It's Only A Paper Rose

This week has been strange - half the time it's felt like it's going by incredibly slowly, the other half it's been like "wait, it's Wednesday already?" I feel like I've been falling behind on my personal stuff (letters, reading, music practice); that's usually a sign that I'm either anxious about something (which is eating my mental cycles) or physically overstretched (no pun intended). I suspect in this case it's a little of column A, a little of column B - I've been having some work frustrations that really deserve their own entry, and my massage bookings picked up this week. Luckily I only have one class to teach tomorrrow and can rest for the remainder of the day.

What I've just finished reading

Unfortunately, nothing - that's been part of the falling-behind. I'm nearly done with My Cousin Rachel, though.

What I'm currently reading

My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne du Maurier. I'm enjoying the subtlety in this novel. There are a lot of unstated but strongly present themes regarding the toxicity of gender roles and rigid class distinctions; I really love how du Maurier's used the perspective of various characters to present the differing facets of Rachel's character, and how well Rachel has resisted being put into any of the pigeonholes so clearly made up for her. She's not an innocent being manipulated by an unscrupulous friend, nor a con woman out to steal the estate, nor a long-exiled Englishwoman returning to fulfill her rightful role as aristocrat, nor a heroine, nor a villain. She's a woman with her own life and her own agenda who has never pretended to be anything else, and (unless there's some kind of Big Dramatic Reveal in the last twenty pages) most of the suffering she's caused has been due to other people expecting her to fulfill whatever role they've designated for her. Kendall says that there are women who, through no fault of their own, bring disaster down wherever they go; what remains unstated is that the disaster stems from their refusal to fit into whatever pattern has been socially mapped for them, and their power (be it through money or charisma or both) to maintain that refusal even in the face of others' expectations. Which says far more about the limited roles for women in rural England of the time than it does about the women involved.

My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante. Speaking of toxic gender roles...Elena and Lila are well past puberty now, and getting attention from many of the boys (and men) in the neighborhood - some welcome, a lot of it not. Particularly poignant is a sequence where Elena gets the opportunity to go on holiday with a friend of her teacher's, and spends a couple of months in an environment that's far more loving and supportive and affectionate than anything she's ever experienced before...only to discover that the adults in this environment harbor danger of a different sort. Which, I suppose, is the fundamental betrayal of teenagerhood, but man, that's a particularly rough way to learn it, even if she does escape mostly unscathed.

What I plan to read next

Nothing's calling to me at the moment, probably because of how buried I feel. Time to finish a few things and then see!