I'm fascinated by the fabricated fear, actually: the specific phobia is fabricated, but the trauma is not, and it seems to me that Ginty is trying to process that genuine trauma into some kind of understandable form, for herself as well as for Unity's benefit. Her trauma at the Foley business is compounded with guilt, so perhaps the secrecy about it is rather worse for her than it is for Peter or Nicola., and Ginty suffers anyway from guilty re-playings of situations where she might have acquitted herself better. She's trying to condense a lot of messy feelings into a simple and--with the company she's keeping at school if not at home--acceptable one. I wonder if Ginty ever tells Unity about her real phobia--of confined spaces? She seems considerably ashamed of that, as people often are about phobic reactions. I think Rowan, being reasonably perceptive, senses the the air of fabrication, but Rowan doesn't know how serious the trauma really is; if she did, I doubt she would be as unsympathetic; she is a Good Officer, after all. Though Marlow family handling of phobia is pretty bizarre anyway: look at the weird maze of taboo Nicola negotiates wrt Peter's fear of heights.
I sympathise with them both, though: Rowan's just made a difficult decision that I think she knows from the start is going to make her less happy (Rowan's not a very happy person anyway, is she? Her sardonic outlook on life can be very funny, and there's something to admire in the pitilessness of it, but I can't imagine it's very much fun from the inside, as it were), possibly for the rest of her life, and what she sees is Ginty making a spurious fuss about having been run aground and stranded at a lighthouse for two nights, some months before. And her reaction is we all have to do things we don't like, so here's yours. It's not particularly edifying or admirable in Rowan, but I can forgive her for it, and it's a very likely and realistic reaction. But I also have a lot of sympathy for Ginty, whose trauma after the events of TMAAT has been woefully handled.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Does Rowan think Ginty is malingering?
Date: 2014-07-28 12:31 pm (UTC)I sympathise with them both, though: Rowan's just made a difficult decision that I think she knows from the start is going to make her less happy (Rowan's not a very happy person anyway, is she? Her sardonic outlook on life can be very funny, and there's something to admire in the pitilessness of it, but I can't imagine it's very much fun from the inside, as it were), possibly for the rest of her life, and what she sees is Ginty making a spurious fuss about having been run aground and stranded at a lighthouse for two nights, some months before. And her reaction is we all have to do things we don't like, so here's yours. It's not particularly edifying or admirable in Rowan, but I can forgive her for it, and it's a very likely and realistic reaction. But I also have a lot of sympathy for Ginty, whose trauma after the events of TMAAT has been woefully handled.