Gee, now that I think of it, there's the title for the page. Oh, well. It has occurred to me to wonder whether I explain too much on occasion. Perhaps I should assume familiarity with the subject more often than I do. But, with all due apologies, we move on to *Emma*, and the heroine whom Miss Austen expected nobody but herself to like much.
L1: I feel at a terrible disadvantage here, as this is really quite an unAustenian situation. There are but two natural children, and neither is thought to be other than she is. But I shall take up Emma's protegee, Harriet Smith - pretty, naive, charming - and the natural daughter of somebody. The decision to go with *Emma* was also based on LW1's rather dotty grandmother, who at least in being a bit unique has at least a little in common with Mr Woodhouse, that vicarious hypochondriac extraordinaire.
LW1 is interestingly placed. We have a wild hint out of the blue that Daddy is Grandpappa's son, which, if anything, might be mildly good news from a medical standpoint. However, barring extreme changes in chances of something severely life-altering, I incline to disregard medical concerns. At least anything that might be pertinent can easily be established in cross-examination. Now it might be most interesting to see if Grandmamma makes a credible witness at all, but it seems a side issue.
I am much inclined to tell LW1 to take a page from Emma's handling of Harriet's situation. Emma soon learns that Harriet may not know her own parentage. This proves promising to Emma rather than anything else, as she is soon able to conjure for her own delight a picture of gentility and wealth behind Harriet's beginnings, if not respectability. Even a lord is not entirely out of the picture. Certainly such a history is suitable for Miss Woodhouse's own choice of a particular friend, and Emma feels entirely justified in liberating Harriet from the yeoman farmer she likes, Robert Martin, in order to attempt to match her with Mr Elton, the vicar.
Emma's friendship with Harriet raises disagreement from Mr Knightley. He regards Harriet as the worst sort of flatterer because unintentional, and thinks that if anything a sensible and intelligent gentleman farmer a good catch for a girl of illegitimacy and ignorance. Emma puts up a spirited defence of the extent and breadth of Harriet's good-nature, and later, when she intends Frank Churchill to transfer his supposed affection from herself to Harriet, has one of her finest moments as she appreciates Harriet's tenderness of heart. "I have it not, but I know how to prize and respect it." Yet for all that, it is Mr Knightley who overcomes his prejudices against Harriet (at the ball calling her unpretending, single-minded and artless, vastly superiour to Mrs Elton and more conversable than he'd expected) while Emma never does. She may befriend Harriet and try to marry her off to superiour men, but she always remains Miss Woodhouse and her first reaction to Harriet's revelation that she hopes to marry Mr Knightley rather than Mr Churchill is, even before Emma realizes at last that she has been in love with Mr Knightley herself, full of all the snobbery she has expected others to shed while retaining it herself.
But I advise LW1 to take Emma as an example, for here it can do no harm. Your father now has Mysterious Origins. His father could be practically anyone of 70-odd years of age or older. Consider the possibilities! What a Grand Romance you can make of this. If it were my own grandfather in question in this situation, I should perhaps select Ken Rosewall or someone else who is bound to make a much more glamourous story than whatever happens to be the prosaic truth. Surely you can do better than the facts.
The moral is perhaps that Truth is only Stranger than Fiction if one has insufficient imagination.
L2: Quite a promising situation here. I envision a most happy time cross-examining both spouses about the events and progress of the marriage, and anticipate the ex-wife breaking down and ranting incoherently on the stand after a particularly good attack. The girlfriend would be rather less fun.
But here we have a social menace blackening a reputation after an attempted relationship falls flat. The Highbury parallel is clear enough - Mrs Elton. She breezes in from Bristol on the strength of a brother-in-law with his own barouche-landau, intending to be quite the queen of Highbury. Unfortnately, there is Miss Woodhouse already occupying such a position, with her family's long standing in the neighbourhood and her thirty thousand pounds, while Mrs E herself has only "as near ten thousand pounds as makes no difference". What to do? At first, Mrs Elton is all in favour of allying herself with Emma in such matters as suggesting the formation of a musical club to meet at Hartfield or the vicarage on a weekly basis. When Emma does not respond as one kindred superiour spirit to another, Mrs Elton gets huffy, takes up Jane Fairfax as a protegee (though one rather superiour to her patroness in all but fortune), and treats Miss Woodhouse with as much marked coolness as she dares, mixed occasionally with her own style of gracious condescension when they are forced into each other's company, often through the indiscriminate friendliness of Mr Weston. Emma is occasionally angered, but never lets herself be pushed farther than her shocking rudeness to Miss Bates on Box Hill, an occurrence only partially due to the disagreeable presence of the Eltons.
I should advise LW2 that his ex-wife has done him rather a favour. He could always leave the area with his girlfriend and start afresh elsewhere, but my instinct would be to run. The girlfriend lacks the internal fortitude of Emma to cope with such a situation, or perhaps thinks that she is entitled to compensatory capitulations in exchange for her having to put up with the disgraceful conduct of the ex-wife. We do know that LW2's Spouse Chooser was not in the highest working order the first time he used it, and here is evidence that it has not done a great deal better the second time out. Buy her a nice consolation prize and start afresh. As the moral is that, as in the case of "Rumpole and the Boat People," one keeps marrying the same person (literally in Jackie Bateman's case), he should perhaps try an arranged marriage next. It's not as if he'd do much worse.
L3: Now what is going on with these three sisters? They are as confusing as the Bradbury Scotts in *Nemesis*. This is the sort of case that one might cheerfully predict to last two weeks, with refreshers of five hundred a day - provision for one's old age!
As we are dealing with a visit from relations including a baby, a little look at Hartfield is entirely in order here. Emma actually is at her best as an aunt. She and Mr Knightley make up their quarrel over Robert Martin's declined proposal when he watches her telling baby Emma to grow up to be a better woman than her aunt. And she copes with the differing parental styles of her sister and brother-in-law well, even if she is teased about her increasing social engagements.
It is actually Mr Woodhouse who is perhaps more interesting to examine in these situations. A house full of active and noisy children ought to be anathema to him, yet he insists that it would be dreadful for Isabella and her family ever to stay with Mr Knightley instead. The noise and activity does not bother him at all. If he suffers during the visit, it is only from seeing how healthy his grandchildren are, but he and his daughter Isabella can happily compare their imaginary complaints and those of the children, and debate their versions of the opinions of their two doctors, Mr Perry and Mr Wingfield, even if this does lead to such danger as John Knightley's losing his temper over Mr Woodhouse ascribing to Perry a preference for Cromer over Southend as a desirable holiday locale for sea-bathing (even if it did do the weakness in little Bella's throat the world of good).
I really don't know what to tell LW3 as we have insufficient evidence to decide whether the putuative Visiting Sister is just trying to use the baby in an attempt to cadge free lodging or not. I should not ordinarily think so, except that the host sister seems (barring facts not in evidence) so extreme with little other plausible explanation. Personally, though I get on extremely well with children (far better than with adults), perhaps due to having done my stint and then some of baby-sitting for real babies, though I would never object to meeting a newborn, five minutes or ten in company with one is quite sufficient, but certainly I'd put sister, spouse and child up for the night in such a situation. I feel about babies a sort of sideways way as Emma does about tenderness of heart, almost. Babies are not my thing, though I know people whose thing they are, and can respect what they get out of it.
I suppose the moral might be something Biblical about however one treats the least of these, etc. But this is making me sad. Time to move on.
L4: Oh, dear - this is a problem? I suppose it's disagreeable to LW4, but it's very much on a level with having to put up with the conversation of Miss Bates, that inveterate talker, who always says anything and everything, and often inadvertently lets something slip out that might be irritating to Emma, such as her accidentally wandering a little too near Mr Elton's previous hopes when she announces that Mrs Cole has had a letter from him announcing his engagement. I shall advise LW4 to appreciate all the genuinely good qualities of the co-workers in question. Think of how much they may, like Miss Bates, have come down in the world. Once upon a time their notice of you might have been an honour, and now it is you who are charitable to them.
If something along the line is not achieved, we may have Box Hill all over again, when Frank Churchill requires everyone in the company first to tell Emma what they are all thinking, which goes over poorly, and then either one thing extremely clever, two things only moderately clever or three things very dull indeed. Miss Bates is delighted. She need not be uneasy. Three things very dull indeed. "That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as I open my mouth. Do not you all think I shall?" Emma then loses it. "Ah, ma'am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me, but you will be limited as to number - only three at once."
The moral is not to let resentment build, lest it explode in such a manner.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
3/18 DP - on to Northanger Abbey
Greetings all. As we look into a week full of deep, dark secrets and things that ought to be deep, dark secrets, where better to go than Northanger Abbey?
L1: Now, LW1 resembles Catherine Morland in a number of the situations she encounters. Unluckily, however, she has a sad cause in her own past, whereas Catherine lives vicariously through the Gothic novels she devours. The two most pertinent to the case are Catherine's pursuit of facts concerming the death of Mrs Tilney and the awkward situation at Northanger after James' letter informs Catherine that his engagement to Isabella is broken off. It is also interesting to see how circumstances turn the LW's potential Henry Tilney into a John Thorpe.
The importance to young people of choosing the right friends is demonstrated early. Catherine visits Bath with her rich neighbours, the Allens, only to find that public assemblies are much less amusing when one has no acquaintance in the place. But she soon finds all the company she desires when Mrs Allen meets an old school friend, Mrs Thorpe, whose daughter Isabella and Catherine quickly become forerunners of today's BFFs. The arrival of their brothers, James Morland and John Thorpe, makes life charming for some time. When Catherine meets again with Henry Tilney, now in Bath with his father and sister, she finds John Thorpe more of an encumbrance than anything else. Even Isabella occasionally strikes a sour note as Catherine befriends Henry and Eleanor Tilney. But all seems well enough as Isabella and James become engaged (Isabella's acceptance of the attentions of Henry's older brother being the fly in the ointment there) and General Tilney (misled by John Thorpe as to Catherine's prospects of fortune) invites Catherine to return with the Tilneys to Northanger - a real Abbey!
Sadly, Catherine is led astray by her imagination. On a few very flimsy facts and suppositions - the General not liking his wife's portrait or favourite walk, Mrs Tilney's supposed melancholia and Eleanor's absence from home when her mother died, Catherine soon convinces herself that General Tilney murdered his wife or imprisoned her alive. Worse, she cannot keep her suspicions from Henry. He is able to assure her that there was no foul play involved in his mother's death, but somehow, though Henry's affection for Catherine never matches the Austenian heights of attachment between other heroes and heroines, this does not divide them forever.
Catherine is happily blameless when she is placed in the awkward situation of James' broken engagement. Inferring from James' letter that Isabella is now engaged to Henry's and Eleanor's brother, Catherine informs them that she cannot remain at Northanger when Captain Tilney returns. Henry and Eleanor are torn between their knowledge that their brother would be unlikely to enter an engagement that would be so financially imprudent (and unpleasant to their father) and Henry's calculation on Isabella's shrewdness that she would not have jilted one fiance if she were not already secured of the next.
As for LW1's situation, it is rather a sad one. My Sympathy Metre was likely to give LW1 a rather high score until the awful closing. LW1's first instinct is, "Should I confront him?" Oh dear, oh dear - Jerry Springer has much for which to answer. this unfortunately is going to keep my Sympathy Metre stuck on Moderate.
The closest to entertaining would be to cross-examine LW1 on her exact grounds for the proposed confrontation. It conjures up images of the Rumpolean reference to the epidemic of twelve-year-old girls making indecent advances to elderly men in cinemas. Confront the abuser, why not, if she's so inclined? Confront the enabling grandmother in denial - again, it would be an active participant using free will in whatever happened. I'd just as soon take the facts submitted in as painless a way as possible without cross-examining anyone not among the guilty.
I find myself at a bit of a loss for anything to tell the LW to do, but one curious thing is that she has written to a stranger instead of or perhaps before taking the matter to her parents. What is that about? She was not disbelieved, or at least she was believed enough at the end for some legal action to be taken. There is no evidence provided in the letter that the abuse damaged the LW's relationships with members of her own family. What, then, do her parents have to say?
I suppose there are some positive things that could come out of a frank discussion with the grandson, but LW1's confrontational mood doesn't seem the right spirit in which to approach it. Neither of the younger generation has done anything wrong, so far as we know; let's keep it like that.
If there is anything LW1 might learn from Catherine Morland, the moral might be how dangerous it is to paint even an already black scenario blacker than it seems. I think I shall pass quickly to L2 before I get a vision of the year 2040 and LW1 telling daughters how she and their daddy fell in love comparing stories about Great-Grandpapa give me major icks...
L2: Here we have how parent handle an Unfortunate Situation that has befallen their child. The Northangrian parallel will come when Catherine suddenly arrives home in Fullerton, unheralded, having been evicted by General Tilney within hours of his learning that she is not the heiress to Mr Allen's fortune, at the end of a journey of seventy miles. The incident really could make yet another parallel for L1, but we shall let that pass. That which I'd wish to make into an example is the way in which the Morlands handle the event. Quite naturally it is shocking that a supposed gentleman should treat their daughter so ill after welcoming her to his home as a guest. But Mrs Morland stresses for the outraged Mrs Allen that it was a good thing for Catherine to have proved to have had the wherewithal to cope with such an emergency, and to Catherine that, if Henry and Eleanor Tilney are worth knowing, they will likely meet again. So, oddly, I begin with the moral, wondering when such a style of parenting happened to drop out of fashion (and, in the habit of making chains, mentioning that this instance might apply equally well to L3 as well as to L1).
To deal with LW2, I must admit that my Sympathy Metre is going to give her a rather higher reading than she deserves, if only because she has the best instincts of any of the LWs - her first thought is to leave it alone, which, assuming no questions or comments from the peanut gallery, must be considered sound procedure. It is rather odd in light of this that the mother who really springs to mind right away is Dr Spencer Reed's, in part because the boy seems reminiscent at least in part of little Spencer and in part because her second instinct seems nearly certifiable. But it makes it easy to give her practical advice. She should reward her four-year-old for copying down and memorizing Bob Dylan songs, read Proust to him for entertainment, and get him started on chess, although not in the park with strange adults.
L3: As I do so often, I am going to question the timing. They have lived together for two years - why complain now? It does seem that she's more interested in cutting out the competition than in "fixing" the situation, as it were. Her first instinct is directed at mamma, not sonny. My Sympathy Metre is registering very low indeed. There might be decent sport in cross-examining the son, but whether he's totally creepy or somewhat reasonable doesn't seem to make that much difference.
One need go no farther than General Tilney for an Austenian overbearing parent. Fortunately in Austenian times it was not the custom to perform domestic chores, but the General's standards require Henry, graced with the prospect of a parental visit for dinner on a Wednesday, to hurry from Northanger to Woodston on the Saturday to make sure everything is up to standard. In one way, General Tilney even outdoes LW3's possible mother-in-law, in going so far as to dictate the romantic inclinations of his children to suit his own plans for his family's alliances. Henry and Eleanor give in to their father as a matter of habit and course time after time, which is the sort of thing which inclines me to think it might be possible to think reasonably well of the overbearing woman's son.
As for practical advice, I regret the general lack of familiarity with the classics. This seems like a clear case for a reference to *Othello* or even *Curtain*. LW3 simply wants to cut out her MIL. What she needs to do is to convince her FIL that MIL is cheating on him and work him up into such a state that he murders her. That will be a win all around. The family as a whole will do better without her, and LW3 will be able to take over the care and feeding of her husband in just the same way. (Actually, come to think of it, Mrs Boynton in *Appointment with Death* seems to be closest in daily details to the overbearing mamma - then again, she dies as well, though not the same way in the play as in the novel.)
I suppose the moral is that she has just the man she likes. This is just the unexpected baggage. "Take what you like and pay for it, says God" is apparently an old Spanish proverb. LW3 might be grateful that at least the son was not disallowed some degree of choice in the matter. And if Catherine Morland can get through suspecting her father-in-law of murder, LW3 might be able to manage her own situation.
L4: The physician reminds me of a direct marketer. Send out mass invitations, and if only 3% or so of those who receive an invitation feel obliged to send a gift, bingo - a nice profit! My Sympathy Metre for LW4 is almost off the low end of the scale for being so nearly susceptible to such extortion. Still, as apparently there may be some sort of cultural reason for such an invitational stretch, a round or two of questions to that effect might not come amiss.
LW4's situation seems to fall in between a couple of parallels to Catherine's. When she and the Allens are just arrived in Bath, Catherine and Mrs Allen find their social opportunities sadly limited on their appearances in the Upper Rooms. They know nobody, find it hard to squeeze through the crowd, and feel in the way when they manage to find seats in the supper room. Only overhearing two strangers calling her a pretty girl renders the evening agreeable to Catherine. In the way of unwanted invitations, we have her being asked to join James, John and Isabella on a proposed drive to Blaize Castle. The prospect pleases, but Catherine has made an engagement to walk with the Tilneys, and declines. But the weather is doubtful and the Tilneys are already late. When John Thorpe declares that he saw Henry Tilney driving out in a carriage and shouting to someone that he'd be gone until the night, Catherine goes, only to see Henry and Eleanor on their way to call on her. But she is prevented from alighting. The drive is aborted when the party discover they left rather too late. The next evening, Catherine is able to explain the situation to the offended Tilneys at the theatre. The engagement is renewed while her brother and the Thorpes are planning a second attempt at the Castle. When Catherine declines, Isabella feels jilted, even James is put out, and John actually goes to the Tilneys and tells them Catherine has just recollected a prior engagment. It costs her a good deal to be able to stick to her original plan and achieve her country walk.
The moral is probably to respond to invitations with due care.
I shall conclude by recalling one of my favourite passages from the novel that occurs during the country walk. Eleanor and Catherine misunderstand each other at one point. Catherine refers to "something horrid" about to come out of London, meaning only a new Gothic novel, while Eleanor's mind immediately leaps to some uprising resulting in danger for her brother Captain Tilney. Henry laughs at them, explains their meanings, and says that Eleanor is usually more intelligent. This draws a mild remonstrance from Eleanor that Catherine will think he thinks meanly of the understanding of women, to which Henry replies that he thinks very highly of the understanding of, "...all the women in the world, especially those, whoever they may be, with whom I happen to be in company." Chided to be serious, he goes on, "Miss Morland, nobody thinks more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, Nature has given them so much that they never find it necessary to use more than half."
L1: Now, LW1 resembles Catherine Morland in a number of the situations she encounters. Unluckily, however, she has a sad cause in her own past, whereas Catherine lives vicariously through the Gothic novels she devours. The two most pertinent to the case are Catherine's pursuit of facts concerming the death of Mrs Tilney and the awkward situation at Northanger after James' letter informs Catherine that his engagement to Isabella is broken off. It is also interesting to see how circumstances turn the LW's potential Henry Tilney into a John Thorpe.
The importance to young people of choosing the right friends is demonstrated early. Catherine visits Bath with her rich neighbours, the Allens, only to find that public assemblies are much less amusing when one has no acquaintance in the place. But she soon finds all the company she desires when Mrs Allen meets an old school friend, Mrs Thorpe, whose daughter Isabella and Catherine quickly become forerunners of today's BFFs. The arrival of their brothers, James Morland and John Thorpe, makes life charming for some time. When Catherine meets again with Henry Tilney, now in Bath with his father and sister, she finds John Thorpe more of an encumbrance than anything else. Even Isabella occasionally strikes a sour note as Catherine befriends Henry and Eleanor Tilney. But all seems well enough as Isabella and James become engaged (Isabella's acceptance of the attentions of Henry's older brother being the fly in the ointment there) and General Tilney (misled by John Thorpe as to Catherine's prospects of fortune) invites Catherine to return with the Tilneys to Northanger - a real Abbey!
Sadly, Catherine is led astray by her imagination. On a few very flimsy facts and suppositions - the General not liking his wife's portrait or favourite walk, Mrs Tilney's supposed melancholia and Eleanor's absence from home when her mother died, Catherine soon convinces herself that General Tilney murdered his wife or imprisoned her alive. Worse, she cannot keep her suspicions from Henry. He is able to assure her that there was no foul play involved in his mother's death, but somehow, though Henry's affection for Catherine never matches the Austenian heights of attachment between other heroes and heroines, this does not divide them forever.
Catherine is happily blameless when she is placed in the awkward situation of James' broken engagement. Inferring from James' letter that Isabella is now engaged to Henry's and Eleanor's brother, Catherine informs them that she cannot remain at Northanger when Captain Tilney returns. Henry and Eleanor are torn between their knowledge that their brother would be unlikely to enter an engagement that would be so financially imprudent (and unpleasant to their father) and Henry's calculation on Isabella's shrewdness that she would not have jilted one fiance if she were not already secured of the next.
As for LW1's situation, it is rather a sad one. My Sympathy Metre was likely to give LW1 a rather high score until the awful closing. LW1's first instinct is, "Should I confront him?" Oh dear, oh dear - Jerry Springer has much for which to answer. this unfortunately is going to keep my Sympathy Metre stuck on Moderate.
The closest to entertaining would be to cross-examine LW1 on her exact grounds for the proposed confrontation. It conjures up images of the Rumpolean reference to the epidemic of twelve-year-old girls making indecent advances to elderly men in cinemas. Confront the abuser, why not, if she's so inclined? Confront the enabling grandmother in denial - again, it would be an active participant using free will in whatever happened. I'd just as soon take the facts submitted in as painless a way as possible without cross-examining anyone not among the guilty.
I find myself at a bit of a loss for anything to tell the LW to do, but one curious thing is that she has written to a stranger instead of or perhaps before taking the matter to her parents. What is that about? She was not disbelieved, or at least she was believed enough at the end for some legal action to be taken. There is no evidence provided in the letter that the abuse damaged the LW's relationships with members of her own family. What, then, do her parents have to say?
I suppose there are some positive things that could come out of a frank discussion with the grandson, but LW1's confrontational mood doesn't seem the right spirit in which to approach it. Neither of the younger generation has done anything wrong, so far as we know; let's keep it like that.
If there is anything LW1 might learn from Catherine Morland, the moral might be how dangerous it is to paint even an already black scenario blacker than it seems. I think I shall pass quickly to L2 before I get a vision of the year 2040 and LW1 telling daughters how she and their daddy fell in love comparing stories about Great-Grandpapa give me major icks...
L2: Here we have how parent handle an Unfortunate Situation that has befallen their child. The Northangrian parallel will come when Catherine suddenly arrives home in Fullerton, unheralded, having been evicted by General Tilney within hours of his learning that she is not the heiress to Mr Allen's fortune, at the end of a journey of seventy miles. The incident really could make yet another parallel for L1, but we shall let that pass. That which I'd wish to make into an example is the way in which the Morlands handle the event. Quite naturally it is shocking that a supposed gentleman should treat their daughter so ill after welcoming her to his home as a guest. But Mrs Morland stresses for the outraged Mrs Allen that it was a good thing for Catherine to have proved to have had the wherewithal to cope with such an emergency, and to Catherine that, if Henry and Eleanor Tilney are worth knowing, they will likely meet again. So, oddly, I begin with the moral, wondering when such a style of parenting happened to drop out of fashion (and, in the habit of making chains, mentioning that this instance might apply equally well to L3 as well as to L1).
To deal with LW2, I must admit that my Sympathy Metre is going to give her a rather higher reading than she deserves, if only because she has the best instincts of any of the LWs - her first thought is to leave it alone, which, assuming no questions or comments from the peanut gallery, must be considered sound procedure. It is rather odd in light of this that the mother who really springs to mind right away is Dr Spencer Reed's, in part because the boy seems reminiscent at least in part of little Spencer and in part because her second instinct seems nearly certifiable. But it makes it easy to give her practical advice. She should reward her four-year-old for copying down and memorizing Bob Dylan songs, read Proust to him for entertainment, and get him started on chess, although not in the park with strange adults.
L3: As I do so often, I am going to question the timing. They have lived together for two years - why complain now? It does seem that she's more interested in cutting out the competition than in "fixing" the situation, as it were. Her first instinct is directed at mamma, not sonny. My Sympathy Metre is registering very low indeed. There might be decent sport in cross-examining the son, but whether he's totally creepy or somewhat reasonable doesn't seem to make that much difference.
One need go no farther than General Tilney for an Austenian overbearing parent. Fortunately in Austenian times it was not the custom to perform domestic chores, but the General's standards require Henry, graced with the prospect of a parental visit for dinner on a Wednesday, to hurry from Northanger to Woodston on the Saturday to make sure everything is up to standard. In one way, General Tilney even outdoes LW3's possible mother-in-law, in going so far as to dictate the romantic inclinations of his children to suit his own plans for his family's alliances. Henry and Eleanor give in to their father as a matter of habit and course time after time, which is the sort of thing which inclines me to think it might be possible to think reasonably well of the overbearing woman's son.
As for practical advice, I regret the general lack of familiarity with the classics. This seems like a clear case for a reference to *Othello* or even *Curtain*. LW3 simply wants to cut out her MIL. What she needs to do is to convince her FIL that MIL is cheating on him and work him up into such a state that he murders her. That will be a win all around. The family as a whole will do better without her, and LW3 will be able to take over the care and feeding of her husband in just the same way. (Actually, come to think of it, Mrs Boynton in *Appointment with Death* seems to be closest in daily details to the overbearing mamma - then again, she dies as well, though not the same way in the play as in the novel.)
I suppose the moral is that she has just the man she likes. This is just the unexpected baggage. "Take what you like and pay for it, says God" is apparently an old Spanish proverb. LW3 might be grateful that at least the son was not disallowed some degree of choice in the matter. And if Catherine Morland can get through suspecting her father-in-law of murder, LW3 might be able to manage her own situation.
L4: The physician reminds me of a direct marketer. Send out mass invitations, and if only 3% or so of those who receive an invitation feel obliged to send a gift, bingo - a nice profit! My Sympathy Metre for LW4 is almost off the low end of the scale for being so nearly susceptible to such extortion. Still, as apparently there may be some sort of cultural reason for such an invitational stretch, a round or two of questions to that effect might not come amiss.
LW4's situation seems to fall in between a couple of parallels to Catherine's. When she and the Allens are just arrived in Bath, Catherine and Mrs Allen find their social opportunities sadly limited on their appearances in the Upper Rooms. They know nobody, find it hard to squeeze through the crowd, and feel in the way when they manage to find seats in the supper room. Only overhearing two strangers calling her a pretty girl renders the evening agreeable to Catherine. In the way of unwanted invitations, we have her being asked to join James, John and Isabella on a proposed drive to Blaize Castle. The prospect pleases, but Catherine has made an engagement to walk with the Tilneys, and declines. But the weather is doubtful and the Tilneys are already late. When John Thorpe declares that he saw Henry Tilney driving out in a carriage and shouting to someone that he'd be gone until the night, Catherine goes, only to see Henry and Eleanor on their way to call on her. But she is prevented from alighting. The drive is aborted when the party discover they left rather too late. The next evening, Catherine is able to explain the situation to the offended Tilneys at the theatre. The engagement is renewed while her brother and the Thorpes are planning a second attempt at the Castle. When Catherine declines, Isabella feels jilted, even James is put out, and John actually goes to the Tilneys and tells them Catherine has just recollected a prior engagment. It costs her a good deal to be able to stick to her original plan and achieve her country walk.
The moral is probably to respond to invitations with due care.
I shall conclude by recalling one of my favourite passages from the novel that occurs during the country walk. Eleanor and Catherine misunderstand each other at one point. Catherine refers to "something horrid" about to come out of London, meaning only a new Gothic novel, while Eleanor's mind immediately leaps to some uprising resulting in danger for her brother Captain Tilney. Henry laughs at them, explains their meanings, and says that Eleanor is usually more intelligent. This draws a mild remonstrance from Eleanor that Catherine will think he thinks meanly of the understanding of women, to which Henry replies that he thinks very highly of the understanding of, "...all the women in the world, especially those, whoever they may be, with whom I happen to be in company." Chided to be serious, he goes on, "Miss Morland, nobody thinks more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, Nature has given them so much that they never find it necessary to use more than half."
Thursday, March 11, 2010
3/11 DP - Sense or Sensibility?
Ten bonus points to anyone who predicted S&S.
Well, things seem to be looking up. We have four situations of reasonable interest.
L1: Scientific evidence is always tricky. LW1 has at least attempted to educate himself on the possibilities in the case, which is always commendable to some extent. It might also be possible to commend him for taking such a Western approach to the situation; one can imagine the alternatives. There is much we do not know, and it's not entirely clear how important the unknown facts might prove to be. Perhaps LW1 has definitive certainty that he could not have been responsible; perhaps his wife could have contracted the virus through conduct that might not have been strictly prohibited. It does not feel entirely seemly to inquire deeply. The wife's reasoning reminds me a bit of the way some crime victims who provide eyewitness testimony that is eventually refuted grasp at straws to insist they were correct, but they have at least not made any deliberate mistake.
Curiously, in seeking an Austenian parallel, there are not a great many arranged marriages from which to select, although there are a good many close calls. Elizabeth Bennet, Edward Ferrars and Henry Tilney are all ordered by a parent to woo or accept someone regardless of inclination, and Fanny Price is nearly thrown off by her uncle for refusing a proposal he thinks quite favourable. Lady Susan Vernon considers forcing her daughter Frederica to accept Sir James Martin, but resolves instead to make her daughter's life so miserable that Frederica will choose to marry him voluntarily. And of course, Mr Darcy's aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, is quick to declare that Darcy is engaged to her daughter, although there is no fondness on either side, simply because the marriage was planned by their mothers over the infants' cradles. But the one true arranged marriage that has actually come off with no inclination on either side is that of Colonel Brandon's older brother, the heir to the family estate, who was married to the Colonel's first love, a rich ward of his father.
We never see either party to the marriage, and have only Brandon's account of the calamity. The mutual attachment between Brandon and his sister-in-law sustains her for a time, but his brother's vicious conduct makes her desperate. She misconducts herself, leaves her husband, sells her allowance and dies in poverty, leaving behind an illegitmate daughter whom some wrongly believe to be Brandon's own.
The moral for LW1 is that he has an arranged marriage that seems on balance to be quite a credit to the institution. Even giving his wife only a moderate helping of a rather large quantity of doubt would seem to promise well for the continuance of the same. While one can probably understand that cultural concerns might render it necessary not to let this end with reasonable doubt, it seems that it would be pleasant if it could be left there.
L2: Ah, the magic ring! Still, it seems mild compared to the occasion 10-15 years ago when I heard a woman I knew slightly telling her bridge partner how her daughter and her daughter's fiance were arranging a trip to Hawaii and planning for the proposal to occur during that trip. Now that was flabbergasting.
I was a little disappointed with DP that she was so dismissive of one of the potentially more interesting points amond LW2's concerns. One might have quite an interesting discussion about which gender-based traditions are retained when others are discarded and why. At least it appears interesting to me as an outsider to such intersex dealings. There might be some legitimate trade-off to make the presentation of a ring seem fair - childbirth, perhaps? Half of a couple predetermined to remain Childless by Choice might reasonably perhaps declare gender equity in all things - it might strike me as dreary, but again, this is not my metier, as Hercule Poirot might say.
S&S provides us with two examples of Engagements with Problems (or at least Situations that Resemble Them). Edward Ferrars and Lucy Steele have actually been engaged for four years (a very apt time for the LW), although they cannot make the engagement public or afford to marry, and indeed Edward has already lost the inclination that drove him to contract the engagement in the first place. LW2 might see their situation as a bit of a warning; his girlfriend might even be in the Edward role, trying to put off as long as possible the evil day of having to finalize the match for some reason or other. The happier couple, Willoughby and Marianne Dashwood, appear and act engaged, leaving little doubt to their friends and acquaintances except that neither of them has breathed a word of their attachment having been formalized. They even reach the brink of a formal proposal before Willoughby's past catches up with him. This seems a bit more apt a comparison to my mind, as the points LW2 raises for his reluctance to buy a ring seem as insubstantial as Willoughby's enjoying the present so much and being just that unwilling to commit himself until he finally is sufficiently swept up in attachment.
I should want considerable cross-examination before being able to convince myself that LW2 is sufficiently attached to make marriage a good idea. While it takes all kinds, I for one would find it rather sad for someone contemplating marriage not to be full of joy and excitement about being able to make a unilateral public declaration of affection when the time comes. It seems rather late in the day to be coping with concerns about reciprocity.
I suppose the moral is that love doesn't really conquer all that much after all.
L3: While I usually incline to sympathy for anyone trapped in the worng career, the magnitude of the desired change is so great and the timing so insurpassably bad that I really must wonder. There may actually be some practical course of action for LW3, a way to wade into a more congenial profession to some extent, but I'm not at all sure she'd be satisfied. If I were writing this as a story, LW3 would chuck her career and toil all the way through medical school and the rigours of beginning to practise only to discover medicine to be even less congenial a profession than the law - a bit French, perhaps, but that's my first instinct.
The S&S paprallel is the strongest one of the lot, though. LW3 was pushed out of the profession she wanted to pursue and into doing something quite different by her family, though at present she has at least the support of the man she loves - LW3 is a female Edward Ferrars. When he is about to leave Barton Cottage after a week's visit, Edward explains his circumstances. He has always harboured a preference for the church, but the church is not smart enough for his mother and sister. The army is a good deal too smart for him. He has no inclination for the law. The navy might be fashionable, but he'd have had to have started much younger. As a young man of eighteen is generally not so determined to be busy as to resist the suggestion of his connections to do nothing, he has been enrolled at Oxford and properly idle ever since.
In LW3's favour is the support of her husband, much as Edward has the support of Elinor even before the fortunate end of his engagement to Lucy. Is this enough? I really can't say, certainly not before LW3 comes to a more thorough understanding of Why Now. Perhaps the moral is that a stitch in time saves nine?
L4: I have often run bridge parties at which prizes have been on offer, and the host has generally declined any prize won, passing it down to the next person in the standings. I am inclined to place L4 between this sort of bridge party (which appears to be the opinion of DP) and a full-on gambling gathering such as a poker game. Now here I am going to surpass myself and offer the Oscar Party hosts a practical solution that does not kill the spirit of the Pool. Set up one of them (or a combined effort from both) as the House. Get in a supply of inexpensive Beat the House prizes if desired, as this can allow those who don't want to compete in the pool to have some little something to play for if they like. The House gets a take from all the pool entries that make a lower score (I'd suggest 25% of the entry, perhaps with a minimum take equal to the entry fee), and after the House's take is paid out the remainder is divided up in the prize pool. This way, should the hosts happen to win, they would receive a quarter of the entries and divide up the remaining three quarters as the cash prizes. There are possible extras, such as considering whether to make one year's winner the House in the following year, or stipulating that only one half of a couple will win if there are only two prizes.
For my S&S parallel, I shall go to a brilliant image from the Emma Thompson film, which ends at Colonel Brandon's wedding to Marianne. As they emerge from the church, Brandon makes the traditional toss into the air of a bag of coins for the children to gather up. And what do we see but John Dashwood, the richest person in attendance, eagerly guided by his wife, grabbing up more coins than anybody else. Brilliant.
I suppose the moral is that hosts who do not have a satisfactory sense of the mood of this sort of gathering run the risk of appearing to be like John and Fanny Dashwood.
Well, things seem to be looking up. We have four situations of reasonable interest.
L1: Scientific evidence is always tricky. LW1 has at least attempted to educate himself on the possibilities in the case, which is always commendable to some extent. It might also be possible to commend him for taking such a Western approach to the situation; one can imagine the alternatives. There is much we do not know, and it's not entirely clear how important the unknown facts might prove to be. Perhaps LW1 has definitive certainty that he could not have been responsible; perhaps his wife could have contracted the virus through conduct that might not have been strictly prohibited. It does not feel entirely seemly to inquire deeply. The wife's reasoning reminds me a bit of the way some crime victims who provide eyewitness testimony that is eventually refuted grasp at straws to insist they were correct, but they have at least not made any deliberate mistake.
Curiously, in seeking an Austenian parallel, there are not a great many arranged marriages from which to select, although there are a good many close calls. Elizabeth Bennet, Edward Ferrars and Henry Tilney are all ordered by a parent to woo or accept someone regardless of inclination, and Fanny Price is nearly thrown off by her uncle for refusing a proposal he thinks quite favourable. Lady Susan Vernon considers forcing her daughter Frederica to accept Sir James Martin, but resolves instead to make her daughter's life so miserable that Frederica will choose to marry him voluntarily. And of course, Mr Darcy's aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, is quick to declare that Darcy is engaged to her daughter, although there is no fondness on either side, simply because the marriage was planned by their mothers over the infants' cradles. But the one true arranged marriage that has actually come off with no inclination on either side is that of Colonel Brandon's older brother, the heir to the family estate, who was married to the Colonel's first love, a rich ward of his father.
We never see either party to the marriage, and have only Brandon's account of the calamity. The mutual attachment between Brandon and his sister-in-law sustains her for a time, but his brother's vicious conduct makes her desperate. She misconducts herself, leaves her husband, sells her allowance and dies in poverty, leaving behind an illegitmate daughter whom some wrongly believe to be Brandon's own.
The moral for LW1 is that he has an arranged marriage that seems on balance to be quite a credit to the institution. Even giving his wife only a moderate helping of a rather large quantity of doubt would seem to promise well for the continuance of the same. While one can probably understand that cultural concerns might render it necessary not to let this end with reasonable doubt, it seems that it would be pleasant if it could be left there.
L2: Ah, the magic ring! Still, it seems mild compared to the occasion 10-15 years ago when I heard a woman I knew slightly telling her bridge partner how her daughter and her daughter's fiance were arranging a trip to Hawaii and planning for the proposal to occur during that trip. Now that was flabbergasting.
I was a little disappointed with DP that she was so dismissive of one of the potentially more interesting points amond LW2's concerns. One might have quite an interesting discussion about which gender-based traditions are retained when others are discarded and why. At least it appears interesting to me as an outsider to such intersex dealings. There might be some legitimate trade-off to make the presentation of a ring seem fair - childbirth, perhaps? Half of a couple predetermined to remain Childless by Choice might reasonably perhaps declare gender equity in all things - it might strike me as dreary, but again, this is not my metier, as Hercule Poirot might say.
S&S provides us with two examples of Engagements with Problems (or at least Situations that Resemble Them). Edward Ferrars and Lucy Steele have actually been engaged for four years (a very apt time for the LW), although they cannot make the engagement public or afford to marry, and indeed Edward has already lost the inclination that drove him to contract the engagement in the first place. LW2 might see their situation as a bit of a warning; his girlfriend might even be in the Edward role, trying to put off as long as possible the evil day of having to finalize the match for some reason or other. The happier couple, Willoughby and Marianne Dashwood, appear and act engaged, leaving little doubt to their friends and acquaintances except that neither of them has breathed a word of their attachment having been formalized. They even reach the brink of a formal proposal before Willoughby's past catches up with him. This seems a bit more apt a comparison to my mind, as the points LW2 raises for his reluctance to buy a ring seem as insubstantial as Willoughby's enjoying the present so much and being just that unwilling to commit himself until he finally is sufficiently swept up in attachment.
I should want considerable cross-examination before being able to convince myself that LW2 is sufficiently attached to make marriage a good idea. While it takes all kinds, I for one would find it rather sad for someone contemplating marriage not to be full of joy and excitement about being able to make a unilateral public declaration of affection when the time comes. It seems rather late in the day to be coping with concerns about reciprocity.
I suppose the moral is that love doesn't really conquer all that much after all.
L3: While I usually incline to sympathy for anyone trapped in the worng career, the magnitude of the desired change is so great and the timing so insurpassably bad that I really must wonder. There may actually be some practical course of action for LW3, a way to wade into a more congenial profession to some extent, but I'm not at all sure she'd be satisfied. If I were writing this as a story, LW3 would chuck her career and toil all the way through medical school and the rigours of beginning to practise only to discover medicine to be even less congenial a profession than the law - a bit French, perhaps, but that's my first instinct.
The S&S paprallel is the strongest one of the lot, though. LW3 was pushed out of the profession she wanted to pursue and into doing something quite different by her family, though at present she has at least the support of the man she loves - LW3 is a female Edward Ferrars. When he is about to leave Barton Cottage after a week's visit, Edward explains his circumstances. He has always harboured a preference for the church, but the church is not smart enough for his mother and sister. The army is a good deal too smart for him. He has no inclination for the law. The navy might be fashionable, but he'd have had to have started much younger. As a young man of eighteen is generally not so determined to be busy as to resist the suggestion of his connections to do nothing, he has been enrolled at Oxford and properly idle ever since.
In LW3's favour is the support of her husband, much as Edward has the support of Elinor even before the fortunate end of his engagement to Lucy. Is this enough? I really can't say, certainly not before LW3 comes to a more thorough understanding of Why Now. Perhaps the moral is that a stitch in time saves nine?
L4: I have often run bridge parties at which prizes have been on offer, and the host has generally declined any prize won, passing it down to the next person in the standings. I am inclined to place L4 between this sort of bridge party (which appears to be the opinion of DP) and a full-on gambling gathering such as a poker game. Now here I am going to surpass myself and offer the Oscar Party hosts a practical solution that does not kill the spirit of the Pool. Set up one of them (or a combined effort from both) as the House. Get in a supply of inexpensive Beat the House prizes if desired, as this can allow those who don't want to compete in the pool to have some little something to play for if they like. The House gets a take from all the pool entries that make a lower score (I'd suggest 25% of the entry, perhaps with a minimum take equal to the entry fee), and after the House's take is paid out the remainder is divided up in the prize pool. This way, should the hosts happen to win, they would receive a quarter of the entries and divide up the remaining three quarters as the cash prizes. There are possible extras, such as considering whether to make one year's winner the House in the following year, or stipulating that only one half of a couple will win if there are only two prizes.
For my S&S parallel, I shall go to a brilliant image from the Emma Thompson film, which ends at Colonel Brandon's wedding to Marianne. As they emerge from the church, Brandon makes the traditional toss into the air of a bag of coins for the children to gather up. And what do we see but John Dashwood, the richest person in attendance, eagerly guided by his wife, grabbing up more coins than anybody else. Brilliant.
I suppose the moral is that hosts who do not have a satisfactory sense of the mood of this sort of gathering run the risk of appearing to be like John and Fanny Dashwood.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
3/4 DP - A Little Persuasion
Well, as I nearly predicted, nothing today is quite in the same class as the question on Monday from the man whose situation made me think of Frank Churchill from *Emma*. But, in continuation of my recent trend of keeping all my comparisons confined to a single novel, today I turn to Miss Austen's *Persuasion* for inspiration, a work to which I referred last week when some threads turned into stereotypical remarks on the question of whether men or women are kinkier. I still hold that Anne Elliot's conversation with Captain Harville on the subject of gender-based constancy ought to be required reading for all posters if not the topic for a mandatory qualifying essay before posting at all.
L1: LW1 is doing a number of things right, and certainly is making a rather better widower than Sir Walter Elliot. Sir Walter, though in his mid-fifties, has retained the good looks to which, in conjunction with his baronetcy, he owes his acquisition of a wife of character, a woman whose judgment, if she might be pardoned the youtful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence since. As it was only the prudence and economy of Lady Elliot that kept Sir Walter from exceeding his income, it is unsurprising that, thirteen years after her death, he finds in expedient to let Kellynch Hall and remove to live in Bath, even though he has only lived up to the standards of a handsome baronet. But it is in the parental field where Sir Walter shines. After making one or two unreasonable applications shortly into his widowhood, he has prided himself on remaining single for the sake of his daughters. His oldest daughter, who most resembles him in both beauty and brains, is a great favourite, and for her sake he might well give up almost anything that he was not very much tempted to do.
But as *Persuasion* opens and Sir Walter plans his relocation, a little threat appears on the horizon in the form of Elizabeth Elliot's intimacy with Mrs Clay, the daughter of Sir Walter's lawyer/agent, Mr Shepherd. Lady Russell, the neighbour of the Elliots who has been the closest thing Anne in particular has had to a mother since Lady Elliot's death, even convinces Anne to warn Elizabeth of unpleasant possibilities. Elizabeth is certain Mrs Clay has no designs on Sir Walter; Anne is less convinced, but the possibility ranks high among the reasons that Mr William Elliot, Sir Walter's heir, reinstates himself in Sir Walter's good opinion. Mr Elliot's initial intention is to marry Anne and keep a son-in-law's eye on Sir Walter in order to restrain the baronet from an imprudent second marriage (which might lead to that most dreadful thing, a male heir). When Anne's reunion with her former fiance Captain Wentworth makes this impossible, Mr Elliot consoles himself by convincing Mrs Clay to surrender her chance of marrying Sir Walter in exchange for the possibility of wheedling her way into marrying Sir William.
Now, LW1 has done a good many things right. He has been, we can reasonably assume, a devoted husband, supported his wife through her final illness without requiring to be propped up by an outside affair (see: recent letters to Mr Savage), and dedicated himself in his widowhood to his career and raising his son. There is very little requiring stern corss-examination. One might question his making a point of his mother-in-law's age, and his use of the word AWESOME almost entirely undoes the favourable impression he makes, but the two most interesting points are his relatively good opinion of the boyfriend amd why he feels creepy. If we compare this letter to the letter from the old flame of Mrs Alzheimers, this LW mentions the woman being attractive once, whereas the other LW cannot go two sentences without bringing up Mrs A's strong sex drive. This LW seems more intrigued by the unexpected possibility of resuming a long-dormant sex life than consumed by lust for the source of the possibility.
I fear I cannot say so many nice things about the conduct of the babysitter. In her favour, she does have the ability to make herself agreeable to children. But she has brought up sex between them in the conversation, apparently multiple times, despite being hired recently. And now she escalates the situation by bringing up her crush and her restlessness. Well, it's certainly enough to provide for a fun time on the witness stand. On the whole, I think it would be better for the boy if she's just calculating rather than sincere. She'll be nicer to him while the situation lasts and the ending will be cleaner.
My best guess as to what's really going on is that this is a sort of variation on *Death on the Nile* or *Endless Night* and that the boyfriend is in on it. She has spread out a lure in conversation, and detected a flicker of interest. Now she is upping the ante, planning to marry LW1, clean out his savings and the boy's college fund, and then return to her true love. But it's just a guess.
L2: Dear me - what a piece of work! I almost feel like expressing deep sympathy to LW2 that the only thing she feels that she can do to stand out and merit being the centre of attention is to become pregnant. I might advise her mother-in-law not to be alone with LW2 or eat or drink anything prepared by LW2 until both babies have safely put in an appearance. The most interesting point of speculation may well be whether her husband ought to have seen that something of this nature would arise.
But if LW2 wants to witness the possible effects of a late pregnancy that would really be a blow to the younger generation, she might consider the plight of Mr Elliot. Having married for money, acquired his fortune, and had the good luck to bury the wife who provided him with little other than his healthy income, he is prepared to go to great lengths to keep Sir Walter single, though not to quite such an extremity as to marry Elizabeth. He might perhaps have been considering such a course before his fortunate meeting with Anne in Lyme (though ostensibly he never discovered her identity until long afterwards) and the realization that marrying the other Miss Elliot would be considerably less of an ordeal, but he cannot bring himself to it at the last, contenting himself with eloping with Mrs Clay, thus saving Sir Walter from the clutches of one designing female, at least.
I have seen it predicted by those who have enjoyed looking into the future of Miss Austen's characters that Mrs Clay does not succeed in getting Mr Elliot to marry her, but that she has the resourcefulness to return to Sir Walter and marry him at last, so that seven years after the end of *Persuasion* we greet the birth of a little heir to Kellynch, and enjoy seeing Mr Elliot seethe in the background.
L3: It is really rather a pity that advice columnists must of necessity provide questioners with answers that are in the questioners' best interest. If ever there were a time to consider what would be better for the poor friend in question (barring true moral repugnancy, but it is hard to imagine it being there and LW3 failing to nail it chapter and verse to the cross), it would be now. Who would not love to tell LW3 that of course she must absolutely drop the terrible horrible awful very bad friend right this instant? After all, surely that must be in the best interest of the friend.
I get double duty out of Sir Walter Elliot, who provides me with a parallel for this letter as well as for L1. It does not take long after he agrees to let his estate to consider who might make the most desirable sort of tenant. Mr Shepherd rather shrewdly advances a naval officer just returned to shore as just the sort of tenant Sir Walter might want.
But Sir Walter has strong objections to the navy, a profession which he would not want to see adopted by any friend of his. His objections are twofold. A naval career often brings men into an undue distinction and confers upon him honours of which his father never dreamed. Also, life at sea cuts up a man's youth and vigour to such an extent that a sailor grows old faster than any other man. He instances Lord St Ives and Admiral Baldwin, men with whom he had been in company and to whom he'd had to give place, despite Lord St Ives having been the son of a country curate and Admiral Baldwin appearing to be 60 or 62 when his true age was no more than 40.
It is left to Mrs Clay to soothe things over. She does so with some skill, beginning with the line that, "We are not all born to be handsome." She goes on to instance the various travails and risks attached to the profession of the lawyer, the physician and even the clergyman. But she comes to the happy conclusion that, while each profession is noble and honourable in its turn, it is only those who are not obliged to take up any profession at all who can maintain the health, vigour and beauty of youth well into their middle years.
L4: I fear I have almost nothing to say about when LW4 should disclose his physical peculiarity. But it might cheer him up to take Mrs Clay as an example. Sir Walter prizes beauty as highly as he does birth or fortune, perhaps higher than fortune. At the end of the novel, he is reconciled to Anne's marriage by considering that Captain Wentworth's superiourity of appearance offsets Anne's superiourity of rank. Early on in the novel, we discover that Mrs Clay has a variety of drawbacks to overcome if she wishes to become Lady Elliot - freckles, a projecting tooth and a clumsy wrist. Sir Walter has made severe comments upon these defects. Elizabeth, a beauty herself, cannot conceive of her father's being attracted by someone so far from pretty. Anne, however, fears that Mrs Clay's abilities of insinuation may prove more dangerous than attractions merely personal might do, and she is proved at least partially right. When Anne joins Sir Walter, Elizabeth and Mrs Clay in Bath, Sir Walter fancies Anne in better than usual looks, compliments her on her appearance, and asks what she's been using for her complexion. Anne replies that she has used nothing, not even (repsonding to a follow-up) Gowland's (I have read that Gowland's doubled as a treatment for various social diseases, which lends considerable substance to the novel's theme of the changing social order given the worth of the navy and the decrepitude of the gentry). This surprises Sir Walter. Anne cannot do better than she has done, cannot be better than well, but otherwise he would recommend the constant use of Gowland's, adding that Mrs Clay has been using it at his recommendation, and that it has completely carried away her freckles. As it does not appear to Anne that Mrs Clay's freckles have at all decreased, she takes this as an alarming sign of Mrs Clay's having made a good deal of progress towards her assumed goal. The moral for LW4 is that the art of pleasing should carry him a good deal farther than a minor peculiarity can set him back.
L1: LW1 is doing a number of things right, and certainly is making a rather better widower than Sir Walter Elliot. Sir Walter, though in his mid-fifties, has retained the good looks to which, in conjunction with his baronetcy, he owes his acquisition of a wife of character, a woman whose judgment, if she might be pardoned the youtful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence since. As it was only the prudence and economy of Lady Elliot that kept Sir Walter from exceeding his income, it is unsurprising that, thirteen years after her death, he finds in expedient to let Kellynch Hall and remove to live in Bath, even though he has only lived up to the standards of a handsome baronet. But it is in the parental field where Sir Walter shines. After making one or two unreasonable applications shortly into his widowhood, he has prided himself on remaining single for the sake of his daughters. His oldest daughter, who most resembles him in both beauty and brains, is a great favourite, and for her sake he might well give up almost anything that he was not very much tempted to do.
But as *Persuasion* opens and Sir Walter plans his relocation, a little threat appears on the horizon in the form of Elizabeth Elliot's intimacy with Mrs Clay, the daughter of Sir Walter's lawyer/agent, Mr Shepherd. Lady Russell, the neighbour of the Elliots who has been the closest thing Anne in particular has had to a mother since Lady Elliot's death, even convinces Anne to warn Elizabeth of unpleasant possibilities. Elizabeth is certain Mrs Clay has no designs on Sir Walter; Anne is less convinced, but the possibility ranks high among the reasons that Mr William Elliot, Sir Walter's heir, reinstates himself in Sir Walter's good opinion. Mr Elliot's initial intention is to marry Anne and keep a son-in-law's eye on Sir Walter in order to restrain the baronet from an imprudent second marriage (which might lead to that most dreadful thing, a male heir). When Anne's reunion with her former fiance Captain Wentworth makes this impossible, Mr Elliot consoles himself by convincing Mrs Clay to surrender her chance of marrying Sir Walter in exchange for the possibility of wheedling her way into marrying Sir William.
Now, LW1 has done a good many things right. He has been, we can reasonably assume, a devoted husband, supported his wife through her final illness without requiring to be propped up by an outside affair (see: recent letters to Mr Savage), and dedicated himself in his widowhood to his career and raising his son. There is very little requiring stern corss-examination. One might question his making a point of his mother-in-law's age, and his use of the word AWESOME almost entirely undoes the favourable impression he makes, but the two most interesting points are his relatively good opinion of the boyfriend amd why he feels creepy. If we compare this letter to the letter from the old flame of Mrs Alzheimers, this LW mentions the woman being attractive once, whereas the other LW cannot go two sentences without bringing up Mrs A's strong sex drive. This LW seems more intrigued by the unexpected possibility of resuming a long-dormant sex life than consumed by lust for the source of the possibility.
I fear I cannot say so many nice things about the conduct of the babysitter. In her favour, she does have the ability to make herself agreeable to children. But she has brought up sex between them in the conversation, apparently multiple times, despite being hired recently. And now she escalates the situation by bringing up her crush and her restlessness. Well, it's certainly enough to provide for a fun time on the witness stand. On the whole, I think it would be better for the boy if she's just calculating rather than sincere. She'll be nicer to him while the situation lasts and the ending will be cleaner.
My best guess as to what's really going on is that this is a sort of variation on *Death on the Nile* or *Endless Night* and that the boyfriend is in on it. She has spread out a lure in conversation, and detected a flicker of interest. Now she is upping the ante, planning to marry LW1, clean out his savings and the boy's college fund, and then return to her true love. But it's just a guess.
L2: Dear me - what a piece of work! I almost feel like expressing deep sympathy to LW2 that the only thing she feels that she can do to stand out and merit being the centre of attention is to become pregnant. I might advise her mother-in-law not to be alone with LW2 or eat or drink anything prepared by LW2 until both babies have safely put in an appearance. The most interesting point of speculation may well be whether her husband ought to have seen that something of this nature would arise.
But if LW2 wants to witness the possible effects of a late pregnancy that would really be a blow to the younger generation, she might consider the plight of Mr Elliot. Having married for money, acquired his fortune, and had the good luck to bury the wife who provided him with little other than his healthy income, he is prepared to go to great lengths to keep Sir Walter single, though not to quite such an extremity as to marry Elizabeth. He might perhaps have been considering such a course before his fortunate meeting with Anne in Lyme (though ostensibly he never discovered her identity until long afterwards) and the realization that marrying the other Miss Elliot would be considerably less of an ordeal, but he cannot bring himself to it at the last, contenting himself with eloping with Mrs Clay, thus saving Sir Walter from the clutches of one designing female, at least.
I have seen it predicted by those who have enjoyed looking into the future of Miss Austen's characters that Mrs Clay does not succeed in getting Mr Elliot to marry her, but that she has the resourcefulness to return to Sir Walter and marry him at last, so that seven years after the end of *Persuasion* we greet the birth of a little heir to Kellynch, and enjoy seeing Mr Elliot seethe in the background.
L3: It is really rather a pity that advice columnists must of necessity provide questioners with answers that are in the questioners' best interest. If ever there were a time to consider what would be better for the poor friend in question (barring true moral repugnancy, but it is hard to imagine it being there and LW3 failing to nail it chapter and verse to the cross), it would be now. Who would not love to tell LW3 that of course she must absolutely drop the terrible horrible awful very bad friend right this instant? After all, surely that must be in the best interest of the friend.
I get double duty out of Sir Walter Elliot, who provides me with a parallel for this letter as well as for L1. It does not take long after he agrees to let his estate to consider who might make the most desirable sort of tenant. Mr Shepherd rather shrewdly advances a naval officer just returned to shore as just the sort of tenant Sir Walter might want.
But Sir Walter has strong objections to the navy, a profession which he would not want to see adopted by any friend of his. His objections are twofold. A naval career often brings men into an undue distinction and confers upon him honours of which his father never dreamed. Also, life at sea cuts up a man's youth and vigour to such an extent that a sailor grows old faster than any other man. He instances Lord St Ives and Admiral Baldwin, men with whom he had been in company and to whom he'd had to give place, despite Lord St Ives having been the son of a country curate and Admiral Baldwin appearing to be 60 or 62 when his true age was no more than 40.
It is left to Mrs Clay to soothe things over. She does so with some skill, beginning with the line that, "We are not all born to be handsome." She goes on to instance the various travails and risks attached to the profession of the lawyer, the physician and even the clergyman. But she comes to the happy conclusion that, while each profession is noble and honourable in its turn, it is only those who are not obliged to take up any profession at all who can maintain the health, vigour and beauty of youth well into their middle years.
L4: I fear I have almost nothing to say about when LW4 should disclose his physical peculiarity. But it might cheer him up to take Mrs Clay as an example. Sir Walter prizes beauty as highly as he does birth or fortune, perhaps higher than fortune. At the end of the novel, he is reconciled to Anne's marriage by considering that Captain Wentworth's superiourity of appearance offsets Anne's superiourity of rank. Early on in the novel, we discover that Mrs Clay has a variety of drawbacks to overcome if she wishes to become Lady Elliot - freckles, a projecting tooth and a clumsy wrist. Sir Walter has made severe comments upon these defects. Elizabeth, a beauty herself, cannot conceive of her father's being attracted by someone so far from pretty. Anne, however, fears that Mrs Clay's abilities of insinuation may prove more dangerous than attractions merely personal might do, and she is proved at least partially right. When Anne joins Sir Walter, Elizabeth and Mrs Clay in Bath, Sir Walter fancies Anne in better than usual looks, compliments her on her appearance, and asks what she's been using for her complexion. Anne replies that she has used nothing, not even (repsonding to a follow-up) Gowland's (I have read that Gowland's doubled as a treatment for various social diseases, which lends considerable substance to the novel's theme of the changing social order given the worth of the navy and the decrepitude of the gentry). This surprises Sir Walter. Anne cannot do better than she has done, cannot be better than well, but otherwise he would recommend the constant use of Gowland's, adding that Mrs Clay has been using it at his recommendation, and that it has completely carried away her freckles. As it does not appear to Anne that Mrs Clay's freckles have at all decreased, she takes this as an alarming sign of Mrs Clay's having made a good deal of progress towards her assumed goal. The moral for LW4 is that the art of pleasing should carry him a good deal farther than a minor peculiarity can set him back.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
2/25 DP - Let's Visit Cranford
This will be brief, as the affairs of the day went overlong, and I am starting late. If the letters had been of a suitable calibre, this might have been the Figure Skating Edition, but I refuse to waste Stephane Lambiel on this lot. Instead we go to Cranford.
L1: Having been more or less there and done very nearly that, I shall recuse myself on the problem with more firmness than Guthrie Featherstone was able to employ when he was sent to try Dr Morris Horridge on the charge of running massage parlours where a bit of the other was a regular side feature. But this issue is very rich with fodder for cross-examination, as it is entirely unclear when it's Mamma speaking and when it's Junior. "He was horribly embarrassed and guilty, and he promised to give up gloves forever." Part one of that sentence seems normal enough, given the circumstances. As for part two, was it spontaneous or forced? It might be interesting to know about the "piles" he keeps in his room, but, again with the girlfriend or wife worries, where did that originate? While LW1 seems armed with rather better intentions than some parents, she seems at least potentially capable of projecting her fears onto or instilling them into her son, and of being misled into putting him into a very wrong course of treatment. But that is all I should allow myself to say.
The Cranford connection I shall assign to Miss Matilda Jenkyns, who all her life wants rather harmless things that are deemed improper. In her youth, it's Mr Holbrook, but he's a farmer who eats peas with a knife, totally unsuitable for the vicar's daughter in a town where what matter more than what one does is what will be said about what one does. After the death of her domineering sister many years later, she almost gets to marry Mr Holbrook, and she does get to fulfill her lifelong dream of raising a little girl, although her tending to her maid's daughter provokes unfavourable commentary. Yet the equivalent I'll find for Miss Mattie is in her desire for a turban. She has long fancied such a style of headwear. She almost buys a red one, but Miss Pole questions its suitability for a garden party, and Mrs Jamieson cannot approve of such a passion for things Oriental. Miss Mattie tries again when the town is to be visited by a conjuror who has appeared before the Lama of Tibet, suggesting that they might all wear turbans in his honour, but again her idea is shot down and the conjuror's appearance canceled due to the sudden death of Lady Ludlow. But finally, when she arranges for the public ballroom to see service after decades of disuse and a visit from the conjuror after all, Miss Mattie gets her turban, an event only topped by Jem's moving back to Cranford with baby Tillie.
L2: And just why, you poor thing you, can't you say so? What a Martyr with a capital Mar you are. I cannot raise much interest in your situation, but Dodo MacIntosh seems quite content with her best friend of long standing, even when said best friend employed her to make cheesy bits for Chambers parties. You may have an out - it might be possible to tell your friend that your boss Rhymes With Rich (as Barbara Bush might say). Of course, this might expose a major fragility in your friendship, which could have been based on your being the dogsbody all along, whereas Dodo and the former Hilda Wystan seem equally matched over the decades, although one or the other has occasionally seized a brief advantage.
Your Cranford connection is an example of the maxim that it is better to befriend your boss than to work for your friend. Consider the Jenkyns' maid, Martha. Miss Jenkyns (Deborah) is a martinet, always correcting Martha and not allowing her to have followers, but happily Deborah dies. Miss Mattie proves much better, allowing Martha and Jem to meet openly and even giving Jem gold when his five pound note, issued by a failing bank, isn't honoured. When Miss Mattie loses all her money and dismisses Martha, Martha refuses to leave, saying that she'll work for no pay to keep such a good place. She pushes up her marriage to Jem so that they can lodge with Miss Mattie and help keep her afloat. Martha's daughter Tillie is raised in a shockingly egalitarian manner, being attended to either by her mother or Miss Mattie depending on which of them has the leisure (until Martha dies during her second lying-in), That seems a much more satisfactory way to go about things as compared to working for a friend.
L3: An interesting form of communication between the two of you. Let me cross-examine the most adult member of the household. Arf arf-arf! Woof woof. Bow-wow-wow-wow-wow! Rrruff!! Sammy would like new living arrangements, probably without the fool.
The most prominent dog in Cranford is always the one belonging to Mrs Jamieson. Her little darling is always fed from her own plate, given an Italian name and clothed in Italian silks similar to the pattern of her own dresses. Additionally, he always enjoys his mistress' full attention. Carlo is sadly shot by accident, but his successor plays an important role in bringing together Mrs Jamieson's visiting widow-of-a-Baron cousin with her future husband (much to the shock of the town, even Miss Mattie), the socially much lower Captain Brown.
L4: The Austenian solution would be to hire a Master of Ceremonies for the evening, assuiming that your husband shares your degree of incapability to host. It was, after all, just such a personnage who introduced Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney in *Northanger Abbey*.
But Cranford provides a shining example of the dangers of having all the people in one's life so neatly boxed off. Consider the plight of young Dr Harrison. He begins with a bang; despite his decision to try a radical surgical technique instead of a safe amputation, he preserves Jem's livelihood by saving his arm. He cannot save little Walter Hutton, but eventually his commencement of a courtship of Walter's sister Sophie gets back on course. But this relationship is only known to the Huttons and Mary Smith, a compartmentalization which nearly costs Dr Harrison everything. His friend Dr Marshland spots Miss Caroline Tomkinson's partiality for Dr Harrison and sends her an anonymous Valentine. Combined with Dr Harrison's failing to pick up on Miss Tomkinson's hints about Caroline's dowry of four thousand pounds, this gives the sisters Expectations, however unrealistic, and unfortunately uncommunicated to anyone. More poignantly, one or two innocent gifts to his housekeeper, the modest widow Mrs Rose, come to the attention of Universal Busybody Miss Pole and her sidekick Mrs Forrester, who convince the reluctant Mrs Rose that she is the Cranford equivalent of a Cougar. (Considering the uproar when Mrs Jamieson's Baroness cousin stoops to marry Captain Brown, it seems an inconsistency that Miss Pole should so heartily approve of an unconventional age difference.) And again this supposed attachment is not spread abroad. Everything converges during the May Day celebration, when Miss Tomkinson tells the Reverend Mr Hutton that she expects Caroline's engagement to be announced that day, and to whom? Why, to Dr Harrison. Naturally Mr Hutton demands an explanation; Dr Harrison's protest that he never gave the Tomkinsons any cause for expectations is overheard by Miss Pole, who exhorts Mrs Rose to defend her fiance. It takes Dr Harrison saving Sophie from near certain death, the recently widowed butcher finding a warm reception at the Tomkinsons' and Dr Morgan's protective feelings towards Mrs Rose to set everything to rights. Moral: Make sure your friends all know each other and all about you.
L1: Having been more or less there and done very nearly that, I shall recuse myself on the problem with more firmness than Guthrie Featherstone was able to employ when he was sent to try Dr Morris Horridge on the charge of running massage parlours where a bit of the other was a regular side feature. But this issue is very rich with fodder for cross-examination, as it is entirely unclear when it's Mamma speaking and when it's Junior. "He was horribly embarrassed and guilty, and he promised to give up gloves forever." Part one of that sentence seems normal enough, given the circumstances. As for part two, was it spontaneous or forced? It might be interesting to know about the "piles" he keeps in his room, but, again with the girlfriend or wife worries, where did that originate? While LW1 seems armed with rather better intentions than some parents, she seems at least potentially capable of projecting her fears onto or instilling them into her son, and of being misled into putting him into a very wrong course of treatment. But that is all I should allow myself to say.
The Cranford connection I shall assign to Miss Matilda Jenkyns, who all her life wants rather harmless things that are deemed improper. In her youth, it's Mr Holbrook, but he's a farmer who eats peas with a knife, totally unsuitable for the vicar's daughter in a town where what matter more than what one does is what will be said about what one does. After the death of her domineering sister many years later, she almost gets to marry Mr Holbrook, and she does get to fulfill her lifelong dream of raising a little girl, although her tending to her maid's daughter provokes unfavourable commentary. Yet the equivalent I'll find for Miss Mattie is in her desire for a turban. She has long fancied such a style of headwear. She almost buys a red one, but Miss Pole questions its suitability for a garden party, and Mrs Jamieson cannot approve of such a passion for things Oriental. Miss Mattie tries again when the town is to be visited by a conjuror who has appeared before the Lama of Tibet, suggesting that they might all wear turbans in his honour, but again her idea is shot down and the conjuror's appearance canceled due to the sudden death of Lady Ludlow. But finally, when she arranges for the public ballroom to see service after decades of disuse and a visit from the conjuror after all, Miss Mattie gets her turban, an event only topped by Jem's moving back to Cranford with baby Tillie.
L2: And just why, you poor thing you, can't you say so? What a Martyr with a capital Mar you are. I cannot raise much interest in your situation, but Dodo MacIntosh seems quite content with her best friend of long standing, even when said best friend employed her to make cheesy bits for Chambers parties. You may have an out - it might be possible to tell your friend that your boss Rhymes With Rich (as Barbara Bush might say). Of course, this might expose a major fragility in your friendship, which could have been based on your being the dogsbody all along, whereas Dodo and the former Hilda Wystan seem equally matched over the decades, although one or the other has occasionally seized a brief advantage.
Your Cranford connection is an example of the maxim that it is better to befriend your boss than to work for your friend. Consider the Jenkyns' maid, Martha. Miss Jenkyns (Deborah) is a martinet, always correcting Martha and not allowing her to have followers, but happily Deborah dies. Miss Mattie proves much better, allowing Martha and Jem to meet openly and even giving Jem gold when his five pound note, issued by a failing bank, isn't honoured. When Miss Mattie loses all her money and dismisses Martha, Martha refuses to leave, saying that she'll work for no pay to keep such a good place. She pushes up her marriage to Jem so that they can lodge with Miss Mattie and help keep her afloat. Martha's daughter Tillie is raised in a shockingly egalitarian manner, being attended to either by her mother or Miss Mattie depending on which of them has the leisure (until Martha dies during her second lying-in), That seems a much more satisfactory way to go about things as compared to working for a friend.
L3: An interesting form of communication between the two of you. Let me cross-examine the most adult member of the household. Arf arf-arf! Woof woof. Bow-wow-wow-wow-wow! Rrruff!! Sammy would like new living arrangements, probably without the fool.
The most prominent dog in Cranford is always the one belonging to Mrs Jamieson. Her little darling is always fed from her own plate, given an Italian name and clothed in Italian silks similar to the pattern of her own dresses. Additionally, he always enjoys his mistress' full attention. Carlo is sadly shot by accident, but his successor plays an important role in bringing together Mrs Jamieson's visiting widow-of-a-Baron cousin with her future husband (much to the shock of the town, even Miss Mattie), the socially much lower Captain Brown.
L4: The Austenian solution would be to hire a Master of Ceremonies for the evening, assuiming that your husband shares your degree of incapability to host. It was, after all, just such a personnage who introduced Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney in *Northanger Abbey*.
But Cranford provides a shining example of the dangers of having all the people in one's life so neatly boxed off. Consider the plight of young Dr Harrison. He begins with a bang; despite his decision to try a radical surgical technique instead of a safe amputation, he preserves Jem's livelihood by saving his arm. He cannot save little Walter Hutton, but eventually his commencement of a courtship of Walter's sister Sophie gets back on course. But this relationship is only known to the Huttons and Mary Smith, a compartmentalization which nearly costs Dr Harrison everything. His friend Dr Marshland spots Miss Caroline Tomkinson's partiality for Dr Harrison and sends her an anonymous Valentine. Combined with Dr Harrison's failing to pick up on Miss Tomkinson's hints about Caroline's dowry of four thousand pounds, this gives the sisters Expectations, however unrealistic, and unfortunately uncommunicated to anyone. More poignantly, one or two innocent gifts to his housekeeper, the modest widow Mrs Rose, come to the attention of Universal Busybody Miss Pole and her sidekick Mrs Forrester, who convince the reluctant Mrs Rose that she is the Cranford equivalent of a Cougar. (Considering the uproar when Mrs Jamieson's Baroness cousin stoops to marry Captain Brown, it seems an inconsistency that Miss Pole should so heartily approve of an unconventional age difference.) And again this supposed attachment is not spread abroad. Everything converges during the May Day celebration, when Miss Tomkinson tells the Reverend Mr Hutton that she expects Caroline's engagement to be announced that day, and to whom? Why, to Dr Harrison. Naturally Mr Hutton demands an explanation; Dr Harrison's protest that he never gave the Tomkinsons any cause for expectations is overheard by Miss Pole, who exhorts Mrs Rose to defend her fiance. It takes Dr Harrison saving Sophie from near certain death, the recently widowed butcher finding a warm reception at the Tomkinsons' and Dr Morgan's protective feelings towards Mrs Rose to set everything to rights. Moral: Make sure your friends all know each other and all about you.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
2/18 DP; the P&P Edition
Greetings once again to any august QCs come a-slumming.
Although this seems a fairly light day with relatively hard-to-whiff questions, there is some enjoyment to be derived from being able to tell each of the four letter writers to read *Pride and Prejudice* with particular attention to the situation of one of the characters.
LW1: For some reason, you are hesitant to talk to your sister about her early life, and to explain to her exactly why you don't want to be one big happy family with your siblings and your mother. Were you the only one involved whose life might be affected by the information you are keeping to yourself, that would be one thing, but not to tell your sister she has been reestablishing a relationship with a person who abused her when she cannot remember the abuse seems beyond the pale. It would be instructive to cross-examine you on the exact nature and depth of your resentment of your sister and brother, but maybe some other time.
Your P&P assignment is to attend to the situation of Elizabeth (assisted by Jane) Bennet. She likes the charming and open Mr Wickham, and dislikes the haughty and reserved Mr Darcy. But her opinion of Wickham sinks after she learns of Wickham's attempt to elope with Darcy's sister. In Chapter 40, Elizabeth and Jane discuss discuss the question of whether to make Wickham's true character generally known. Jane thinks not because Wickham might have become truly repentant, Elizabeth because it would have to be done without revealing the particulars necessary to convince a neighbourhood in which Wickham was a universal favourite and Darcy a favourite villain, and because Wickham would soon be leaving with the militia. They say nothing. Some chapters later, their sister Lydia, who has accompanied the colonel's wife and gone with the regiment to Brighton, elopes with Wickham and nearly brings down the entire Bennet family by living with him in London heedless of when they might marry. Surely you want to spare yourself the bitterness of Elizabeth's lamentations.
LW2: Most posters seem to be taking your side, though I am somewhat dubious. The wives in question are polite, as you admit yourself. Perhaps there is just too little common ground for you all to advance much beyond politeness, an endeavour which your husband's poor behaviour is not assisting to succeed. Then too, you describe yourself as being very much in love with someone who, by your own account, is rather a jerk. He's getting off big time on your being so much younger and hotter than his friend's wives, and I would not mind bringing out how much this really bothers you, as well as why the two of you continue to socialize with this circle.
Although Colonel and Mrs Forster are probably the couple who match you and your husband on the age difference, your P&P assignment is to attend to Charlotte Lucas. Without valuing either men or matrimony highly, she designs to marry. Her intelligence and lack of romanticism are offset by her dangerous age of 27 and her general deficiencies of beauty and fortune. But opportunity falls her way when Elizabeth refuses the proposal of her cousin Mr Collins, a clergyman who has obtained a most wealthy and attentive patroness. In the course of a mere two days, Charlotte manages to redirect his proposal to herself. In exchange for a comfortable situation, she surrenders much of the esteem of her closest friend with the consolation of a man of no sense whose company is not agreeable and the patronage of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Elizabeth recovers enough feelings of friendship to visit Charlotte in Chapter 28, and cannot but come away impressed with how well Charlotte manages to arrange her household to her liking, get her husband as much out of the way as possible, and cope with the continuous intrusions of Lady Catherine into every detail of the Collins' domestic existence. Surely none of your husband's friends' wives, who are always, by your own admission, polite, are anything like a match for Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
LW3: Once again, after LW1 from last week, I note and disapprove of a second-party letter. Even if it were deemed a good strategy for the two of you to deny your pasts, I for one would not be comfortable telling you what he ought to do about it. I will say that your husband having a youthful indiscretion reminds me of Mr Bennet, although Mr B's youthful indiscretion was of rather a different nature. In Chapter 42, we see how Mr Bennet, captivated by youth, beauty, and the appearance of good nature which youth and beauty generally give, had selected a wife of weak understanding and illiberal mind, but consoled himself as a philosopher with the amusement that could be derived from her ignorance and folly. Let us hope that your husband does not have cause to emulate Mr Bennet.
However, this makes a nice segue into your P&P assignment, which is to attend to Mrs Bennet. Should you decide to reverse your intended course of parenting, you can use her as an example of how to take the opposing style too far. Rather than learn from her own past, she uses the entry of her youngest daughters into the marriage market as an opportunity to relive her own youth. In Chapter 41, rather than join her husband, Jane and Elizabeth in being pleased by the imminent departure of the regiment, she joins Kitty and Lydia in their despair, recalling the departure of a Colonel Miller twenty-five years previously and attempting as eagerly as either of the youngest girls to persuade Mr Bennet to take the whole family on holiday. A short time later, when Lydia is invited by Colonel Forster's wife to accompany the regiment to Brighton, Mrs Bennet sees no drawback in the scheme and is as delighted as Lydia herself, while Elizabeth risks sisterly disapproval and tries to persuade her father to refuse permission. In the end, while Lydia would likely have gone to the bad anyway, her mother's assistance certainly amplified the magnitude.
LW4: Hardly having anything to say about a predicament that at least rises above that of the previous week's L4 in giving rise to a dispute between husband and wife, I shall round out my response to LW3 by making your P&P assignment a sort of complement to that one. Having seen an example of Mrs Bennet's parenting style, you get to attend to Mr Bennet (as an example of how not to address a social embarrassment) on the grand occasion of the Netherfield ball in Chapter 18. There fate conspires against Elizabeth as event piles upon event. Wickham, whom she still likes at the time, is not in attendance (his friend Denny passing on that Wickham thought it prudent to avoid being in company with Darcy). She must dance with Mr Collins, who apologizes in lieu of attending to the proper steps. Darcy asks her to dance and she is so surprised she agrees. Their conversation while they dance is vexing to each, but the interruption of Sir William Lucas, during which he hints that the evident attachment between Jane and Bingley has given rise to Expectations, is even more so to Elizabeth. After their dance, she has an unpleasant encounter with Miss Bingley, who takes an ineffective jab at Wickham. A pleasant moment of chat with Jane might turn the tide, but then Mr Collins mortifies Elizabeth by actually introducing himself to Darcy, much to the astonishment of the latter. At supper, Elizabeth must not only hear but also observe Darcy hearing Mrs Bennet bragging to Lady Lucas of her delight in the expectation of Jane and Bingley marrying soon. After supper, Mr Collins makes a ridiculous speech before the company, much to the amusement and derision of Bingley's sisters, and then remains by Elizabeth for the rest of the evening, ominously attempting to make himself agreeable to her and preventing her from dancing with anyone else.
But perhaps the coup de grace and one of the more well-remembered quotations in the Austen calendar comes just after the conclusion of supper, before Mr Collins' speech. As is the custom, the conclusion of supper is followed by talk of singing, and, as sure as eggs are eggs, the one young lady in the room who, for want of ever being asked to dance, is always eager to oblige the company on very little entreaty, is Mary Bennet, who refuses to see Elizabeth's look imploring her not to perform. After Mary finishes her song, the slightest hint of a hope is enough encouragement to her to oblige the company with another, an exertion for which her powers are not suited. Elizabeth, consoled only by Jane's and Bingley's being too engrossed with each other to attend, sees Darcy looking grave with Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst looking only too well amused, and finally can only look imploringly to her father for assistance lest Mary remain at the piano all night. But Mr Bennet's parenting style brings little more comfort than his wife's, as he cannot resist the humourous admonition, "That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit."
In my mind, however, Mr Bennet redeems himself on the next day. As if not punished enough on the previous evening, Elizabeth is forced by Mrs Bennet to grant Mr Collins a private interview. He not only proposes to her, but refuses to accept any attempt she makes to decline, calling her repeated refusals mere words, a matter of form to refuse the first offer or even a second or third, and an affectation of elegant females designed to increase his attachment through suspense. Lady Catherine de Bourgh has advised him to marry, he came to visit his cousins with the intention of marrying one of them, Jane was already attached elsewhere, and he cannot conceive of his proposal (accompanied by a desirable establishment which her own fortune could not claim as her due) being disagreeable to her. Even Elizabeth's ardent claim that Lady Catherine would declare her unsuitable only shakes Mr Collins for a moment. When she has spoken as plainly as she can and he has vowed that she will accept him when her parents approve of the match, he retires to confer with Mrs Bennet. By no means so sanguine as Mr Collins that Elizabeth means to accept him at last, Mrs Bennet can only go to her husband, saying that she refuses to see Elizabeth ever again if she does not marry Mr Collins, and requiring Mr Bennet to insist that Elizabeth accept the proposal. After having Elizabeth brought to them in the library, Mr Bennet recapitulates the situation, and then sums up, "An unhappy alternative is before you. From this day forward, you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins - and I will never see you again if you do."
Although this seems a fairly light day with relatively hard-to-whiff questions, there is some enjoyment to be derived from being able to tell each of the four letter writers to read *Pride and Prejudice* with particular attention to the situation of one of the characters.
LW1: For some reason, you are hesitant to talk to your sister about her early life, and to explain to her exactly why you don't want to be one big happy family with your siblings and your mother. Were you the only one involved whose life might be affected by the information you are keeping to yourself, that would be one thing, but not to tell your sister she has been reestablishing a relationship with a person who abused her when she cannot remember the abuse seems beyond the pale. It would be instructive to cross-examine you on the exact nature and depth of your resentment of your sister and brother, but maybe some other time.
Your P&P assignment is to attend to the situation of Elizabeth (assisted by Jane) Bennet. She likes the charming and open Mr Wickham, and dislikes the haughty and reserved Mr Darcy. But her opinion of Wickham sinks after she learns of Wickham's attempt to elope with Darcy's sister. In Chapter 40, Elizabeth and Jane discuss discuss the question of whether to make Wickham's true character generally known. Jane thinks not because Wickham might have become truly repentant, Elizabeth because it would have to be done without revealing the particulars necessary to convince a neighbourhood in which Wickham was a universal favourite and Darcy a favourite villain, and because Wickham would soon be leaving with the militia. They say nothing. Some chapters later, their sister Lydia, who has accompanied the colonel's wife and gone with the regiment to Brighton, elopes with Wickham and nearly brings down the entire Bennet family by living with him in London heedless of when they might marry. Surely you want to spare yourself the bitterness of Elizabeth's lamentations.
LW2: Most posters seem to be taking your side, though I am somewhat dubious. The wives in question are polite, as you admit yourself. Perhaps there is just too little common ground for you all to advance much beyond politeness, an endeavour which your husband's poor behaviour is not assisting to succeed. Then too, you describe yourself as being very much in love with someone who, by your own account, is rather a jerk. He's getting off big time on your being so much younger and hotter than his friend's wives, and I would not mind bringing out how much this really bothers you, as well as why the two of you continue to socialize with this circle.
Although Colonel and Mrs Forster are probably the couple who match you and your husband on the age difference, your P&P assignment is to attend to Charlotte Lucas. Without valuing either men or matrimony highly, she designs to marry. Her intelligence and lack of romanticism are offset by her dangerous age of 27 and her general deficiencies of beauty and fortune. But opportunity falls her way when Elizabeth refuses the proposal of her cousin Mr Collins, a clergyman who has obtained a most wealthy and attentive patroness. In the course of a mere two days, Charlotte manages to redirect his proposal to herself. In exchange for a comfortable situation, she surrenders much of the esteem of her closest friend with the consolation of a man of no sense whose company is not agreeable and the patronage of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Elizabeth recovers enough feelings of friendship to visit Charlotte in Chapter 28, and cannot but come away impressed with how well Charlotte manages to arrange her household to her liking, get her husband as much out of the way as possible, and cope with the continuous intrusions of Lady Catherine into every detail of the Collins' domestic existence. Surely none of your husband's friends' wives, who are always, by your own admission, polite, are anything like a match for Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
LW3: Once again, after LW1 from last week, I note and disapprove of a second-party letter. Even if it were deemed a good strategy for the two of you to deny your pasts, I for one would not be comfortable telling you what he ought to do about it. I will say that your husband having a youthful indiscretion reminds me of Mr Bennet, although Mr B's youthful indiscretion was of rather a different nature. In Chapter 42, we see how Mr Bennet, captivated by youth, beauty, and the appearance of good nature which youth and beauty generally give, had selected a wife of weak understanding and illiberal mind, but consoled himself as a philosopher with the amusement that could be derived from her ignorance and folly. Let us hope that your husband does not have cause to emulate Mr Bennet.
However, this makes a nice segue into your P&P assignment, which is to attend to Mrs Bennet. Should you decide to reverse your intended course of parenting, you can use her as an example of how to take the opposing style too far. Rather than learn from her own past, she uses the entry of her youngest daughters into the marriage market as an opportunity to relive her own youth. In Chapter 41, rather than join her husband, Jane and Elizabeth in being pleased by the imminent departure of the regiment, she joins Kitty and Lydia in their despair, recalling the departure of a Colonel Miller twenty-five years previously and attempting as eagerly as either of the youngest girls to persuade Mr Bennet to take the whole family on holiday. A short time later, when Lydia is invited by Colonel Forster's wife to accompany the regiment to Brighton, Mrs Bennet sees no drawback in the scheme and is as delighted as Lydia herself, while Elizabeth risks sisterly disapproval and tries to persuade her father to refuse permission. In the end, while Lydia would likely have gone to the bad anyway, her mother's assistance certainly amplified the magnitude.
LW4: Hardly having anything to say about a predicament that at least rises above that of the previous week's L4 in giving rise to a dispute between husband and wife, I shall round out my response to LW3 by making your P&P assignment a sort of complement to that one. Having seen an example of Mrs Bennet's parenting style, you get to attend to Mr Bennet (as an example of how not to address a social embarrassment) on the grand occasion of the Netherfield ball in Chapter 18. There fate conspires against Elizabeth as event piles upon event. Wickham, whom she still likes at the time, is not in attendance (his friend Denny passing on that Wickham thought it prudent to avoid being in company with Darcy). She must dance with Mr Collins, who apologizes in lieu of attending to the proper steps. Darcy asks her to dance and she is so surprised she agrees. Their conversation while they dance is vexing to each, but the interruption of Sir William Lucas, during which he hints that the evident attachment between Jane and Bingley has given rise to Expectations, is even more so to Elizabeth. After their dance, she has an unpleasant encounter with Miss Bingley, who takes an ineffective jab at Wickham. A pleasant moment of chat with Jane might turn the tide, but then Mr Collins mortifies Elizabeth by actually introducing himself to Darcy, much to the astonishment of the latter. At supper, Elizabeth must not only hear but also observe Darcy hearing Mrs Bennet bragging to Lady Lucas of her delight in the expectation of Jane and Bingley marrying soon. After supper, Mr Collins makes a ridiculous speech before the company, much to the amusement and derision of Bingley's sisters, and then remains by Elizabeth for the rest of the evening, ominously attempting to make himself agreeable to her and preventing her from dancing with anyone else.
But perhaps the coup de grace and one of the more well-remembered quotations in the Austen calendar comes just after the conclusion of supper, before Mr Collins' speech. As is the custom, the conclusion of supper is followed by talk of singing, and, as sure as eggs are eggs, the one young lady in the room who, for want of ever being asked to dance, is always eager to oblige the company on very little entreaty, is Mary Bennet, who refuses to see Elizabeth's look imploring her not to perform. After Mary finishes her song, the slightest hint of a hope is enough encouragement to her to oblige the company with another, an exertion for which her powers are not suited. Elizabeth, consoled only by Jane's and Bingley's being too engrossed with each other to attend, sees Darcy looking grave with Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst looking only too well amused, and finally can only look imploringly to her father for assistance lest Mary remain at the piano all night. But Mr Bennet's parenting style brings little more comfort than his wife's, as he cannot resist the humourous admonition, "That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit."
In my mind, however, Mr Bennet redeems himself on the next day. As if not punished enough on the previous evening, Elizabeth is forced by Mrs Bennet to grant Mr Collins a private interview. He not only proposes to her, but refuses to accept any attempt she makes to decline, calling her repeated refusals mere words, a matter of form to refuse the first offer or even a second or third, and an affectation of elegant females designed to increase his attachment through suspense. Lady Catherine de Bourgh has advised him to marry, he came to visit his cousins with the intention of marrying one of them, Jane was already attached elsewhere, and he cannot conceive of his proposal (accompanied by a desirable establishment which her own fortune could not claim as her due) being disagreeable to her. Even Elizabeth's ardent claim that Lady Catherine would declare her unsuitable only shakes Mr Collins for a moment. When she has spoken as plainly as she can and he has vowed that she will accept him when her parents approve of the match, he retires to confer with Mrs Bennet. By no means so sanguine as Mr Collins that Elizabeth means to accept him at last, Mrs Bennet can only go to her husband, saying that she refuses to see Elizabeth ever again if she does not marry Mr Collins, and requiring Mr Bennet to insist that Elizabeth accept the proposal. After having Elizabeth brought to them in the library, Mr Bennet recapitulates the situation, and then sums up, "An unhappy alternative is before you. From this day forward, you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins - and I will never see you again if you do."
Thursday, February 11, 2010
2/11/10 DP, or, Orgasms With Others
Greetings to all the QCs yet again. This week's alternate title just springs from a remark I made at the Fray, and is in no way intended as any sort of commentary on Ms Plays Well. Now to work.
L1: Now, I must confess that I cannot imagine myself in the position of Mrs A. I doubt I'd ever be competent to care for anyone in such condition as her husband. Instinctively, thinking as a potential patient, I certainly would not want my loved one to become a worn-down and embittered shell of himself due to the demands of devoting himself to my care. We don't have to look too far back - LW3 from the previous week might well serve. But then reasonable doubt will creep in as I wonder how much of this is pride, and then hear the stories of people who gave up their lives to care for someone and describe the experience as being incredibly full of grace, and wonder if Billie Jean King's motto that Pressure Is A Privilege might apply, and it makes me all the more glad both that my body is bound to deteriorate much faster than my mind and that I have retired from Romance.
I have the tiniest hint of what Mrs A's life is like at the moment through running a weekly bridge game for residents of a nursing home. The player who has the most trouble simply following the rules of the game was a regular player in my club for twenty years, and still played as recently as 2006. She's nowhere near as far gone as Mr A, though apparently headed in that direction, and two hours a week are enough to drain most of my energy.
I shall not urge Mrs A in either direction. Only she knows what she needs to know to make that decision. And cross-examination seems too indelicate. But Mrs A is not LW1. Why is it LW1 and not Mrs A writing in for advice?
Several Fray posters have remarked on this and speculated that the okay from DP would hardly be the sort of thing they could wave in front of a disapproving family or community as if it were Charlie's Golden Ticket to Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory. (Not that LW1 doesn't remind me a little of Veruca Salt...) One poster at least has suggested that LW1 isn't Mrs A because Mrs A herself might be reluctant and he's hoping the DP Seal of Approval will provide him with the key to the Lead Casket. Well, I added the latter part myself, but that was the poster's general idea. And I rather think I'd enjoy cross-examining him along such a line.
People familiar with Mr Mortimer's authorial efforts will perhaps recall an Alzheimer's case when the disease claimed one of the few judges with whom Rumpole shared a friendship. The judge's doctor was well-known for advocating euthenasia, but she claimed that his case had not yet reached that point when he died and she was tried for his murder. If I were to make this letter into a similar story, the husband would die. Mrs A would be arrested and tried for his murder. LW1 would get a brilliant defender, who would discover evidence against a doctor or another family member. At the trial, the prosecution would succeed in proving that the evidence had been faked, and LW1 would break down on the stand and be revealed as the murderer. But, interestingly enough, I have a more apt analogy coming in a bit. Wait for it.
The reason for my inclination to cast LW1 in the role of murderer may not be too hard to discern through a reasoably careful perusal of the letter. He mentions that there was no sex involved when they were teen sweethearts (seemingly gratuitous). Then there comes the reunion and their deep love. This is followed by Mr A's sexual inadequacies even before the disease, which has, of course, resulted in Mrs A having been deprived of sex for many years. Then we have her strong sex drive. Fortunately, they are principled people, and then we have the remarkable conclusion: "We are not intimate now but want to know, is it permissible for a woman to indulge her sexual needs with a man she loves since she cannot get that satisfaction within the confines of her marriage?" He doesn't change the subject to "I want to know," and once again we have her sexual needs and her lack of satisfaction within the marriage. I shall return to one more point presently.
I like SB1's Truth Serum version of L1 very much. It captures the spirit of L1 very well as one reviews the letter. They didn't boink the first time around because Good Girls Didn't or for some other reason. But it appears that he has done very little over the forty or fifty years since except to regret their not boinking. I shall not judge Mrs A for whatever intimate details she may have revealed (LW1 may well have cross-examined most of them out of her), but I note that he has nothing to say in praise of her character, being too lost in lust and overpowered by the desire of decades.
With all due respect, I challenge the statement that they love each other deeply. Perhaps she does love him deeply, but he gives no indication of such capacity. For another minor referral, I turn to *In This House of Brede*. Barbara Colquhoun, Sister Julian, is nearing her Final Profession when her brother, who has joined a missionary order, gives the community a talk which impresses many of the younger nuns. One of them asks at recreation, "Wasn't it *deeply* interesting?" and receives the reply, "No. He is not a deep young man." LW1 is someone who looks at Sophia Loren or Tina Turner and wants to boink because visually she's as hot as she was before, not someone who looks at Geraldine McEwan or Joan Hickson and sees with his heart that inside the woman there still lives the sweet girl who was the world to him and whom Time has not made less dear.
(As that was perhaps a fair piece of rhetoric, I shall acknowledge that there is a chance LW1 may have carried a torch for her all these years and might be pounding home the sexual aspect of the attraction in an attempt to downplay what he may perceive to be his improper emotions for her. It's worth a question or two in cross-examination, but I feel inclined to stand by the earlier sentence.)
But now we come to their actual situation. I don't criticize Mrs A, but I am concerned, if she does anything, about whether LW1 is the right partner, both for her sake and for his. For her sake, I could see it working out terribly. What if one night of boinking proves to be enough to quench his burning desire, and he waves goodbye just as he's finally helped her to own and reactivate her sexual self? I don't really think that will happen, as he seems to realize he's on to a Good Thing in the form of a Regular Source of Nookie, but if she's not very good in bed, who knows? But I wonder a bit more seriously about whether an old flame is the best sort of person for it. I'd be content to abide by Mrs A's judgment, though I note that an affair can give energy with which to deal with a tragic situation or it can drain energy, and an affair with LW1 could well turn into one of the latter sort.
Even if LW1 sticks around and carries on with the affair to Mrs A's benefit, the effect on him may be more than what he bargains for. If by chance he genuinely loves her more than he appears to do, how long will he be able to put up with being just the tool with which she satisfies her sexual desires? When the thrill of Regular Nookie wears off, if he feels bound to keep the affair going , he's likely to grow selfish, want more of her time, wish her husband out of the way, perhaps try to push her into divorce, or...
But now, rather late in the day, I finally come to my main comparison for LW1. It was rather entertaining that Mr Paris mentioned Dan Savage in the first post of the day, and a person's right to sex outside of marriage when it became impossible inside. I thought of Mr Savage in quite a different context.
Any regular follower of Savage Love has probably come across one of his most passionately held principles concerning Bisexual Men. With all the difficulties they face when they date gay men, such as finding on occasion that their partners might not believe in true bisexuality, or objections they perceive to be unreasonable when they dump their male partners for women, they are presented by Mr Savage with advice that they should date Other Bisexual Men and leave the Kinsey Sixes to each other. Now, while I am not entirely convinced that B and G don't or shouldn't mix, I think the idea that Mrs A is so particularly situated that the best companion for her is someone similarly circumstanced might have some merit. I'd like to see Mrs A in a support group for Alzheimer's Spouses and taking up, if she feels so inclined, with someone caring for an ailing wife. If LW1 really loves her, let him assist her in caring for her husband - but I shall not hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
I shall conclude this ridiculously overlong portion of post by saying that I'd rather like to kick LW1. Not that there's anything wrong with having a strong sex drive at his age, but to be so completely obsessed by how much he wants to boink Mrs A that he can't even provide a single compliment on her character - well, really!
L2: I am going to presume that LW2 is of legal age, because that means that I get to slap him for talking about a GIRL and not a WOMAN (pet peeve). But I would not do so very hard, as I rather like this sort of situation.
Serious people won't agree with me, I'm sure, but my memory is immediately drawn to *A Murder Is Announced,* in which witnesses to a shooting are arranged for through the expedient of advertising (and inviting friends to) a murder in the local newspaper. I'd be strongly tempted to advise LW2 not to send a real Valentine but a sort of pre-Valentine, accompanied by the suggestion that, if she's intrigued and would like the real Valentine, they correspond through a local Personals column. They could make quite a nice little game of it, and put a little money into the coffers of a dying institution in the process. Now there's a nice air of old-fashioned romance...
L3: Does LW3 never watch A&E, USA or TNT? Let us list: CSI Miami; Criminal Minds; Cold Case Files; The First 48; NCIS; Bones; the whole Law & Order franchise; there are other programs that probably rotate in and out. That was just from a quick scan of the weekly television section of my local newspaper. I don't actually watch much crime television, just keeping up with Criminal Minds because I liked Thomas Gibson in *Love and Human Remains*. But as long as I'm on a television jaunt, I have occasionally seen an episode of something called Parental Control, in which parents who dislike their child's significant other set their little darling up on two blind dates and watch the dates with the SO. The child then chooses which of the three (s)he will keep seeing. This is completly unserious, but we could devise a twisted version of the programme for Alice and her ilk. (A bit lame, perhaps, but I've been at this for several hours now.)
L4: Now we get to the rich fodder for cross-examination. Due to exhaustion, I shall not spend much time trying to re-word my posts in the day's early threads:
One thing I'd want to establish early on is exactly what sort of nonmonogamy we have in operation. Is he the only one sleeping with others? One might guess so as being true at present, even if she also indulged in nonmonogamous conduct earlier on. It would be helpful to get a general idea of the rough proportions of their conduct - about how many outside encounters to inside and his to hers, and how she felt about it all. It helps to know whether we're dealing with both of them going out for a pickup after several weeks of exclusivity or his having five outside boinks between his encounters with her while she sits in her room trying to feel GGG, or somewhere in between.
It's reminding me of *Torch Song Trilogy*. In the first act, Arnold hasn't heard from Ed for a while and goes over only to find Ed preparing for his dinner with Laurel. "If I have to accept that you're seeing other people, then you have to accept that I'm not!" Then in the second act, when Ed and Laurel are married and hosting Arnold and Alan, Ed and Alan get frisky in the hayloft and Laurel accidentally spills the beans to Arnold later over the telephone, during their fight about it, Arnold tells Alan that he agreed they could see other people, "Because I wanted you to feel that you could!" "No, because you wanted me to feel that you could."
I suppose we can safely agree that the majority of heterosexual relationships in which one partner takes advantage of sexual license and the other does not are an M doing multiple Fs, and that women are more likely than men to agree to nonmonogamy in order to keep a partner, but it's a bit of a jump from that to assume that any woman in such a relationship is really and has always been crying out on the inside, desperate for monogamy.
the first sentence that stands out for me in L4 is, "Lately I've started to feel that I don't want to continue nonmonogamy." Whatever sentiment one may think she's really expressing, she is hardly taking bold and declarative ownership of it. Ms Messy would certainly express herself rather more forcefully, would she not? I am reminded of the writer Grace Lichtenstein in her book *A Long Way, Baby* which she wrote after attending women's tennis tournaments in 1973. At the U.S. Open, she was struck by something Margaret Court said in an interview after she'd defeated Chris Evert in one semifinal. Asked about her opponent in the final, Evonne Goolagong, Margaret replied, "She's a beautiful mover, isn't she?" It occurred to Ms Lichtenstein that, had Billie Jean King been in Margaret's place, she would have made it perfectly clear that she was going to beat the living daylights out of Evonne. Margaret fully intended to do the same, but she had a classy way of not putting it in those terms.
LW4 then resorts to more distancing qualifiers before mentioning changing their sexual lifestyle, his presumptive non-agreement (interesting to cross-examine on exactly how flimsily or thoroughly she'd really tested the waters) and then how "horribly guilty" she'd feel for "making him do so". MAKING? She'd have that power? That's a bit of a jump from just Starting the Conversation, especially when she seems so terrified of doing so. HORRIBLY guilty? That may be the strongest statement she makes in the entire letter.
I raise an eyebrow at her thinking it's irrational of her to feel that she wants the relationship to evolve into monogamy, but my guess is that it comes perhaps from her being a convert to Savagism and a little overinterpretation of the scriptures leading to a mild overdose of GGG.
It does seem that she wants monogamy, but she doesn't want him to be monogamous "for her" because she wants no more ownership of this decision than she does of any of the sentiments that she picks up only with ten-foot-long tongs. Of course, it is possible that I may still be getting vibrations a few weeks old from Ms He-Never-Buys-Me-Flowers.
I do apologize, but I am going to have to cut this one short at this point; I have been going on for ages. My apologies for the incomplete bit at the end.
L1: Now, I must confess that I cannot imagine myself in the position of Mrs A. I doubt I'd ever be competent to care for anyone in such condition as her husband. Instinctively, thinking as a potential patient, I certainly would not want my loved one to become a worn-down and embittered shell of himself due to the demands of devoting himself to my care. We don't have to look too far back - LW3 from the previous week might well serve. But then reasonable doubt will creep in as I wonder how much of this is pride, and then hear the stories of people who gave up their lives to care for someone and describe the experience as being incredibly full of grace, and wonder if Billie Jean King's motto that Pressure Is A Privilege might apply, and it makes me all the more glad both that my body is bound to deteriorate much faster than my mind and that I have retired from Romance.
I have the tiniest hint of what Mrs A's life is like at the moment through running a weekly bridge game for residents of a nursing home. The player who has the most trouble simply following the rules of the game was a regular player in my club for twenty years, and still played as recently as 2006. She's nowhere near as far gone as Mr A, though apparently headed in that direction, and two hours a week are enough to drain most of my energy.
I shall not urge Mrs A in either direction. Only she knows what she needs to know to make that decision. And cross-examination seems too indelicate. But Mrs A is not LW1. Why is it LW1 and not Mrs A writing in for advice?
Several Fray posters have remarked on this and speculated that the okay from DP would hardly be the sort of thing they could wave in front of a disapproving family or community as if it were Charlie's Golden Ticket to Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory. (Not that LW1 doesn't remind me a little of Veruca Salt...) One poster at least has suggested that LW1 isn't Mrs A because Mrs A herself might be reluctant and he's hoping the DP Seal of Approval will provide him with the key to the Lead Casket. Well, I added the latter part myself, but that was the poster's general idea. And I rather think I'd enjoy cross-examining him along such a line.
People familiar with Mr Mortimer's authorial efforts will perhaps recall an Alzheimer's case when the disease claimed one of the few judges with whom Rumpole shared a friendship. The judge's doctor was well-known for advocating euthenasia, but she claimed that his case had not yet reached that point when he died and she was tried for his murder. If I were to make this letter into a similar story, the husband would die. Mrs A would be arrested and tried for his murder. LW1 would get a brilliant defender, who would discover evidence against a doctor or another family member. At the trial, the prosecution would succeed in proving that the evidence had been faked, and LW1 would break down on the stand and be revealed as the murderer. But, interestingly enough, I have a more apt analogy coming in a bit. Wait for it.
The reason for my inclination to cast LW1 in the role of murderer may not be too hard to discern through a reasoably careful perusal of the letter. He mentions that there was no sex involved when they were teen sweethearts (seemingly gratuitous). Then there comes the reunion and their deep love. This is followed by Mr A's sexual inadequacies even before the disease, which has, of course, resulted in Mrs A having been deprived of sex for many years. Then we have her strong sex drive. Fortunately, they are principled people, and then we have the remarkable conclusion: "We are not intimate now but want to know, is it permissible for a woman to indulge her sexual needs with a man she loves since she cannot get that satisfaction within the confines of her marriage?" He doesn't change the subject to "I want to know," and once again we have her sexual needs and her lack of satisfaction within the marriage. I shall return to one more point presently.
I like SB1's Truth Serum version of L1 very much. It captures the spirit of L1 very well as one reviews the letter. They didn't boink the first time around because Good Girls Didn't or for some other reason. But it appears that he has done very little over the forty or fifty years since except to regret their not boinking. I shall not judge Mrs A for whatever intimate details she may have revealed (LW1 may well have cross-examined most of them out of her), but I note that he has nothing to say in praise of her character, being too lost in lust and overpowered by the desire of decades.
With all due respect, I challenge the statement that they love each other deeply. Perhaps she does love him deeply, but he gives no indication of such capacity. For another minor referral, I turn to *In This House of Brede*. Barbara Colquhoun, Sister Julian, is nearing her Final Profession when her brother, who has joined a missionary order, gives the community a talk which impresses many of the younger nuns. One of them asks at recreation, "Wasn't it *deeply* interesting?" and receives the reply, "No. He is not a deep young man." LW1 is someone who looks at Sophia Loren or Tina Turner and wants to boink because visually she's as hot as she was before, not someone who looks at Geraldine McEwan or Joan Hickson and sees with his heart that inside the woman there still lives the sweet girl who was the world to him and whom Time has not made less dear.
(As that was perhaps a fair piece of rhetoric, I shall acknowledge that there is a chance LW1 may have carried a torch for her all these years and might be pounding home the sexual aspect of the attraction in an attempt to downplay what he may perceive to be his improper emotions for her. It's worth a question or two in cross-examination, but I feel inclined to stand by the earlier sentence.)
But now we come to their actual situation. I don't criticize Mrs A, but I am concerned, if she does anything, about whether LW1 is the right partner, both for her sake and for his. For her sake, I could see it working out terribly. What if one night of boinking proves to be enough to quench his burning desire, and he waves goodbye just as he's finally helped her to own and reactivate her sexual self? I don't really think that will happen, as he seems to realize he's on to a Good Thing in the form of a Regular Source of Nookie, but if she's not very good in bed, who knows? But I wonder a bit more seriously about whether an old flame is the best sort of person for it. I'd be content to abide by Mrs A's judgment, though I note that an affair can give energy with which to deal with a tragic situation or it can drain energy, and an affair with LW1 could well turn into one of the latter sort.
Even if LW1 sticks around and carries on with the affair to Mrs A's benefit, the effect on him may be more than what he bargains for. If by chance he genuinely loves her more than he appears to do, how long will he be able to put up with being just the tool with which she satisfies her sexual desires? When the thrill of Regular Nookie wears off, if he feels bound to keep the affair going , he's likely to grow selfish, want more of her time, wish her husband out of the way, perhaps try to push her into divorce, or...
But now, rather late in the day, I finally come to my main comparison for LW1. It was rather entertaining that Mr Paris mentioned Dan Savage in the first post of the day, and a person's right to sex outside of marriage when it became impossible inside. I thought of Mr Savage in quite a different context.
Any regular follower of Savage Love has probably come across one of his most passionately held principles concerning Bisexual Men. With all the difficulties they face when they date gay men, such as finding on occasion that their partners might not believe in true bisexuality, or objections they perceive to be unreasonable when they dump their male partners for women, they are presented by Mr Savage with advice that they should date Other Bisexual Men and leave the Kinsey Sixes to each other. Now, while I am not entirely convinced that B and G don't or shouldn't mix, I think the idea that Mrs A is so particularly situated that the best companion for her is someone similarly circumstanced might have some merit. I'd like to see Mrs A in a support group for Alzheimer's Spouses and taking up, if she feels so inclined, with someone caring for an ailing wife. If LW1 really loves her, let him assist her in caring for her husband - but I shall not hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
I shall conclude this ridiculously overlong portion of post by saying that I'd rather like to kick LW1. Not that there's anything wrong with having a strong sex drive at his age, but to be so completely obsessed by how much he wants to boink Mrs A that he can't even provide a single compliment on her character - well, really!
L2: I am going to presume that LW2 is of legal age, because that means that I get to slap him for talking about a GIRL and not a WOMAN (pet peeve). But I would not do so very hard, as I rather like this sort of situation.
Serious people won't agree with me, I'm sure, but my memory is immediately drawn to *A Murder Is Announced,* in which witnesses to a shooting are arranged for through the expedient of advertising (and inviting friends to) a murder in the local newspaper. I'd be strongly tempted to advise LW2 not to send a real Valentine but a sort of pre-Valentine, accompanied by the suggestion that, if she's intrigued and would like the real Valentine, they correspond through a local Personals column. They could make quite a nice little game of it, and put a little money into the coffers of a dying institution in the process. Now there's a nice air of old-fashioned romance...
L3: Does LW3 never watch A&E, USA or TNT? Let us list: CSI Miami; Criminal Minds; Cold Case Files; The First 48; NCIS; Bones; the whole Law & Order franchise; there are other programs that probably rotate in and out. That was just from a quick scan of the weekly television section of my local newspaper. I don't actually watch much crime television, just keeping up with Criminal Minds because I liked Thomas Gibson in *Love and Human Remains*. But as long as I'm on a television jaunt, I have occasionally seen an episode of something called Parental Control, in which parents who dislike their child's significant other set their little darling up on two blind dates and watch the dates with the SO. The child then chooses which of the three (s)he will keep seeing. This is completly unserious, but we could devise a twisted version of the programme for Alice and her ilk. (A bit lame, perhaps, but I've been at this for several hours now.)
L4: Now we get to the rich fodder for cross-examination. Due to exhaustion, I shall not spend much time trying to re-word my posts in the day's early threads:
One thing I'd want to establish early on is exactly what sort of nonmonogamy we have in operation. Is he the only one sleeping with others? One might guess so as being true at present, even if she also indulged in nonmonogamous conduct earlier on. It would be helpful to get a general idea of the rough proportions of their conduct - about how many outside encounters to inside and his to hers, and how she felt about it all. It helps to know whether we're dealing with both of them going out for a pickup after several weeks of exclusivity or his having five outside boinks between his encounters with her while she sits in her room trying to feel GGG, or somewhere in between.
It's reminding me of *Torch Song Trilogy*. In the first act, Arnold hasn't heard from Ed for a while and goes over only to find Ed preparing for his dinner with Laurel. "If I have to accept that you're seeing other people, then you have to accept that I'm not!" Then in the second act, when Ed and Laurel are married and hosting Arnold and Alan, Ed and Alan get frisky in the hayloft and Laurel accidentally spills the beans to Arnold later over the telephone, during their fight about it, Arnold tells Alan that he agreed they could see other people, "Because I wanted you to feel that you could!" "No, because you wanted me to feel that you could."
I suppose we can safely agree that the majority of heterosexual relationships in which one partner takes advantage of sexual license and the other does not are an M doing multiple Fs, and that women are more likely than men to agree to nonmonogamy in order to keep a partner, but it's a bit of a jump from that to assume that any woman in such a relationship is really and has always been crying out on the inside, desperate for monogamy.
the first sentence that stands out for me in L4 is, "Lately I've started to feel that I don't want to continue nonmonogamy." Whatever sentiment one may think she's really expressing, she is hardly taking bold and declarative ownership of it. Ms Messy would certainly express herself rather more forcefully, would she not? I am reminded of the writer Grace Lichtenstein in her book *A Long Way, Baby* which she wrote after attending women's tennis tournaments in 1973. At the U.S. Open, she was struck by something Margaret Court said in an interview after she'd defeated Chris Evert in one semifinal. Asked about her opponent in the final, Evonne Goolagong, Margaret replied, "She's a beautiful mover, isn't she?" It occurred to Ms Lichtenstein that, had Billie Jean King been in Margaret's place, she would have made it perfectly clear that she was going to beat the living daylights out of Evonne. Margaret fully intended to do the same, but she had a classy way of not putting it in those terms.
LW4 then resorts to more distancing qualifiers before mentioning changing their sexual lifestyle, his presumptive non-agreement (interesting to cross-examine on exactly how flimsily or thoroughly she'd really tested the waters) and then how "horribly guilty" she'd feel for "making him do so". MAKING? She'd have that power? That's a bit of a jump from just Starting the Conversation, especially when she seems so terrified of doing so. HORRIBLY guilty? That may be the strongest statement she makes in the entire letter.
I raise an eyebrow at her thinking it's irrational of her to feel that she wants the relationship to evolve into monogamy, but my guess is that it comes perhaps from her being a convert to Savagism and a little overinterpretation of the scriptures leading to a mild overdose of GGG.
It does seem that she wants monogamy, but she doesn't want him to be monogamous "for her" because she wants no more ownership of this decision than she does of any of the sentiments that she picks up only with ten-foot-long tongs. Of course, it is possible that I may still be getting vibrations a few weeks old from Ms He-Never-Buys-Me-Flowers.
I do apologize, but I am going to have to cut this one short at this point; I have been going on for ages. My apologies for the incomplete bit at the end.
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