In The Beginning, Part 2

[sonetka]

In which Philip begins the pursuit, and Norman Urquhart slithers back into his life. (Part 1 is here.) I may change the title at some point, since this one isn't particularly inspiring (and while something like, say, Fifty Shades Of Boyes would definitely stand out more, I wouldn't want to be responsible for the resulting mental scars). As before,

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

Harriet, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Don't do it! But she will. Of course, she ought to just sleep with him, find out he's terrible in bed, and then get on with life. He is so convincingly awful here.

Bewitched, sorry for, badgered to death. Poor girl. Her loneliness/isolation definitely comes across. The only people she has to talk to don't really understand and are wrapped up in their own business, and the people who might be able to give her sensible advice, she doesn't feel she can talk to. But she's also cut herself off in practice (thinking of canon and not wanting to go back to Oxford preceisly because she loved it) - if Harriet had got on a train and gone to talk to the Dean of Shrewsbury about Phil I bet she wouldn't have been shocked.

I liked Cremorna Garden being entertained by, presumably, the rude bits of Phil's books, and also that you do give him some talent even if he is unfortunately hampered in its expression by being more interested in displaying his radical genuis than writing a good book. It makes it more plausible that Harriet should respect him sufficiently to live with him. I just can't see her being interested in him, whatever the other factors, if his stuff was simply tripe.

[sonetka]

Even if Philip was the latter-day heir to Casanova, living with him would still be a terrible idea -- there would be so many hours out of bed that you still have to get through! And while Harriet is fairly isolated, you're right that a big part of her problem is that she tends to cut herself off. It's pretty clear in canon that she (a) hates asking anyone for help and (b) hates being felt sorry for. She's also still pretty young -- the best I could work out, if you ignore the statement that she's twenty-nine in SP, which could be a slip-up on the judge's part, she was probably born around the beginning of June 1903 and is twenty-four years old at this point in the story. Admitting that she's in over her head with the Boyes situation and needs outside help/advice would be especially hard for someone who's become used to relying entirely on her own resources, has likely had to fight to be taken seriously as a detective writer, and who doesn't want to be pitied. I think she also overestimates the degree to which people like the Dean or her school friends would be horrified by Boyes's proposition or by her failure to instantly dump him after he made it. Really, she just needs to get out of the house more and realize that Boyes is not the only male creature on earth who will ever be interested in her. (Harriet will tell Peter later that she's naturally a cheerful person but the canon descriptions of Boyes's pursuit make it very hard to write her that way while it's going on).

Cremorna Garden thought very highly of Phil's audacity and left him the greater part of her money as a gift from one artist to another. As for his writing, it seemed like the most reasonable option (especially when Peter will say later "with some sincerity" that he thinks Philip's books are very fine, and Peter is in no way motivated to see anything good about him or his writing). I just couldn't see Philip, with his ego, not only living with but proposing to a woman who never commented on his work; it just didn't make sense. It seemed far more likely that Vaughan had got hold of the wrong end of the stick somehow when he said Harriet wouldn't give her opinion of it.

[nineveh_uk]

Really, she just needs to get out of the house more and realize that Boyes is not the only male creature on earth who will ever be interested in her.

She really does. And that whatever his good points, other people have those too without the terrible ones.

[witchwestphalia]

Bewitched, sorry for, badgered to death. Poor girl. Her loneliness/isolation definitely comes across. The only people she has to talk to don't really understand and are wrapped up in their own business, and the people who might be able to give her sensible advice, she doesn't feel she can talk to.

And a late bloomer, experiencing her first crush long after her friends did. She may feel she can't talk about it with her friends, so she doesn't discuss it with them. She could write, or go visit, after all. And she may well feel it's this man or none, given that she seems to have not had other men pursuing her prior to Boyes.

I ran across this fic on LJ's front page, and as a huge Harriet and Peter fan, I'm delighted!

[sonetka]

Thank you! I had no idea it was on the LJ front page -- hurrah, it is now as immortal as Mock Turtle!

Harriet is definitely a late bloomer due to a combination of natural tendencies and life circumstances, and Phoebe and Mary are both married with children at this point, while her bohemian friends tend to slip in and out of relationships in a way she doesn't mind observing but doesn't feel comfortable participating in. I think she would have been fine with telling her friends about the relationship if Philip hadn't dropped the bomb about wanting her to live with him. She thinks that if she tells them about that in a letter they'll just write back and tell her to give him the gate, which she doesn't entirely want to do because he's making her a priority and is very enjoyable to be around when he isn't being an aggressive jerk.