The party went well – we ended up with about 12 people (13, if you count a baby – but she brought her own food). They cruised in an unexpectedly locust-like fashion through the brisket, ate most of the tomato salad and a fair bit of the very large bowl of jambalaya, but left a lot of the kasha varnishkes. I thought the jambalaya was OK, but it was much better when we reheated the leftovers for last night’s dinner and added Tabasco and Cajun seasoning.
Over the weekend, I also finished listening to Wilkie Collin’s The Woman in White. (38 chapters means it takes a very long time when you only listen while working out – even with the amount I erg.) Two thoughts:
1) I will eat my copy of TWiW if the Dark Mark in the Harry Potter books wasn’t inspired by the Brotherhood. (As it’s an audio copy, I’m not taking much of a risk here – there’s always the possibility of multiple inspirations!)
2) I’m beginning to think that the major difference between us and the Victorians is not how we live but how we talk about it. We talk about straights and gays, lesbians, transgender people, polyamory, genderqueer, and what have you, and we try to pigeonhole people. The first poly family I knew about back then was the one about to form in Alcott’s An Old-Fashioned Girl; that one is a V formation. (One woman, an artist, is getting married; her roommate will continue to live with them because “George knows he can’t have one without the other”. But the family in The Woman in White, shown in much more detail, is definitely a triangle. I refuse to speculate whether Marion and Laura have a sexual relationship (other than sleeping together in the literal sense in a few cases) because there’s not enough information to say, but half-sisters or no, it is *absolutely* a romantic love, and an abiding one. (This time I will eat not only my adiobook but my iPod if anyone can convince me otherwise.)
The dastardly Percival Glyde tries to break them up, but he only serves to estrange Laura from himself. When Walter and Laura fall in love and marry, it is a classic Victorian romance in which he places her on a pedestal and cares for her as if for a child (in his defense, she is not entirely compos mentis at the time – and he does make arrangements for her to feel that she is contributing to the household on an adult level, even when that has to be faked). But the only time he ever suggests that Marion leave is in the misguided thought that she might want her freedom – and she promptly quashes that. Walter and Marion do *not* have a romantic relationship, but they have a truer partnership than ever he does with Laura, and they love each other for the full capabilities of each, as well as for their shared feeling for Laura.
(Speaking of genderqueer, Marion’s frequent references to her own limitations as a women certainly come across to me as protesting too much – as if she is constantly having to remind herself of what she is.)