Rose of Versailles - marriage and sexual violence
Re-read the Lady Oscar manga and was reminded of some things in it. And I want to babble about them. Under cut - incoherency, scans, spoilers and sexual harassment.
There were two things that triggered me to blog off. One: the stupid wikipedia article that I stumbled over when I wanted to link to it last time I wrote about the. Two: the massive amount of sexual harrassment.
This is the second paragraph in the wikiarticle. No spoiler warning + WTF:
The Rose of Versailles focuses on Oscar François de Jarjayes, a girl raised as a man to become her father's successor. Oscar accepts the destiny that her father decided for her, but when she realises that her true love was André Grandier, her childhood friend, she decides to live as a woman.
She decides to live as a WHAT?
One of the reasons I've always liked Lady Oscar is that it's the best portrayal of a "woman living a man's life" I've ever read. There are many aspects to that, and one of them is that Oscar doesn't change completely and go girly once she finds her tru wuw. Love doesn't turn her into a Woman. Love turns her into Oscar in love. She never really opposes the idea of getting married, just a marriage with someone she doesn't love and the low levels of freedom that married women (and women in general) enjoy. The men she loves, she can not marry, but it doesn't stop her when it comes to André.
Manga from where she is at her femininest, when she dances with Fersen. I think we all agree that Oscar is veeeery attractive in that scene. I think we all agree that Oscar is always veeeery attractive. (Japanese reading direction, scanned from my German books. Enjoy the sound effects!)
As we can see, being all dolled up and in love doesn't automatically turn Oscar into a traditional female. I think this is a little different in the anime, though.
And well, after "she realises that her true love was André Grandier", she does some serious Revolution. Goes about her military business as usual, but with more cuddling. Not that she isn't devastataed by André's death,
not that she doesn't think about him when she gets shot the next day,
but she gets shot commanding her troops, storming the Bastille. Her last words are "Vive le France".
I think that in the anime, she dies even more spectacularily, ordering her troops to fire. André means the world to her, but there's no now-I'll-go-housewife, which is a rather ordinary case in other works (Eowyn, blergh).
And then we get to the SEXUAL HARASSMENT. Another thing I like in Lady Oscar when it comes to the gender troubles is that Oscar being a woman doing a man's job i a man's world is not treated as something that everyone simply ignores and treats her as if she was a man, just better. Percy, I remembered there was sexual violence in Lady Oscar, but I didn't remember how much of it there was and how it's very much not between the lines...
When Oscar quits the Royal Guard and moves to Garde Francais, she doesn't just have to show Allain some m4d sword skillz...
...she also gets tied up and informed that if she doesn't leave the Garde Francais, they'll show her that she's just a woman. Maaany a man there hungers for a woman's body.
Mmyeah! Not that she hasn't been close to getting raped before, mind you...
IT'S RAPE TIME!
Remember kids, a nein is a nein, no matter how many times you say Ich liebe dich! (This happens before Oscar falls for André and he stops when she cries for Axel, once they're a couple there is a scene when André makes Oscar his wife. Not too good on the equality either, but much better. Was too lazy to scan the maaaany shoujo pages.)
There are more times when Oscar gets cuddled with, when she is not interested in cuddling. Like here...
...or here. I scanned the whole scene, as I really like the next to last page, the one without dialog.
But since Oscar is often mistaken for a man, she ends up on the other side as well. Here, a younger sister of one of Oscar's soldiers freaks out and runs when she sees Oscar. She calms down immediately when Oscar says she's a woman. Hmmm...
And just to round this up, Oscar being totally sleazy to her fangirls. It's at a ball that her father throws to marry Oscar off, so I guess Oscar has an excuse to behave like that.
I don't really have a deep meaningful point to this post. It's just that I was surprised by the amount and quality of this kind of thing in the manga, I remembeerd it as if was much less and much more subtle. So I thought I'd share.
There were two things that triggered me to blog off. One: the stupid wikipedia article that I stumbled over when I wanted to link to it last time I wrote about the. Two: the massive amount of sexual harrassment.
This is the second paragraph in the wikiarticle. No spoiler warning + WTF:
The Rose of Versailles focuses on Oscar François de Jarjayes, a girl raised as a man to become her father's successor. Oscar accepts the destiny that her father decided for her, but when she realises that her true love was André Grandier, her childhood friend, she decides to live as a woman.
She decides to live as a WHAT?
One of the reasons I've always liked Lady Oscar is that it's the best portrayal of a "woman living a man's life" I've ever read. There are many aspects to that, and one of them is that Oscar doesn't change completely and go girly once she finds her tru wuw. Love doesn't turn her into a Woman. Love turns her into Oscar in love. She never really opposes the idea of getting married, just a marriage with someone she doesn't love and the low levels of freedom that married women (and women in general) enjoy. The men she loves, she can not marry, but it doesn't stop her when it comes to André.
Manga from where she is at her femininest, when she dances with Fersen. I think we all agree that Oscar is veeeery attractive in that scene. I think we all agree that Oscar is always veeeery attractive. (Japanese reading direction, scanned from my German books. Enjoy the sound effects!)
As we can see, being all dolled up and in love doesn't automatically turn Oscar into a traditional female. I think this is a little different in the anime, though.
And well, after "she realises that her true love was André Grandier", she does some serious Revolution. Goes about her military business as usual, but with more cuddling. Not that she isn't devastataed by André's death,
not that she doesn't think about him when she gets shot the next day,
but she gets shot commanding her troops, storming the Bastille. Her last words are "Vive le France".
I think that in the anime, she dies even more spectacularily, ordering her troops to fire. André means the world to her, but there's no now-I'll-go-housewife, which is a rather ordinary case in other works (Eowyn, blergh).
And then we get to the SEXUAL HARASSMENT. Another thing I like in Lady Oscar when it comes to the gender troubles is that Oscar being a woman doing a man's job i a man's world is not treated as something that everyone simply ignores and treats her as if she was a man, just better. Percy, I remembered there was sexual violence in Lady Oscar, but I didn't remember how much of it there was and how it's very much not between the lines...
When Oscar quits the Royal Guard and moves to Garde Francais, she doesn't just have to show Allain some m4d sword skillz...
...she also gets tied up and informed that if she doesn't leave the Garde Francais, they'll show her that she's just a woman. Maaany a man there hungers for a woman's body.
Mmyeah! Not that she hasn't been close to getting raped before, mind you...
IT'S RAPE TIME!
Remember kids, a nein is a nein, no matter how many times you say Ich liebe dich! (This happens before Oscar falls for André and he stops when she cries for Axel, once they're a couple there is a scene when André makes Oscar his wife. Not too good on the equality either, but much better. Was too lazy to scan the maaaany shoujo pages.)
There are more times when Oscar gets cuddled with, when she is not interested in cuddling. Like here...
...or here. I scanned the whole scene, as I really like the next to last page, the one without dialog.
But since Oscar is often mistaken for a man, she ends up on the other side as well. Here, a younger sister of one of Oscar's soldiers freaks out and runs when she sees Oscar. She calms down immediately when Oscar says she's a woman. Hmmm...
And just to round this up, Oscar being totally sleazy to her fangirls. It's at a ball that her father throws to marry Oscar off, so I guess Oscar has an excuse to behave like that.
I don't really have a deep meaningful point to this post. It's just that I was surprised by the amount and quality of this kind of thing in the manga, I remembeerd it as if was much less and much more subtle. So I thought I'd share.