The Girl Who Can’t Grow Up

[osprey_archer]

I’ve been thinking more about Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child, specifically about the ending. What makes the first two-thirds of the book so interesting is Ivey’s ability to hold possibilities in suspension. Is Faina a snow child, magically born out of the snowgirl Mabel and her husband Jack made? Or is she just a normal girl, living alone in the

Comments

[asakiyume]

Yes, I think this is exactly it! (What you say about MPD) As a kid (and even now), I loved these fay, beautiful characters, I wanted to be like them--but when I would play imaginary games, I found that I was imagining about them rather than in them: "she flitted lightly over the grass" rather than "I flitted lightly over the grass." I was objectifying the character I wanted to be. Kinda sad.

There's nothing wrong with ethereal beauty of course, nothing wrong even with unknowable, inaccessible wondrous characters--I guess what makes the MPD type so hateful to people is that,she ends up being a mere device, a foil for other characters, a route to others' improvement. And while it might be all right for a bit-part angel or fairy to play those roles, it seems kind of a copout to create a human character who is actually not fully human at all.

When I realized that some of the characters I yearned after and admired were mere objects, it really got me started thinking about what it would mean to be in their heads. What would it mean to be them, for real? And then I realized that it's like a parade: a parade is so beautiful to watch, but that is not at all what it's like to be *in* a parade--being *in* a parade is an interesting experience, but the aching feet, the seeing nothing but the people right in front of you and beside you, barely even noticing the onlookers, unless you're on an edge of the column--very different from watching a parade.

… I feel a major tangent coming on here; I'd better save it for my journal.

And yeah, that's one thing that is very cool about Saaski and Eepersip (haven't read the Anne of Green Gables books, but I'm sure you're right about them, too): that we're in their heads. Ivy, less so, though I think she comes through in her letters and in her behavior.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I think Ivy is a fairly good midpoint between this enchanting, fay, unknowable character - because she's trying to project that persona, to distance herself from her home life - but having hints of this real person underneath, too.

It's probably a difficult balance to pull off.