Contentment

I have a cold. I am at exactly that state of encoldedness when I am a little too woozy to fret about anything, but not so fuzzy-headed that I can't get anything done. I have been reading The Straight State and Uncle Tom's Cabin and Fanon, and staring contentedly at the steam off my teacup swirling in the sunlight. It is very sunny today. The sky is soft and blue and even the bare trees seem cheering.

If I could bottle this mental state - without the accompanying stuffy nose and sinus headache - I could probably make a fortune.

Desperate Romantics: The True Love Train

The last two episodes of Desperate Romantics did not enthrall me quite as much as the others did. They're still quite splendid, mind (and they introduced William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones!!!! VICTORIAN ARTIST GEEKERY YAY) but they focus mostly on Dante Gabriel Rosetti and Elizabeth Siddal riding the True Love Train to destruction (hers), and that just doesn't enthrall me like "William Holman Hunt completely failing to treat Annie Miller like a real human being till she kicks him to the curb" or "John Ruskin and Effie Ruskin and John Everett Millais having the move awkward love triangle in the history of forever".

I mean, clearly the story does have to move on to someone else once the love triangle has been sorted and Millais and Effie have settled into marital bliss. They have the most adorable marriage ever. So Rosetti is having trouble with Lizzie Siddal, right - because Rosetti is pretty much the WORST husband ever; he's with someone else the night before their wedding - and Millais is trying to give him advice, and he says, "When Effie and I have a tiff, we make friends by devising new nicknames for each other. She likes to call me Mr. Crumpet..."

Oh, Millais. I have added you and Effie to the gallery of Married Couples Whose Relationship I Would Like to Emulate.

But marital bliss does not a story make, because a story needs conflict, so clearly Desperate Romantics had to focus its spotlight on someone else. But did it have to focus so intensely on Dante Gabriel "We don't have a love affair, we have an argument punctuated by sex!" Rosetti and Lizzie "Without your love I have nothing to live for!" Siddal?

She says this the first time she is dying of laudanum. Rosetti is like "I LOVE YOU LET'S GET MARRIED." I think he does sincerely love her in that moment. The problem is Rosetti's love like a puddle in July, shallow and swiftly evaporating; and Lizzie clearly needs something more than that.

It's just horrible watching Lizzie destroy herself over a man who isn't worth it.

I still highly, highly recommend the show. Trainwreck though Rosetti and Lizzie's marriage is, the show never bogs down in it: there's enough much going on with the other characters to buoy it up. But the last two episodes are definitely the weakest. Lizzie and Rosetti's relationship is far less interesting and unique than Hunt's Pygmalion project with Annie Miller, or the love triangle between Millais and the Ruskins, and of the three relationships, it is also the shallowest. Rosetti clearly can love no one but himself.

And I'm still sorry about the total lack of Christina Rosetti. She should get a movie of her own! It could be a deliciously gothic tale about her visit to the Goblin Market - I'm envisioning an aesthetic like Pan's Labyrinth, the same uneasy lovely terror, though like Rosetti's poem "Goblin Market," it would have a happy ending.