it's not often that I find myself... becoming one(1) with a /minor/ character in a show, a non recurring one. but something about amy bartlett (or isabella york)(or the unnameable woman she was forced to become) is making me want to scream and cry and rip my heart out, in a way not many things always do
i had been watching violet evergarden for the past two weeks or so, and the show, by itself, had already become an irreplaceable, integral memory for me. it became so so important to me, in such a short time, with every single thing it stood for,,,, human connections, war, empathy, memories, peace, violence, remembrance, burning, words, language, thoughts, feelings, desires, love, so, so so much grief, but such devastatingly greater love..... something about the innate humanness of the show got me in a way nothing else has, and it became one of the .. safest pieces of media ever for me. at the centre of my overwhelming intensity of emotions, of fondness and love stood violet evergarden herself, who was forced to grow up so quickly yet... actually I'll talk about her later, because as much space as violet has in my heart and will for evermore, this post is not (just) about her
and then I finish the series and I'm filled with this deep sense of grief, but a deep sense of love. and so I start this little movie and here comes isabella york, the deuterogonist who at first glance seemed to me like the normal rebellious girl, born in a high class family in a high functioning society with the crushing expectations of patriarchy typical of the Victorian era that the show is supposedly set in, placed on her shoulders- a harrowing narrative for sure, but nothing new, nothing we haven't seen before, something we could primarily sympathise with, rather than empathise. you expect her to be like the typical, common place rebel, who finds herself strangled with these. you're convinced that there's no way violet would be able to "tame" her, and she'd give violet a world altering speech about the confines of the nobility being too constricting for her, and she'd give her a small kiss and fly away into the setting sun, with violet watching her go with a half smile on her face
except
except none of this actually happens.
you watch, and you're instead hit with the ..... heartwrenching tragedy, that isabella york is. you watch her be tamed, you watch her become increasingly lady like, you watch as the resigned set of her shoulders becomes wearier. you watch her fall so desperately, so hopelessly in love.
you watch, and you start getting restless, because there's no way right? you convince yourself, there's no way. there's no way they'd keep throwing in the scenes of her before in her ragamuffin clothes except to highlight that the person in present is far at home in them, that past image could never be comfortable, be One with the silks and satins and ribbons and bows right? there's no way they showcase the love, the heartbreaking love she had for her little sister unless they planned to reunite them immediately after, with a little help and push from violet right? there's no way they show her falling so much in love, just for it to go... nowhere right? they wouldn't show her in a prison, just for her to never escape... right?
right?
and then you watch, keep watching with a pounding heart, and you see violet and her bidding adieu, and you see four years passing without a word from her, and you see her sister growing up, and you see her sister yearning for her, and you see her at end and you see her .confined. imprisoned . still. and even though the movie ends on a happy note, you go and look her up, you look up the light novels, and you search frantically, looking for some news, any news of her.
and that's when it hits you. the absolute tragedy that amy bartlett is, the absolute tragedy she's been turned into. that's when it hits you that some people aren't like violet, who've been saved so thoroughly and wholely (as joyful as I'm about that). that's when it hits you that some people are just dealt a ... rough, miserable hand by God. and they end up hating him for it.
like,, idk I don't even know i genuinely don't know what about her got me so bad, that I'm sitting here with my head pounding and loads of work to complete, but instead im just . sitting here with my heart feeling like it's carved out of stone.
i think it's mostly the never ending grief of womanhood, the heartwrenching pain of a denied queerness.
like, i read the two extra stories dedicated to her and both of them just. stuck a chord in me, a chord that made my very soul flinch, shudder in agony. it was the absolute hopelessness i think. it was this i think
ORESTES: This was always going to happen. She's been dead since the beginning.
Aeschylus, The Oresteia
like,,,, idk idk man I wanna cry so bad, i think it genuinely was this, a large part of it was this; she'd never been meant to be the rebel girl, who'd find love and acceptance and freedom whilst getting to love her sister and the girl she adored and herself. it was never about fighting, breaking free.
her fate had been set in stone since the moment her "father" had appeared out of nowhere to restake his claim on an abandoned child and asked her to partake in a monstrous deal, a deal where she'd been dealt the losing hand even before it had been stuck.
her three months with violet weren't supposed to be the grand, life altering point paving the path to her freedom, you realised. it was just supposed to be her reprieve, her... noon. that she'd forever clasp, unseen, hidden, and that would have to be pried from her cold, dead hands.
i don't know, even after writing this much, i feel like I haven't gotten to the essence of it, of why amy bartlett makes me want to sob my heart out, why i relate to her more than I have to anyone ever. i can't, i Cant get over the unfairness of it all, about why She alone was dealt a miserable hand, why she couldn't have been saved like the Postal company saved violet and like she (and then violet) saved taylor and how she again saved the couple who had been thrown out of her husband's room and ...
god, something,,,,.just something about the two chapters about her is still shattering me, devouring my very heart where i sit. like,,,, this girl, this brave, tragic girl, who should've been able to fall in love with a girl, her... her violet blossom, should've been able to tell her, should've been able to live with her, and her sister whom she adored and who adored her so, so heartbreakingly much, and lived comfortably with them, lived in their small house where nobody would have been lonely and nobody would have needed saving and the sun would shine and the world wouldn't be a terrible place and if she were to be asked if it should end, she wouldn't have had to say it should, and god would have dealt her a much softer hand for which she would never seek revenge and she would live forever in her noon, basking in the loud laughter and quiet smile of the two women, one whose red unruly hair she'd dry and brush for all of time to come, and the other for whom she'd tirelessly pick out thousands of violets and place countless flower crowns in her velvet hair, the two women who were her whole world.
she was instead fated to live as a Woman, a woman through and through, representation of the absolute,,,, misery that womanhood can be (even more so as a queer individual), a woman cut out for suffering the moment she was born, a woman with a terrible childhood, and- just as she started feeling like a child, like she belonged, to have it wrenched from her grasp, to watch, unseeing as her sister begged her not to go, to trade her very life in exchange for her sister's, to donne on dresses and gowns and be commodified, to meet a girl whom she'd probably love more than she would ever anyone else in this lifetime, to play with her hair and hold hands and swing and swing around and fall in love just because she was walking alongside her, and then to have it once again wrenched from her grasp because again, this wasn't something meant to last was it? and then continue and be married and forever, for ever carry the atlantean weight that every, every woman is forced to carry, especially in those times to have been gifted a forever cursed existence, to be so lonely, to want to be saved, so so much but knowing that no one was coming ever, to have precisely this be your tragedy, to forever seek revenge by saving others because she would never be saved, to live with an abusive man, to spend her whole entire life stretched ahead of her, vast and so tragically unending, struggling to make do with the handfuls of love she'd had, to force it to be enough, for it to not nearly be enough, to, be so full of love so as to make her sister and her visits her entire noon as she grew up and older, to forever live as someone she wasn't because she'd given up her life long ago, to love someone she couldn't, she shouldn't have had to.
a woman meant to love only for a short while before having it yanked from her, from her chest from her heart, a love that still raged in her, but she'd forever, ever after, continue to live with the memory of that love, the sheer force of it. to remember violet longer than she knew her. to be so in love, but to be okay even if the other never finds out, for all eternity.
claudia tells violet "you haven't realised that everything you've ever done has sparked a flame that is now burning you up. one day you'll stop burning and understand, and for the first time, you'll notice the burn marks." and I think amy bartlett's tragedy is that she never. stops burning.
