“True,” rejoined Mrs. Farrell with burlesque thoughtfulness. “But in this case they’re both men.”
“Nothing escapes you, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, bowing his head.
--That made me giggle. And then the next lines!
"the bright moon would have made [the room] uncomfortable for any but a lover." Gilbert, notably, appears perfectly comfortable. --That made me laugh too, and that was *you*, not Howells.
The trope of the woman ending a male friendship is so common ... I have always hated it. Right now The Lion King is coming to mind. The fact that you get it in Disney movies does feel like a holdover of the notion that men are supposed to put aside friendships when they get married--or at the very least, as the friends suggest, that the friendships are going to be lackluster shadows of their former selves.
... I mean, it's definitely true that when you change your circumstance significantly, how you interact is going to change too. Putting aside questions of the human heart, if a guy is suddenly going to be supporting a household, that's going to take up time that in the past he had free for cards and madcap adventures and whatnot. But if he had to suddenly take up the chief executive position in his father's diamond mine, or become king (hello, Henry IV), he's *also* have less time for his male buddies.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2021-10-26 03:56 pm (UTC)“Nothing escapes you, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, bowing his head.
--That made me giggle. And then the next lines!
"the bright moon would have made [the room] uncomfortable for any but a lover." Gilbert, notably, appears perfectly comfortable. --That made me laugh too, and that was *you*, not Howells.
The trope of the woman ending a male friendship is so common ... I have always hated it. Right now The Lion King is coming to mind. The fact that you get it in Disney movies does feel like a holdover of the notion that men are supposed to put aside friendships when they get married--or at the very least, as the friends suggest, that the friendships are going to be lackluster shadows of their former selves.
... I mean, it's definitely true that when you change your circumstance significantly, how you interact is going to change too. Putting aside questions of the human heart, if a guy is suddenly going to be supporting a household, that's going to take up time that in the past he had free for cards and madcap adventures and whatnot. But if he had to suddenly take up the chief executive position in his father's diamond mine, or become king (hello, Henry IV), he's *also* have less time for his male buddies.