In The Beginning, Part 3

[sonetka]

In which Harriet and Philip move in together and it goes about as well as you'd expect. (Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here). As usual, all questions, comments, corrections, and Howlers are welcome, as are Britpicks -- since I've spent a grand total of five weeks in the UK, I'm sure they'll be needed!

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

Borish Phil is completely convincing and keeping with what we know of him in "Strong Poison" - he has to have been bad for Harriet's loss of confidence in herself and her judgment to last for so long. I'm now going to be even annoying and say definitely not range, because that's such a specific type of cooker and a small flat wouldn't have one. Sorry! (In recompense, I will tell you that I once sketched an idea for an entire novel to be set in the US with the word "prawns" in the title...) And extra annoying by saying that I forgot to mention that I also think that Harriet wouldn't go to a clinic (which in England at this point where they existed were basically for married working-class women who already had lots of children), but a GP, with the name of one willing to prescribe for unmarried women doubtless being known in her social circles. Harriet's worry about pregnancy is just one more thing to remind her constantly that living together isn't just the same as being married from her POV - once again Phil gets the benefit, and she gets the social cost. And she must know underneath it all that if she were to become pregnant, Phil would be out of the door in about 5 minutes.

I shall have to look up the film! German interwar cinema seems to veer between the misery-fest and totally inane song-and-dance musical.

[sonetka]

Thanks for catching the clinic and the range -- it really helps a lot to be told these things, since there's a huge knowledge base that I just don't have. (I feel better knowing DLS did it too. A 1930s American with a hyphenated surname? Really?) I knew about Stopes Clinics and wasn't sure just how much you get away with there, but a sympathetic GP sounds much more likely -- and I'm sure Sylvia will know someone who knows one, and Harriet and Sylvia both know that a baby would make whatever happens exponentially worse. And Phil would definitely be out of there -- he'd probably even manage to make himself into a victim of the whole thing. After all, she must have done it on purpose, right? Contraception never fails if you use it correctly! Though I think Urquhart was probably terrified that Philip would get her pregnant at some point and then Do The Right Thing, because even if Philip died before Mrs. Wrayburn, a legitimate child could make a strong case for being the heir.

I think that Phil was definitely hard to live with (to put it mildly) but what really shot Harriet's confidence was his proposal. That would really have cut the ground out from under her because it was essentially an admission that he had been lying to her for a long time, and this after forcing her to go to great lengths in service of his supposed principles. To make an overly dramatic comparison, it's a bit like those women who are married to a perfectly decent guy for ten or twenty years and then it turns out that said decent guy had been committing serial rape or murder during most of the time they were together. Every memory you have is tainted and it's very difficult to trust your own judgement afterwards. (This may be a small element in the "I'll live with you if you like ... one couldn't get away" bit -- apart from all the other factors, how is she supposed to know that Peter isn't eventually going to rip off the mask and reveal that he was intentionally screwing with her head the entire time?)

[nineveh_uk]

Yes, it's the everything turning out to have been built on sand. It's one thing if she'd eventually walked out having decided that it would never work and he'd never change and since it was really the same as being married, then she could do really the same as getting a divorce. But the proposal retrospectively changes everything.

[sonetka]

You will not be shocked to learn that the phrase "built on sand" also turns up in the last installment of this :-).