Thank you again for the info, it's most appreciated.
I feel rather like saying "Take that, Hilary Mantel!" here.
I'm really trying to avoid thinking about M****l as she distracts me and causes a frothing rage in seconds, which is rather daft when you consider all that is bad in the world.
Having said that because I've just read Mark Steele and Marge Piercy and found neither of them as good as I had hoped - I'd still give better than average but still, I have been thinking about why Anglophones can't do the Revolution. There is a tendency in most post 1950s literature in English to automatically view perfect looking families as inherently creepy. Fair enough, happy families don't make for dramatic tension but seems misplaced in this case. Certainly the above source seems to demonstrate the Duplay's were just as they appeared to be, an ordinary loving family who respected their children. It's hard to reconcile Élisabeth's view of her family with the idea of M. Duplay advising his eldest daughter to offer herself the lodger for his comfort as if she were extra towels.
I suppose there's Fréron's account where the Duplays are portrayed as slightly stupid dupes unwittingly creating a tyrant with their unseemly devotion and plates of radioactive oranges. (I think, I've only read fragments of Fréron not the whole.)
That and I suppose snobbery. There is a line in Steele's book that's not especially historically accurate still pertinent, where he points out France had gone from being ruled by a king in a palace to being ruled by someone who had to wait for a carpenter to leave the bathroom so he could clean his teeth. All problems with the last sentence aside, I think it's fairly safe to say we are conditioned to like being ruled by people who display the trappings of power. The Duplays are just jumped up little artisans getting ideas above their station in harbouring a revolutionary leader. And besides, why would a leader, a ruler of men ever want to live somewhere simple? The set up must be unnatural, he must be unnatural, shenanigans must have been taking place for a ruler to not want to live in a palace.
I suppose Robespierre would just blink and say "but I'm a representative of the people not a ruler of them,". Nobody else seems to get it.
I found this sort of attitude here (http://community.livejournal.com/revolution_fr/22322.html?thread=221490#t221490) in an odd quote on The PoGS Scarring Sex Scene at revolution_fr.
I don't want to read about a carpenter's daughter being deflowered by someone whose hairstyle I can freely compare to a cake.
Éléonore's father's occupation was not the main issue for me. (Would it have been okay if Éléonore had been an aristocrat, because everything aristocrats do is sexy, right?) I'm also guessing that while theories on Robespierre's sex life are speculative at best, if and when he did get down to it, it would have been a 'wig off' moment.
In short I think Hillary's a snob. See - mention Mantel and I digress into a thousand words of rant.
Apparently he was something of an ultra (who was however, somehow close to the Dantonistes - Camille Desmoulins praises him in his journal at the same time that they're pursuing opposite objectives:
See I've tried to be a good fangirl, but it's at points like this I really give up. What was Camille playing at? I've never quite found the answer once I realised it wasn't the one I originally thought (You know, he was standing up for human rights against an OMG! oppressive regime, yes I have believed that, yes I feel stupid now) He was close to Fréron too, wasn't he, who was quite an enthusiastic terrorist in Toulon. I suppose he just stuck up for who he was in with no matter what they were doing to the country or the citizenry. Why is this always seen as such a good thing?
You should. It would be interesting to see your take on it in action, as it were
No I shouldn't. ;) all I write is fluff and/or slightly nutty characters who usually exhibit their fluffiness in unrelentingly winsome ways. This style is not appropriate here. Plus, I'm anglophone, which pretty much curses the whole thing.
no subject
I feel rather like saying "Take that, Hilary Mantel!" here.
I'm really trying to avoid thinking about M****l as she distracts me and causes a frothing rage in seconds, which is rather daft when you consider all that is bad in the world.
Having said that because I've just read Mark Steele and Marge Piercy and found neither of them as good as I had hoped - I'd still give better than average but still, I have been thinking about why Anglophones can't do the Revolution. There is a tendency in most post 1950s literature in English to automatically view perfect looking families as inherently creepy. Fair enough, happy families don't make for dramatic tension but seems misplaced in this case. Certainly the above source seems to demonstrate the Duplay's were just as they appeared to be, an ordinary loving family who respected their children. It's hard to reconcile Élisabeth's view of her family with the idea of M. Duplay advising his eldest daughter to offer herself the lodger for his comfort as if she were extra towels.
I suppose there's Fréron's account where the Duplays are portrayed as slightly stupid dupes unwittingly creating a tyrant with their unseemly devotion and plates of
radioactiveoranges. (I think, I've only read fragments of Fréron not the whole.)That and I suppose snobbery. There is a line in Steele's book that's not especially historically accurate still pertinent, where he points out France had gone from being ruled by a king in a palace to being ruled by someone who had to wait for a carpenter to leave the bathroom so he could clean his teeth. All problems with the last sentence aside, I think it's fairly safe to say we are conditioned to like being ruled by people who display the trappings of power. The Duplays are just jumped up little artisans getting ideas above their station in harbouring a revolutionary leader. And besides, why would a leader, a ruler of men ever want to live somewhere simple? The set up must be unnatural, he must be unnatural, shenanigans must have been taking place for a ruler to not want to live in a palace.
I suppose Robespierre would just blink and say "but I'm a representative of the people not a ruler of them,". Nobody else seems to get it.
I found this sort of attitude here (http://community.livejournal.com/revolution_fr/22322.html?thread=221490#t221490) in an odd quote on The PoGS Scarring Sex Scene at
I don't want to read about a carpenter's daughter being deflowered by someone whose hairstyle I can freely compare to a cake.
Éléonore's father's occupation was not the main issue for me. (Would it have been okay if Éléonore had been an aristocrat, because everything aristocrats do is sexy, right?) I'm also guessing that while theories on Robespierre's sex life are speculative at best, if and when he did get down to it, it would have been a 'wig off' moment.
In short I think Hillary's a snob. See - mention Mantel and I digress into a thousand words of rant.
Apparently he was something of an ultra (who was however, somehow close to the Dantonistes - Camille Desmoulins praises him in his journal at the same time that they're pursuing opposite objectives:
See I've tried to be a good fangirl, but it's at points like this I really give up. What was Camille playing at? I've never quite found the answer once I realised it wasn't the one I originally thought (You know, he was standing up for human rights against an OMG! oppressive regime,
yes I have believed that, yes I feel stupid now) He was close to Fréron too, wasn't he, who was quite an enthusiastic terrorist in Toulon. I suppose he just stuck up for who he was in with no matter what they were doing to the country or the citizenry. Why is this always seen as such a good thing?You should. It would be interesting to see your take on it in action, as it were
No I shouldn't. ;) all I write is fluff and/or slightly nutty characters who usually exhibit their fluffiness in unrelentingly winsome ways. This style is not appropriate here. Plus, I'm anglophone, which pretty much curses the whole thing.