Marie is, I agree, dislikable to the extent that I sometimes use her as a touchstone for my own disreputable thoughts and behaviour. & yes! How did she lose the social traction that she had in the Second? (Fic, please!)
What interests me about the presentation of Marie is how the aesthetic immediately takes on an ethical dimension. Because of her aesthetic unappeal, unproblematically good things that she does (defending Pomona with a laudable don't be beastly to a new girl) are seen as irritatingly turgid, whereas more morally dubious things become outrageous, because Marie is yuk. Both she and Tim commit dubious fait accompli actions over the desk, but Marie's involves an element of invasion of privacy, and is thus creepier (though how private a desk is varies from school to school). Ideas of soiling and sullying are persistently attached to Marie, though, and make her not-very-heinous actions seem a deal worse than they are. I'm interested that novels which often present themselves as being very much about objective codes of ethics, honour even, have such a strong element of aesthetic value judgement. (Not just Forest, I think it's a general thing in a lot of 20th, and indeed 19th-century fiction.) Does that make any sense to anyone?
Pomona later loses her affectations and is accepted (though never by Tim); bullying is thus framed I think as something that can be fixed and stopped by its victims conforming to social norms--that in my experience is untrue and a rather pernicious untruth at that.
Tim has chocolate! Which perhaps caters to a rationing-era desire to read about such things. Later on, in the note to The Thuggery Affair, explaining her decision to update the setting, she says 'it would be a bore, to me as well as everyone else, to keep strictly to period time (who cares that sweets still had to be rationed in 1947?)'. But I can't remember any mention of rationing at all. Clothes are in short supply, but that seems to be a general issue of Marlow household finances and the notion that thrift and even a certain shabbiness are well-bred, and new things a touch vulgar.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-05-23 10:59 am (UTC)What interests me about the presentation of Marie is how the aesthetic immediately takes on an ethical dimension. Because of her aesthetic unappeal, unproblematically good things that she does (defending Pomona with a laudable don't be beastly to a new girl) are seen as irritatingly turgid, whereas more morally dubious things become outrageous, because Marie is yuk. Both she and Tim commit dubious fait accompli actions over the desk, but Marie's involves an element of invasion of privacy, and is thus creepier (though how private a desk is varies from school to school). Ideas of soiling and sullying are persistently attached to Marie, though, and make her not-very-heinous actions seem a deal worse than they are. I'm interested that novels which often present themselves as being very much about objective codes of ethics, honour even, have such a strong element of aesthetic value judgement. (Not just Forest, I think it's a general thing in a lot of 20th, and indeed 19th-century fiction.) Does that make any sense to anyone?
Pomona later loses her affectations and is accepted (though never by Tim); bullying is thus framed I think as something that can be fixed and stopped by its victims conforming to social norms--that in my experience is untrue and a rather pernicious untruth at that.
Tim has chocolate! Which perhaps caters to a rationing-era desire to read about such things. Later on, in the note to The Thuggery Affair, explaining her decision to update the setting, she says 'it would be a bore, to me as well as everyone else, to keep strictly to period time (who cares that sweets still had to be rationed in 1947?)'. But I can't remember any mention of rationing at all. Clothes are in short supply, but that seems to be a general issue of Marlow household finances and the notion that thrift and even a certain shabbiness are well-bred, and new things a touch vulgar.