Nicola planning to vamp at the Merrick party?

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

Something I didn't really notice before my most recent read of Run Away Home. Nicola is told by Rowan at the start of the holidays that they have several party invitations. Nicola's response is 'half-pleased, half-dismayed. Natch, she was in favour of parties, but Miranda's dress was for the Merricks' do, not just for any old hooli.'

Now, I can understand that she's always thought of the dress as just for the Merricks' because it was the only party she was expecting to go to, but even when she finds there are other opportunities to wear it (and she doesn't at this point have her new Christmas present from her mother), she's very reluctant to think of wearing it more than once, to the Merricks'. Obviously, it is to do with her feelings towards Patrick, and also Ginty - and she's pleased when he briefly mistakes her for Ginty when he finally sees her wearing the Dress - but my question is whether her response to the other invitations suggests she's consciously planning to look beautiful and Ginty-ish enough to turn Patrick's head, a year on from the same party where she discovered their relationship/ private Gondal characters?

Something about this conscious planning ahead of her own effect doesn't sit right with my reading of Nicola's character in general, and her feelings about Patrick specifically, which I've always read as vaguer and more pre-sexual - he matters terribly to her, but she isn't so sure why. I wondered how other people read why the Dress is only for the Twelfth Night party?

Comments

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

I have assumed it was partly unexamined feelings about Patrick which I think are starting to be more than 'pre-sexual'. The kiss in the omitted sections from RAH indicate that AF was starting to move in that direction too.

Also, I think that the party at Mariot Chase is significantly grander and dressier than the others. Isn't there something about how this is parents mainly with a few kids, whereas the others are teenage-only affairs?

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

I'm hampered by never having read that omitted passage. Is AF on record as saying why she decided to omit it? Coming at it from the perspective of only having read the novel as published, it would seem to me like a very decisive shift in tone, and a removal of some of the interesting ambiguity in the Patrick-Nicola relationship. Although now that I come to think of it, I quite like the idea of Nicola's Inner Seductress emerging in Ginty's absence...

I also tend to forget (in the case of Patrick as seen chastely through Nicola's eyes) that he is Quite the Kisser, judging by his Claudie-bothering (to which I always rather wish she'd responded with a sharp smack...) Although we virtually never (ever?) see him kissing Ginty, do we?

It's true I may also be misreading the parties as occasions. We're certainly told that the other parties are given primarily by Patrick and Nicola's contemporaries for their peers, but the fact that formal invitations are sent out, that Patrick gets his knuckles rapped by a neighbouring mother for his refusal, that formal dancing does go on at them - and of course, that Lawrie and Nicola are wearing their mother's relatively formal-sounding party dresses and capes - suggests to me some formality even at the 'younger' parties which might not make the Dress definitely inappopriate wear. (But of course Nicola wouldn't have known what kind of dress was expected at the other parties anyway, when she thinks about only wearing the Dress to the Merricks, because Rowan has only mentioned them?)

Maybe part of the problem is that, as discussed at length here before, it's hard to visualise either the Dress or Nicola's green and white striped number. The latter always reminds me rather of the 'elegant' emerald-striped dress Miranda wears to travel back to school in...

SPOILERS!

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

The 'kiss' is initiated by Patrick and is brief and leaves Nicola somewhat bewildered. It's really more of a hint of things that might come, rather than anything significant in itself. So, I don't think one could extrapolate Nicola's Inner Seductress from it.

I think there are implied Patrick-Ginty kisses somewhere (start of Attic Term, perhaps?)

I agree, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what kind of dresses are in mind, and thus what kind of events Nicola may be imagining. There does seem to be something more grown-up about the Dress than the Christmas-present dresses. Though obviously Mrs Marlow intended those to be suitable for all the parties, including the Merricks. And I don't think any of the others wear anything different for the Twelfth Night party, do they? So maybe it is all in Nicola's perception. Hmmm.