Comments | gelphie_lovers: Love and Marriage: An Essay

skullduggery in gelphie_lovers

Love and Marriage: An Essay

Feb 19, 2007 02:02

Title: Love and Marriage: An Essay
Rating: PG-13 (for mention of sexual acts as described in the book)
Summary: At the request of others, I am offering my analysis of a well-known passage, and its implications on another famous quote.

"I am married," she said, "just not to a man."

He raised his eyebrows. She put her hands to her face. He'd never seen ( Read more... )

Comments 29

lfae February 19 2007, 10:04:45 UTC

Oh man, I want to take you home and force you into lengthy conversations now! Or at least listen to you speak, I sadly don't think I have anything to contribute :p I've thought plenty, but never been able to sort things out quite as much. Brilliant post!

1. She is still awake, having not lost consciousness.
a. She can mentally register Elphaba's nearness.
i. Elphaba's nearness is a cause for revulsion.

2. She is sexually stimulated.
a. She can mentally register Elphaba's nearness.
i. Elphaba's nearness is a cause for pleasure.

We were on the same wavelength there as well - when I read the passage in question (as in the book, not your post), I was immediately thrown back to a writing course I did...many years ago (blimey, 1997?!), where we did a few days on the conscious and subconscious minds and hey, looks like I absorbed something after all! The physical nearness of Elphaba Glinda knows is 'wrong'...but deep down, it's what she craves.

skullduggery February 19 2007, 20:01:25 UTC

I always knew, in my head, what this all meant to me... A lot of people do. But it was a very difficult exercise in getting it out into words that could be read and understood and not laughed at for either their incoherency or their biased extremism.

So it's very gratifying to hear you agree. Glinda's split reaction can be interpreted a couple of ways-- and in ways that are not necessarily as flattering to this pairing. That is why I was thrilled with that particular line... Because there was something almost mathematical about it. And when you bring math into the fray, you can justify an equation.

Only I'm terrible at math, so I made a chart instead :P

lfae February 19 2007, 23:16:48 UTC

Only I'm terrible at math, so I made a chart instead :P

Yes, and scarred me for life because flow charts were the bane of my existance for a few years ;)

I love that you managed to get all that down! I always get a bit Elphie-ish when I try - "though her thoughts were rich and complicated, her words were poor" - the transition from one part of the brain to the other never works.

And again, I agree with something else you said (in a comment below): Elphaba's use of the word 'virgin'. I always took that not in the sexual way, but that she thought that Fiyero thought she was still mostly the Shiz student who was, above all else, was still a young girl. So it's like, "you think I'm so young and innocent and in need of protection".

lfae February 19 2007, 23:24:11 UTC

whoops, that was miss_artist, not you *g*

Thread 5

light_spectre February 19 2007, 10:51:24 UTC

Oh, this was absolutely fantastic.

I had vaguely interpreted that section in the book in much the same way, but hadn't deconstructed it enough to really be able to back it up. It was jus an incling. I hadn't related the "I am married... just not to a man," to Glinda's fantasy earlier in the book. It makes so much sense though. Now I'm upset I didn't see it for myelf. >.<*

But, Fl0rida, I'm very glad you did this. And you did it very well. Now I feel like reading the book all over again... Oooh

skullduggery February 19 2007, 20:06:44 UTC

To be honest, I only made the correlation mid-essay. But I saw the opportunity to strengthen my case as a whole, and so I ran with it.

Thank you for your kind words. It's good to know I'm not a total crackpot.

panur_links February 19 2007, 13:08:52 UTC

woah, that's awesome... certainly a new light on things I haven't yet thought of...

the lats part, is especially interesting to me: I read in wiki that thought the books, it is mentioned that Elphaba has some kind of deformity on her genitalia...

And something perhaps more important, now that I think about it, on regards to the 'soul' comment. Elphaba, from what I get from the beggining, feels very much in touch with Dr. Dill's cause... Proving that talking animals indeed have brains and a soul, and that they need to be consideered as citizens as well and blah blah....

But yeah, it suddenly occurred to me, that no matter how idealistic you can be, Elphaba was just too crushed when she found out about the Wizard of Oz. Maybe she felt like that for personal reasons... Maybe she is afraid that due to her skin and other deformities, people will consider her not a person, but an animal?

skullduggery February 20 2007, 03:30:37 UTC

I'll buy into that, sure. Even if it's not a conscious stream of thought, one reason she probably gets so defensive over Animal rights is 'cause she herself is used to being treated unfairly.

-- Pg. 387

He lingered at the door, and said, "The Lion wants courage, the Tin Man a heart, and the Scarecrow brains. Dorothy wants to go home. What do you want?"

"A little peace and quiet."

"No, really."

She couldn't say forgiveness, not to Liir. She started to say "a soldier," to make fun of his mooning affections over the guys in uniform. But realizing even as she said it that he would be hurt, she caught herself halfway, and in the end what came out of her mouth surprised them both. She said, "A soul--"

He blinked at her.

"And you?" she said, in a quieter voice. "What do you want Liir, if the Wizard could give you anything?"

"A father," he answered.

fabala_belle February 19 2007, 16:09:15 UTC

Wow. Thank you for sharing this... Must have taken a lot of time to work all of that through, and it's nice to see all those little details I never picked up on. I'll have to read Wicked another time, it seems.

skullduggery February 19 2007, 20:33:48 UTC

All Sunday long! It was fun, however frustrating.

But thanks; if you do give it another read-through, you'll have to let me know how that works out.

misicka47 February 19 2007, 16:27:24 UTC

I have the urgent need to take this and show it to my Writing teacher. Because this is a good topic for an essay! Just kidding. But I loved it. I must have taken you so much time to think of all this.

skullduggery February 19 2007, 20:10:17 UTC

I've always wished for the opportunity to analyze Wicked in a classroom environment. Sadly, having taken my last highschool English course last semester, I have no more room for hope.

But I had fun writing this, however nerdy of me it was. So I'm glad you got something from it.

lfae February 19 2007, 23:08:19 UTC

Dude, same. It's just so rich, and to have the opportunity to sit down and analyse it thoroughly would have been awesome. I mean, I get super into books that I enjoy and that have more to them than just the words on the page - the one I did for year 12 English was a lot like Wicked in that sense - it was possible to read between so many of the lines, and draw together parallels across chapters and such...but Wicked would have been so much more fun ;) Half the time I read it like its a study text, and I love how each re-reading provides something new.