Pamela: Or, Sexual Harassment and Relationship Violence ‘Justified’

Oh. My. God. I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated this novel (I can see why Ebert wrote a whole book devoted to films he hated, and yes, this opening was inspired by him)

I hated it so much, that at one point while reading it on the metro, I started hitting myself in the face with it out of sheer disgust. I feel sorry for the poor guy who was sitting across from me facing me, who I think was a bit worried that he was in a metro car with a crazy person. He wouldn’t be too far off. Pamela will make you crazy!

Where or where to begin? If you are fortunate enough to know nothing about Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded, yet foolish enough to be willing to change that fact, here is a brief synopsis: Pamela is a young maid whose mistress dies; her son takes over the household, harasses Pamela, makes unwanted sexual advances, has a serious problem with the word no, and when Pamela wants to return home he instead takes her off to stay with this other servant and hold her prisoner. Then, he does an about face after reading her letters (because, hello, boundary issues) to her parents where she talks about how upsetting this all was for her (because, hello, sexual harassment and borderline sexual assault ain’t fun), and he apologizes and asks her to marry him. And Pamela says yes, and the rest of the novel is an ode to how awesome he is and how great Pamela’s life is now that she’s married to the guy who spent the first half of the novel as a sexual predator.

Now, you might be thinking, wow, if that’s virtue rewarded I think I’ll just go in for vice. I’ve got to hope that was the takeaway lesson here.

I do not think that portrayal equals endorsement, and I don’t think we can say that any portrayal of sexual violence helps normalize it. And I certainly believe that this type of harassment and these type of “solutions” or “positive outcomes” were common. And, yes, we cannot read this ahistorically.

But, I still hate Pamela and find it (and any argument that we shouldn’t find it problematic because of the historical context) loathsome. He is an abuser, end of story. Her saying, please leave me alone (or get the fuck away from me) should be enough for him to do it. The fact that marrying him is her great outcomes is so, so, so problematic. This is where portrayal becomes endorsement. Basically, the novel is saying, if guys are willing to marry girls, then they can harass them. If guys learn from their mistakes and realize, hey sexual assault is bad, then the girl who they were abusing will want to be with them and it will be great.

I guess that is where my issue really comes in, because I think this appears again and again in “romances; essentially, it’s the hard to get set up, or this belief that women should guard their sexuality, tell men no, but they don’t really mean it, they really want the guy, and he just needs to push past no and want to then commit and it will all be great. And I hate that romance trope, that stalker justifying, “yes she said no with her voice, but not with the way she was dressed” justifying; gah! I can’t even intelligently talk about this. It’s such an awful cultural trope and it is awful for men and women and heterosexual relationships and gender norms and; gah!

Look, when I say no or leave me alone or just ignore comments or street harassment, I jolly well mean leave me alone and I am not “asking” you to try harder thank you very much.

While we can’t read Pamela ahistorically, I think we can still hate the “love story” it tells; I don’t feel the need to find it progressive just because Pamela has a voice in the novel or because it upsets class norms.

We’ll take a nice long break before reading Clarissa. Yes, yes we will.

If You're Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands

I have now finished the pantheon of Toni Morrison novels on the list. I’m actually rather sad. Bluest Eye, the first I read, is not a favorite, but from Beloved on (Song of Solomon, now Jazz, and to a lesser extent Sula), I have come to absolutely adore Toni Morrison.

Ultimately, I think most of her works are about love, not in a goopy, romance novel way AT ALL, but in all the rich complexity, all the ecstasy, all the pain, all the wonder, and all the hate of the many, many types of love (including self love and self hatred, and the justice that is what love looks like in public), and Jazz epitomizes that for me.

I have a weakness for novels that use other art forms to help structure their story (one of my two favorite books, God of Small Things, mirrors a Kathekali dance). I particularly like the solo improvisations in Jazz. Morrison is just masterful in the way that she uses jazz to enhance and maintain the force of the novel; it doesn’t feel even remotely artificial or gimmicky.

My favorite quote comes at the end (the last two paragraphs, essentially): I envy them their public love. I myself have only known it in secret, shared in secret and longed, aw longed to show it – to be able to say out loud what they have no need to say at all: That I have loved only you, surrendered my whole self reckless to you and nobody else. That I wanted you to love me back and show it to me. . . But I can’t say that aloud; I can’t tell anyone that I have been waiting for this all my life and that being chosen to wait is the reason I can. If I were able I'd say it. Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you.

The declarative, linearity of Hemingway’s novel, Farewell to Arms, ways a strange experience after so many non-linear ones. I feel like I should have something to say about this. Hmm. It probably hurts that I’ve read several (yes, I am running behind; my bad). Let’s see. What happened in this novel.

I recall being annoyed at the one head nurse, thinking Keira Knightley should play the female lead if they do another movie version anytime soon, liking the fact that it ends tragically, and wanting to go to Italy. That’s really it. This is pretty terrible. I should remember more. I mean, I remember the main theme (the tragic nonsensical nature of war, individual tragedy/human suffering in the context of this suffering of humanity), but I’m not sure death in childbirth (which sort of isn’t necessarily all that connected to war) is the best way to show that. But hey, that could just be me.

Metaphorical Body Parts

The entire time that I read The Heart of the Matter, I kept thinking that it really should be a Bogart film or some such. There was a film adaption sometime around 1950 I guess, but I didn’t recognize any of the actors. The story feels incredibly claustrophobic. I know Heart of Darkness is supposed to feel that way, but it has nothing on Greene’s novel.

Despite being a very masculine novel in many ways, it has two interesting female characters. Louise manages to be fairly likeable, which is somewhat surprising considering. I also didn’t expect to like Helen, but I did (another Helen that I identified with; yeesh). I love the scene where Scobie is reading a story to a young boy who is very ill, and he makes it into an adventure novel when it isn’t and Helen overhears. I can see why she’d be interested in him after that; so many authors do poor couple meetings.

The main theme is Catholicism/Scobie’s shifting morality (or apparently shifting; I think that is open for debate). Suicide absolutely fascinates me, particularly the way different societies and religions address it. It might be a morbid fascinating (okay, let’s be honest, it is morbid), but I think how we view suicide and its meanings tells us a lot about ourselves.

In contrast to that mostly straightforward novel, Eyeless in Gaza is rather disorienting at first. It’s essentially non linear (I saw essentially, since the chapters bounce around to different times, but the different times present linearly, so it’s like several different times are interspersed, but they’re individually in order).

While this narrative choice takes some getting used to, I ultimately really liked it, since it allows themes that wouldn’t necessarily be obvious to come out. It also makes for unusually climaxes, and does a better job of showing the complexity of a human life than a usual presentation of time would. Some of the stories were more interesting to me than others, though, and it is rather long.

That being said, I really have no idea what the significance of the title is; I really do not.

How the Heck Did You Get Ivanhoe?

I have so many associations with Ivanhoe that's it's almost impossible to go into reading it without baggage. Here are some of my favorites:

1) The Fairie Tale Theatre Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I have five or so favorites from Shelly Duval's awesome series, and this is one of my top ones. Whenever I play charades, I can't help but think of the scene where Goldilocks and the Three Bears are playing charades (I know; you kind of have to see it to understand. . .) and Mama Bear jumps up and exclaims Ivanhoe, when it clearly is not Ivanhoe, and everyone wonders why in the world she guessed it. It's become a family in-joke.

2) Betsy in Spite of Herself. After their freshman year of high school, the crowd/the high school freshman class is told to read Ivanhoe over the summer for an essay the first day of sophomore year (this is the English teacher Betsy has problems with, the one who really wants to be teaching science; he leads to the amazing apple blossom scene that any Betsy/Joe shipper knows by heart). Most do not, though Betsy already has, and she ends of coaching them through it.

3) Wishbone! Oh, Wishbone; you've probably messed up my sense of many great novels for the rest of my life. I can distinctly picture the inner story for this one, but I cannot for the life of me remember what the outer story was. Let's see if Wikipedia can come to the rescue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oh, that's right. Samantha has an allergic reaction to coconut cookies, and David has to compete in the spelling bee to win against the resident school jerks.

All of this is to say, I had some preconceived notions going into this one. Specifically, I expected to hate it. Ivanhoe, how dare you not get with Rebecca! Why in the world do you love Rowena? Etc.

But, I didn't hate it. I actually really, really enjoyed it. Ivanhoe is long, but it is another super fast read. Sir Walter Scott is an interesting character, but I can see why this one made him as an author. First, he basically created this genre, which is amazing when you think about it (sort of like how Tolkien created the Medieval setting for fantasy novels that is now so ubiquitous).

Yes, I did prefer Rebecca to Rowena, but at the same time, I didn't actually want them to get together in the end. Given the social context Sir Walter Scott was writing about, it wouldn't have made sense, and I sort of like that tragic element. The social context is super important and super fascinating (though good lord, the Antisemitism; yeesh).

And now I have the Wishbone theme song in my head.

The End of Howard the Handmaid’s Tale

So, the other day I was thinking that I would be doing a lot better with this project if it weren’t for The Economist. Oh, David Cameron and your Big Society; if I didn’t spend so much time reading about it, maybe I’d have tackled Crime and Punishment by now. But we digress.

The Handmaid’s Tale was my second Margaret Atwood; I liked it about as well as I liked The Robber Bride. Which is to say, it was all right. Of course, I’m not a big fan of stories about dystopian near futures (well, any sort of speculative dystopian story; it takes a lot to overcome that for me). Like all good dystopian stories, it actually reveals a lot about what is happening and about our society as it is now, which is always interesting.

In contrast to Hardy’s novel, Atwood’s depicts institutionalized violence against women. Well, Hardy’s does as well, of course, but through the lens of individuals’ actions which are permitted/tolerate/almost encouraged in a society that has institutionalized violence against women, whereas Atwood’s explores state violence against women, primarily in the form of extremely coercive and overt reproductive control, and the ways that creates individual violence against women. The story actually is funnier than this would lead you to believe; it is also very bleak.

I started to have the most incredible moment of deju vu when I started Howards End. Confession time: I must be incredibly ignorant. When I read On Beauty, I had no idea that it was a re-telling/re-imagining of Howards End. Howards End, not surprisingly, focuses the issues through class and to a more limited extent gender. On Beauty adds race (of course, race is not absent from Howards End, but all the characters are white, and Forster isn’t consciously exploring race at all, which says something itself about white privilege).

I’m always fascinated about novels about eccentric families that have a similar make-up to my family (like I Capture the Castle), though in this case that makes me Helen, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Tibby was my favorite sibling in this case.

In terms of the On Beauty parallels, I’m still not sure why Zadie Smith chose this novel or what she wanted to say with that re-telling. It’s very strange. A closer reading of both in comparison is probably warranted. I do wonder what reading them in the wrong order (in a sense) did to my perspective on both.

Movies Part II: With Thin Man, Watchmen, and The Three Musketeers’ Spoilers

Thin Man
This one is particularly complicated for me. On the one hand, I absolutely love the film version to death. I can re-watch this one at any time. Nick and Nora are such a wonderful, hilarious, couple; they show that you can have a film/film series about a married couple that is truly in love without having it be at all dull/have their relationship be at all dull. Mona Loy and William Powell have amazing chemistry (and Mona Loy looks so beautiful). The second one is almost as much fun as the first (the Nick/Nora interactions are as fun, and the twist is excellent, but the overall story is not as good or well plotted); they go a bit off the rails after that, but still fun.

On the other hand, I have a passion for the book as well. It is darker, more noir. Dorothy in particular is less of an innocent victim, and has her own instabilities with which to grapple. The non Nick and Nora characters ring more true, and the psychology of the novel is more complex. I would love to see a remake of the film that emphasizes the darkness of the book (though it can leave out the cannibalism excerpt; still not sure what to make of that).

Watchmen
Sigh. I actually enjoyed the movie of this, which I saw before I read the graphic novel. I wasn’t at all familiar with the source material, and I particularly enjoyed the Laurie/Daniel romance, perhaps in part because of my love for Patrick Wilson. I remember I had an absolutely horrific headache after seeing it (which is not unusual for me; I spent more time recovering from the headache I got at Atlantis than I did watching that unfortunate piece of cinema), but all in all I had fun.

But, after reading the graphic novel, I can see why a) critics/fans were disappointed, and b) Moore thinks you can’t really adapt his works for film. The power and the pain of the graphic novel seemed to be missing in the movie somehow. It’s been awhile since I saw it, but the movie doesn’t capture the raw despair of the novel nor the desperate hope that keeps propelling the novel forward.

In the novel, every little cruelty seems to matter, you can see how Dr. Manhattan is shattered by those around him and how he is unintentionally cruel beyond words to those he claims to care about; the film doesn’t capture that. For example, I was most struck by his relationship with Laurie in the novel (not Daniel’s, though again, that may be a Patrick Wilson issue), and the incredible pressure he places on her to be all of humanity for him, even when he chooses to save the world. So, yeah, the film disappoints. The graphic novel doesn’t.

The Three Musketeers
Okay, I’m a terrible person, but I still really enjoy the Disney film version. Yes, it is not really The Three Musketeers at all, but I still love it, all right?

Maybe it’s because the King and Queen have such a sweet, adorable relationship. It certainly is not historically accurate at all, but I’m not really looking for that in this movie. They are just too cute, particularly at the end when they finally connect; yes, it is an overly rose-colored glasses version of arranged marriages, but hey, I’m cool with that because I ship them.

Similarly, while Athos is a better character, with more depth and complexity in the novel, I prefer Sabine in the film. This may because the women get modernized in the movie, but again, I can live with that. She is a more compelling ,interesting character when she is not pure evil from the beginning but really was betrayed by Athos, and it makes him have a certain depth as well (which is so ironic, considering that he is more complex/interesting in the novel; I can’t explain that).

On the other hand, the Cardinal is a much more interesting character in the novel; I appreciate that it is not as black and white, and it makes significantly more sense. The novel manages the difficult task of not having one main story arc but several little ones while maintaining momentum. The friendship among the four is better developed, and d’Artagnan is less shallow/less of just a pretty-boy hero.

I do think it is interesting that the male characters in the novel are more interesting/complex/three dimensional, while the women are much more interesting/complex/three dimensional in the film. Whether this reflects a better ability to portray women, or the fact that I can just more easily identify with these modernized women is an interesting question.

Still need to see Cider House Rules, Dr. Zhivago, and The French Lieutenant’s Woman. And I’m excited to see Never Let Me Go when it comes out this fall, so there will be another movie post soon.

I Know What I Like, and I Like What I Know

The same Salon article I mentioned in my post about recommending books briefly discusses one way to evaluate what makes you enjoy a book/what you look for in books, with the idea that knowing that can help you select other books with those characteristics and thereby improve your ability to choose books you’ll enjoy. The method involves thinking of your favorite books, and then selecting various phrases that apply to why you like that book. Some relate to the prose, others towards having a gripping plot, etc.

I never thought of myself as someone who likes a book because of the prose. Perhaps this is because I’m not a fan of some of the authors most renown for the “language” of their works (cough Austen cough). However, when I think of many of my favorite books from the list, many are ones where I found certain passages or quotes to be incredibly beautiful (The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The House in Paris, and God of Small Things in particular). I don’t mean flowery prose, so much as prose with a certain intensity to it, prose that I have to stop reading because it’s touched me on some level and I need to step back.

When I think of my favorites, I also tend to gravitate to ones that have unique or unusual characters, and even more so ones that have interesting relationships among characters. Wings of the Dove, the only Henry James I’ve liked thus far, stands out because of those interesting relationships; one main strength of The Forsyte Saga is the different relationships between men and women/the different relationships within marriages that it explores. The Idiot and The Robber Bride don’t rank among my favorites per se, but the main reason I liked them was because of the relationships in the stories (and in general I do not mean romantic relationships at all; in The Idiot I mean the relationship between the two leading ladies, and in The Robber Bride I mean the trio’s friendship).

I do think of myself as a plot person, but in general works on the list don’t stand out because of their plots (exceptions to that would be Count of Monte Cristo, noir novels, and anything by Le Carre). World building is also important to me, but like the right shoes or the appropriate bra, it has a bit of a thankless role. You notice if it is off or shoddily done, but when done right you don’t necessarily notice or give it credit.

The next post that I’ll write in this vein will focus on some of the different reasons/ways that a book’s presence on the list is justified in my mind (in a general way, rather than the justification of specific works, which I’ve already undertaken).

I'm either bored or traumatized, but it's all good

I don’t have anything to say about Love in the Time of Cholera. Really don’t. I feel bad, because I know that I should love Marquez and that many people thinks this book is amazing, and it has all this nuance I am sure. But I just was bored. I didn’t really enjoy 100 Years of Solitude, per se (I always think of it as 1000 years of solitude; it certainly felt long enough), but it is rich and complex. I found Love in the Time of Cholera surprisingly bland. And that’s really all I have to say. Really. I’m sorry.

Ah, Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The question here really is, how do you like your portrayals of violence against women? We’ll take a second shot at this when we get to The Handmaid’s Tale.

But for now, let’s start with Hardy’s novel. It’s beautiful; Tess is an amazing character. I love her voice and the way we are in her head, and yet not in so many ways. But, I found this one extremely hard to read. It may not have been the best week for me to be reading a work where one of the main themes is violence against women. If you do read it, be prepared. There were times when I just had to stop reading for a few seconds.

What really stood out to me was the victim blaming that permeates the novel. Obviously as the rapist Alec is horrible, but Angel is not much better (her parents are equally victim blaming; gah). One way that we justify victim blaming is through dehumanizing victims. Throughout the novel, Hardy repeatedly brings up Tess’s humanness and the ways the different characters view Tess. Angel muses on the fact that Tess is fully human, a full person living her own true and real life, not just a thing defined in relation to him. At the same time, Angel clearly doesn’t fully comprehend this or what it means, which is why Angel ultimately is able to be so incredibly cruel to Tess.

Alec doesn’t even pretend to see Tess as a full person. He completely defines her in relation to him, to his needs and desires. That’s why he rapes her in the first place, and why later, after he thinks he has changed/ “converted,” he still only thinks of his need to absolve his guilt over his actions, not what Tess needs.

Next time, The Handmaid’s Tale and Howards End.

In Which We Progress in Our Expectations

Well, that’s over with. And thank goodness. Believe it or not, my need for allegorical novels espousing puritanical beliefs and values is actually pretty minimal (shocking, I know). The Pilgrim’s Progress was wearing thin by about page 25, but it is now in the past. And like Christian and later Christina, we have survived the journey to reach a better place. A place where we will never again have to read, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

I went into this one knowing that it would not be fun. The pre-1700s on the list are all rather difficult for me for some reason (one of my biggest cheats is probably The 1001 Nights; I have read all that I can stand, and I am counting that as a read, and there is no way you can possibly convince me otherwise). I tried to make it more fun by thinking of the role it plays in two of my favorite young adult novels (one is obvious, but bonus points if you know the second one!) and how reading this would give me insight. And perhaps to a certain extent it did.

But good gravy. Any work where characters are named Pliable, Knows Nothing, Enmity, and Hopeful is going to be a little heavy handed, and The Pilgrim’s Progress lives up to that expectation.

I’m not exactly sure why, but I decided to read Great Expectations after this one. I’m trying to knock off some of my dreads, and I guess that’s my justification. I certainly did not have great expectations going in, but surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. Dickens is much more fun than I expect him to be, and I probably need to stop underestimating him.

First, the story is well plotted, and the character journeys are compelling. No one is perfect, but no one is beyond evil, either. Joe and Biddy come the closest to perfection in some ways, but they still feel like actual people (and who couldn’t love Joe). The scene where Estella confronts Miss Havisham is so powerful, and would make for a great scene. Pip is actually interesting, which I had not expected at all, and Herbert and Clara’s romance is lovely.

I’m a fan of Dickens’ first ending, not the re-worked one to make it more appealing or what have you. I’m not a particularly romantic person, of course, but the re-worked ending just doesn’t. . . work. Estella is who she is, and that isn’t going to change. I’d love to read a re-write of the story from her perspective, though.

You Look Approachable or It's Watchmen All the Way Down

“Reading anything interesting?’ The elderly gentleman on the metro asks me.
Now, I am not only engrossed in the novel in my hands, I also have headphones in. Yet, apparently I seem approachable. I couldn’t begin to tell you why.
I respond by showing the cover of The Three Musketeers.
“Now, that is interesting,” he says. “Not many young ladies read that one anymore.”

This conversation felt odd while I was in it, since I tend to have these out-of-body conversation experiences where I see myself having the conversation. That being said, recapping it makes it seem even odder. I mean, did many young ladies used to read The Three Musketeers? Do young men read it now, or did he really mean young people? Gah, I’ve got nothing.
Anyway, I sort of smile dubiously. I’m not really sure what to say to that.

“Are you reading it for a seminar?”
Now, this would be the point to tell all about my exciting list project, right? WRONG. I merely say that I thought it would be fun and that I’m enjoying it. And I breathe a sigh of relief that my metro stop is here.

This experience was in no way as awkward (and uncomfortable!) as when I was walking home from the library (again with headphones) with a large stack of books, and some creep in a car pulled over to try to use my books as some sort of entry pick-up line. That was really awkward. I have a low trigger threshold, though, for being hit-on or for street harassment.

In other news, I actually really did enjoy The Three Musketeers. Young ladies may not be reading it anymore, but they don’t know what they are missing out on. It was a super fast read (about two days for 600 pages), since it just moved so quickly. I was a bit disappointed by Lady de Winter, but other than that I thought it was excellent. Athos was easily my favorite character (which is interesting, considering how I felt about the Milady situation). It feels modern in many ways, and stands the test of time quite well, though overall the female characters are a bit thin. In all, I prefer The Count of Monte Cristo, but for fun, it’s hard to beat The Three Musketeers.

I finally finished Watchmen as well. Graphic novels aren’t easy for me, so I was glad that I knew about the plot ahead of time. I had forgotten some of the pieces for how it fit together, but it came back to me as I read it. I found it hard to read, though. I do not think of graphic novels as childish, per se. I’m not one of those people who sees superheroes as juvenile.

At the same time, for me, they are tied in many ways to my childhood. I think of them in terms of watching the Batman animated series in our house in Germany or in Phoenix growing up. I think of the ridiculous X-Men talking game Sarah, Josh and I played. I don’t necessarily want them to be dark and dystopian; I want them to have that nostalgia (no joke intended there, really) of childhood memories. Of course, Watchmen ultimately has a (fairly) happy ending, but it still rips at the security of superheroes.

My favorite quote is from Dr. Manhattan (who wasn’t always blue!): Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.