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erindatema25's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
- Strong character development? No
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Incest and Suicide
akeehan's review
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
4.25
The author Unica Zurn described this novella as "the erotic life of a little girl based on my own childhood."
The unnamed protagonist is introduced as a young child who adores and idealizes her "exotic" and often absent father. In fact, she makes heroes of many mysterious, "noble", and dashing men throughout the book, the majority of which are fictional book characters (Captain Nemo), adventure movie actors (Douglas Fairbanks), imaginary handsome robbers or otherwise unattainable men (her married teacher) who are very dissimilar to the awkward and incapable young men around her.
Early on she comes to loathe her aging and frustrated mother, who is being abandoned not only by her beauty and youth, but also by her husband who has found a "beautiful and elegant" lover. Her mother is powerless, bitter, selfish, and ultimately uninteresting. The mother comes to represent everything the child hates about her mundane, anti-climatic life. "She is overwhelmed by the sheer misery of her ten-year-old life."
The loneliness caused by the frequent absences of her father and her great disdain for her dull and unexciting life breeds in her a romantic and violent imagination, along with a fixation on onanism. The novella has ample imagery of "locks and keys", "knives stabbing wounds", or the tentacles of the octopus from 20,000 thousand leagues under the sea "forcing their entry into the submarine." There is an emptiness inside, a void, she seeks to fill both figuratively and literally. She feels certain this wholeness, this feeling of being complete can only come from a man.
In an attempt to satisfy these longings she plays dangerous games with other children that involve humiliation and physical pain, or enact grossly melodramatic plays envolving howling grief and brutal murder. She has an obsession with all people and things "exotic" or foriegn to her. Her fantasies and imagination center around being tortured and violently ravaged, but yet she finds herself ashamed and disappointed when she realizes the male figures she admires (her father and her teacher) have sexual needs and desires as well. Upon this realization they fall from their noble and god-like status in her eyes.
I think one can easily come to this conclusion that the child protagonist hates women. I do not think this is so. I think she despises her mom because she is the embodiment of her mundane, boring life and also because she largely contributes to her loneliness by brushing off the child's attempts at showing affection. In fact, the child is in complete awe of the young maid earlier in the novella. To the girl this maid was exciting and beautiful. I also think the part of femininity she hates is this perceived powerlessness or weakness of being a woman. "She is sorry she has to be a girl. She wants to be a man in his prime... But she is only a little girl whose body is bathed in sweat from fear of discovering the terrible gorilla in her room, under her bed. She is tortured by fears of the invisible."
The unnamed protagonist is introduced as a young child who adores and idealizes her "exotic" and often absent father. In fact, she makes heroes of many mysterious, "noble", and dashing men throughout the book, the majority of which are fictional book characters (Captain Nemo), adventure movie actors (Douglas Fairbanks), imaginary handsome robbers or otherwise unattainable men (her married teacher) who are very dissimilar to the awkward and incapable young men around her.
Early on she comes to loathe her aging and frustrated mother, who is being abandoned not only by her beauty and youth, but also by her husband who has found a "beautiful and elegant" lover. Her mother is powerless, bitter, selfish, and ultimately uninteresting. The mother comes to represent everything the child hates about her mundane, anti-climatic life. "She is overwhelmed by the sheer misery of her ten-year-old life."
The loneliness caused by the frequent absences of her father and her great disdain for her dull and unexciting life breeds in her a romantic and violent imagination, along with a fixation on onanism. The novella has ample imagery of "locks and keys", "knives stabbing wounds", or the tentacles of the octopus from 20,000 thousand leagues under the sea "forcing their entry into the submarine." There is an emptiness inside, a void, she seeks to fill both figuratively and literally. She feels certain this wholeness, this feeling of being complete can only come from a man.
In an attempt to satisfy these longings she plays dangerous games with other children that involve humiliation and physical pain, or enact grossly melodramatic plays envolving howling grief and brutal murder. She has an obsession with all people and things "exotic" or foriegn to her. Her fantasies and imagination center around being tortured and violently ravaged, but yet she finds herself ashamed and disappointed when she realizes the male figures she admires (her father and her teacher) have sexual needs and desires as well. Upon this realization they fall from their noble and god-like status in her eyes.
I think one can easily come to this conclusion that the child protagonist hates women. I do not think this is so. I think she despises her mom because she is the embodiment of her mundane, boring life and also because she largely contributes to her loneliness by brushing off the child's attempts at showing affection. In fact, the child is in complete awe of the young maid earlier in the novella. To the girl this maid was exciting and beautiful. I also think the part of femininity she hates is this perceived powerlessness or weakness of being a woman. "She is sorry she has to be a girl. She wants to be a man in his prime... But she is only a little girl whose body is bathed in sweat from fear of discovering the terrible gorilla in her room, under her bed. She is tortured by fears of the invisible."
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide
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