Mental Fantic
Today's mental exploration: Lucy Snowe and Lucy Steele.
There's Lucy Snowe, heroine of the very best of Charlotte Bronte's books, Vilette--powerfully depicted and as empty as a dress-maker's dummy. The thing that makes Bronte so difficult to read is that her heroines labor and labor and basically end up with nothing I would not only not ever want, but nothing I admire or would ever strive to attain. Snowe spends herself attempting to be the upright moral lady for everyone around her, but is such a traumatized victim that she's anti-emotion, not passionate or loving or laughing or even living. Oh, she thinks she loves that gaspard Paul Emmanuel, but it seems to me what we really see is someone yearning for an authoritarian figure who, in remaking her inexorably into his dead fiance's image (so quiet and demure), will be so thorough a master she won't ever have to make a choice again? Does anyone want him to come back, at the end?
Then there's that angry little ball of fire, Lucy Steele. She's certainly no heroine, though not quite the villainess, of Austen's roughest book in structure and prose, Sense and Sensibility--but she's certainly a maker and doer. Her watchful gaze, bright and quick as birds' eyes, is constantly on the watch. Lucy thinks fast, and acts faster. We don't know if she ever loves, but she sure can put on a good show of mimicry when she wants something of someone, because she's determined she's not going to end up as anyone's doormat--or even spending her life, as her poor, hapless sister will, hoping someone will tease her about the doctor as if that would make her imaginary romance real. At the end of S&S, we see the Ferrars and Dashwoods fade off into a lifetime of squabbles, but we know that the only one strong enough to stand up to Mrs. Ferrars, who is about the nastiest piece of work in any Austen novel, is Lucy--and we know Lucy is going to win.
So as I scrub and vacuum and fold and dust and so forth, my mental fanfic: Lucy Steele meets Paul Emmanuel. And oh, does he deserve just what he gets.
There's Lucy Snowe, heroine of the very best of Charlotte Bronte's books, Vilette--powerfully depicted and as empty as a dress-maker's dummy. The thing that makes Bronte so difficult to read is that her heroines labor and labor and basically end up with nothing I would not only not ever want, but nothing I admire or would ever strive to attain. Snowe spends herself attempting to be the upright moral lady for everyone around her, but is such a traumatized victim that she's anti-emotion, not passionate or loving or laughing or even living. Oh, she thinks she loves that gaspard Paul Emmanuel, but it seems to me what we really see is someone yearning for an authoritarian figure who, in remaking her inexorably into his dead fiance's image (so quiet and demure), will be so thorough a master she won't ever have to make a choice again? Does anyone want him to come back, at the end?
Then there's that angry little ball of fire, Lucy Steele. She's certainly no heroine, though not quite the villainess, of Austen's roughest book in structure and prose, Sense and Sensibility--but she's certainly a maker and doer. Her watchful gaze, bright and quick as birds' eyes, is constantly on the watch. Lucy thinks fast, and acts faster. We don't know if she ever loves, but she sure can put on a good show of mimicry when she wants something of someone, because she's determined she's not going to end up as anyone's doormat--or even spending her life, as her poor, hapless sister will, hoping someone will tease her about the doctor as if that would make her imaginary romance real. At the end of S&S, we see the Ferrars and Dashwoods fade off into a lifetime of squabbles, but we know that the only one strong enough to stand up to Mrs. Ferrars, who is about the nastiest piece of work in any Austen novel, is Lucy--and we know Lucy is going to win.
So as I scrub and vacuum and fold and dust and so forth, my mental fanfic: Lucy Steele meets Paul Emmanuel. And oh, does he deserve just what he gets.