| bluekivrin @ 2003-08-12 01:18:00 |
On the subject of Narcissa.
Mood: 
contemplative
For 
notapipe, I've finished reading The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, and I've realized that there are quite a lot of parallels between Edna and Narcissa.
Both are glamorous woman of high society, coming from families that are careful to marry into the same sort of family in order to preserve the line and keep up appearances. They are rich, socially respected, and used to the glamour and comfort of the lives their husbands provide.
Both have never really paid attention to their children; they love them in a vague, detached way and occasionally feel the need to shower them with attention, but are not "mothers." Their children are more likely to pick themselves up and live on their own then come crying home.
Both love their husbands in a necessary sort of way. They seem to have been taught that one loves one's husband because marriage is the purpose of life. (Narcissa, though growing up in a "modern" age, seems to have had nothing more in her live besides Lucius and Draco, nothing besides being a [trophy?] wife and mother -- until recently, of course.) They understand and placidly accept their husbands' jobs, their husbands' interests and their husbands' lifestyles (again, until recently, sort of).
Both meet a man who becomes a companion and a means of awakening. This is the biggest variance, since Remus is obviously taken (wibble...) and even if he wasn't, he's not exactly in a field for romantic interest. But, at present, he is Narcissa's closest friend and has [intentionally] encouraged some of her independence, somewhat akin to how Robert's presence [unintentionally] encouraged Edna's awakening. Though I seriously doubt that Remus would be running away any time soon to deny his feelings for Narcissa -- mostly because he doesn't have them -- the first-close-male-friend-besides-my-husba
Both are awakening and growing into themselves. Narcissa's interest in poetry and literature, as pointed as it is to Lucius, reminds me of Edna's interest in music and drawing. They are developing into people who are not merely wives and occasional mothers, but are women. Stronger, discarding their husband's "orders" and following their hearts in the interest of living their own lives, both are changing.
The end of the book, with her drowning herself, seems utterly unlikely. Even if Narcissa reached a point in her life where she could not stand the suffocation of Malfoy Manor any longer, she has more freedoms as a woman of today. However, everything leading up to it (again, discarding the very important Robert issue that could just make this theorizing go flat) seems interestingly similar.
I vary here from either thinking that this parallel is enlightening and important to it being something obvious and insignificant. Is there any relevance in Narcissa's awakening occurring in a similar fashion to Edna's, or is Narcissa simply being a typical woman who is discovering herself? Am I reading too much into the situation?
Thoughts?
Comments:
| notapipe @ August 12 2003, 01:07:41 UTC |
FYI: Cut tags are your friend. <lj-cut text="Cut for brevity">
(parent)| black_dog @ August 12 2003, 02:35:04 UTC |
Meh. It's too thoughtful to treat disrespectfully. I wish there were cut tags for some other things.
(parent)| notapipe @ August 12 2003, 03:06:54 UTC |
I'm not trying to reply disrespectfully, and I'm honestly sorry to 
bluekirvin if it was disrespectful. I thought that a cut tag would be nice, so I said so. I'd have appended that point to a larger comment, except I don't know The Awakening and really don't know what to think of Narcissa, so can't add anything there. *just trying to dispell the accidental "disrespectful" aura*
| anjenue @ August 12 2003, 01:09:52 UTC |
I am first of all very impressed with the thought and detail you put into this!
That being said, I think the major difference would probably be the time. While I adored The Awakening, it was set in a time where women were often deterred from being independent, strong people. While there are definitely some parallels, I think Narcissa is taking her newfound independence and is running with it, since there isn't the glass ceiling of old to really stop her. I do not foresee her doing anything damaging to herself, since there wouldn't be a need.
However, I also don't see her leaving Lucius. I do believe she cares for him deeply, and I see her as a woman capable of much, including love, which has begun to emerge even more as of late, directed at Remus and Harry more than we've seen it directed toward her own family. However, I think it is there, and she does care very much for her family, but has never really been able to express it. In this case, it's a bit of Like Father Like Son, where both Lucius and Draco are somewhat reserved in their expression of emotion, leaving Narcissa emotionally stranded. This friendship with Remus might be an emotional release for her, but I think her loyalty toward and feelings for her family will remain strong, and she will remain a Malfoy, although perhaps not as happy as she could be.
Thoughts on this?
| sistermagpie @ August 12 2003, 07:58:05 UTC |
However, I also don't see her leaving Lucius. I do believe she cares for him deeply, and I see her as a woman capable of much, including love, which has begun to emerge even more as of late, directed at Remus and Harry more than we've seen it directed toward her own family. However, I think it is there, and she does care very much for her family, but has never really been able to express it. In this case, it's a bit of Like Father Like Son, where both Lucius and Draco are somewhat reserved in their expression of emotion, leaving Narcissa emotionally stranded.
I don't think Draco's reserved, I think he's angry and resentful. Harry and Remus (and Weetzie) are all safe places for Narcissa to start to show affection. Remus pretty much supports her unconditionally, Harry is pleasant and polite, Weetzie is a house elf. Draco, by contrast, has big emotional reactions to many small things she does, and most of those reactions are negative.
| bluekivrin @ August 14 2003, 20:47:41 UTC |
Draco may be angry and resentful, but he is also reserved. He has grown up putting on the facade of power, arrogance and supremacy in order to cover any insecurities and weaknesses he had. He is used to surviving on his own and so has become distrustful of sincerity and emotional dependence. This has left him rather cold and difficult to approach for a heart-to-heart. Emotions, sincere emotions, are for the weak (his father certainly isn't a flower of emotional exuberance); only a person who does not care about the world will not be hurt by it.
This is then combined with a mother who has never paid him much attention. This is where I find the Chopin-parallel striking; Narcissa loves Draco because he is Her Son, but has failed to be involved in his life or show a constant level of concern for his worries and interests. Only now is she beginning to try and reach out to him, but in doing so is showing how little she knows about him and how little there is to which she can relate. Thus his reservation -- and resentment -- are becoming more pointed; he seems suspicious of her motives and hurt by her lack of attention. (For instance, whenever she posts something about his childhood Draco steps in and corrects her errors, all with a tinge of pain that you can never quite point out.) So instead she reaches out to contacts who are more comfortable and safe -- Remus, Harry -- and doesn't realize that going at it halfway hurts Draco more than not bothering at all.
| sistermagpie @ August 15 2003, 08:45:51 UTC |
Yes, you're absolutely right. PS is reserved and frustrating when it comes to getting straight communication with him--I think I tend to just be bowled over by how relatively straightforward he is about Narcissa sometimes!
| bluekivrin @ August 14 2003, 20:34:02 UTC |
Yes, I agree with you exactly about the time difference, especially in relation to self-injury. In the modern age of "girl-power" and equal rights she certainly has many options open to her exploration. I only question any lingering traits of wife-subordination that her upbringing could have instilled in her. However, considering her current strength to Lucius, I do not think that this is hampering her a great deal.
I suppose the question left here is whether The Awakening depicts the TYPICAL journey of a woman awakening (that is, the emotions behind it, not the external situation) or whether the book is speaking to something unique. As I'm inclined to the former, I suppose that Narcissa is indeed following a typical train of awakening, and Chopin chose to document it only because the idea was so foreign at the time.
| black_dog @ August 12 2003, 08:15:57 UTC |
This is a really interesting effort to generalize Narcissa's experience and put it in a broader literary context. I am at a disadvantage, for once, in being a fanboy rather than a fangirl, and the sum total of my exposure to feminist literary theory is sitting in a hammock reading Carolyn Heilbrun's "Writing a Woman's Life." And I have only a secondhand knowledge of Chopin's book. But incomplete knowledge has never yet stopped me from babbling.
It would be interesting to know if the player was explicitly constructing parallels to "The Awakening," simply because the book is a kind of classic. But it's also possible that the similarities are just an artifact of the fact that both stories are somewhat archetypical. Heilbrun is helpful in clarifying the type: in a society in which women did not routinely work, women who found themselves discontented with the options that were open to them (marriage, domestic life) faced a characteristic type of crisis as they broke out of their shell. First, since it takes a while for this discontent to come to a head, they would often be in their thirties or forties before they were driven to make their big move. Second, they were then at a terrible disadvantage by the standards of a "male" pattern of life, since by that age men had chosen their professions and advanced to significant positions in them. Starting much later, women would find themselves, in middle age, in a career that felt like a shambles and a failure by male criteria of orderly chronological advancement and success. Third, this would either generate crushing psychological pressure, or, paradoxically, liberate them to create a definition of success and fulfillment that was radically unlike either the conventional careerist or domestic pattern -- but it took some real mental toughness to pull this off, because that definition got very little social support.
It's easy to suggest that this whole model is a relic of an earlier era, but for a woman like Narcissa, raised without any expectation of ever having a career of her own, that era may survive in her own life. If she's been in the early stages of this sort of crisis, then the very sense of the difficulty of escaping from her marital identity may have led to some of the dissociation we see in her personality over the past year.
The question of a male catalyst is kind of interesting. Heilbrun suggests the awakening has to be internal and personal, but the next stage is to look for "a narrative that could take these women past their moment of revelation and support their bid for freedom from the assigned script" -- in other words a model or guide that can help them through a new and uncharted pattern of life, but by no means necessarily a male one. How does the "catalyst" work in Robert's case, in "The Awakening"? In Remus' case, it might work because he has a similarly shattered life-story -- unemployable for so long because of his werewolfism, which overlaps with the theme of homosexual social alienation -- but eventually he is at least partly successful in creating a workable life for himself. The importance of this model to Narcissa may also be one reason why she is so shattered by the apparent failure of Remus' and Sirius' marriage.
OK, I'm in deep, so somebody rescue me -- surely somebody out there has a deeper knowledge of the literature and the theory that may be relevant here?
| sistermagpie @ August 13 2003, 08:11:44 UTC |
LOL! I hesitated before posting that because honestly, it's not like you sound particularly female. Your font is very masculine! It's just my own prejudices, I tell you!
In the end, though, it was just too funny so I had to say it.
| bluekivrin @ August 14 2003, 21:32:39 UTC |
If she's been in the early stages of this sort of crisis, then the very sense of the difficulty of escaping from her marital identity may have led to some of the dissociation we see in her personality over the past year.
I agree with this a lot. While it is present-day and many of the stigmas of woman are passed, I do get a strong feeling that Narcissa still may have been raised for marriage and taught "high-society" subordination to her husband. Currently she seems quite disillusioned with Lucius (though, interestingly, not enough to object (publicly) to his "business practices") and appears to be recognizing that he is not fulfilling her needs. I honestly wonder how much of Lucius' public affection for Narcissa comes from sincere love and what comes from a societal desire to keep up appearances and honour his "trophy wife." Either way, he is failing her as a husband and she has found that exalting her interests is entirely more liberating.
In relation to Robert: from what I can tell after reading through the book, it is merely his presence and affection for her that lead her to begin awakening. Even though he is known for attaching himself to a lady each summer in a playful way, she takes his interests more seriously (as he is ultimately serious in them) and then, bam, she's awakening. The only thing they share is a life of ease.
Remus, at least, shares the things that you mentioned, which probably make up for the lack of romantic connection between them. Not only is he compassionate and caring, but he seems sincerely interested in Narcissa's emotional well-being, something that I doubt she ever received from Lucius or any of her high-class friends. She is safe with him, because he will not hurt her, and has her best interests in mind. (Ahh, I love Remus. <3) They are especially good for each other right now, since they both are facing such similar situations (though I agree with a comparison someone made father up about how the R/S problem is sitting between the Weasley problem and the Malfoy problem in semantics). Hopefully he will provide her with more active support then Robert did (he t00bed off to Mexico to deny his feelings for her, and then came back, admitted his feelings, and left her again, inciting her to kill herself) and she will be able to more fully discover herself.
The importance of this model to Narcissa may also be one reason why she is so shattered by the apparent failure of Remus' and Sirius' marriage.
I had never considered that, but it's likely very true. If two people who love each other, one who is a good friend, cannot make it work, what hope is there for her marriage?