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3.34 AVERAGE
3.34 AVERAGE
Not the farcical madcamp romp that the Poor Relation series was, but entertaining, and Hannah Pym is a great character, so I will be listening on!
Another lovely romance by Chesney! I'm enjoying Hannah's travels and matchmaking (I moved on to book 2 immediately), but I still find myself missing the larger casts of A House for the Season and Poor Relations).
An effervescent froth of a novel, with a pleasingly older heroine, a book I should have forgotten about almost as soon as I turned the last page. But over the last day, I've found myself mulling on some character descriptions and a humorous (well - "humorous") scene again and again, and I have to say it: I am so. goddamn. tired. of Fat Person As Comically Disgusting And Embarassing trope. Is this a major part of the novel? Not at all. Has it ruined it for me? Yep.
I am tired of lascivious descriptions of how horrifically sticky and greasy the fat person is, as if we are to be titillated by their gluttony. I am tired of authors constructing scenes to have the audience laugh at how the fat person doesn't know how disgusting she is. I am exhausted by the scene where the fat lady gets stuck in a bathtub and has to be forcibly extracted, which is 100% played for laughs at how the fat lady is embarassed because she will be seen undressed in the tub by her extractors, rather than what she should be embarassed about, i.e. getting stuck in the first place.
Yes, this novel is almost 30 years old, and yes, you can make the argument that this was acceptable then and we know better now. I reject that, because it was just as cruel then as it is now, acceptability be damned. I am tired of fat people confined to the role of laughingstock; I am tired of fatness being used as a shorthand for unpleasant character traits, and I am so very, very tired of the narrative convention that it's both funny and plausible that fat people a) don't know they're fat and 2) don't understand that they should be ashamed of being fat.
Yes, this novel is almost 30 years old, and yes, you can make the argument that this was acceptable then and we know better now. I reject that, because it was just as cruel then as it is now, acceptability be damned. I am tired of fat people confined to the role of laughingstock; I am tired of fatness being used as a shorthand for unpleasant character traits, and I am so very, very tired of the narrative convention that it's both funny and plausible that fat people a) don't know they're fat and 2) don't understand that they should be ashamed of being fat.