through those woods and past the trains
Dec. 14th, 2012 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseYesterday I drove nine hours north, my cats intermittently squalling in their carrier on the front seat next to me. We're camping out for the holidays in my mother's painting studio, living with the Botticelli studies and works in progress. The smells always make me kind of nostalgic, because when I was a kid, before we built this house, my mama painted in the kitchen.
The thing I've enjoyed most about watching Due South - and I'll post more on that anon, promise (I just realized that in this context that could mean "anonymous," instead of being a Shakespeare joke) - is the way it calls up memories of my childhood. I've been living in towns for a while now, and that wasn't something I ever really meant to do. But dorms became apartments led to more apartments, and it's been sidewalks and streetlights for what feels like a really long time. I've had such fun reading the celebratory way people in this fandom write about the north - and it was in my mind driving up, watching things get woodier and snowier, feeling kind of epic and kind of wonderful.
I've still got a fair amount of end-of-semester work/grading to tidy off, not to mention my yuletide (it exists, I think I understand it, now I just have to write words down except that writing words down is the hard part!) But it feels good to be back where I can see snowy hills out the window while I work.
foranghraine,
1. Edmund had a bad time at school. More than any of the Pevensies, more than anyone except Eustace, Edmund carries Lewis' school issues - whatever went wrong in him that made him nasty to his little sister, that made him vulnerable to Jadis, it started in a bad school. One of the things that I really love about Lewis/Narnia is how unromantic he is about child oppression - being a kid can really suck, you're totally disempowered, adults force children to put up with awful things, and that can screw you up. I've always believed that that was a lot of what Aslan talked to Ed about, after he saved him from the Witch - about power and justice and abuse, and about how Narnia offers Edmund a chance to radically reajust his relationship to those concepts.
2. Edmund is a third child. It's an awkward position - he's at the bottom of the sibling power hierarchy, but wouldn't have enjoyed the pampered position of baby for long before little Lucy came along.
3. Relatedly, I don't think Edmund often thinks of himself as the hero, as the protagonist. It's what Jadis offers him, more than candy, more than power: narrative centrality and dominance, his siblings bit-part-players in the story of how Edmund Pevensie became King of Narnia. But by Prince Caspian, he's entirely willing to play supporting actor in Peter's heroic duel with Miraz, and in VDT he gracefully relinquishes the spiritual center to Lucy - Aslan knows him, not the other way around, and anyway it's Lucy who sees him most often. Edmund plays from the sidelines, the shadows, from behind the throne - which offers him a different kind of power from his siblings, not a lesser one.
4. Edmund is called "the Just." But he's a just man not because he loves people; it's because he doesn't. Edmund is a self-aware misanthrope, and his concern with justice arises from his awareness of his own tendencies toward unfair judgement. As an un-nice person, he has to be more conscious of kindness and fairness than others do. This also gives him understanding of and affinity with the darker elements of Narnian society - he's been a traitor, and a thief, and a bully, and a usurper, he knows what those things feel like, what their roots are.
5. Edmund never blames Susan for any of the nastiness with Rabadash in HHB. Sometimes I feel like Lewis might, a little bit, but Edmund never says or does anything to imply that it isn't Susan's right to investigate, accept, or reject potential sexual partners. He also doesn't say anything against her in The Last Battle; Peter and Jill and Polly, but never Edmund.
The thing I've enjoyed most about watching Due South - and I'll post more on that anon, promise (I just realized that in this context that could mean "anonymous," instead of being a Shakespeare joke) - is the way it calls up memories of my childhood. I've been living in towns for a while now, and that wasn't something I ever really meant to do. But dorms became apartments led to more apartments, and it's been sidewalks and streetlights for what feels like a really long time. I've had such fun reading the celebratory way people in this fandom write about the north - and it was in my mind driving up, watching things get woodier and snowier, feeling kind of epic and kind of wonderful.
I've still got a fair amount of end-of-semester work/grading to tidy off, not to mention my yuletide (it exists, I think I understand it, now I just have to write words down except that writing words down is the hard part!) But it feels good to be back where I can see snowy hills out the window while I work.
for
anghraine, 1. Edmund had a bad time at school. More than any of the Pevensies, more than anyone except Eustace, Edmund carries Lewis' school issues - whatever went wrong in him that made him nasty to his little sister, that made him vulnerable to Jadis, it started in a bad school. One of the things that I really love about Lewis/Narnia is how unromantic he is about child oppression - being a kid can really suck, you're totally disempowered, adults force children to put up with awful things, and that can screw you up. I've always believed that that was a lot of what Aslan talked to Ed about, after he saved him from the Witch - about power and justice and abuse, and about how Narnia offers Edmund a chance to radically reajust his relationship to those concepts.
2. Edmund is a third child. It's an awkward position - he's at the bottom of the sibling power hierarchy, but wouldn't have enjoyed the pampered position of baby for long before little Lucy came along.
3. Relatedly, I don't think Edmund often thinks of himself as the hero, as the protagonist. It's what Jadis offers him, more than candy, more than power: narrative centrality and dominance, his siblings bit-part-players in the story of how Edmund Pevensie became King of Narnia. But by Prince Caspian, he's entirely willing to play supporting actor in Peter's heroic duel with Miraz, and in VDT he gracefully relinquishes the spiritual center to Lucy - Aslan knows him, not the other way around, and anyway it's Lucy who sees him most often. Edmund plays from the sidelines, the shadows, from behind the throne - which offers him a different kind of power from his siblings, not a lesser one.
4. Edmund is called "the Just." But he's a just man not because he loves people; it's because he doesn't. Edmund is a self-aware misanthrope, and his concern with justice arises from his awareness of his own tendencies toward unfair judgement. As an un-nice person, he has to be more conscious of kindness and fairness than others do. This also gives him understanding of and affinity with the darker elements of Narnian society - he's been a traitor, and a thief, and a bully, and a usurper, he knows what those things feel like, what their roots are.
5. Edmund never blames Susan for any of the nastiness with Rabadash in HHB. Sometimes I feel like Lewis might, a little bit, but Edmund never says or does anything to imply that it isn't Susan's right to investigate, accept, or reject potential sexual partners. He also doesn't say anything against her in The Last Battle; Peter and Jill and Polly, but never Edmund.
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Date: 2012-12-14 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-14 10:42 pm (UTC)