RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[spiralsheep]

What are you reading?

Murderbot community discussing the books and tv series at murderbotbookclub.

Comments

[drawnecromancy]

Ohhh, interesting !

I honestly have not read much of any literary criticism around Wuthering Heights, despite there being a whole "introduction and commentary" with the French translation I read. (Maybe I'll read it in english eventually, it was just that I found that translation for free in a book box). I honestly gave up on reading the "introduction and commentary" pretty much the moment the writer was like "she was SO YOUNG you WOULD NOT BELIEVE how YOUNG she was when writing this, SUCH A YOUNG GIRL" and that's like okay, she died when she was 28, but there's a chance she didn't write that book when she was literally 12. It felt very, uh... demeaning ! Even though I think it was meant as a compliment on how a young writer can write really good stuff, it felt a little bit like repackaged infantilization of women, so I didn't give more time to the literary analysis within.

I do think your approach is one I would vibe with more, lol.

[spiralsheep]

I mean, yes, they were young but they had been through a lot. They travelled to learn and to teach, which was a surprising amount of moving around for young women of their class and historical period. They would have met a wide variety of people in their father's parish, and making visits as teachers (to chaperone their students). And they read and had imaginations too.

[drawnecromancy]

Exactly ! So it's a bird weird to insist on how young she was, and while "jeune fille" is used slightly more widely in french than "young girl" is in english, I still believe that choice of word is very infantilizing.
So. Yeah