Glee 3.20&21 - and A Silly - AND! Why I love Threesomes
In which I wax poetics because Rachel Berry is possibly one of my very favorite female characters on television today. (Glee poetics behind cut because I am unsure where my highly-vampire-oriented Flist even stands on the Gleek front)( I just love this girl )
What I think was just - the MOST adorable part of the story - is that I had been throwing around the phrase "OT3" for a few minutes without any violent reactions... it was "Threesome" that made everyone uncomfortable. I had to explain that I had been saying threesome for a few minutes without them even knowing. So cute!
It's like that time in my Henry James class when I made the claim that Isabel isn't even the point that her cousin and his neighbor (names elude me) are following her around IN ORDER TO BE TOGETHER - and this guy in my class had a total shit-fit! "No - they love her. It's not homoerotic!" Really? Sharing a hotel room for years and following each other and NUMEROUS breakfast scenes and phrases like "there is no one who knows my love/feelings like you do" ISN'T homoerotic? WHY are you in a Masters English class, guy? Read some Eve Sedgwick and then try again. Love triangles are supposed to call your masculinity into question - deal or get out of the room so that we can think without your hang-ups in the way.
#haz bitterness
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TROLOLOLOL. Seriously. It's Henry Fucking James. How exactly was he supposed to homoeroticism, if not like that? Not that I've read the book you're referring to, but I've read The Portrait of a Lady, so I feel qualified to judge ;). People can't read between lines, that's what.
Meh, I feel you. A while ago I was trying to discuss Wuthering Heights in terms of binary oppositions, and I was arguing that Edgar represents the masculine, Heathcliff the feminine (wild, unpredictable, lack of money, lack of power, dependence, emotions etc). And I couldn't for the love of God explain to my classmate that feminist literary analysis and common gender stereotypes are Two. Different. Things. Gender subversion doesn't even enter the minds of those people.
Fail.
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Well... AND! I should have clarified that in my comment I was talking about Portrait, even if in the post I was talking about The American (which is fun, BTW).
People can't read between lines, that's what.
Also! Engl grad students are SUPER shy. I *always* am the one who has to actually spit out: they're talking about sex, that's a penis metaphor, yes she's talking about a vagina ... And they all know!!! So they'll all now dance around for 20 min until I get sick of it and just yell PENIS at everyone.
ALSO: WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT WUTHERING HEIGHTS ALL THE TIME BECAUSE THAT IS A FANTASTIC ANALYSIS AND YOU ARE SO RIGHT!!! I wonder, then, if H is the feminine (which, since he is a gypsy, you can pretty much just take that for granted... One Other is just another Other in literature, gender/race/class ... These things are all DEPENDENT upon eachother) ... What does it say about Catherine (my darling girl) that she chooses the masculine, but still lusts after and seeks her feminine side? She's totally in a state of lack! But instead of lacking a penis, she's lacking her femininity. This! Is just awesome.
Oh Bronte. I worship at your feet.
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I *always* am the one who has to actually spit out: they're talking about sex, that's a penis metaphor, yes she's talking about a vagina ...
YOU ARE ME.
I'd say Catherine is suspended. She's definitely in between nature and nurture. She abandons nature in order to be more socially appropriate, to gain better social status. So... she abandons femininity to be more socially appropriate? Which, makes sense. Femininity doesn't belong in the society. The feminine is private. So, in order to belong to the society, both Catherine and Heathcliff have to abandon at least a part of their feminine traits (Catherine marries Edgar and starts sharing his life in the world of order, Heathcliff gains power through money and becomes a victimizer).
Also, to risk an unpopular opinion, I don't think Catherine lusts after Heathcliff. I think she identifies with him deeply, that they're more siblings than anything else, but, since they aren't technically siblings, and the society they live in doesn't recognize the kind of relationship they have, they channel their platonic affection into a sexualized relationship. They appropriate themselves. The first hint of them feeling any lust appears after they both enter the world of nurture.
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I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE! Clearly I forgot about YOU!
I don't think Catherine lusts after Heathcliff. I think she identifies with him deeply, that they're more siblings than anything else, but, since they aren't technically siblings, and the society they live in doesn't recognize the kind of relationship they have, they channel their platonic affection into a sexualized relationship. They appropriate themselves.
I love your brain.
I completely agree with this; though I wonder if the tragedy of WH is that in order to grow up - to become an adult - one must live in society. I'm thinking of the moment when Catherine is looking in the mirror, seeing herself as a child on the moor - there seems to be only an unrecognizable adult and a child... there is no in-between in this construction of reality. So then she is therefore *always* in stasis, she can neither move forward nor move backward, at any point. She is always stuck, right between her feminine (wild) side and masculine (socially restrained) side.
Also - I use the term "lust" sometimes too loosely. . . but then, I think *everything* is about sex always (#is an English major) ... so while I LOVE your reading of C/H - I also think that underlying the idea that they are the same - that over-identification - is desire for the Other... the Other that is the same, but isn't... Desire for the Uncanny. And whether Desire is sexual or platonic or whatever - it is still Desire.
I think you'd really like this article I read on WH last semester - it claimed that Catherine and Heathcliffe are psychological vampires. The crux of the argument is that the Vampire is Freud's Uncanny - it is the creature that is like us, but not like us, familiar, yet repressed... and that for Catherine and Heathcliffe, they are each other's Uncanny..... OR... er.... something like that....
Link to Journal of Dracula Studies: if you didn't know about this website (your welcome) if you DID - check out "Why am I so changed? Vampiric Selves and Gothic Doubleness in Wuthering Heights" by Lakshmi Krishnan in Volume 9 .... tis the paper I was ineloquently paraphrasing.
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