Monday, January 23, 2012
Doing nothing leads to happy endings
When I was reading Volume II and III of Desmond, I was a little frustrated with Geraldine. Like Lady Susan, everyone liked her and found her charming, but all the characters seemed to genuinely care for her and want to help her in her unfortunate marriage. Geraldine did not command the plot like Lady Susan, but rather, the plot just happened to her. She just went along with what everyone else wanted or did for her throughout the novel. Bethel even had to help her make arrangements to meet her husband in Paris. Yet somehow, she ends up happily ever after, whereas Lady Susan manipulates and makes things happen for herself and ends up losing. This is mostly the mindset of the views of women at the time as more caretakers and property to men instead of equal individuals, but it is still frustrating to read.
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I was also extremely frustrated by Geraldine's lack of action. I found her constant reference to herself as a "martyr" as both obnoxious and pitiful. Rather than working to create her own happy ending and using the little agency she was allowed, she stayed neatly inside the bounds of her familial duty. I hardly think she deserved the happy ending she got.
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