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May 7 and 8, 2005 A Christmas -loan, from my loving, book-addict Mother.
Brief background notes first: The book is a Play, written by a Canadian. My mother LOVES this play, and will not give me the script entirely: it's a loan, and I must return it to her once I'm finished reading. Also, I read it in the car, which Pamela, (My dearest girlfriend,) as we were going South, to a wedding of an old friend of hers. (And then finished it driving back the next day.) So, I was concentrated a good deal on just reading it aloud, and couldn't find the meaning in many of the little nuances because of that.
Well, I think that a small description is in order. This is a play which analysis the two great tragic heroines of Shakespeare: Juliet and Desdemona. This is done through the person of a... university English teacher, (My understanding of academia is not great, but it seemed to me that she did not have the degree to be a professor, and was still struggling to have "Tenure" -which I believe is partly equal to qualifications and credit.) Anyhow, she, (the not-quite-professor,) is researching these two of Shakespeare's works and writing a paper.
This is where the characters of Desdemona and Juliet are introduced... as Constance, (our protagonist,) thinks of them. Also, there's the concept put forward that these two plays are... half comedy, and more than that: the concept that they originally WERE comedies by someone else, and that Shakespeare then stole and turned into tragedies.
As an idea, it seems not that entirely odd. I can agree with her argument that both plays are set up to be comedies, but then little, terrible misunderstandings bring death and destruction to those involved. It's clear that this script was very well researched, and thought out. Also, in the first scene, we're given an idea of what kind of life Constance has. -Or what lack of ... life she has. It's not truly a life she's lacking though, it's more -Respect, (entirely lacking that. She gets none what-so-ever.) And then her life turns to shambles, more or less. -And she finds she has nearly nothing. And then act two begins:
It could be seen as a dream, I suppose, of Constance's. Or it could be that she truly is taken into a magical, realm of a different world. Anyhow, she ends up in Othello's castle, and meets the main players in that story. Desdemona particularly. And she is not treated as a ... worthless, hopeless, weak, ill-fated woman. She's a strong warrior type, and full of rugged life force, and blood lust. She is a banner person for the liberation of women. And Constance is in outright awe of her. She finds that this is the exact... sense... or ... characteristic which she is personally lacking. And she clears up the misunderstanding which takes place in that play, and makes it plain to Othello that, as bloody and rough as Desdemona may be, she's entirely devoted, and wouldn't dishonour Othello at all.
-And how did I end up writing a plot summary? That's not what I'm meant to do!!! -It was a very good book, And let me leave it at that.
The -MEANING... (Which is more the sort of thing I think I should be writing about,) was hard for me to understand, as I've said at the beginning. But... I see the characters of Juliet and Desdemona to be two inner voices of Constance... or two characteristics in her. -They are greatly understated characteristics in her everyday life though, and they are rarely, if ever, expressed. So, this play then, is an inner exploration of her Self. And I found it very interesting that these two voices, these two parts of her self, are both flawed. She likes them both, and would love to be entirely like either one of them. But at the end, she realizes that they are both too extreme, and that temperance; bringing out a little of each personality, but in no case too much of either, is the only "Right" way to live. (to Be.)
That explains the riddle in the book about "Two plus One makes One, not Three." But, I have no answer for the part that says Constance Herself is the author. (There's this mystery that she's seeking an answer to the whole way through: if Shakespeare took the stories from someone else, then WHO was that other person, that originally wrote the two tales???) -at the end of the play, the answer she gets is, "Herself." And the obvious problem with that, is that she wasn't alive 400 years ago to write them.
Anyhow, that's all the "deep" stuff that comes to mind at the moment. In other -things... The writing style was great, (and the humour put in had me laughing out loud, and annoying my girlfriend, I'd suppose, because I couldn't read it to her, so she couldn't understand why I was laughing.) It was witty, and the writing was good both when it was recent, and Shakespearean. And I think that the message it gets across is valid and useful too: that we need to find temperance in our selves, but not loose our selves to the extremes either. (That sounded redundant, didn't it?) -That we need to work on some things in our selves, and improve in those directions... but not too much. (better?) -Still confused? Well perhaps I ought to just tell you what happens in the book: Through the interaction and meeting with Desdemona and Juliet, Constance confronts and deals with her own problems and situations.
Ah, and I just HAVE to say, that the Third act was the best: with Romeo, and Juliet. It was genius to me, to have them portrayed the way they were: Both young, and too starry-eyed to know what love really is. Then disillusioned with their marriage together, and Romeo chasing after other women, and Juliet being tragic, and immature and imagining... great loves, and deaths, and other unrealistic fantasies. Being over the top romantic -like an adolescent who has only read cheap paperback books, Romances, that are all about love and tragedy; The type who expecting every moment for something dramatic and earth-shaking to happen.
Just Genius.
Well, I took a week, and read this in peace and quiet. I don't think I have a great deal more to say though. (After that week, I was very busy, and now some 7 more days have come between.) So...
There is no doubt at all that this is a plunging into Constance's inner self. (Well, it says that directly in the text a couple of times, so I feel safe about stating it here.) It is also clear that Desdemona and Juliette represent two aspects of Constance's personality. They are elements that make up her whole being. The only interesting thing to look at, is what these two say about Constance her self.What exactly can we learn about her, through these projections, her discourse with them, and her eventual evaluation of their short comings?
It's exactly here that I get a little lost, because I'm not able to understand Constance's ... relation. She has idealised Desdemona, and is ever so pleased to find that she is not a helpless victim, but a strong, independent, and powerful woman. It's a type that appeals greatly to her classicly femenistic side. (No man would ever be able to push Her around.) Now, the next step would be to realize that this is only an element of Constance's (hidden) self. All right: so Constance is unassertive,and weak-willed in life, so she idealises and longs to realise her assertiveness. But then...
At the end, she is able to critically judge Desdemona, and finds her much Too strong-willed. Her violence, power, and obsession with honour make her much too much like Othello himself. Constance finds her too extreme. But What, oh What does this say about Constance's self? If Desdemona is one piece of her own psyche? It would be easily understandable if Constance was strong willed in real life, and in meeting her Desdemona side, she sees her need to mellow out. But it's not so. And I, Personally, have a hard time believing that within the space of her own head, within her own dream, she could truly see the fault of her weakness, change that in herself, see the fault of being too powerful, and then change back, to a happy medium.Is that clear?
Perhaps my answer would be in understanding that she does not so completely change herself; only, that she finds the will, and finds the determination to change her self. Because, this change is only made in the head. (And I feel that's where the only changes are possible: because it all takes place only within her head. -And to clarify, I mean that to truly CHANGE one's nature, it's a change of Heart, not only of decisions in the mind.) I could then understand her thinking: that she decides to ruthlessly deal with those people who put her down, to the violent and bloody extent that Desdemona would. -And later relents of such harsh, extreme judgement.
Now then, On to Juliet.
She is at the other end of the spectrum from Desdemona, being Romantic, in love with the world, and giving no mind to anything other than her own enjoyment. But... you can see that she is, as the saying goes, just the other side of the same coin. She is obsessed with herself. And she takes her thoughts to the extremes. Also, she is independent, in that it was not so much Romeo, who makes her act the way she does, but her own burning passion, which is within her breast, regardless of which young man she might fancy. (Is the connection to Desdemona clear there? Because she's independent in her strength, as well as her violence.)
So, what does this say about Constance then? It seems clear that she would like to love; To be immersed in logic defying, mind stunning, heart racing passion. She wants to have such a flood of love, that she could give in to it completely, and exist only through that. I enjoyed the way that this tied into her real life; with her unspoken crush on Claud Night, (Her Boss, who treats her like ... lower-than-dirt.) It shows that she not only hides her passion from him, but from herself as well. She never even imagined that she might have... this side of her self, that could love another for years, without even telling a soul about it. (It is a very romantic, mooney-eyed thing to do, after all.)
Constance has desire then, to be like Juliet, in her love. -in her loving. Meaning, she wants to get more in touch with her passionate side. But... again, she finds at the end, that Juliet is Too much mindless of nothing outside her love. Juliet's feeling that there's nothing to life At All outside of burning passion is too much for Constance to accept. So, again, I find that Constance must have only made a decision to become more romantic in the future... and then changes her mind about how dreamy she ought to ever be.
I should think too, about how she realizes that these characters are too extreme. She doesn't precisely think of it her self. It's only when she confronts the two parts of herself at the same time, that she sees the failings of each. The differences between the two viewpoints, and the impracticability of either one, is best demonstrated when they're fighting with each other. The both tell Constance to come with them. The One, telling her to be strong, and Kill the others. The other, telling her to be soft, and Die from the pain from the others. Then they directly argue, one saying that there is no Honour at all in Romance, The other saying there's no Romance in Honour. So, it's only in the combination of the two perspectives, that the limitations of each is visible to Constance.
So then, it seems to me, that the "message" we could infer from this, is that one can only hope for self-improvement, or any change of the mind and soul, is when all the facets of a personality are taken into account at once. You can not become more romantic, or a stronger will. The only path to change, is one where all traits are accepted and accounted for at once. -So a balance must be there. -And I know that I'm making a bloody mess of this conclusion, but Pamela, my dearest girlfriend just arrived, and I want to be cooking dinner, and there's so many little things to do. But, I hope that at the very least, this last paragraph gives an idea of the direction that my original thought was going in.
Now, TO DINNER!!!
Feb. 2007 Left to me by my visiting, Book-addict Mother.
What this book is also, undeniably about, is sexual abuse. There's the teacher of the protagonist's class of 9 year olds, who keeps "The following little girls for exercises after class today..." It disgusted, revolted, and upset me. It was one of the factors that made me read the book so quickly: I couldn't wait for that evil, rotten bastard to be caught. I couldn't wait for the poor little girls to be freed from him. I had to read on, even though it made me feel ill.
The interesting thing was that it made me feel more than just ill; It made me feel violently vengeful. I wanted him to be caught, and for the sexual abuse to end, but I also wanted more than that. I wanted him to be punished. I wanted an angry father to find him and beat him. I wanted him to suffer for many years in a prison cell. I would not have minded him receiving a death sentence. -Especially once it was clear that he ended up raping, and murdering one of his pupils. I am a pacifist. I am aggressive to... my food. And that's it. I feel sick when I think about hurting someone. And here was this character that I felt should receive the harshest penalty, and preferably a violent one.
So I guess I felt somewhat sick to my stomach over my reaction, and that was just added to my sickness over what had happened in this classroom, after school hours. I felt it was such a pity, and such a shame; that I had to feel so horrible through the whole book. It was so nicely written, and had such lively and realistic characters, and the perspective of the ten year old child was expertly done, and she was such a strong person, and such a pleasure to get to know. Why did the whole thing have to be so polluted, tainted, and poisoned with this perverted bastard?
Why did one of the other characters, a young, charming, kind-hearted, reformed, and wonderful young adolescent have to be wrongly convicted of this rape and murder? Why did his life, and the lives of his family, and all who liked him have to be destroyed?
Could the reason be... that this shows the reader much more clearly what it means to be sexually abused? That the truth is that you can never find a reason? Is the author saying that these terrible, disgusting, disturbing things just happen, and lives are destroyed... and that's just the way things are in this world? Perhaps it is a cry for more justice. Or better justice. Or much more awareness, and the readiness to address such wrongs. (One part which disturbed me, was the aside mentioning of Freud: he had a famous study of a patient named Dora, who admitted to being sexually abused. And soon after, Freud found he had an endless stream of women coming in, and telling about abuses and rapes. -Many more than he could believe, and decided that the women were mostly delusional.
I was petrified, (and am still worried,) that just that mentality persisted, (does it still persist?) in our society. We know that sexual abuse it a terrible thing. It's something that shouldn't happen. -And so we can't actually believe that it COULD happen to people we know. It's so repugnant to us, as well as being a rather taboo subject, that we'd rather pretend it happens much less often than is truly the case. -That was one of the disturbing thoughts I had while reading this book.
Now if you plan on reading this book yourself, do NOT read the next paragraph! What came as a great surprise to me:...
What came as a shocking surprise is that the evil, awful, sexually abusive pervert of a teacher, wasn't the murderer. If I had been paying close attention, I could have known that he was busy teaching the school band when the rape and murder took place. But that is only plainly showed to us at the very, very end of the book. So until I got there, I remained disgusted and angry with the teacher, and worried that he was doing still more harm, out there in the world, (he was never caught in his molestations. He went to his grave without ever being punished for his atrocities.) So he was innocent of the rape and murder. He never had intercourse with a minor; he only, (ONLY???) had about every other form of sexual perversion with them. But I was ready to castrate, torture, and then lock him away for life. I was blinded by my rage and revulsion for him, and then convicted him of the murder without a second thought. But it's hard to accept that I was... unfair. Unjust. I hope that I will remember in the rest of my life that when I have a strong emotional reaction, that I must absolutely not let myself stand in judgement of that person. -as a fair judgement could be quite beyond me.
So a disturbing book, but with such lovely scenes throughout. It left me with quite a dilemma: Should I tell Pamela, my love, about it? Would she only be disturbed that I'm making myself feel ill, and filling myself with anger? Would she ask me to stop reading it, and throw the book aside? Would she feel that I was being morbid, and disturbed, for reading about such disturbing, revolting things? All those questions were part of the overall dilemma: If I told Pamela about what I'm reading in every spare moment, would it only serve to make her and I less happy?
And I feared too much it would. I told her that it was too difficult to talk about over the phone. And when I saw her again, a week later, I'd finished the book, and offered to talk about it. But she didn't want to discuss horrible, unpleasant things at the time. So we haven't spoken about it. and I don't know if or when we will. But at least now I have some of my thoughts about the book captured here, so I can refer to this, should my memory fail me in some details.
It is a powerful book. And I read it not just because I wanted to see the guilty punished, but because it had such wonderful people and settings too. Because it was masterfully and passionately written. Because I wanted to know what else would happen. A good book, but I wouldn't recommend it to those... who can't handle any more depression at the moment.