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Visionaries--Part Two--Chapter Twenty-Five

Started by Evie, April 27, 2012, 11:55:35 AM

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Alkari

#15
Yes, they are certainly sisters in spirit.  It's not just that they are optimistic in the face of all adversity and are never 'down' for long (a quality which you can normally admire), because they go far beyond mere optimism and a positive attitude.  They are so completely self-centred and self-absorbed that they simply cannot believe that the world - and everyone else in it - will not eventually fall into place around them so that they get what and who they want.  

Elkhound

In Scarlett's case, it was because she never grew up with any reality checks.  She was spoiled and indulged by her parents, her siblings weren't strong enough physically or mentally to smack her upside the head when she got otu of line, and she was educated at home by tutors, and thus never had to eat any playground dirt.  I'm guessing that Aedwige's home life was similar.

Shiral

I really want Brendan to have justification to cart Aedwige straight back to Rhemuth Castle under arrest. And then to see Kelson smack Aedwige down.... HARD! And I'm SURE Aedwige won't be allowed to deviate to any chapels on her way to judgement THIS time.  I hope Kelson will have her escorted to the Great Hall by all the deafest guards in his castle garrison!

Melissa
You can have a sound mind in a healthy body--Or you can be a nanonovelist!

Evie

Well, in addition to still being about half a scene away from finishing the next chapter of Visionaries, we're undergoing a bit of excitement at the office right now, with the entire building possibly about to be evacuated due to a cracked gas main down the street from us, so needless to say the next chapter might be just a tad delayed.  :D
"In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas."

--WARNING!!!--
I have a vocabulary in excess of 75,000 words, and I'm not afraid to use it!

Alkari

I didn't know Aedwige's evil influence extended to gas mains!   She sure doesn't want to meet whatever fate you have in store for her  :D 


Evie

The good news is, the gas was shut off to the site of the gas leak before it could spread far abroad enough to warrant our building's occupants needing to evacuate (although the police said the gas had spread rapidly before they got it under control and that we needed to be ready to leave if it reached our part of the block), so I'm still at the office and things are back to business as usual, aside for needing to do a bit of catching up on work set aside when it looked like we'd need to hightail it out of here.  It came quite close; after I dodged roadblocks trying to find an open route to get here this morning, I discovered upon arrival that I could smell the gas fumes (albeit only faintly) from my parking lot, which is just across the street from my office building, although we couldn't smell it from this side of the street yet.   The other good news is that I finished the next chapter of Visionaries while at lunch today, so that should be ready to post once I have time to give it another read-through and polish and then set up the formatting for copying and pasting it here.

The bad news is, I've been told I'm to be given a project this afternoon that's likely to take up the rest of my workday if/when it hits my desk, so I might not get around to setting up the chapter for posting today.  If not, then I'll see if I can upload it sometime tomorrow. 

And yes, Alkari, I'm sure that gas leak was all Ædwige's fault, drat her uncooperative hide!   ;D
"In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas."

--WARNING!!!--
I have a vocabulary in excess of 75,000 words, and I'm not afraid to use it!

Jerusha

I wouldn't be surprized if Aedwige had a hand in that project you are being given, too! 

But never fear - we'll be ready to read whenever you're ready to post!   :)
From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity beasties and things that go bump in the night...good Lord deliver us!

 -- Old English Litany

Elkhound

Another character I see A. as being somewhat similar to is Nora from "A Doll's House."  Nora just couldn't understand why forging her father's signature on the loan application was wrong.  Not just illegal, but wrong.  In her mind, because she was sure that if her father had been capable of signing he would have, it was perfectly OK for her to have forged his signature---especially as she did pay it all back, after all, and it was for a good cause.  Of course, Nora never murdered anyone---but she never had occasion to, and I'm sure if she had, she would have used the same specious reasoning to justify it in her own mind.

Evie

#23
Granted, it's been ages since I read A Doll's House, but IIRC Nora's motivations were entirely different from Ædwige's.  Nora did an illegal act (the forgery of her father's signature), but her reason for doing so was to save her husband's life, in a society and time period during which women did not have the right to sign legal documents themselves.  She was, in essence, trying to do a right thing, but she picked an illegal way to go about it because there was either no legal way to do so that was allowed by her society, or else such a way didn't occur to her at the time.  It's not that she thought she was above rules and laws, but she placed what she felt to be a higher moral responsibility (saving her husband's life) over the strict legalities that would have prevented her from being able to pay for the care her husband needed.  She attempts to cover up her actions later, but again this is to protect her husband from the scandal that would ensue if her original act of forgery were discovered.  Ibsen wrote the play not to showcase Nora as a bad wife, but to show what sort of extremes women were sometimes forced to go to in a society that treated women as second-class citizens without legal and/or financial rights.  Granted, Nora isn't portrayed as a total angel either.  She tells some smaller fibs in addition to her major cover-up of her forgery, but again, when you look at her underlying motivation, her smaller acts of rebellion (such as hiding her sweets that her husband has "forbidden' her to eat) are attempts to assert herself in a household and society in which she is not allowed to be an equal partner, but is treated like one of the children.  Because she is forced into a child's role, she acts rather childlike, at least in the earlier part of the play before the consequences of her actions unfold and she is forced to grow up.  Torvald (the husband), unfortunately, does not grow up along with her, and he is the one who ends up shown to be the clueless narcissist at the end of the play, much more so than Nora.  (And the reason Ibsen felt strongly enough to write on the issue was that pretty much the same thing had happened to a female friend of his, only in the real life situation the wife in question was divorced and forced into an asylum for a few years by her husband once he found out about her forgery to obtain the loan.)  I really can't see Nora committing a crime such as murder, though I could possibly see her killing someone in self-defense or to protect her family.  Again, the same sort of act but very different motivations.

For Nora's situation to be comparable to Ædwige's, Nora would have forged that signature not because she needed money to save her husband's life, but because she needed it to hire a hitman to kill him...or perhaps to buy a wardrobe of luxurious new gowns and a palfrey.  Nora would probably have been better off in some ways if she'd been born in the Middle Ages, because women in that time period actually had more rights, at least in some respects, than their female descendants born in the 1800s.  Look at the changes in laws regarding dowries and/or jointures, for starters.
"In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas."

--WARNING!!!--
I have a vocabulary in excess of 75,000 words, and I'm not afraid to use it!

Elkhound

You may be right.  It has been a long time for me, too, since I read or saw the play.  But I was trying to think of a character who (a) had done something that was both illegal and wrong and (b) who was unable or unwilling to admit or understand why, and Nora was the first person who came to mind.