A Curious Girl: Literature is a feminist issue

I am exhausted in practically every level. OK, so maybe not intellectually. For some reason that part of me has just woken up. It always keeps late hours (OK, so I know it's only twenty past eight, but the rest of me wants to go to bed).

Strange thoughts.

Everyone (every girl, anyway) ought to read "Fat is a Feminist Issue" - Susie Orbach. It's primarily for compulsive eaters but there's a bit on anorexia as well.

It is a most inspiring book. I must buy it.

I read an article on Chatham Girls and it was dumb. The journalist obviously did not know his/her subject, as most of it was directly quoted from the site as research and it referred to them as Chevs - not Chavs, which is the correct term. Ooh, sometimes it feels good to think another writer is an imbecile (calling myself a writer, you understand). It makes my own inadequcies feel smaller. Isn't this pathetic? I must learn to be more caring.

As to writing, too many love stories are coming out of the works at the moment. Oh, please. And none of them look like they're gonna be finished. I swore to myself I'd never write pure romance. But here I am, with a least two stories done with lovey dovey storylines (although one was pointing out that fashion is not a legitimate way to judge people as well) and two on the go. One is about a couple of teenagers who played down the same road for years and years and gradually come to supoort each other through their crises and stuff. The other is already boring me, as I was trying to write a plausible version of Cinderella and I don't like the characters too much. They're too stereotyped. I read in the Chambers 20th century dictionary that 'Ella' is a diminutive form of Eleanor, which is of course another form of Helen. And the prince's name is 'Sebastian'. In some books I read when I was younger, Sebastian was a musician, a conductor and the cousin of a prima ballerina. I liked him, he was headstrong and proud and interesting. His full name was Sebastian Scott. Some things are just too strange.

Anyway, the reason why it's boring me is that Ella, aka Cinderella, is a bit demure, and Sebastian is /too/ headstrong and clever. Maybe the story could work, but I don't feel inclined to write it, as it's not the sort of story I would enjoy. Ella has got a classic case of 'learned helplessness', and the prince has got one those identity crisis/unsatisfaction complexes that fairy tale royalty always have. It's damn annoying. It's the kind of story where a woman needs a man to succeed in life, and that goes against the grain a bit.

I quite like this passage though. Don't ask me why.

"Ella's mother had been old when she was born, and had ded giving birth. Her father loved her more than anything, and eager to give her a mother and playmates, he had married again. But her step-sisters were infinitely different from her. Motherless Ella, when not with her father, would run around the house, pestering the servants and getting into trouble. She had treated child servants and servant's children as equals, and /they/ had been her playmates. The two sisters, however, were the perfect model of noble children at the time. They were neat, well-mannered and demure; but to Ella they were cruel, snide and superior. She remembered so clearly the day the expedition she had the housemaid's son planned up the chimney failed so miserably, and they found her covered from tip to toe in cinders. That was when they thought up the name they had been taunting her with ever since, as they ran screaming it and laughing and pretending to whimper as they told their mother what she had done."

I think maybe it's because I've finally worked out why the sisters and Cinderella had such a feud between them. It was because Cinderella was a wild child.

I've had a few odd thoughts as I was typing this passage out - why is it that I don't like 'demure' people, and why am I so feminist and assertive (in theory, not really in practice)?

Maybe it's because I've never been out wiht a boy (there, I said it...).

It's a nice rationalization. I don't need a man. People who need men are pathetic. The first story I ever wrote with a love element in it had the man grovelling in apology before the woman before they got together. Actually, that's not strictly true - in the first version he merely explained stuff and she submitted - but later on I changed it so that he was asking for full forgiveness for all his sins before she even thought about getting back with him - oh and then I changed it so that she realised she was still in love with him and had been repressing it (a prime case of 'reaction formation') and acting as though she hated him until he apologised. OK, so that story was meant to be about time travel, but I go a bit carried away.

Or maybe I've got 'learned helplessness'. The women I've created can speak their minds and take action (I wrote a truly awful Sleeping Beauty parody where practically every female character (and one or two of the male ones) was an out-and-out feminist. What is it with me and fairy tales?)

Christina just called to talk about Detling and so on. I read her something from Jesus Online and we mused on it a bit. Oddly enough she's take a book out from the Library called "Fat is a Spiritual Issue", by someone who knew Susie Orbach. Interesting.

As far as headstrong female characters go, my favourite has to be Holly van Daan, the half-Dutch thespian who starred in both of the aforementioned love stories I have finished. OK, so in one she did not do the falling in love, but she did quote from 'Romeo and Juliet' a lot. And she, I am learning, is a lot more like me than she originally seemed to be, although she has a bit more nerve. She's also (I hope) a bit more neurotic. /She/ always calls the shots. I don't invent girls who are strung along by their selfish boyfriends.

Whilst I'm on this point of fictional females, I have to confess I love the character of the heroine of 'Rebecca' (Daphne du Maurier). She drives me nuts but she's so realistic. She's not at all feminist, but from all her self-consciousness and worrying I can see a part of me, and of people I know that I often try to hide. And at least she gets her revenge on Mrs. Danvers eventually. This woman is never named, other than 'Mrs de Winter' but there is a reference to firstly "He had spelled my name correctly, which was unusual" and "You have a very lovely and unusual name" (or something like that- I read this in the Summer). Both of these things would apply to 'du Maurier'. So maybe she imagined herself in the role.

I can't believe it. I am hardly feeling tired at all. This is worrying, as I know tomorrow I am going to feel half-dead.

Random word for today:

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