(no subject)
ARGH. I was on a coffee fueled sermon here and I lost it.
KEY WORDS:
lack of consummation in A/V relationship, cleaving / bifurcation, societal diffusion, Hiranya as McArthur's foil / Jake as Aradhia's, caricatures of narcisism (Hiranya as woman destroyed by patriarchy, Jake as a faux mystic/male with corrupted anima) the failure of Nell, irrational feminism (pride in female hysteria -- thumbs up), Gertrude Stein's failure to elevate women (a chauvanist who liked Weininger),
Nell fails because Nell is never elevated to humanity. She is arguably raised above--but even that fails. It is not believable. The romance is between the doctor and her, not between the doctor and shrink; the doctor, made wild by jealousy of Nell, is a convenient standin. It would be much more powerful if the eroticism between the doctor and Nell could steep and be questioned, if we were given the idea that the doctor was actually attracted to Nell. Instead, the doctor plunges into romance with the shrink, and Nell is left to babysit the doctors' children: she is not ever quite human. The story fails because it is too concerned with how it is being seen. If the doctor ditched the psychologist for Nell, we would have a true statement and--if Nell was made strong, if Nell was made more human than the psychologist--if Nell was allowed to defend herself rationally on a level of peers (as they tried to do in the courtroom scene)--an example of irrational feminism. Nell overcomes her fear of men, supposedly, in swimming naked and chastely with the cross wearing doctor, but in the end she is still dominated by him. If Nell were to be truly human, she would have overcome fear...and then pounced him. I agree a consummation would have been fairly uncomfortable here, perhaps too uncomfortable for our culture. But it should not have been blithely dismissed. ("You think I would be unethical?" says the doctor to the shrink. Why yes, we do. Nell has charisma that your droopy breasted colleague here, the female eunich, does not. Don't pretend you didn't think of Nell that way. Your ability to see Nell as a real and free thinking woman is entirely why you treat her with such respect -- and there is nothing at all licentious about that.) In my story, the relationship is left to steep, because the boundary is not pretended to be that Aradhia is retarded and the shrink more human and attractive. Aradhia is not retarded. Aradhia is more human, and Aradhia is more attractive. The problem is merely that she is young. And even then there is a small question--in Aradhia's world, she is mature enough to be exactly who she is, and more mature, we see, than Mr. McArthur. She's also old enough, at fourteen, to want someone physically. Vick McArthur is then asked to consider Aradhia's world as an alternative. This where he nearlyt buckles.
We are then left with the uncomfortable and mostly unconscious realization that they are not romantic because of Rules dictated by society--not because there seems anything inherently wrong with a romance between them, cosmically. (Granted there is a future here which neither of them are really contemplating, mostly because the future seems very dim.)
KEY WORDS:
lack of consummation in A/V relationship, cleaving / bifurcation, societal diffusion, Hiranya as McArthur's foil / Jake as Aradhia's, caricatures of narcisism (Hiranya as woman destroyed by patriarchy, Jake as a faux mystic/male with corrupted anima) the failure of Nell, irrational feminism (pride in female hysteria -- thumbs up), Gertrude Stein's failure to elevate women (a chauvanist who liked Weininger),
Nell fails because Nell is never elevated to humanity. She is arguably raised above--but even that fails. It is not believable. The romance is between the doctor and her, not between the doctor and shrink; the doctor, made wild by jealousy of Nell, is a convenient standin. It would be much more powerful if the eroticism between the doctor and Nell could steep and be questioned, if we were given the idea that the doctor was actually attracted to Nell. Instead, the doctor plunges into romance with the shrink, and Nell is left to babysit the doctors' children: she is not ever quite human. The story fails because it is too concerned with how it is being seen. If the doctor ditched the psychologist for Nell, we would have a true statement and--if Nell was made strong, if Nell was made more human than the psychologist--if Nell was allowed to defend herself rationally on a level of peers (as they tried to do in the courtroom scene)--an example of irrational feminism. Nell overcomes her fear of men, supposedly, in swimming naked and chastely with the cross wearing doctor, but in the end she is still dominated by him. If Nell were to be truly human, she would have overcome fear...and then pounced him. I agree a consummation would have been fairly uncomfortable here, perhaps too uncomfortable for our culture. But it should not have been blithely dismissed. ("You think I would be unethical?" says the doctor to the shrink. Why yes, we do. Nell has charisma that your droopy breasted colleague here, the female eunich, does not. Don't pretend you didn't think of Nell that way. Your ability to see Nell as a real and free thinking woman is entirely why you treat her with such respect -- and there is nothing at all licentious about that.) In my story, the relationship is left to steep, because the boundary is not pretended to be that Aradhia is retarded and the shrink more human and attractive. Aradhia is not retarded. Aradhia is more human, and Aradhia is more attractive. The problem is merely that she is young. And even then there is a small question--in Aradhia's world, she is mature enough to be exactly who she is, and more mature, we see, than Mr. McArthur. She's also old enough, at fourteen, to want someone physically. Vick McArthur is then asked to consider Aradhia's world as an alternative. This where he nearlyt buckles.
We are then left with the uncomfortable and mostly unconscious realization that they are not romantic because of Rules dictated by society--not because there seems anything inherently wrong with a romance between them, cosmically. (Granted there is a future here which neither of them are really contemplating, mostly because the future seems very dim.)