sparklight

Knitter

[thesweetnessofspring]

She was no longer unimportant, little, old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant—justified to herself. Life was no longer empty and futile, and death could cheat her of nothing. Love had cast out her last fear.... Barney need never know it—though she would not in the least have minded his knowing. But she knew it and it made a tremendous difference to her. Just to love! She did not ask to be loved. It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendour of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods.

In the first chapter of the book club, I made a post about Valancy following the patriarchal idea that it should hurt her that a man has never desired her, making her an old maid.

Here, though, we see this flip on its head. Whereas before she "did not mind so much being an old maid" where she is not married, here Valancy is throwing off the patriarchal description altogether. It doesn't matter that she is just as unmarried and undesired (to her knowledge) as before. She is the one who has experienced love and desire for Barney. It is her own feelings, "justified to herself" which throws off any shame or hurt she has of being an unmarried, undesired woman.

We see this play out in her exchange with Olive as well. She fully admits to her cousin that Barney hasn't tried to kiss her, but she "wouldn't have minded if he had." It isn't shameful for her to admit that she's still undesired and that she would accept Barney if he had desired her, even without a proposal prior to make it all "proper" as the Stirlings would have wanted.

[amarguerite]

Yeah this is is so interesting— I don’t think I realized until today that an important part of Valancy’s coming to grips with desire is being so wholly unshaken by the desires of others for the first time in her life. What does Olive want? Irrelevant, it can’t move Valencey. Is it hurtful that yet another man doesn’t want her? Absolutely not. Her own desire is enough for her and I think— given that Valancy mentions she wasn’t sure she loved her own mother— it must have been a relief to her to know that she can love in the way that she wanted to.

[puppydogwithlargeeyes]

Chapter 21

What kind of owl laughs?—I guess maybe laughter applies to the bubbling hitch in their "who's" sometimes.

So the part about love.

"She was no longer unimportant, little, old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant—justified to herself. Life was no longer empty, and death could cheat her of nothing. Love had cast out her last fear."

For all its romance, the phrasing here emphasizes all the harsh realities of the sentiment. Love as social capital, as escape from poverty. Love as the snare that creates a woman as she exists in the world; love as what binds a person with womanhood, binds her to a man.

At the same time, though, I can't help but think about Courtly Love Undressed by E. Jane Burns, which cites "Throwing Like a Girl" by Iris Marion Young in its third chapter. The ideas I'm bringing up are moreso Young's, but the Burns book was my real introduction to the politics of heterosexual romance, even if the book itself is tied up (sewed up?) in the laughably nonsequitur topic of French courtly love song in the High Middle Ages. It treats on the many ways women, fictional and real, utilize clothing—gifting it, sewing it, donning it—as ways to move into a the position of "amorous subject" rather than fetishized object or mirror for a man's desire. And I think about that a lot. I think about becoming a subject that experiences the world rather than an object to whom things happen.

Becoming a subject is empowering, but it is also humiliating, as is described in tales of courtly love. Male suitors are wretched. They are often described (or describe themselves) as trapped or wounded by their female lover who spurns them. But the woman remains disadvantaged by her lack of interiority: often she wounds or kills her amors by doing nothing at all but be beautiful.

(Obviously this isn't always the case, or else Courtly Love Undressed wouldn't exist lol)

I'm sure there are nuances to this. But I am starting to fashion myself as an "amorous subject" these days, as someone who experiences all this humiliation, but also as someone who experiences the pride of unselfish feeling, the real delight of living in a body. The joy of being a woman looking away from herself.

I want more than anything else to be loved and desired—but—isn't loving and desiring so much more fun, so much more fulfilling and exciting? It's hard work but it makes me feel like a person. It makes me feel real. And love is a complicated, political thing. Loving and otherwise feeling doesn't exist in a vacuum for anyone, and especially for women. But that subject position can be one facet of it, right?

[deemoyza]

#blue castle book club#the blue castle#oooh this is so interesting#valency like many other women#has been fashioned by her family and society into an object#and what is worse#a useless object no one wants#but she makes herself into a SUBJECT#she is the main actor of her own life#and suddenly it is not about#being acted upon#but acting#that is so interesting and really reshapes how I’m thinking about this early dynamic#I used to think it was realistic but kind of sad#Like Valencey was so unused to romance and had such low self-esteem/ self-worth#It simply didn’t occur to her that Barney could desire her#Let alone love her#Like there’s a point later on where she’s delighted that he even enjoys her company#But I think it’s actually critical that the focus is on what SHE wants#and not how she is wanted#Because her wanting is the driving force of the novel#the emphasis needs to be on her wanting and her desire#it’s how and why she reclaims her life and gives it meaning#Barney’s feelings are actually irrelevant to the larger point being made here about how opening herself up to wanting and love#is a radical act in and of itself for Valencey#and that’s an incredibly important thing to focus on in terms of her character growth (via @amarguerite)

[ceruleana]

project hail mary is a touching and poignant film that leaves you asking questions about humanity like, "wow what if all mainstream media was genuinely good" and "what if book adaptions actually gave a shit about the book in question" and "what if studios hired actors that could actually act, and then let them get a lil wacky with it"

[astriiformes]

#Don’t forget ‘what if puppetry was treated as a serious artform’ (via @specialagentartemis)

[dashcon]

How big is the ball pit area going to be?

I don’t know the exact dimensions right now, okay

[mayflame15]

[yo-its-matt]

world heritage post

[that-one-fat-guy-over-there]

Reading this post is like walking into a civil war reenactment only to realize you accidentally time travelled to the real civil War

[dragongirlsweetie]

"vibes", also known as "internal biases",

[availablequilts]

Throw size constellation themed quilt in blue and aqua. It is backed with a cotton blue crosshatch print and finished with a constellation binding.

The pattern is a modified irish chain.

This is for sale for $270 USD + $80 shipping.

[thequeenoftheentiregoddamnworld]

Hey, hey, look me in the eyes when I tell you this okay? The whole "do trans women or trans men have it worse?" debate going on right now is the most obvious CIA bullshit on earth cause honestly we've both got it pretty shitty and fighting each other isn't helping anyone

[materialistses]

Abigail Thorn stuns at the red carpet premiere of ‘HOUSE OF THE DRAGON’ Season 3

[nerdygaymormon]

[dunkthebiscuit]

This is why Pride is not just a party. It's a joyful celebration, but it's also a pointed and colourful two-finger salute to a world that stood back whilst so many of us died. And we'll never go quietly, never again.

[byjove]

A large part of the reason families were bigger in the past was because marital rape was not considered rape and birth control/abortion methods were ineffective, dangerous and/or illegal. We can dance around this and act like our great great great grandmothers just loveddddd being mamas so much that they decided out of their own free will to have 11 children. We can pretend that they DECIDED to have big families because it was a financially advantageous decision so they could have more labor around the farm. But a lot of children in the past were fundamentally unwanted and not conceived out of love, children were not a choice women got to make. We need to admit that and stop pretending historical women were inherently more maternal because they were impregnated at the age of 15 and kept having babies until they were 40. That did not make them loving mothers, it did not make them ‘the divine feminine’ and it sure did not make them happy.

[ruicui]

oversharing online is so important cus like what if someone needed to know that

[meangirlnurse]

messages from doctors so confusing that every nurse on the unit is huddled around one computer puzzling over it together

[meangirlnurse]

[divorcedwife]

studying history is like. here's to another beautiful day of not being pregnant and of having no obligation to ever be. thank you women who fight for abortion and contraception and independance from men for another beautiful day of not being pregnant and of having no obligation to ever be

[tehamelie]

To another day of not waking up pregnant or turned into a giant cockroach

[divorcedwife]

so many perils out there…

[roseworth]

i don’t want to be angry anymore i’m never going to hate again unless someone says something really stupid or if i see something i don’t like at all or maybe just whenever i feel like it

[carrotline]

I don’t think Downton Abbey gets enough credit for introducing a gay central character to a period drama in 2010, where being gay isn’t his defining trait. His defining trait is that he’s Evil.

[flintandpyrite]

Fireflies!!!

[knitposting]

Mittens I made for a charity auction.