Yes, the self-deception angle is the one that really gets me re: Peter. He reads as incredibly self-deceiving: the keynote of his character is his ability to convince himself that whatever he happens to want is what is best for everyone: he's doing Elsie a favor by pretending to be in love with her, doing Helen and Leo a favor by seducing them, doing his girlfriend Norah a favor by introducing her to all the other women he's seducing, etc. etc. (I mean that last one WAS inadvertently a favor but only because Leo decided to teach Peter a lesson.) It's so vividly portrayed that it's hard to believe it's not intentional and yet... maybe... it is not?
Having said that, I'm pretty sure that we're meant to despise Elsie, who I thought was such a good and sympathetic portrayal of a shy unhappy child struggling to grow up, so I no longer trust that my emotional reaction to anything in this book bears any resemblance to the emotional reaction Renault wanted me to have.
I'm SURE that if Renault had embraced the word lesbian she would have done something with it that Faderman would not have approved. Possibly it would have involved defining lesbian as an all-encompassing word including bisexuality?
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Date: 2022-07-10 08:42 pm (UTC)Having said that, I'm pretty sure that we're meant to despise Elsie, who I thought was such a good and sympathetic portrayal of a shy unhappy child struggling to grow up, so I no longer trust that my emotional reaction to anything in this book bears any resemblance to the emotional reaction Renault wanted me to have.
I'm SURE that if Renault had embraced the word lesbian she would have done something with it that Faderman would not have approved. Possibly it would have involved defining lesbian as an all-encompassing word including bisexuality?