnelaith, Scotland, to the present, or thirteenth, generation in the Garden District of New Orleans. The story of this dynasty, however, is intricately interwoven with those of another species of being, The Taltos, and the organization that has studied both for centuries, the Talamasca. The mystery of their various interconnections forms the heart of the tale of the Mayfair witches; as the reader learns of the historical relationships between them, the hostility of the human race at large toward both Taltos and Mayfairs also becomes clear. Within the Taltos/Mayfair/Talamasca knot, each group pursues its own agenda. Whether the wish be to exploit others or to exterminate them, ruthlessness sets the tone. A dominant sub-theme of the intertwined histories and bloodlines is thus the exploitation of helpless beings in the name of self-interest. Whenever an explanation is offered, the perpetrator always feels justified in the name of survival, the elimination of "evil," or even curiosity, but in every case Rice is on the side of the victim. In The Witching Hour, the young Rowan is shocked and repelled by the desire of one of her mentors, Dr. Lemle, to exploit fetuses for scientific and financial ends; she rejects the research opportunity offered to her by Lemle one Christmas Eve in medical school, running from his lab full of fetal creatures. Because of him, she refuses to become a researcher. The question of the use of fetal tissue for research is central to the novel, for the temptation offered by the Devil is a Faustian one that could only appeal to a research scientist, and that could only be of value to a person with the healing power of Rowan. She ran as she did from Lemle not only because of her horror at his indifference toward the humanity of the fetuses in his lab, but also to remove herself from an occasion of sin-the lure of experimentation with the malleable fetal cells. If one could disregard the human identity of these creatures, if they could be seen as lab animals or better yet, as sources of organic raw material, like plants that can yield slips for grafting, or simply living tissue that can be used to patch people up without a fear of their rejecting the graft, much as a patient's own skin can be used, what possibilities could there not be? The fact that many of the advances we have already seen have been precisely in areas of interest to neurosurgeons, like grafts in the brain to treat Parkinson's, Hodgkins' and Alzheimer's, makes the temptation strong and real to Rowan. This, Rice divines correctly, is the mad scientist's dream of the 21 st century, far more enticing and even more realistic than anything a Dr. Frankenstein could attempt. Simultaneously we are aware, as is Rowan, that the temptation will include the desire and ability to go beyond waiting for abortees with the appropriate tissue match and expand to include fetus farming akin to the maintenance of deceased corpses for transplants in Robin Cook's novel Coma; indeed, this is what Lemle has set up in his lab, and he insists that he is not alone, that the same thing is being done everywhere out of simple expediency. Once the principle of using fetal tissue is established, there is in fact no upper limit to the age at which a fetus would be eligible. Pancreas cells, for example, for transplant into adults with diabetes, are most successfully used when taken from fetuses of 10 to 20 weeks gestation, or up to 5 months. Since most abortions are obtained within the first 90 days, the convenience of maintaining a live tissue source is obvious. Would these come exclusively from brain-dead neonates, or might a doctor, like the one in Coma, be tempted to "arrange" the availability of retarded or otherwise imperfect newborns? The temptations, aid to the ill in the short run, research advances and profits that can be plowed back into medicine in the long run, are clear cut and undeniable. …