My Monday rumination for this week has centred on the marrying couple who aren't entirely in agreement about using church facilities that would not be available to same-sex couples. I have seen at least one other poster saying that it would be no greater hypocrisy than their marrying in church facilities at all, given that the questioner says she is not religious. That point might more accurately depend on a question of degree. There are plenty of people who don't go to church or give a hoot about religious questions one way or the other who aren't at all put out by such things as graduation ceremonies being held in church halls or prayers being inserted into secular occasions. Such people, it seems, might reasonably be allowed not to rule out a church that is making a similar statement in letting them use the facility in the first place - gambling, as it were, that the family might become religious at some point and be in search of a church, in which case, what better choice? An anti-religious person would presumably have ruled out church facilities from the beginning of the search.
The prosecution chose to make a jab at not buying the idea of not marrying simply because same-sex couples cannot yet wed in most places. Perhaps the intent behind that was to invalidate what the prosecution might have seen as an attempt to weasel out of marrying entirely. But I for one find nothing wrong with a conscientious delay. Certainly in a place such as Maine or California after an unfavourable referendum result, a postponement, not that such a thing would be requested, seems a thoughtful gesture. One could write a nice little letter to the editor and send it around to various publications.
This particular questioner reminded me a bit of seeing various Republican women making the rounds recently and mentioning their support for same-sex marriage. Even if I silence my Inner Mystery Novelist who suggests that it's all part of some giant hoax to convince people with libertarian streaks who Just Don't Generally Trust Right-Wingers On Social Issues that the Rs can safely be returned to power (at which point they will just do what they've always done), I still wonder quite often how far the support extends or to what it amounts. It's not as if any of them can ever give a concrete example of a candidate against whom they voted or for whom they withheld support because of this issue. And it doesn't have to. People are entitled to have preferences on issues which are perhaps outside of the top ten in priority. Support is support to whatever extent it can be given. But I wouldn't mind once or twice seeing an interviewer ask for a practical application.
I am not entirely sure this couple should marry at all. They have stumbled into a fairly big incompatibility. The questioner's support is basically theoretical; it would be nice, but the issue is not worth giving up the "perfect" venue, as if this issue were something which gives the venue a slight blemish overshadowed by the facility's superiour amenities. The fiance's principles have a bit more in the way of teeth to them. Even if one is in a sufficiently generous mood to give the bride a pass on considering social issues as basically on the same plane as lighting, seating capacity and appeal in photographs, it does not take the genius of Professor Karl Hendricks to foresee that this couple may well turn out the way Karl and Anya did in the Christie play *Verdict* in which Karl jeopardized his university position by taking in a fellow professor who'd been unjustly treated. Eventually he lost his position, they had to relocate to England, Anya's health failed and she was murdered by a rich girl thinking herself in love with Karl. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the play was that Dame Agatha herself thought it one of her two or three best plays, but that she was practically alone in that opinion.
With this in mind, today feels like a day to invoke Miss Marple.
L1: So for the second consecutive week we have a questionable adoption. The prosecution is really laying it on extremely thick on this one, lambasting the adoptrix and urging a rather violent course of action. Now perhaps the adoption might not really have been the wisest thing in the world, but it did go through; a few questions might clarify whether there is genuine cause for concern particularly given the adoptrix's possible health limitations. I can grant that the witness may well have legitimate concern over the question of whether an adoption given her mother's age and circumstances and the condition of the adoptee was a wise idea.
But what stands out here in LW1's testimony is the ovemphatic resentment of Mamma's European holiday. How much of the objection to the adoption was financially based? It's certainly legitimate to be concerned that a parent with health concerns might be stretched. But we we have a luxury holiday that Mamma cannot afford, according to LW1. Well, that can be determined easily enough. But it could be that LW1 and her natural-born sister have been looking ahead and anticipating financial burdens they don't want to undertake, or perhaps the loss of some future financial consideration. There's enough fuzziness here that this is what would make up the bulk of my questions.
The adoptrix seems to have some admirable qualities, and has done some good even if not entirely for the best of motives. If good were only acceptable when accompanied by pure motivation, then there would be a great deal less good about in the world. I must say that, however much the adoptrix might need a holiday, three weeks at a time when the adoptee is in rather a troubled situation seems a tad ambitious. I am more or less prepared potentially to grant the adoptrix the benefit of the doubt on this point that it is not a sign that she should be thrown under the bus. But perhaps my greatest concern here is that she potentially is considerably put out that her daughters have not taken to their new "sister" in the way she'd hoped and this is among other things part of her trying to force the girl into her daughters' families. The daughters are treating the girl about as much as a real "sister" as Percival and Elaine Fortescue treat Adele as a "mother" in *A Pocket Full of Rye* when their father marries a woman of their own generation.
But I shall send my Marple comparison in another direction. The adoptrix reminds me of Marina Gregg in *The Mirror Crack'd* half-adopting three children to create her perfect image of her own little family as she gets to play the role of "Mom" in inverted commas (as Margot Bence, once of the three children, later describes it). When she becomes pregnant, that's the end of her little "pretend" family, and the three semi-adoptees are all established with nice little arrangements and assorted emotional scars to sustain them later in life. Here my sense is that the adoptrix has tried to force their new "sister" on her two daughters in an emphasis of that role and they'd really just as soon not have it.
Marina Gregg didn't get a happy ending. She contacted German measles during pregnancy, which did not result in the birth of a happy, healthy child. After a nervous breakdown, divorce, remarriage and relocation to England, she met Heather Badcock at a fete, heard Heather tell a long story about meeting her (during her pregnancy) despite being told by her doctor she couldn't, realized that Heather had caused tragic damage to her child, and killed her.
The hard part is trying to think of what LW1 ought to do. She seems to be a bit of a wispy person surrounded by those more forceful - mother, sister, husband. I shall advise her to treat the new "sister" the way Elizabeth Bennet treats Lydia. If LW1 can spare the funding with a few private economies in her personal expenditure, she might contribute a little on the quiet to the "sister's" maintenance for a short period.
Moral: What will make nobody happy seems obviously the best solution.
L2: The prosecution attempts to get away with a crafty single on this one. LW2 teaches undergraduate English, which is not the same as undergraduate English Literature. These days, there are a great many courses that could be considered remedial. Given the peculiar elegance (or lack thereof) in phrasing that permeates L2, I shall guess that she teaches a course much closer to remedial than literary. She certainly does not seem up to the level required to teach Miss Austen. Perhaps this does not change anything material in the case; I just don't like to let the prosecution slip in these little assumptions.
In Agathaland, there are various cases of older women infatuated with younger men. It usually ends remarkably badly for the older women. In both "The Cornish Mystery" and "Death on the Nile" (which true Christiephiles will recall is not only a Poirot novel but also a short story featuring Mr Parker Pyne) the young man has been stringing the old woman along and ends up murdering her. In *Ordeal by Innocence* Kirsten becomes the accomplice who actually commits the murder Jacko plans (while he establishes a legitimate alibi that fails to materialize due to his witness suffering concussion and temporary loss of memory) only to discover after his arrest that he's secretly been married the whole time. There's General Macarthur's wife in *Ten Little Indians* but she's only a year older than her paramour; at least it's only the paramour who is sent to his death, though she dies of pneumonia shortly afterwards.
But none of these are Marple examples. The closest I can come to an attachment of a slightly older woman to a younger man on not very secure moral grounds might be Esther Walters and Tim Kendall in *A Caribbean Mystery*. She's a widow who doesn't know she'll inherit fifty thousand pounds when her old and ailing employer dies; he's planning to murder his wife and make it look like suicide, as he's done before. The perfect couple!
As for what LW2 ought to do, I shall provide her with some very modern advice. As it seems to me inevitable that such a highly desirable young man should have numerous females clamouring for his attention and his favours, what inevitably seems the inevitable course of action is for LW2 to consult her Inner Slore and inevitably and immediately begin sexting her inamorato. This should inevitably lead to his seizing the day (and various appendages as well best left to the Submariner to describe) and eventually the inevitable spread of the sexts far and wide across the internet. When LW2 is inevitably fired, she can then take great confort that the whole affair was her inevitable Fate all along, and that she will inevitably land in a career better suited to her talents on her next attempt.
Moral: As for what that career might be, I'm thinking that waitressing or exotic dancing seems pretty inevitable, as I see her as inevitably destined to appear on a Judge programme in some lawsuit inevitably involving unpaid rent, loans and/or credit card bills.
L3: Beyond cross-examining a few of the medical staff involved with the diagnosis, the cleanest course of action here seems to be to give LW3 an example as a sort of warning. She does not want to become Mrs Pritchard in the Miss Marple short story "The Blue Geranium". If LW3 spends all her time and energy on her illness, she might end up going in that direction. Mrs Pritchard's main interest besides her own dodgy health (which keeps her husband and her nurse in line) is fortune telling. Told that she will die when various pink flowers on her wallpaper turn blue, she becomes almost mesmerized by the idea and seems to find it quite glamourous by the time she has seen a blue primrose and a blue hollyhock with the blue geranium approaching as the next full moon comes nearer and nearer. Fortunately the poor thing (not a dear by any stretch of the imagination) is spared the indignity of knowing it was all done with litmus paper and her own smelling salts.
Moral: If LW3 must hire a nurse, she should hire a male. A young and attractive female will be Elsie Holland to her husband's Mr Symmington, and a middle-aged one will be Mrs Pritchard's Nurse Copling who kills her in an attempt to become Mrs P #2.
L4: While I can sympathize with a member of either gender surrounded by those of the opposite who expect the benefits of Victorian gender-based treatment without being willing to supply the reciprocal treatment, I doubt it would take an expert cross-examiner to establish that LW4 has a very thin case indeed. As for an unpleasant male quick to find fault with the females around him when his own conduct has been far from irreproachable, I need look no further than Colonel Protheroe in *The Murder at the Vicarage*. I'd rather like to advise LW4 on no account to change the water bottle again as a result of the email he's been receiving, but to draw up a byzantine rota for water changing based on usage and an appropriate barter system to compensate him for his actions above and beyond the call of duty. Perhaps he can get fired quicker than LW2 if he tries.
Moral: When LW4 is found shot in the Vicarage study, what's the over/under on the number of suspects? Miss Marple had seven for Colonel Protheroe; that seems a good under/over here.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
5/20 - DP and Bad Barts
So we are within sight of the start of the French Open, and find that both singles fields seem singularly lacking in a variety of plausible champions. Rafael Nadal's sputter has been halted by his expected perfect run on claym and Roger Federer won last year, but all the others who seemed likely starters are in disarray. On the women's side, Serena Williams should be able to muster some form despite her perpetually dodgy health. Venus Williams has had the closest thing to a consistent run since Australia, but only Justine Henin's return will save this one.
Having delved into Gilbert and Sullivan last week, I feel like staying there, and this week shall stay throughout all four letters with *Ruddigore*.
L1: This certainly seems to offer the best scope for cross-examination. It is natural to have a strong instinct in favour of getting the boy completely out of his sperm donor's life, but the prosecution has been overeager and overvehement. The prosecutor has styled the biological parent a deadbeat without a scrap of evidence to support that supposition (however much force of logic there may be behind it). But, more so, the prosecutor has opined that the witness' fear is a sign that there is no place for the biological parent in the boy's life - putting words into the mouth of the witness, who has testified only to worry, not to fear. And who would not worry when a parent who'd been in prison were released and wishing to reclaim his position in the life of his child? Even in the happiest of circumstances, such as an exoneration, there is almost always cause for concern.
And there are other points as well. While it is certainly instinctive to have an immediate feeling of revulsion towards a convicted sex offender (presumably admitted as well), what might have started as an admirable attempt to label every such fiend with a scarlet SO and make sure no such escapes has resulted in a broadening of the label to cover a number of actions that many if not most reasonable people would consider at worst questionable judgement (thinking of the just-eighteen young man in Kansas who got Romeo and Julianed into a lengthy prison sentence for something that occurred during a period of about the only three weeks during which it would have incurred any legal penalty, and even then their ages would have been close enough to evade his fate had his nearly-sixteen partner been female). It's a queasy subject, full of possible contradictions, especially for anyone who has read Matthew Stadler, and as it happened I just finished rereading *Allan Stein* earlier this week.
The Ruddigore comparison is with a range of Bad Baronets. Is the SO most comparable to Sir Rupert Murgatroyd, who delighted in burning witches and drew the curse upon his family that the current Baronet must commit a daily crime or die in agony, Sir Despard Murgatroyd who does commit genuine crimes but does so in the morning and then atones in the afternoon, or the hapless Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd who has such poor success at crime that he has to resort to forging his own will?
I can strike one cautionary word. LW1 is on the brink of reminding me of Mrs Symmington in *The Moving Finger*, whose daughter Megan mopes about feeling unwanted. Megan tells Jerry Burton that her mother doesn't like her, because Megan is too like her father, and Mummy would like to forget all about him and have it just be her lovely little family with Mr Symmington and their two boys. The adoption could just be an outpouring of natural affection, or it could be an attempt to cover up a mistake. On the whole, I'm inclined to think that LW1 comes off as reasonably conscientious, but on what we're given I'm not sure. The one thing I can state declaratively is that the adoption does not need to go through for the boy to think of his stepfather as his real Daddy and to have the desired relationship with him. While it's a lovely gesture in good circumstances, I have seen a little too much of the unintended consequences of the psychologically-pressured adoptions that were so popular for a while, in which it was held to be Better for the Child to have only one legal family and therefore husbands being divorced for incompatibility were guilted into letting Hubby #2 adopt the children and fading away into obscurity, to be eager for an enforced contested adoption - although it could perhaps work out well, if the only way LW1 could enforce an adoption would be if the offence were so horrific that any reasonable person would not want the sperm donor within two states of the child.
Moral: "When in crime you are fully employed (like you)/Your expression gets warped and destroyed (it do)/It's a penalty few can avoid (how true)/I once was a nice-looking youth."
L2: I shall spare my readership a lengthy rant against Those Who Begin Sentences With, "I know it's hard to stay positive, but..." The most just penalty for the prosecutor would be to have to undergo double the job searching experience of the witness.
Here I really ought to recuse myself, having personally been underemployed for over a year. But it might provide some sport to put a few questions to a recruiter. Thinking of Mrs Boynton in *Appointment with Death*, who became a prison wardress because it suited her sadistic temperament, there are those who become employment recruiters because, being Queen Bee Wannabes, that way they get to preside in a sense over a lot of suffering people and either consciously or unconsciously twist the knife. Then there are those who genuinely enjoy helping people find good matches for themselves in the career arena. And in between are those with good intentions who don't entirely appreciate how they either sound like a Queen Bee Wannabe or how someone who has been out of work for two years might hear their inquiries as if they were so.
My own recommendation to LW2 would be to meet such an inquisition with incomprehension. That seems about the only sensible reaction that doesn't do the cause any active harm. False positivity (even if it's the unconsciously false sort advised by the prosecutor) gives a tell that rings a bell that can be heard five miles away.
Not only did I rewatch *To Play the King* yesterday, but also sometime this week I read some columnist going on about whether the poor economy will create an irreparable rift between the Haves and the Have Nots. To judge from the writing produced by career recruiters (and I really hope the vast majority of them are deliberately being sadistic, because it would be so depressing if they really think they're being helpful that that would be worse than their just being cruel because they can), the attaining of even the simplest of jobs requires such prodigious jumping through exactly the right quantity of hoops that I'd say the Divide has Already Happened and it's a Doozie with a capital Dooz. As the King expresses it, the Jobless are already viewed as "a little less human than ourselves, and the Safely Employed have a worse chance of successful commisseration than married opposite-sex couples did with not-yet-married same-sex couples after Proposition 8 passed.
But my Ruddigore comparison will be for LW2, not the recruiter. I shall look at the task set to poor Mad Margaret to transform herself, once Despard renounces Sir Ruthven's title and in his new role as virtuous person keeps his vow to marry her, into a highly respectable District Visitor. That's probably a reasonable simile for what is required these days.
Moral: "She didn't spend much upon linendrapers/It certainly entertained the gapers//My ways were strange beyond all range/Paragraphs got into all the papers."
L3: Now I wish I were still in Austenian mode, because LW3's mother-in-law is right in the mode of Mrs Bennet. Why, I can hear Mrs Bennet now, telling Mr Bingley what a close friend of their family Charlotte Lucas is, and how she has never joined in the common gossip of the neighbourhood in calling Charlotte unattractive. Then, when Bingley pays Charlotte the compliment of being very pleasant, Mrs B fires back, "But you must own she is very plain."
Now I have a huge bone to pick with the school, let alone LW3 or any of her relations. If there is a TIE for valedictorian, then there CANNOT be a SECOND tie for salutatorian. Look at the leaderboard and the placements listed at any PGA or LPGA tournament. When two players are tied for first place, what is the next place listed on the leaderboard? THIRD. Not second. Accordingly, I cannot care about the outcome unless both of the so-called tied-for-salutatorians decline the misguided and erroneous honour.
I'll compare the mother-in-law to the ancestors in Ruddigore who come out of their picture frames to torment any Baronet who refuses to commit his daily crime until he dies in agony. It is perhaps only out of desperation that Sir Ruthven at last manages to defeat them by realizing that Sir Roderick, his predecessor, died in the only way any Baronet of Ruddigore could, by refusing to commit his daily crime. But knowing that such refusal was death meant that the refusal was basically suicide - a crime - and that therefore Sir Roderick ought never to have died at all. But LW3 also reminds me a little of Rose Maybud trying to cope with the dilemma of how to convey to Dame Hannah which of the local swains she favours when her book of etiquette, which was all her parents left her and which she has taken as her Guide to Life, seems to thwart her at every turn.
Moral: "You may not hint, you must not hint/It says you mustn't hint in print."
L4: Interesting to see the prosecutor acting like counsel for the Defence, but the solution to this one is quite simple. This is grounds for breakup. The lucky couple have discovered their strong incompatibility on a significant point quite sufficiently early. (We should start a pool on how long they'll be married before they realize that they knew now it wouldn't work.) I shall not even have to cross-examine the witness on exactly how she thinks she has acquired veto power over the proposed arrangement. (I forget now whether LW4 actually made it incontrovertibly clear that the letter is written by a woman; it would be a much more interesting situation if LW4 were male; cross-orientational lines often make for a much more entertaining picture.)
This letter is actually my strongest *Ruddigore* likeness. Early in Act II, Rose and Dick Dauntless sing the duet, "Happily Coupled Are We," in which Dick predicts a happy married life for them but Rose suspects otherwise, even if she is such a bright little, right little, slight little, tight little craft.
Morals: "And all of my wishes you'll throw to the fishes/As though they were never to be - poor me!" and "For you'll be asserting your freedom by flirting/With every woman you meet - you cheat!"
Having delved into Gilbert and Sullivan last week, I feel like staying there, and this week shall stay throughout all four letters with *Ruddigore*.
L1: This certainly seems to offer the best scope for cross-examination. It is natural to have a strong instinct in favour of getting the boy completely out of his sperm donor's life, but the prosecution has been overeager and overvehement. The prosecutor has styled the biological parent a deadbeat without a scrap of evidence to support that supposition (however much force of logic there may be behind it). But, more so, the prosecutor has opined that the witness' fear is a sign that there is no place for the biological parent in the boy's life - putting words into the mouth of the witness, who has testified only to worry, not to fear. And who would not worry when a parent who'd been in prison were released and wishing to reclaim his position in the life of his child? Even in the happiest of circumstances, such as an exoneration, there is almost always cause for concern.
And there are other points as well. While it is certainly instinctive to have an immediate feeling of revulsion towards a convicted sex offender (presumably admitted as well), what might have started as an admirable attempt to label every such fiend with a scarlet SO and make sure no such escapes has resulted in a broadening of the label to cover a number of actions that many if not most reasonable people would consider at worst questionable judgement (thinking of the just-eighteen young man in Kansas who got Romeo and Julianed into a lengthy prison sentence for something that occurred during a period of about the only three weeks during which it would have incurred any legal penalty, and even then their ages would have been close enough to evade his fate had his nearly-sixteen partner been female). It's a queasy subject, full of possible contradictions, especially for anyone who has read Matthew Stadler, and as it happened I just finished rereading *Allan Stein* earlier this week.
The Ruddigore comparison is with a range of Bad Baronets. Is the SO most comparable to Sir Rupert Murgatroyd, who delighted in burning witches and drew the curse upon his family that the current Baronet must commit a daily crime or die in agony, Sir Despard Murgatroyd who does commit genuine crimes but does so in the morning and then atones in the afternoon, or the hapless Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd who has such poor success at crime that he has to resort to forging his own will?
I can strike one cautionary word. LW1 is on the brink of reminding me of Mrs Symmington in *The Moving Finger*, whose daughter Megan mopes about feeling unwanted. Megan tells Jerry Burton that her mother doesn't like her, because Megan is too like her father, and Mummy would like to forget all about him and have it just be her lovely little family with Mr Symmington and their two boys. The adoption could just be an outpouring of natural affection, or it could be an attempt to cover up a mistake. On the whole, I'm inclined to think that LW1 comes off as reasonably conscientious, but on what we're given I'm not sure. The one thing I can state declaratively is that the adoption does not need to go through for the boy to think of his stepfather as his real Daddy and to have the desired relationship with him. While it's a lovely gesture in good circumstances, I have seen a little too much of the unintended consequences of the psychologically-pressured adoptions that were so popular for a while, in which it was held to be Better for the Child to have only one legal family and therefore husbands being divorced for incompatibility were guilted into letting Hubby #2 adopt the children and fading away into obscurity, to be eager for an enforced contested adoption - although it could perhaps work out well, if the only way LW1 could enforce an adoption would be if the offence were so horrific that any reasonable person would not want the sperm donor within two states of the child.
Moral: "When in crime you are fully employed (like you)/Your expression gets warped and destroyed (it do)/It's a penalty few can avoid (how true)/I once was a nice-looking youth."
L2: I shall spare my readership a lengthy rant against Those Who Begin Sentences With, "I know it's hard to stay positive, but..." The most just penalty for the prosecutor would be to have to undergo double the job searching experience of the witness.
Here I really ought to recuse myself, having personally been underemployed for over a year. But it might provide some sport to put a few questions to a recruiter. Thinking of Mrs Boynton in *Appointment with Death*, who became a prison wardress because it suited her sadistic temperament, there are those who become employment recruiters because, being Queen Bee Wannabes, that way they get to preside in a sense over a lot of suffering people and either consciously or unconsciously twist the knife. Then there are those who genuinely enjoy helping people find good matches for themselves in the career arena. And in between are those with good intentions who don't entirely appreciate how they either sound like a Queen Bee Wannabe or how someone who has been out of work for two years might hear their inquiries as if they were so.
My own recommendation to LW2 would be to meet such an inquisition with incomprehension. That seems about the only sensible reaction that doesn't do the cause any active harm. False positivity (even if it's the unconsciously false sort advised by the prosecutor) gives a tell that rings a bell that can be heard five miles away.
Not only did I rewatch *To Play the King* yesterday, but also sometime this week I read some columnist going on about whether the poor economy will create an irreparable rift between the Haves and the Have Nots. To judge from the writing produced by career recruiters (and I really hope the vast majority of them are deliberately being sadistic, because it would be so depressing if they really think they're being helpful that that would be worse than their just being cruel because they can), the attaining of even the simplest of jobs requires such prodigious jumping through exactly the right quantity of hoops that I'd say the Divide has Already Happened and it's a Doozie with a capital Dooz. As the King expresses it, the Jobless are already viewed as "a little less human than ourselves, and the Safely Employed have a worse chance of successful commisseration than married opposite-sex couples did with not-yet-married same-sex couples after Proposition 8 passed.
But my Ruddigore comparison will be for LW2, not the recruiter. I shall look at the task set to poor Mad Margaret to transform herself, once Despard renounces Sir Ruthven's title and in his new role as virtuous person keeps his vow to marry her, into a highly respectable District Visitor. That's probably a reasonable simile for what is required these days.
Moral: "She didn't spend much upon linendrapers/It certainly entertained the gapers//My ways were strange beyond all range/Paragraphs got into all the papers."
L3: Now I wish I were still in Austenian mode, because LW3's mother-in-law is right in the mode of Mrs Bennet. Why, I can hear Mrs Bennet now, telling Mr Bingley what a close friend of their family Charlotte Lucas is, and how she has never joined in the common gossip of the neighbourhood in calling Charlotte unattractive. Then, when Bingley pays Charlotte the compliment of being very pleasant, Mrs B fires back, "But you must own she is very plain."
Now I have a huge bone to pick with the school, let alone LW3 or any of her relations. If there is a TIE for valedictorian, then there CANNOT be a SECOND tie for salutatorian. Look at the leaderboard and the placements listed at any PGA or LPGA tournament. When two players are tied for first place, what is the next place listed on the leaderboard? THIRD. Not second. Accordingly, I cannot care about the outcome unless both of the so-called tied-for-salutatorians decline the misguided and erroneous honour.
I'll compare the mother-in-law to the ancestors in Ruddigore who come out of their picture frames to torment any Baronet who refuses to commit his daily crime until he dies in agony. It is perhaps only out of desperation that Sir Ruthven at last manages to defeat them by realizing that Sir Roderick, his predecessor, died in the only way any Baronet of Ruddigore could, by refusing to commit his daily crime. But knowing that such refusal was death meant that the refusal was basically suicide - a crime - and that therefore Sir Roderick ought never to have died at all. But LW3 also reminds me a little of Rose Maybud trying to cope with the dilemma of how to convey to Dame Hannah which of the local swains she favours when her book of etiquette, which was all her parents left her and which she has taken as her Guide to Life, seems to thwart her at every turn.
Moral: "You may not hint, you must not hint/It says you mustn't hint in print."
L4: Interesting to see the prosecutor acting like counsel for the Defence, but the solution to this one is quite simple. This is grounds for breakup. The lucky couple have discovered their strong incompatibility on a significant point quite sufficiently early. (We should start a pool on how long they'll be married before they realize that they knew now it wouldn't work.) I shall not even have to cross-examine the witness on exactly how she thinks she has acquired veto power over the proposed arrangement. (I forget now whether LW4 actually made it incontrovertibly clear that the letter is written by a woman; it would be a much more interesting situation if LW4 were male; cross-orientational lines often make for a much more entertaining picture.)
This letter is actually my strongest *Ruddigore* likeness. Early in Act II, Rose and Dick Dauntless sing the duet, "Happily Coupled Are We," in which Dick predicts a happy married life for them but Rose suspects otherwise, even if she is such a bright little, right little, slight little, tight little craft.
Morals: "And all of my wishes you'll throw to the fishes/As though they were never to be - poor me!" and "For you'll be asserting your freedom by flirting/With every woman you meet - you cheat!"
Thursday, May 13, 2010
5/13 - The DPs that Bloom in the Spring, Tra-La
Today's version will have to be a quickie, as much of the day has been spent coping with screwing those horrible little cables out of and into a VCR and whatever this new box my cable company sent me that lets me get the Hallmark channel again now that they aren't showing Murder, She Wrote any more.
It often amuses me with the Monday mini-questions the way that one can predict how a particularly soulless question will receive the vast majority of the comments. This week, of course, everyone and the Lady with the Alligator Purse had to have a say about Hand Sanitizer, which was even worse than last week when 98% of the comments were about into which restroom a parent should take an opposite-sex 4-year-old. There were a mere handful of comments about the questioner worried that her summer-intern-Ivy-League-roomie will be a snob, and DP's outrageous suggestion that the girl might be worth knowing because maybe her parents are divorced or she has a disabled sibling. I am not unused to being the only one outraged by these things, but I liked the question, because it reminded me of three things:
* Iolanthe, the excellent performance a friend of mine gave as Mountararat (one of the two Earls trying to marry Phyllis) and the song "Blue Blood" ("High rank involves no shame/We bear an equal claim/With him of humbler name to be respected").
** Rumpole and the Family Pride, in which Mizz Liz Probert is beside herself over an unmentionable secret she's just learned about her lover Dave Inchcape. Rumpole eventually discovers that Inchcape is related to Lord Luxter, and is actually an Honourable. When he consoles Mizz Liz for Dave's disgraceful birth, Rumpole convinces her that the sons of lords are deprived children, sent away from home and lied to by their fathers about their mothers' deaths, and Liz completely fails to see how he's taking the mick out of her.
*** Lady Marchmain telling Charles Ryder (before Sebastian leaves England for good) how becoming so rich when she married troubled her until she realized how the rich could sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. That strikes me as especially apt for today.
But now, as we go on to a group of questions refreshingly free of mothers, I find that my weird fancy has lighted for the nonce on Gilbert and Sullivan.
L1: Cross-examining LW1 on the exact nature of the hard evidence of the affair might be quite enjoyable if it weren't for the likelihood that LW1 would enjoy perjuring herself with details invented on the spur of the moment, or at the very least find being cross-examined quite thrilling. If one were given enough ammunition to take down the witness, then I should proceed without qualm.
Clearly I rank myself with those who find LW1 less than entirely trustworthy. However, as to what LW1 should actually do if the letter is absolutely true, that seems easy enough. Leave something important in the Tryst Room, and make an excuse to have someone in high office accompany her there at the appropriate time. Really, the whole thing seems extremely difficult to believe. One is almost inclined to apply for employment at this company, if the superiours are so dim that two employees can actually conduct a sexual affair including hour-long trysts in the workplace and not draw the attention of anyone on a higher level.
This is rather reminding me of the LW from a couple of weeks back who heard an invited and an uninvited guest having sex in her living room. If a hostess were to hear an invited and an uninvited guest in her living room having a game of going around the room in a circle without stepping on the floor, she would certainly make her opinion known as quickly as possible, and be lauded for doing so clearly and directly. If the two employees were giving everyone else extra work because they spent so much time playing Internet Poker, anyone blowing the whistle on them would again probably be lauded. But because the misconduct is sexual in nature, it's supposed to get a pass?
I can almost see this sort of situation being picked up by the anti-same-sex marriage crowd as a sign of the decline of values. Once upon a time, if a married person were exhibiting even mildly suspicious conduct, there would be a good deal of commentary and the community would openly take the side of the Wronged Spouse. But now, given that the universal assumption of monogamy that accompanied marriage is on rather shakier ground, and one or two other little factors, blatant affairs do get a lot of the Not My Business reaction.
I really hate these sorts of situations, because whatever anyone does I always expect the worst. If noone does or says anything, I am convinced Wifey will be given some nasty disease, or that the affair will go on long enough to render the marriage too damaged for repair, when a timely word early enough might have given it a chance to be saved. But then again, there are far too many instances of people blurting out the truth all over the place and it not doing anyone any good, especially when not speaking might keep someone out of chokey. I suppose if I had to choose a course, I'd opt for confronting the husband - IF (and it's a big if) LW1 is really firm on her facts and preferably will have a backup.
Now for the G&S comparison to a suspected affair. We can stay in Iolanthe. Strephon is engaged to Phyllis, but the peers and Phyllis herself overhear bits of his meeting with Iolanthe. The tidbits of evidence they hear are suggestive of an affair. As Iolanthe, being a fairy, always appears to be 17 to Strephon's 25, Strephon's explanation that the lady is his mother is quite laughable. It takes a long time (and Iolanthe risking death by revealing her identity to the Lord Chancellor) before the Fairy Queen, infatuated with Captain Shaw, lifts the ban on Fairy-Mortal unions, and everyone can accept the truth.
Moral: "A plague on this vagary/I'm in a nice quandary/Of thoughtless tone/With dames unknown/I ought to be more chary/It seems that she's a fairy/From Andersen's library/And I took her for the proprietor/Of a lady's seminary."
L2: Talk about a rush to judgement! I suppose LW2 can go to her mentor and find out the true facts of the case, but we're certainly in the mood to go burning down the house just to get rid of a fly that has evaded swatting, aren't we?
This situation feels a little bit like The Pirates of Penzance in reverse. Early on, the Pirate King is entirely at a loss to understand why the pirates have found piracy so unprofitable. Although Frederic, who has been their apprentice for many years, has apparently reached the end of his contract with them and will leave them in an hour, he spends the end of his time with them informing them of their great inefficiencies, such as never taking anything from anyone who claims to be an orphan. Later, of course, the Pirate King finds a loophole - Frederic is bound to them until "his one and twentieth birthday" and he was born 21 years ago -BUT - as he was born on the 29th of February, he has only had five birthdays, and must therefore serve the pirates for another 67 years, which will entail robbing the Very-Model-of-the-Modern-Major-General (father of his beloved Mabel).
The LW's incompetency also reminds me a bit of The Sorcerer. Alexis Poindexter, son of Sir Marmaduke, happily engaged to Aline, daughter of Lady Sangazure, cannot understand why his scheme to have love transcend social barriers of birth, breeding and fortune is only catching on with the labourers and not with the ladies among whom he has attempted to spread his philosophy. Accordingly, he reveals to Aline that he has purchased a philtre from John Wellington Wells which will make every unmarried person who drinks it fall asleep and, on waking, fall instantly and permanently in love with the first person of the opposite sex (s)he sees. It seems to go to Alexis' liking at first, but Sir Marmaduke and Lady Sangazure, who are old flames and were secretly inclined to reunite in their joint widowhood, both fall in love elsewhere, and Aline unluckily first sees Alexis' old tutor. Sadly, the only solution requires either Alexis or John Wellington Wells to die at once, and Alexis survives.
Moral: "And that birthday will not be reached by me til 1940."
L3: Here we have an engagement dying for want of sex. I am certainly inclined to cross-examine him, although, even if he has a genuine physical problem, laughing at his partner in what was intended as Alluring Costume is never a good idea. But then, just as LW1 loses a lot of points for bringing in her faithless father, LW3 loses points for bringing in her "oversexed" friends. It almost sounds as if she was fine with Not Very Often until hearing her friends' tales of Derring-Do, and then she pressured him into the current box in an attempt to keep up with them. Not very likely, perhaps, but I've defended worse cases.
I recuse myself from coming up with any reply as to what she should actually do, as I can't raise enough interest in myself to care. Consult a Ouija board or the Magic 8-Ball.
Now the worst engagement in G&S occurs in Patience, when the title heroine agrees to marry Bunthorne despite loving Grosvenor with all her heart. You see, Lady Angela has explained to Patience that True Love, the noblest of all emotions, is completely unselfish. As Grosvenor is a paragon of perfection, there would be nothing unselfish in loving him, whereas loving Bunthorne would be the most ennobling trial imaginable. Just as Bunthorne, the more flambuoyant of the two aesthetic poets, is about to give up on Patience and raffle himself off to one of the twenty lovesick maidens who pine for him, Patience agrees to marry him. Then everyone is horrified when the twenty lovesick maidens, who had temporarily reunited with their former loves the Dragoon Guards, discover that Grosvenor is aesthetic and poetic (though more platitudinal), and transfer their affections to him - except for Lady Jane, who remains faithful to Bunthorne. Furious at the loss of his fan club, Bunthorne blackmails Grosvenor into transforming himself into a commonplace young man. His success makes him cheerful and agreeable, which convinces Patience that it would be a pleasure to love him. That means, of course, that they cannot wed. But when she sees the transformed Grosvenor (the lovesick maidens, seeing that Grosvenor has discarded aestheticism, discard it also), Patience realizes that there is now nothing selfish about loving him, and they are happily united. Bunthorne is about to console himself with Lady Jane until the Duke arrives to make his selection of a wife. As those who are truly lovely have all they need in terms of beauty to secure their happiness, in the common fairness he feels he should choose the only one among them who is truly plain - Jane! The other maidens return for good to their dragoons and noone marries Bunthorne (who was a clear Gilbertian stab at Oscar Wilde).
But a broken engagement is actually the entire subject matter of Trial By Jury. The plaintiff, Angelina, is suing the defendant, Edwin, who seems due for a tough time. The Bailiff extols Angelina's beauty at the same time he tells the jury that From Bias Free of Every Kind/This Trial Must Be Tried. Nor does Edwin's evidence help him much. He must describe how at first in the relationship he was her lovesick boy, only to become, in a short time, another's lovesick boy. [Note: in the Opera World production of TBJ, the non-lined role of Ann Other was played by Anna Dawson, who went on to portray the unhappily wed Violet in Keeping Up Appearances.]
Moral: "Is this the court of the Exchequer?/Be firm, be firm my ****er!" [actual line!]
L4: I cannot bring myself to side with those posters who seem to think that abusive ridicule is a good way to convince a loved one to lose weight or an appropriate expression of concern. But this situation does provide LW4 with an opportunity to set herself apart from her jelly of a mother and make it clear to her nasty relations, without having to resort to equal nastiness herself, that their conduct will no longer be tolerated. The moral high ground is giving her a really wide lane for this one. My personal choice for a retort to have ready would be something along the line of the scene in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie when Maggie Smith as Miss Brodie has had her first meeting in the film with Miss Mackay. We have seen their battleground laid out over educational methods. Leaving the office, Miss Brodie comments on Miss Mackay's, "Chrysanthemums - such... serviceable flowers!"
But on to G&S, where I can happily inform LW4 that her grandmother is King Gama from Princess Ida, who has the traditional patter song on the subject of wondering why everyone thinks he's such a disagreeable man. And Princess Ida herself is that novelty, an Educated Woman. In fact, she carries the idea so far that she gets her father into trouble with King Hildebrand by refusing to honour her engagement to Prince Hilarion because she has established a college for women who will never have anything to do with men. One student is even in trouble for having a set of chess pieces, because they are men with which one gives mate. Hilarion and his friends have to penetrate Ida's school in drag and then defeat Ida's brothers in battle. Gilbert gets in his authorial jab at feminists at the end. Ida proclaims that she will never marry; Gama asks her what if every woman were to do the same; what if her mother had done so? and Ida can only reply, "I never thought of that!"
Moral: "I can tell a woman's age in half a minute - and I do!"
It often amuses me with the Monday mini-questions the way that one can predict how a particularly soulless question will receive the vast majority of the comments. This week, of course, everyone and the Lady with the Alligator Purse had to have a say about Hand Sanitizer, which was even worse than last week when 98% of the comments were about into which restroom a parent should take an opposite-sex 4-year-old. There were a mere handful of comments about the questioner worried that her summer-intern-Ivy-League-roomie will be a snob, and DP's outrageous suggestion that the girl might be worth knowing because maybe her parents are divorced or she has a disabled sibling. I am not unused to being the only one outraged by these things, but I liked the question, because it reminded me of three things:
* Iolanthe, the excellent performance a friend of mine gave as Mountararat (one of the two Earls trying to marry Phyllis) and the song "Blue Blood" ("High rank involves no shame/We bear an equal claim/With him of humbler name to be respected").
** Rumpole and the Family Pride, in which Mizz Liz Probert is beside herself over an unmentionable secret she's just learned about her lover Dave Inchcape. Rumpole eventually discovers that Inchcape is related to Lord Luxter, and is actually an Honourable. When he consoles Mizz Liz for Dave's disgraceful birth, Rumpole convinces her that the sons of lords are deprived children, sent away from home and lied to by their fathers about their mothers' deaths, and Liz completely fails to see how he's taking the mick out of her.
*** Lady Marchmain telling Charles Ryder (before Sebastian leaves England for good) how becoming so rich when she married troubled her until she realized how the rich could sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. That strikes me as especially apt for today.
But now, as we go on to a group of questions refreshingly free of mothers, I find that my weird fancy has lighted for the nonce on Gilbert and Sullivan.
L1: Cross-examining LW1 on the exact nature of the hard evidence of the affair might be quite enjoyable if it weren't for the likelihood that LW1 would enjoy perjuring herself with details invented on the spur of the moment, or at the very least find being cross-examined quite thrilling. If one were given enough ammunition to take down the witness, then I should proceed without qualm.
Clearly I rank myself with those who find LW1 less than entirely trustworthy. However, as to what LW1 should actually do if the letter is absolutely true, that seems easy enough. Leave something important in the Tryst Room, and make an excuse to have someone in high office accompany her there at the appropriate time. Really, the whole thing seems extremely difficult to believe. One is almost inclined to apply for employment at this company, if the superiours are so dim that two employees can actually conduct a sexual affair including hour-long trysts in the workplace and not draw the attention of anyone on a higher level.
This is rather reminding me of the LW from a couple of weeks back who heard an invited and an uninvited guest having sex in her living room. If a hostess were to hear an invited and an uninvited guest in her living room having a game of going around the room in a circle without stepping on the floor, she would certainly make her opinion known as quickly as possible, and be lauded for doing so clearly and directly. If the two employees were giving everyone else extra work because they spent so much time playing Internet Poker, anyone blowing the whistle on them would again probably be lauded. But because the misconduct is sexual in nature, it's supposed to get a pass?
I can almost see this sort of situation being picked up by the anti-same-sex marriage crowd as a sign of the decline of values. Once upon a time, if a married person were exhibiting even mildly suspicious conduct, there would be a good deal of commentary and the community would openly take the side of the Wronged Spouse. But now, given that the universal assumption of monogamy that accompanied marriage is on rather shakier ground, and one or two other little factors, blatant affairs do get a lot of the Not My Business reaction.
I really hate these sorts of situations, because whatever anyone does I always expect the worst. If noone does or says anything, I am convinced Wifey will be given some nasty disease, or that the affair will go on long enough to render the marriage too damaged for repair, when a timely word early enough might have given it a chance to be saved. But then again, there are far too many instances of people blurting out the truth all over the place and it not doing anyone any good, especially when not speaking might keep someone out of chokey. I suppose if I had to choose a course, I'd opt for confronting the husband - IF (and it's a big if) LW1 is really firm on her facts and preferably will have a backup.
Now for the G&S comparison to a suspected affair. We can stay in Iolanthe. Strephon is engaged to Phyllis, but the peers and Phyllis herself overhear bits of his meeting with Iolanthe. The tidbits of evidence they hear are suggestive of an affair. As Iolanthe, being a fairy, always appears to be 17 to Strephon's 25, Strephon's explanation that the lady is his mother is quite laughable. It takes a long time (and Iolanthe risking death by revealing her identity to the Lord Chancellor) before the Fairy Queen, infatuated with Captain Shaw, lifts the ban on Fairy-Mortal unions, and everyone can accept the truth.
Moral: "A plague on this vagary/I'm in a nice quandary/Of thoughtless tone/With dames unknown/I ought to be more chary/It seems that she's a fairy/From Andersen's library/And I took her for the proprietor/Of a lady's seminary."
L2: Talk about a rush to judgement! I suppose LW2 can go to her mentor and find out the true facts of the case, but we're certainly in the mood to go burning down the house just to get rid of a fly that has evaded swatting, aren't we?
This situation feels a little bit like The Pirates of Penzance in reverse. Early on, the Pirate King is entirely at a loss to understand why the pirates have found piracy so unprofitable. Although Frederic, who has been their apprentice for many years, has apparently reached the end of his contract with them and will leave them in an hour, he spends the end of his time with them informing them of their great inefficiencies, such as never taking anything from anyone who claims to be an orphan. Later, of course, the Pirate King finds a loophole - Frederic is bound to them until "his one and twentieth birthday" and he was born 21 years ago -BUT - as he was born on the 29th of February, he has only had five birthdays, and must therefore serve the pirates for another 67 years, which will entail robbing the Very-Model-of-the-Modern-Major-General (father of his beloved Mabel).
The LW's incompetency also reminds me a bit of The Sorcerer. Alexis Poindexter, son of Sir Marmaduke, happily engaged to Aline, daughter of Lady Sangazure, cannot understand why his scheme to have love transcend social barriers of birth, breeding and fortune is only catching on with the labourers and not with the ladies among whom he has attempted to spread his philosophy. Accordingly, he reveals to Aline that he has purchased a philtre from John Wellington Wells which will make every unmarried person who drinks it fall asleep and, on waking, fall instantly and permanently in love with the first person of the opposite sex (s)he sees. It seems to go to Alexis' liking at first, but Sir Marmaduke and Lady Sangazure, who are old flames and were secretly inclined to reunite in their joint widowhood, both fall in love elsewhere, and Aline unluckily first sees Alexis' old tutor. Sadly, the only solution requires either Alexis or John Wellington Wells to die at once, and Alexis survives.
Moral: "And that birthday will not be reached by me til 1940."
L3: Here we have an engagement dying for want of sex. I am certainly inclined to cross-examine him, although, even if he has a genuine physical problem, laughing at his partner in what was intended as Alluring Costume is never a good idea. But then, just as LW1 loses a lot of points for bringing in her faithless father, LW3 loses points for bringing in her "oversexed" friends. It almost sounds as if she was fine with Not Very Often until hearing her friends' tales of Derring-Do, and then she pressured him into the current box in an attempt to keep up with them. Not very likely, perhaps, but I've defended worse cases.
I recuse myself from coming up with any reply as to what she should actually do, as I can't raise enough interest in myself to care. Consult a Ouija board or the Magic 8-Ball.
Now the worst engagement in G&S occurs in Patience, when the title heroine agrees to marry Bunthorne despite loving Grosvenor with all her heart. You see, Lady Angela has explained to Patience that True Love, the noblest of all emotions, is completely unselfish. As Grosvenor is a paragon of perfection, there would be nothing unselfish in loving him, whereas loving Bunthorne would be the most ennobling trial imaginable. Just as Bunthorne, the more flambuoyant of the two aesthetic poets, is about to give up on Patience and raffle himself off to one of the twenty lovesick maidens who pine for him, Patience agrees to marry him. Then everyone is horrified when the twenty lovesick maidens, who had temporarily reunited with their former loves the Dragoon Guards, discover that Grosvenor is aesthetic and poetic (though more platitudinal), and transfer their affections to him - except for Lady Jane, who remains faithful to Bunthorne. Furious at the loss of his fan club, Bunthorne blackmails Grosvenor into transforming himself into a commonplace young man. His success makes him cheerful and agreeable, which convinces Patience that it would be a pleasure to love him. That means, of course, that they cannot wed. But when she sees the transformed Grosvenor (the lovesick maidens, seeing that Grosvenor has discarded aestheticism, discard it also), Patience realizes that there is now nothing selfish about loving him, and they are happily united. Bunthorne is about to console himself with Lady Jane until the Duke arrives to make his selection of a wife. As those who are truly lovely have all they need in terms of beauty to secure their happiness, in the common fairness he feels he should choose the only one among them who is truly plain - Jane! The other maidens return for good to their dragoons and noone marries Bunthorne (who was a clear Gilbertian stab at Oscar Wilde).
But a broken engagement is actually the entire subject matter of Trial By Jury. The plaintiff, Angelina, is suing the defendant, Edwin, who seems due for a tough time. The Bailiff extols Angelina's beauty at the same time he tells the jury that From Bias Free of Every Kind/This Trial Must Be Tried. Nor does Edwin's evidence help him much. He must describe how at first in the relationship he was her lovesick boy, only to become, in a short time, another's lovesick boy. [Note: in the Opera World production of TBJ, the non-lined role of Ann Other was played by Anna Dawson, who went on to portray the unhappily wed Violet in Keeping Up Appearances.]
Moral: "Is this the court of the Exchequer?/Be firm, be firm my ****er!" [actual line!]
L4: I cannot bring myself to side with those posters who seem to think that abusive ridicule is a good way to convince a loved one to lose weight or an appropriate expression of concern. But this situation does provide LW4 with an opportunity to set herself apart from her jelly of a mother and make it clear to her nasty relations, without having to resort to equal nastiness herself, that their conduct will no longer be tolerated. The moral high ground is giving her a really wide lane for this one. My personal choice for a retort to have ready would be something along the line of the scene in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie when Maggie Smith as Miss Brodie has had her first meeting in the film with Miss Mackay. We have seen their battleground laid out over educational methods. Leaving the office, Miss Brodie comments on Miss Mackay's, "Chrysanthemums - such... serviceable flowers!"
But on to G&S, where I can happily inform LW4 that her grandmother is King Gama from Princess Ida, who has the traditional patter song on the subject of wondering why everyone thinks he's such a disagreeable man. And Princess Ida herself is that novelty, an Educated Woman. In fact, she carries the idea so far that she gets her father into trouble with King Hildebrand by refusing to honour her engagement to Prince Hilarion because she has established a college for women who will never have anything to do with men. One student is even in trouble for having a set of chess pieces, because they are men with which one gives mate. Hilarion and his friends have to penetrate Ida's school in drag and then defeat Ida's brothers in battle. Gilbert gets in his authorial jab at feminists at the end. Ida proclaims that she will never marry; Gama asks her what if every woman were to do the same; what if her mother had done so? and Ida can only reply, "I never thought of that!"
Moral: "I can tell a woman's age in half a minute - and I do!"
Thursday, May 6, 2010
DP 5/6 - Which Austenian Mother Are/Have YOU?
This week, I find myself still somewhat depressed after a quick read through Andre Agassi's "Open," which was certainly frank but not terribly edifying. It depressed me to see how much he disliked the vast majority of the other players (without much cause beyond finding Michael Chang's propensity to credit God for his victories offensive); he was neutral about Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg, positive only about Patrick Rafter, and negative about basically everyone else, though he did come to terms with Pete Sampras and John McEnroe. It was also a little disappointing not to get his perspective on the Graf-Hingis 1999 French Open final, as that was more or less when he and Stefanie finally got together. Still, as he does seem to be under a good influence, perhaps he will turn out better in time.
Moving on to this week's DP, it does not strike me as incredibly inspiring. Maybe it's the enforced Mommy Theme, as the letters themselves don't seem too much below par if at all.
L1: Decent fodder here, without even inquiring into the details that might be of most interest to the majority of male posters. It ought to be easy enough to determine that this all occurred before LW1's existence. What interests me most is the mother's parenting style. As LW1 does not mention anything specific that strikes her as peculiarly surprising about the news given her upbringing, I might start the line of questioning along the assumption that Mumsy didn't jump right onto the Virginity-Or-Else Train. Reluctantly, I shall also state that there probably wasn't any coo-coo-ca-chew going on either with LW1's friends during the Mary Kay LeTourneau years or since. Does LW1 think that might be just the flimsiest possibility? Perhaps, but I have no strong interest in this particular Pandora's Box.
I do see a few traps here. The first is in assuming that they were actually really great parents in the first place. If we can assume LW1 isn't outright lying, then they were probably popular parents and she was the Most Popular Mom, but just because LW1 thought (s)he had parents that were just about perfect doesn't mean they'd score so high on an objective scale. My So-Called Life gives us a glowing example of how the teenage fantasy of the Perfect Parent can fail to measure up to the ideal. Another trap is for posters who might be inclined to smack LW1 around with the intent to invalidate what (s)he is feeling. While one might be inclined to find it a bit odd that someone would still be having difficulty processing such news almost a year after the disclosure, people have their own timetables, and putting on the You're So Wonderful mask DP suggests just glosses over that LW1 isn't quite where (s)he wants to be yet. Planning a bit of time apart for the summer seems in order. Not that I don't think LW1 deserves to be smacked around a little, just not for the reason that may seem the most likely. I am getting a very faint read that LW1 has assumed an air of undeserved moral superiourity for having such wonderful parents, perhaps not because of having been raised that way. That might be able to take some adjusting. The end goal, perhaps, might be for LW1 and Mumsy to be able to accept it being okay for them to have differing views of the past while still being able to keep it in the past.
It's interesting to reach for an Austenian parallel, as obviously we cannot find an exact parallel. I suppose Mrs Bennet or Lady Susan might not have objected to the conduct of the secret past, though neither was a popular mother. Mrs Dashwood would be the best parallel to the mother whose house was always where all the kids were, but she isn't the sort to have had a real past. I shall go with a non-mother here, Mrs Croft, who would have been the most popular mother around had she had children, and who, having at least married the future Admiral after an acquaintance of a duration she would just as soon not mention, comes as close to having a chequered past as any of Miss Austen's admirable females of middle age.
Moral: This letter will be nothing to the one that will be written after LW1's intended happens to learn Mumsy's Little Secret.
L2: As this letter deals mainly with logistics, I have little to say. It might be entertaining watching LW2 and Mumsy each determined to say and do what the other secretly wants her to say and do while never having an adult conversation about it, but not for more than five minutes or so. How unfortunate that this situation will be permanent.
The Austenian parallel is again not the easiest. Lady Elliot, Mrs Woodhouse and Mrs Tilney have already died. Only Mrs Churchill both thinks herself ill and is really ill, although her using her health as an excuse to her own advantage backfires on her. The mother and daughter who seem best suited to each being more determined than the other to bend over backwards are Mrs Dashwood and Marianne. It's almost a common theme for them. Marianne is only convinced by Elinor to refuse Willoughby's gift of a horse because clearly Mrs Dashwood would never admit to being unable to afford to keep it. And Mrs Dashwood in her turn is only too eager for Elinor and Marianne to accept Mrs Jenning's invitation to accompany her for a short season in London.
Moral: Happily, this sort of situation does not always turn on the unfortunate circumstance of ill health.
L3: The overwhelmed and dependent mother seems to be largely Mrs Bennet (despite her indefatigable efforts to get her daughters well married) with little bits of Mrs Price, who was completely unable to cope with the demands of a large family and a small income. The sisters are a little tougher. Anne Elliot might serve as a model for LW3's sister, but neither Elizabeth nor Mary would feel guilty about a falling-out. Emma Woodhouse might lose her patience in the way LW3 has done, only not with her father. The closest it might be possible to get to a parallel would be to take Jane and Elizabeth Bennet. Elizabeth might just possibly become fed up with their mother at some point, though she probably would never allow herself to give rein to her exasperation, and she certainly would not fall out with Jane about it, although they would have different opinions about the situation.
LW3 and perhaps her sister as well might do well to take Jane and Elizabeth as models. Although Jane consistently thinks rather better of people than Elizabeth does, they manage to maintain their affection for each other in the most perfect repair. I might also question LW3 along the line of whether what she really wants isn't to get out of the rent agreement without sacrificing her sisterly relationship. That probably isn't possible, and I'm not sure whether LW3 is willing to give up enough of her resentment for a happy ending.
Moral: It seems quite possible that LW3 isn't female, but these sorts of situations just play out so much more satisfactorily among sisters.
L4: One thing on which I am willing to take a little guess is that LW4 was presumable not among the intelligentsia when she was in school if she rallied against popularity instead of railing against it. But enough snarking. I find it very interesting that I am getting a strong feeling that LW4's having popular daughters seems a peculiarly apt punishment for her. She comes across as one of those Intense Social Worker types who have the unfortunate knack of alienating people who agree with them. "There are students who are picked on at their school," may just be awkward phrasing but comes across as if LW4 finds this a unique phenomenon. And the idea that her daughters might actually go through a rebellious phase seems to be the sort of thing she thinks she can eradicate if she raises them properly, so that, even if she suppresses it at present, it might be worse when it occurs. Think of Liz Probert, daughter of well-known Labour leader Red Ron, going to University and joining the - gasp - Conservative Association!
The daughters remind me of Maria and Julia Bertram. "Their vanity was in such good repair that they seemed quite free of it," or something along that line ran the description of them. LW4 herself seems more like their aunt, Mrs Norris, than their mother. And this leads me to my line of questioning. I cannot shake the suspicion that LW4, for all her wanting her daughters to have empathy and to stand up for the underdog, has been raising them to do so in that Intensely Earnest sort of way that makes it only too painfully clear to the underdogs for whom they stand up that they *are* Underdogs. It's all well and good to stand up for people, but how many have they actually befriended? And if the girls have befriended some underdogs, have they treated them the way Emma Woodhouse treated Harriet Smith or Miss Bates? For all her "rallying," I am not entirely sure that LW4 is clear on the concept, and therfore how far can we trust the principles she has instilled into her daughters?
Some posters see potential Carrie moments in the offing, which is certainly likely enough to explain the behaviour of those who rejected the however-sincere-it-was gesture from LW4's daughter. But there seems to be a little too strong a desire to contrast the Mean Girl popular faction against those Little Angels who Genuinely Like Everybody, who are occasionally instanced as the pinnacle of personality perfection. Too much like Mr Weston for my taste, though. The affections of someone who likes everyone can't really be the highest distinction in the calendar.
Moral: Had LW4 read her daughters two pages of Miss Austen's every night before they went to sleep, she might not have had this problem.
Moving on to this week's DP, it does not strike me as incredibly inspiring. Maybe it's the enforced Mommy Theme, as the letters themselves don't seem too much below par if at all.
L1: Decent fodder here, without even inquiring into the details that might be of most interest to the majority of male posters. It ought to be easy enough to determine that this all occurred before LW1's existence. What interests me most is the mother's parenting style. As LW1 does not mention anything specific that strikes her as peculiarly surprising about the news given her upbringing, I might start the line of questioning along the assumption that Mumsy didn't jump right onto the Virginity-Or-Else Train. Reluctantly, I shall also state that there probably wasn't any coo-coo-ca-chew going on either with LW1's friends during the Mary Kay LeTourneau years or since. Does LW1 think that might be just the flimsiest possibility? Perhaps, but I have no strong interest in this particular Pandora's Box.
I do see a few traps here. The first is in assuming that they were actually really great parents in the first place. If we can assume LW1 isn't outright lying, then they were probably popular parents and she was the Most Popular Mom, but just because LW1 thought (s)he had parents that were just about perfect doesn't mean they'd score so high on an objective scale. My So-Called Life gives us a glowing example of how the teenage fantasy of the Perfect Parent can fail to measure up to the ideal. Another trap is for posters who might be inclined to smack LW1 around with the intent to invalidate what (s)he is feeling. While one might be inclined to find it a bit odd that someone would still be having difficulty processing such news almost a year after the disclosure, people have their own timetables, and putting on the You're So Wonderful mask DP suggests just glosses over that LW1 isn't quite where (s)he wants to be yet. Planning a bit of time apart for the summer seems in order. Not that I don't think LW1 deserves to be smacked around a little, just not for the reason that may seem the most likely. I am getting a very faint read that LW1 has assumed an air of undeserved moral superiourity for having such wonderful parents, perhaps not because of having been raised that way. That might be able to take some adjusting. The end goal, perhaps, might be for LW1 and Mumsy to be able to accept it being okay for them to have differing views of the past while still being able to keep it in the past.
It's interesting to reach for an Austenian parallel, as obviously we cannot find an exact parallel. I suppose Mrs Bennet or Lady Susan might not have objected to the conduct of the secret past, though neither was a popular mother. Mrs Dashwood would be the best parallel to the mother whose house was always where all the kids were, but she isn't the sort to have had a real past. I shall go with a non-mother here, Mrs Croft, who would have been the most popular mother around had she had children, and who, having at least married the future Admiral after an acquaintance of a duration she would just as soon not mention, comes as close to having a chequered past as any of Miss Austen's admirable females of middle age.
Moral: This letter will be nothing to the one that will be written after LW1's intended happens to learn Mumsy's Little Secret.
L2: As this letter deals mainly with logistics, I have little to say. It might be entertaining watching LW2 and Mumsy each determined to say and do what the other secretly wants her to say and do while never having an adult conversation about it, but not for more than five minutes or so. How unfortunate that this situation will be permanent.
The Austenian parallel is again not the easiest. Lady Elliot, Mrs Woodhouse and Mrs Tilney have already died. Only Mrs Churchill both thinks herself ill and is really ill, although her using her health as an excuse to her own advantage backfires on her. The mother and daughter who seem best suited to each being more determined than the other to bend over backwards are Mrs Dashwood and Marianne. It's almost a common theme for them. Marianne is only convinced by Elinor to refuse Willoughby's gift of a horse because clearly Mrs Dashwood would never admit to being unable to afford to keep it. And Mrs Dashwood in her turn is only too eager for Elinor and Marianne to accept Mrs Jenning's invitation to accompany her for a short season in London.
Moral: Happily, this sort of situation does not always turn on the unfortunate circumstance of ill health.
L3: The overwhelmed and dependent mother seems to be largely Mrs Bennet (despite her indefatigable efforts to get her daughters well married) with little bits of Mrs Price, who was completely unable to cope with the demands of a large family and a small income. The sisters are a little tougher. Anne Elliot might serve as a model for LW3's sister, but neither Elizabeth nor Mary would feel guilty about a falling-out. Emma Woodhouse might lose her patience in the way LW3 has done, only not with her father. The closest it might be possible to get to a parallel would be to take Jane and Elizabeth Bennet. Elizabeth might just possibly become fed up with their mother at some point, though she probably would never allow herself to give rein to her exasperation, and she certainly would not fall out with Jane about it, although they would have different opinions about the situation.
LW3 and perhaps her sister as well might do well to take Jane and Elizabeth as models. Although Jane consistently thinks rather better of people than Elizabeth does, they manage to maintain their affection for each other in the most perfect repair. I might also question LW3 along the line of whether what she really wants isn't to get out of the rent agreement without sacrificing her sisterly relationship. That probably isn't possible, and I'm not sure whether LW3 is willing to give up enough of her resentment for a happy ending.
Moral: It seems quite possible that LW3 isn't female, but these sorts of situations just play out so much more satisfactorily among sisters.
L4: One thing on which I am willing to take a little guess is that LW4 was presumable not among the intelligentsia when she was in school if she rallied against popularity instead of railing against it. But enough snarking. I find it very interesting that I am getting a strong feeling that LW4's having popular daughters seems a peculiarly apt punishment for her. She comes across as one of those Intense Social Worker types who have the unfortunate knack of alienating people who agree with them. "There are students who are picked on at their school," may just be awkward phrasing but comes across as if LW4 finds this a unique phenomenon. And the idea that her daughters might actually go through a rebellious phase seems to be the sort of thing she thinks she can eradicate if she raises them properly, so that, even if she suppresses it at present, it might be worse when it occurs. Think of Liz Probert, daughter of well-known Labour leader Red Ron, going to University and joining the - gasp - Conservative Association!
The daughters remind me of Maria and Julia Bertram. "Their vanity was in such good repair that they seemed quite free of it," or something along that line ran the description of them. LW4 herself seems more like their aunt, Mrs Norris, than their mother. And this leads me to my line of questioning. I cannot shake the suspicion that LW4, for all her wanting her daughters to have empathy and to stand up for the underdog, has been raising them to do so in that Intensely Earnest sort of way that makes it only too painfully clear to the underdogs for whom they stand up that they *are* Underdogs. It's all well and good to stand up for people, but how many have they actually befriended? And if the girls have befriended some underdogs, have they treated them the way Emma Woodhouse treated Harriet Smith or Miss Bates? For all her "rallying," I am not entirely sure that LW4 is clear on the concept, and therfore how far can we trust the principles she has instilled into her daughters?
Some posters see potential Carrie moments in the offing, which is certainly likely enough to explain the behaviour of those who rejected the however-sincere-it-was gesture from LW4's daughter. But there seems to be a little too strong a desire to contrast the Mean Girl popular faction against those Little Angels who Genuinely Like Everybody, who are occasionally instanced as the pinnacle of personality perfection. Too much like Mr Weston for my taste, though. The affections of someone who likes everyone can't really be the highest distinction in the calendar.
Moral: Had LW4 read her daughters two pages of Miss Austen's every night before they went to sleep, she might not have had this problem.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
DP 4/29 and Gender Ruminations
It does seem as if various little tweaks to these letters could improve them considerably.
L1: Now this is interesting. Your supervisor constantly has little "crises de nerfs," and spends much of the workday in a state of considerable Upset with a clearly capital U (like Mrs Oliver in *Dead Man's Folly*) making demands on you for your sympathy. You, good sir, are working for Mrs Bennet of *Pride and Prejudice*.
Mrs B, as any reader of P&P will instantly recall, is inclined to react to any vexation, be it minor or major, from Kitty's coughing to Mr Bennet's saying he will not visit a new neighbour who happens to be a highly eligible bachelor to Elizabeth's refusing the proposal of marriage from a man she despises who happens to be the future inheritor of the family estate, with loud lamentations that noone appreciates her suffering or has any compassion for her poor nerves. It's difficult to know exactly how to rate Mrs Bennet's judgment. One is inclined to dislike her so much that it is difficult to rate her conduct with objectivity. Yet, to judge by results, she comes out almost tolerably well. Her judgment is seriously off for thinking that Elizabeth could ever find Mr Collins even a tolerable husband, but then again she does manage to get Jane and Bingley together with speed, and her results exceed even her own expectations. Not bad for a woman of little or no understanding and illiberal mind.
I wonder about LW1's supervisor. Does she spend her entire day going from employee to employee sobbing her poor little heart out while forming and dismantling vendettas at whim? It doesn't seem terribly likely. It might be entertaining to determine why she singles out LW1 and what he might have in common with any other favourites of hers at the office.
But I suspect that the real problem just does not appear in the question, and might not even have occurred to LW1 yet. The strange conduct of his wife is what concerns me. LW1's wife knows that Another Woman is telling LW1 her Feelings - the most sincere, precious and important communication any woman can ever disclose to a mere man - and her extremely unwifely reaction is to be so completely sanguine and to encourage such an outrageous assault on the entire foundation of American Family Values to continue? This will not do. Mrs LW1 is clearly cheating on her husband, or at least wishes to do so, probably with another woman. Unless LW1's lifelong fantasy is to be the Creme Filling in an Oreo Cookie, he must divorce her at once.
Moral: Reverse the genders of the couple, and would this even be a letter? Make the couple gay and bisexual males for maximum number of interesting side lines to pursue.
L2: This one is creeping me out a bit. Here I shall have to draw a parallel between a rather spaniel-like human and an actual dog. LW2 has returned home to find that his best friend has turned into Mrs Norris from *Mansfield Park*.
Mrs Norris might well make a rewarding case study, perhaps one of the most rewarding case studies in all of Austeniana. Beginning life as Miss Ward, with a fortune of seven thousand pounds, she has the remarkably mixed blessing of seeing her sister Maria marry up after captivating a baronet. Shortly thereafter, Miss Ward finds herself obliged to become attached to Mr Norris,a clerical friend of her brother-in-law's. On the plus side, Sir Thomas can give his friend a living, and the Norrises begin their career of conjugal felicity with an income (that would satisfy Elinor Dashwood) of very little less than a thousand a year. On the minus side, this throws Mrs Norris into a lifetime of scrounging and toadying to her inactive sister, a situation slightly similar to that of Sir Walter and Miss Elliot at the end of *Persuasion* when they are forced to find their only consolation with Lady Dalrymple - that to follow and flatter others without being followed and flattered in return is but a state of half enjoyment. However much Mrs Norris might enjoy the direction of affairs at Mansfield Park to the extent that she can act in Lady Bertram's stead, she has noone to whom she can openly feel superiour, which, one must presume, grates on her during the course of her marriage until the action of the novel begins.
Fortunately for Mrs Norris, there were three Miss Wards. While Miss Maria married up, Miss Frances married considerably down. By the time of her ninth confinement, her last recourse is to appeal to her sisters (primarily Lady Bertram) for relief. This is all Mrs Norris could request of life, and it is no coincidence that the scheme to raise Mrs Price's oldest daughter at Mansfield comes from her older, poorer and more active aunt. After more than a decade and a half of subordinating herself to the Bertrams, Mrs Norris has a relation to whom she can condescend, and the treatment Fanny receives at her hands is about what one might expect from someone who has had to repress herself for so long and now finds an object ideally suited both in temperament and situation to all the worst excesses within her character.
As to what LW2 should do, I'm just too sick that he went around consulting others instead of taking action at once. That he sorta-kinda-should-woulda-coulda tried to do the right thing is all very nice and cute, but if I had my way LW2 would spend a day (with only the same recreation breaks provided) in a cage meant for someone rather smaller than he is for every day he knew the abuse to the dog to be continuing and did nothing to stop it. We can deal with the friend and determine whether he's a likely serial murderer or just very sick later, but the main thing is that the dog must be saved. Buy the dog. Blackmail the friend if necessary, just do not let the poor animal live through another day of mistreatment. Do it at once, yesterday, last week. If you really want to worry about the friend later, be my guest.
Moral: Talk about Good Men Doing Nothing...
L3: As if L2 weren't bad enough. Now we go all the way to Miss Austen's juvenilia, with a fiance who could have been a model for a title character in her story, "Jack and Alice." The Johnsons were a devoted family and, though a little addicted to the bottle and the dice, had many amiable qualities. At least LW3's intended does not gamble, so far as we know. Jack, sadly, does not get to do very much in the story. He appears in the opening chapter, at the masquerade to celebrate his father's birthday, and then is not mentioned until he dies young (considerably assisted in this endeavour by alcohol), an event which, as it makes her her father's sole heiress and thus increases the possibility of her being considered worthy to marry the exquisite Charles Adams, is a source of pleasure to his sister.
It might be possible to spend a long afternoon asking questions about how LW3 had it drummed into her that judgment was such a negative quality, but taking any interest in such an exercise would be considerably assisted by feeling at least the tiniest piece less contempt for her. In fact, I think her course of conduct is quite clear. She must get herself both spayed and neutred just to be safe, move with him to Manhattan where he will not have to drive ever again, and marry him at once. In fact, my heart may be more set on this pair marrying than on any other pair that has ever appeared in this column.
Moral: I suppose it's progress of a kind if the general reaction to the situation would be the same with the genders reversed. Would it be? I'm not sure.
L4: I could spend the rest of the day trying to decide whether this is an improvement or not over the previous letter from the woman who did reconnect with her (Swoon) First Love and then had a Psychic Dream about his dying. In a way, working off my previous moral, it's a little interesting to see LW4 producing a letter that looks like such a bad fake it almost has to be genuine (unless it had been written by a novice female staffer who had not yet taken a course in How to Sound Male). And I am going to give LW4 at least a few points for sounding a lot less crude than the LW of some weeks ago whose old flame was married to the demented man and who could neither write two sentences without mentioning the strength of her sex drive or instance even one point of merit in the poor woman's character.
But I would refer LW4 to *Persuasion* and how Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot may have gone on with their lives, but neither of them married and had children even though they were neither expecting nor hoping to meet again. As Eleanor of Aquitaine said to Henry II in *The Lion in Winter* - Save your aching arches; that road is closed.
LW4's manner of mentioning his wife in passing opens up all sorts of possibilities. I think I should cross-examine him along the line of finding out exactly what the trigger was that woke him up one day to his being in late middle age with nothing much in his life except a sense that his Golden Past seemed to suggest so much more Promise in his future than life actually delivered. I think the comic strip *Mary Worth* recently had a not-too-dissimilar story line. Wilbur Weston, a man of about 50 who writes an advice column called, I think, Dear Wendy, had a recent brush with his past. A young man appeared briefly in his life; his mother had been Wilbur's college sweetheart and Wilbur just might have been his father. He wasn't, apparently (I only saw the Sunday strip and a rare one on a weekday and didn't think to follow it on line), but I recall a strip or two of reminiscence about Abby and what a free spirit she was, and how she and her son basically grew up together. Unfortunately, Wilbur Weston is widowed, but LW4 might as well be for all the interest he seems to be showing in his marriage. (Perhaps his wife expected him to buy her an expensive engagement ring and never got over it, so that now she is free with her affections only when she receives presents that will fetch a decent amount at the pawnbroker's.) That seems a decent long along which to start; he doesn't really give off the impression of having been half-consciously obsessed with his (Swoon) First Love all the time, though the cross could easily transpose into such a vein.
As for what LW4 should do, this seems one of those times when a heartfelt note would be genuinely heartfelt. It would be easy enough to omit any little details that would be less than comforting to the grieving family. And their could be a side benefit in such a course of conduct. If the family happen to reply, LW4 might learn a thing or two of interest, such as whether his (Swoon) First Love ever mentioned him to her children, or perhaps compared him favourably to their father, or maybe even went so far as wish she'd had them with LW4 instead and openly cried to them every night that she'd thrown away Her One Chance At True Love - well, a LW can dream, can't he? And if it had happened that his (Swoon) First Love had turned him into her family joke, at least the relations would probably be sufficiently polite to keep that from him.
Moral: This sort of letter really needs something like non-matching sexual orientations in order to give it sufficient seasoning. Otherwise it just comes out all swoony and droopy.
L1: Now this is interesting. Your supervisor constantly has little "crises de nerfs," and spends much of the workday in a state of considerable Upset with a clearly capital U (like Mrs Oliver in *Dead Man's Folly*) making demands on you for your sympathy. You, good sir, are working for Mrs Bennet of *Pride and Prejudice*.
Mrs B, as any reader of P&P will instantly recall, is inclined to react to any vexation, be it minor or major, from Kitty's coughing to Mr Bennet's saying he will not visit a new neighbour who happens to be a highly eligible bachelor to Elizabeth's refusing the proposal of marriage from a man she despises who happens to be the future inheritor of the family estate, with loud lamentations that noone appreciates her suffering or has any compassion for her poor nerves. It's difficult to know exactly how to rate Mrs Bennet's judgment. One is inclined to dislike her so much that it is difficult to rate her conduct with objectivity. Yet, to judge by results, she comes out almost tolerably well. Her judgment is seriously off for thinking that Elizabeth could ever find Mr Collins even a tolerable husband, but then again she does manage to get Jane and Bingley together with speed, and her results exceed even her own expectations. Not bad for a woman of little or no understanding and illiberal mind.
I wonder about LW1's supervisor. Does she spend her entire day going from employee to employee sobbing her poor little heart out while forming and dismantling vendettas at whim? It doesn't seem terribly likely. It might be entertaining to determine why she singles out LW1 and what he might have in common with any other favourites of hers at the office.
But I suspect that the real problem just does not appear in the question, and might not even have occurred to LW1 yet. The strange conduct of his wife is what concerns me. LW1's wife knows that Another Woman is telling LW1 her Feelings - the most sincere, precious and important communication any woman can ever disclose to a mere man - and her extremely unwifely reaction is to be so completely sanguine and to encourage such an outrageous assault on the entire foundation of American Family Values to continue? This will not do. Mrs LW1 is clearly cheating on her husband, or at least wishes to do so, probably with another woman. Unless LW1's lifelong fantasy is to be the Creme Filling in an Oreo Cookie, he must divorce her at once.
Moral: Reverse the genders of the couple, and would this even be a letter? Make the couple gay and bisexual males for maximum number of interesting side lines to pursue.
L2: This one is creeping me out a bit. Here I shall have to draw a parallel between a rather spaniel-like human and an actual dog. LW2 has returned home to find that his best friend has turned into Mrs Norris from *Mansfield Park*.
Mrs Norris might well make a rewarding case study, perhaps one of the most rewarding case studies in all of Austeniana. Beginning life as Miss Ward, with a fortune of seven thousand pounds, she has the remarkably mixed blessing of seeing her sister Maria marry up after captivating a baronet. Shortly thereafter, Miss Ward finds herself obliged to become attached to Mr Norris,a clerical friend of her brother-in-law's. On the plus side, Sir Thomas can give his friend a living, and the Norrises begin their career of conjugal felicity with an income (that would satisfy Elinor Dashwood) of very little less than a thousand a year. On the minus side, this throws Mrs Norris into a lifetime of scrounging and toadying to her inactive sister, a situation slightly similar to that of Sir Walter and Miss Elliot at the end of *Persuasion* when they are forced to find their only consolation with Lady Dalrymple - that to follow and flatter others without being followed and flattered in return is but a state of half enjoyment. However much Mrs Norris might enjoy the direction of affairs at Mansfield Park to the extent that she can act in Lady Bertram's stead, she has noone to whom she can openly feel superiour, which, one must presume, grates on her during the course of her marriage until the action of the novel begins.
Fortunately for Mrs Norris, there were three Miss Wards. While Miss Maria married up, Miss Frances married considerably down. By the time of her ninth confinement, her last recourse is to appeal to her sisters (primarily Lady Bertram) for relief. This is all Mrs Norris could request of life, and it is no coincidence that the scheme to raise Mrs Price's oldest daughter at Mansfield comes from her older, poorer and more active aunt. After more than a decade and a half of subordinating herself to the Bertrams, Mrs Norris has a relation to whom she can condescend, and the treatment Fanny receives at her hands is about what one might expect from someone who has had to repress herself for so long and now finds an object ideally suited both in temperament and situation to all the worst excesses within her character.
As to what LW2 should do, I'm just too sick that he went around consulting others instead of taking action at once. That he sorta-kinda-should-woulda-coulda tried to do the right thing is all very nice and cute, but if I had my way LW2 would spend a day (with only the same recreation breaks provided) in a cage meant for someone rather smaller than he is for every day he knew the abuse to the dog to be continuing and did nothing to stop it. We can deal with the friend and determine whether he's a likely serial murderer or just very sick later, but the main thing is that the dog must be saved. Buy the dog. Blackmail the friend if necessary, just do not let the poor animal live through another day of mistreatment. Do it at once, yesterday, last week. If you really want to worry about the friend later, be my guest.
Moral: Talk about Good Men Doing Nothing...
L3: As if L2 weren't bad enough. Now we go all the way to Miss Austen's juvenilia, with a fiance who could have been a model for a title character in her story, "Jack and Alice." The Johnsons were a devoted family and, though a little addicted to the bottle and the dice, had many amiable qualities. At least LW3's intended does not gamble, so far as we know. Jack, sadly, does not get to do very much in the story. He appears in the opening chapter, at the masquerade to celebrate his father's birthday, and then is not mentioned until he dies young (considerably assisted in this endeavour by alcohol), an event which, as it makes her her father's sole heiress and thus increases the possibility of her being considered worthy to marry the exquisite Charles Adams, is a source of pleasure to his sister.
It might be possible to spend a long afternoon asking questions about how LW3 had it drummed into her that judgment was such a negative quality, but taking any interest in such an exercise would be considerably assisted by feeling at least the tiniest piece less contempt for her. In fact, I think her course of conduct is quite clear. She must get herself both spayed and neutred just to be safe, move with him to Manhattan where he will not have to drive ever again, and marry him at once. In fact, my heart may be more set on this pair marrying than on any other pair that has ever appeared in this column.
Moral: I suppose it's progress of a kind if the general reaction to the situation would be the same with the genders reversed. Would it be? I'm not sure.
L4: I could spend the rest of the day trying to decide whether this is an improvement or not over the previous letter from the woman who did reconnect with her (Swoon) First Love and then had a Psychic Dream about his dying. In a way, working off my previous moral, it's a little interesting to see LW4 producing a letter that looks like such a bad fake it almost has to be genuine (unless it had been written by a novice female staffer who had not yet taken a course in How to Sound Male). And I am going to give LW4 at least a few points for sounding a lot less crude than the LW of some weeks ago whose old flame was married to the demented man and who could neither write two sentences without mentioning the strength of her sex drive or instance even one point of merit in the poor woman's character.
But I would refer LW4 to *Persuasion* and how Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot may have gone on with their lives, but neither of them married and had children even though they were neither expecting nor hoping to meet again. As Eleanor of Aquitaine said to Henry II in *The Lion in Winter* - Save your aching arches; that road is closed.
LW4's manner of mentioning his wife in passing opens up all sorts of possibilities. I think I should cross-examine him along the line of finding out exactly what the trigger was that woke him up one day to his being in late middle age with nothing much in his life except a sense that his Golden Past seemed to suggest so much more Promise in his future than life actually delivered. I think the comic strip *Mary Worth* recently had a not-too-dissimilar story line. Wilbur Weston, a man of about 50 who writes an advice column called, I think, Dear Wendy, had a recent brush with his past. A young man appeared briefly in his life; his mother had been Wilbur's college sweetheart and Wilbur just might have been his father. He wasn't, apparently (I only saw the Sunday strip and a rare one on a weekday and didn't think to follow it on line), but I recall a strip or two of reminiscence about Abby and what a free spirit she was, and how she and her son basically grew up together. Unfortunately, Wilbur Weston is widowed, but LW4 might as well be for all the interest he seems to be showing in his marriage. (Perhaps his wife expected him to buy her an expensive engagement ring and never got over it, so that now she is free with her affections only when she receives presents that will fetch a decent amount at the pawnbroker's.) That seems a decent long along which to start; he doesn't really give off the impression of having been half-consciously obsessed with his (Swoon) First Love all the time, though the cross could easily transpose into such a vein.
As for what LW4 should do, this seems one of those times when a heartfelt note would be genuinely heartfelt. It would be easy enough to omit any little details that would be less than comforting to the grieving family. And their could be a side benefit in such a course of conduct. If the family happen to reply, LW4 might learn a thing or two of interest, such as whether his (Swoon) First Love ever mentioned him to her children, or perhaps compared him favourably to their father, or maybe even went so far as wish she'd had them with LW4 instead and openly cried to them every night that she'd thrown away Her One Chance At True Love - well, a LW can dream, can't he? And if it had happened that his (Swoon) First Love had turned him into her family joke, at least the relations would probably be sufficiently polite to keep that from him.
Moral: This sort of letter really needs something like non-matching sexual orientations in order to give it sufficient seasoning. Otherwise it just comes out all swoony and droopy.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Chapter and Verse
I'll admit I'd have been surprised if anyone had recognized the quotation I gave.
I'm not sure whether it was 1985 or 1986. I had been thinking about various friends from college, I remember that much, and somehow happened to stumble upon what appeared to be a new release on a remarkably obscure label by, of all people, Melanie. As it happened, one of the people I'd been remembering had been a suitemate who had been passionately devoted to her recordings. The general consensus at the time had been that he'd seemed better naturally suited to her era than our own. That and a natural curiosity about someone reappearing after some years comprised enough reason and interest for a minor purchase.
It was a painful listening experience. Melanie had attempted to drag herself into the 80's and it just did not work. I can't really recall much of how or why it didn't work apart from one line, "Abuse is just a game I play in bed." But I recall feeling rather sad as the album neared its conclusion, as she seemed just so out of her time.
Then the last song, "Some Body Love," began with, "I fell in love with a man who was twice my age and half my size," and quickly made itself the one success in the entire misplaced collection. I could not really recall how much of her own brand of It she still had, but she still had something worthwhile. And somehow that made the whole thing seem that much sadder. It would have been so much simpler just to be able to stamp, Outlived Her Time, and file her away. But ever since there's been a twinge of lingering regret that comes to me every so often, and has become a sort of benchmark for considering how other well-known people have aged.
I'm not sure whether it was 1985 or 1986. I had been thinking about various friends from college, I remember that much, and somehow happened to stumble upon what appeared to be a new release on a remarkably obscure label by, of all people, Melanie. As it happened, one of the people I'd been remembering had been a suitemate who had been passionately devoted to her recordings. The general consensus at the time had been that he'd seemed better naturally suited to her era than our own. That and a natural curiosity about someone reappearing after some years comprised enough reason and interest for a minor purchase.
It was a painful listening experience. Melanie had attempted to drag herself into the 80's and it just did not work. I can't really recall much of how or why it didn't work apart from one line, "Abuse is just a game I play in bed." But I recall feeling rather sad as the album neared its conclusion, as she seemed just so out of her time.
Then the last song, "Some Body Love," began with, "I fell in love with a man who was twice my age and half my size," and quickly made itself the one success in the entire misplaced collection. I could not really recall how much of her own brand of It she still had, but she still had something worthwhile. And somehow that made the whole thing seem that much sadder. It would have been so much simpler just to be able to stamp, Outlived Her Time, and file her away. But ever since there's been a twinge of lingering regret that comes to me every so often, and has become a sort of benchmark for considering how other well-known people have aged.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
DP 4/22 - Back to the Cold Climate
This week I shall open with a quotation that, in context, sometimes breaks my heart. I have been meditating upon how some people in the public eye age considerably better than others, which turned out to be quite apt for the first letter this week. Because I suspect this one might even merit Final Jeopardy, I shall provide pertinent details after the weekend.
"I fell in love with a man who was twice my age and half my size."
On to the letters and a return to Miss Mitford.
L1: I have seen one or two posters speculate that LW1 might be male. The theory, which has some ingenuity to it, is that LW1 made an advance or two of some sort to the kitty in question only to discover her to be a cougar. I shall not quite side with that assessment. LW1 comes across as very nearly an A-Gay Wannabe, which would explain the tone of desperation in L1 to make a mountain out of a little pile of grass as well as the excessive concern about age as a number. But I'll agree with the theory that a male LW1 would have only written that letter out of thwarted passion, so that, unless LW1 is Mr Carvey's character Lyle the Effeminate Heterosexual (not a pleasant thought), that leaves LW1 as a Fag Hag. The cross-examination of this witness would be highly entertaining for the general public, and would deal with exact details of precisely how people should act at various ages. My guess is that she might respond to questioning rather like Stacy London on steroids.
As to what LW1 should actually do, I think she should show enthusiasm for the birthday lunch in question, but, in the spirit of the Fake Prom, do a bit of rearranging. She should divert the invited (young) guests to a different location, and invite a group of what she would call Old Frumps and the rest of us would call respectable 40-year-olds to join the Cougar at the appointed rendezvous, armed with the gag gifts. When word of her cleverness gets back to those in charge of the radio station, she should reap her richly deserved reward.
Love in a Cold Climate contains a number of people passing for younger or mingling with a younger set. At the end we have Fanny's mother, the Bolter, thinking that it might have been as well for Linda to have died young, life being unkind for women like Linda and herself when they aged (even if the Bolter had brought a young and devoted Spaniard to escort her on her return to England). There is Boy Dugdale of indeterminate age, who chooses marriage and bolting partners from the younger generation. And there is Lady Montdore, whom I shall choose for my comparison.
As portrayed by Sheila Gish, Lady Montdore appears as if she could be practically any age between 40 and 60. Her meeting life with an air of command and her regal indifference to fashion are great age blurrers. But she meets her match after she sees to it that Polly is disinherited. Our last view of the old Lady Montdore is when she suddenly appears at Fanny's home and invites Fanny to Hampton to meet Montdore's new heir, a Canadian distant cousin whom she expects to behave like a lumberjack. Then Cedric swishes in and takes her over in the first ten minutes. Lady Montdore's last typical pronouncement is how she has never been very fond of France and finds the French frivolousl she prefers Germans. Cedric's extreme reaction ("The frivolity of the Germans terrifies even one!") overwhelms and seems to hypnotize her. He charms Fanny and Montdore as well, but "Aunt Sonia's" iron will crumbles before him. Invited originally for two weeks, Cedric is clearly there to stay, and he immediately sets about transforming Lady Montdore into one of those ageless-looking women with perfectly smooth makeup and a gay smile for every occasion. At the first public appearance of Cedric and Aunt Sonia with her new look, she's summed up by her friend Veronica, Mrs Chadley Corbett, as being so wonderful and so young. "I hope I look like that when *I'm* a hundred."
Moral: Only look into mirrors before turning into Lucrezia Borgia.
L2: I rather feel for LW2, who seems to be a blameless version of LW4 from last week. Last week it was just someone pressured into agreeing to an excessive expense as a bridesmaid through the expedient of almost crying. This week's LW2 more seriously has saddled herself with guilt simply because of someone else's thoughtless comment that she was driving too slowly. It is interesting that she describes herself as witnessing the accident, but I would only want to undertake this cross-examination if I were being paid for it. There's a lot more there than just the accident, though. This LW falls into my least favourite category, that of those who do not deserve severe treatment but who need it because it's the only thing to do them any good.
Looking in LIACC for inappropriate remarks, there's a runaway winner. After Polly and Boy marry and she is disinherited, they cannot afford to live in England and only come back when he's invited to write or research a family history. Polly is pregnant, but it is already clear that the marriage is not a success. The baby dies, leaving Fanny and Polly distraught. But Polly has rallied enough to be curious about how Cedric has transformed her mother when Lady Montdore comes to see her for the first time since the wedding. Lady Montdore sails in with her blue hair and her perfect makeup and her fixed smile which is completely unsuitable for the occasion, and instead of her formerly typical heavy remarks comes out airly with a remark about the poor baby dying and her supposing it was all for the best as if a rainy day had forced the cancellation of a tennis party. It is enough to leave one speechless, quite speechless (and, as Sophie Thompson's Miss Bates adds in Gwyneth Paltrow's *Emma* - "and we have not stopped taking of it since").
Moral: Scapegoats never go out of fashion.
L3: Now this letter confuses me. LW3 handled an awkward situation with somewhat less grace than she might have done. Okay, that happens. But now here she is and she has come up with a proposed solution that makes no sense. LW3 wonders whether she should send a message to the brother of the woman in question in order to shame her into better behaviour. What on earth does she expect such a course of action to accomplish? (Apparently LW3 posted in the comments that she intended sending a private message, not making a public post.) Does the brother in question control his sister's every move? What on earth would he do?
Singularly missing from the letter is an account of the boyfriend's reaction. Naturally one wonders why he has not taken any part in the proceedings. After all, the male in question wasthe friend of his friend. He is much closer to the situation than LW3.
A fairly large number of posters and DP herself advance the opinion that the correct response to hearing the sounds of Hanky Panky is to ignore them and let the couple in question get on with it. That is enough to drive me to bad language again. Why the SB1 should the SB1 hostess just have to ignore the SB1 highjinks of SB1 guests SB1ing each other on her SB1 sofa? Perhaps I have a bit too much of a case of Ama Clutch, but I feel for the poor furniture. I think anyone in LW3's situation well within her rights at least to offer the couple a sheet or two to protect the sofa.
The LIACC comparison is clear and obvious again, and it is a priceless moment. Anthony Andrews, playing Boy Dugdale, is seated next to Rosamund Pike's Fanny at dinner during Lady Montdore's house party (designed to try to match Polly up with the Duc de Sauterre), gives the most marvelously nauseating leer and then proceeds to grope her under the table. It is the sort of image that burns itself onto one's eyeballs.
I shall now bring up a point of order that I have not seen raised by anyone else at this point. A few people seem to be skimming lightly over the written evidence, just as Phyllida Erskine Brown did when she thought Claude was advertising for extramarital companionship and missed the [F] in the description that pointed to his pupil Mrs Whitaker as the lonely heart. It may be one thing when hosting a party of friends that includes one or more couples or potential couples to accept that sometimes Nature will take its course. However little one likes LW3, though, it is quite another thing in the case here. The male in question, while her guest, was not personally known to either herself or her boyfriend. Indeed, only one member of the house party was a friend of her boyfriend. The guests (one can establish with a quick question whether the boyfriend accompanied them or not) went out to a party which LW3 did not attend, and one of them brought a pickup back to her home. Again, where was the boyfriend in all this? Did he go to the party? Did he know of the hookup? Did he accede to the impromptu addition of an extra guest? If so, there are various other issues in play that noone has raised. But my initial assumption, as LW3 seems the sort who would enumerate all her complaints about her boyfriend if he'd taken some part in the goings-on, was that there was no reason for either host to expect to hear Loud Sex on the living room sofa. This does detract considerably from whatever blame LW3 may merit.
One of the few Logistical Advantages of Heterosexuality is that one can have a house party and invite more than two guests, perhaps a good many more than two, and have a reasonable expectation that the weekend will be Hanky Panky Free.
Moral: There is no way on earth that one should ever allow both a Submariner and a Mermaid within five miles of one's Victorian Fainting Sofa at the same time, however trustworthy either might be when alone.
L4: Perhaps LW4's resentment is the result, as some posters deduce through their own experiences, of her husband trying to push her too deeply into his life and take her over. Perhaps they are really equally matched. Perhaps he thinks they have too little in common. Which is the case will emerge at the end of questioning if one can muster the interest for it. At the moment, I feel too little inclined to take the requisite interest in the exercise.
LIACC has couples with a range of divergent interests. Fanny and Alfred are well suited. The Montdores, Polly's parents, don't seem to do much together, but are sustained by their great estate. Linda's parents, the Radletts, are clearly in a relationship in which he Expresses Himself and she Manages Him, but it works well. When Linda marries Tony Kroezig, she soon finds that they have far too little by way of common interests (she already knew their families were incompatible). Moved by Christian's Communism, Linda never really can take it up properly, which she eventually realizes when she sees how well he gets on with Lavender, and she bolts again. But I think Polly and Boy make the couple with the most divergent interests.
The previous moral seems uncappable; I shall not attempt it.
"I fell in love with a man who was twice my age and half my size."
On to the letters and a return to Miss Mitford.
L1: I have seen one or two posters speculate that LW1 might be male. The theory, which has some ingenuity to it, is that LW1 made an advance or two of some sort to the kitty in question only to discover her to be a cougar. I shall not quite side with that assessment. LW1 comes across as very nearly an A-Gay Wannabe, which would explain the tone of desperation in L1 to make a mountain out of a little pile of grass as well as the excessive concern about age as a number. But I'll agree with the theory that a male LW1 would have only written that letter out of thwarted passion, so that, unless LW1 is Mr Carvey's character Lyle the Effeminate Heterosexual (not a pleasant thought), that leaves LW1 as a Fag Hag. The cross-examination of this witness would be highly entertaining for the general public, and would deal with exact details of precisely how people should act at various ages. My guess is that she might respond to questioning rather like Stacy London on steroids.
As to what LW1 should actually do, I think she should show enthusiasm for the birthday lunch in question, but, in the spirit of the Fake Prom, do a bit of rearranging. She should divert the invited (young) guests to a different location, and invite a group of what she would call Old Frumps and the rest of us would call respectable 40-year-olds to join the Cougar at the appointed rendezvous, armed with the gag gifts. When word of her cleverness gets back to those in charge of the radio station, she should reap her richly deserved reward.
Love in a Cold Climate contains a number of people passing for younger or mingling with a younger set. At the end we have Fanny's mother, the Bolter, thinking that it might have been as well for Linda to have died young, life being unkind for women like Linda and herself when they aged (even if the Bolter had brought a young and devoted Spaniard to escort her on her return to England). There is Boy Dugdale of indeterminate age, who chooses marriage and bolting partners from the younger generation. And there is Lady Montdore, whom I shall choose for my comparison.
As portrayed by Sheila Gish, Lady Montdore appears as if she could be practically any age between 40 and 60. Her meeting life with an air of command and her regal indifference to fashion are great age blurrers. But she meets her match after she sees to it that Polly is disinherited. Our last view of the old Lady Montdore is when she suddenly appears at Fanny's home and invites Fanny to Hampton to meet Montdore's new heir, a Canadian distant cousin whom she expects to behave like a lumberjack. Then Cedric swishes in and takes her over in the first ten minutes. Lady Montdore's last typical pronouncement is how she has never been very fond of France and finds the French frivolousl she prefers Germans. Cedric's extreme reaction ("The frivolity of the Germans terrifies even one!") overwhelms and seems to hypnotize her. He charms Fanny and Montdore as well, but "Aunt Sonia's" iron will crumbles before him. Invited originally for two weeks, Cedric is clearly there to stay, and he immediately sets about transforming Lady Montdore into one of those ageless-looking women with perfectly smooth makeup and a gay smile for every occasion. At the first public appearance of Cedric and Aunt Sonia with her new look, she's summed up by her friend Veronica, Mrs Chadley Corbett, as being so wonderful and so young. "I hope I look like that when *I'm* a hundred."
Moral: Only look into mirrors before turning into Lucrezia Borgia.
L2: I rather feel for LW2, who seems to be a blameless version of LW4 from last week. Last week it was just someone pressured into agreeing to an excessive expense as a bridesmaid through the expedient of almost crying. This week's LW2 more seriously has saddled herself with guilt simply because of someone else's thoughtless comment that she was driving too slowly. It is interesting that she describes herself as witnessing the accident, but I would only want to undertake this cross-examination if I were being paid for it. There's a lot more there than just the accident, though. This LW falls into my least favourite category, that of those who do not deserve severe treatment but who need it because it's the only thing to do them any good.
Looking in LIACC for inappropriate remarks, there's a runaway winner. After Polly and Boy marry and she is disinherited, they cannot afford to live in England and only come back when he's invited to write or research a family history. Polly is pregnant, but it is already clear that the marriage is not a success. The baby dies, leaving Fanny and Polly distraught. But Polly has rallied enough to be curious about how Cedric has transformed her mother when Lady Montdore comes to see her for the first time since the wedding. Lady Montdore sails in with her blue hair and her perfect makeup and her fixed smile which is completely unsuitable for the occasion, and instead of her formerly typical heavy remarks comes out airly with a remark about the poor baby dying and her supposing it was all for the best as if a rainy day had forced the cancellation of a tennis party. It is enough to leave one speechless, quite speechless (and, as Sophie Thompson's Miss Bates adds in Gwyneth Paltrow's *Emma* - "and we have not stopped taking of it since").
Moral: Scapegoats never go out of fashion.
L3: Now this letter confuses me. LW3 handled an awkward situation with somewhat less grace than she might have done. Okay, that happens. But now here she is and she has come up with a proposed solution that makes no sense. LW3 wonders whether she should send a message to the brother of the woman in question in order to shame her into better behaviour. What on earth does she expect such a course of action to accomplish? (Apparently LW3 posted in the comments that she intended sending a private message, not making a public post.) Does the brother in question control his sister's every move? What on earth would he do?
Singularly missing from the letter is an account of the boyfriend's reaction. Naturally one wonders why he has not taken any part in the proceedings. After all, the male in question wasthe friend of his friend. He is much closer to the situation than LW3.
A fairly large number of posters and DP herself advance the opinion that the correct response to hearing the sounds of Hanky Panky is to ignore them and let the couple in question get on with it. That is enough to drive me to bad language again. Why the SB1 should the SB1 hostess just have to ignore the SB1 highjinks of SB1 guests SB1ing each other on her SB1 sofa? Perhaps I have a bit too much of a case of Ama Clutch, but I feel for the poor furniture. I think anyone in LW3's situation well within her rights at least to offer the couple a sheet or two to protect the sofa.
The LIACC comparison is clear and obvious again, and it is a priceless moment. Anthony Andrews, playing Boy Dugdale, is seated next to Rosamund Pike's Fanny at dinner during Lady Montdore's house party (designed to try to match Polly up with the Duc de Sauterre), gives the most marvelously nauseating leer and then proceeds to grope her under the table. It is the sort of image that burns itself onto one's eyeballs.
I shall now bring up a point of order that I have not seen raised by anyone else at this point. A few people seem to be skimming lightly over the written evidence, just as Phyllida Erskine Brown did when she thought Claude was advertising for extramarital companionship and missed the [F] in the description that pointed to his pupil Mrs Whitaker as the lonely heart. It may be one thing when hosting a party of friends that includes one or more couples or potential couples to accept that sometimes Nature will take its course. However little one likes LW3, though, it is quite another thing in the case here. The male in question, while her guest, was not personally known to either herself or her boyfriend. Indeed, only one member of the house party was a friend of her boyfriend. The guests (one can establish with a quick question whether the boyfriend accompanied them or not) went out to a party which LW3 did not attend, and one of them brought a pickup back to her home. Again, where was the boyfriend in all this? Did he go to the party? Did he know of the hookup? Did he accede to the impromptu addition of an extra guest? If so, there are various other issues in play that noone has raised. But my initial assumption, as LW3 seems the sort who would enumerate all her complaints about her boyfriend if he'd taken some part in the goings-on, was that there was no reason for either host to expect to hear Loud Sex on the living room sofa. This does detract considerably from whatever blame LW3 may merit.
One of the few Logistical Advantages of Heterosexuality is that one can have a house party and invite more than two guests, perhaps a good many more than two, and have a reasonable expectation that the weekend will be Hanky Panky Free.
Moral: There is no way on earth that one should ever allow both a Submariner and a Mermaid within five miles of one's Victorian Fainting Sofa at the same time, however trustworthy either might be when alone.
L4: Perhaps LW4's resentment is the result, as some posters deduce through their own experiences, of her husband trying to push her too deeply into his life and take her over. Perhaps they are really equally matched. Perhaps he thinks they have too little in common. Which is the case will emerge at the end of questioning if one can muster the interest for it. At the moment, I feel too little inclined to take the requisite interest in the exercise.
LIACC has couples with a range of divergent interests. Fanny and Alfred are well suited. The Montdores, Polly's parents, don't seem to do much together, but are sustained by their great estate. Linda's parents, the Radletts, are clearly in a relationship in which he Expresses Himself and she Manages Him, but it works well. When Linda marries Tony Kroezig, she soon finds that they have far too little by way of common interests (she already knew their families were incompatible). Moved by Christian's Communism, Linda never really can take it up properly, which she eventually realizes when she sees how well he gets on with Lavender, and she bolts again. But I think Polly and Boy make the couple with the most divergent interests.
The previous moral seems uncappable; I shall not attempt it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)