PoL is a book that does try something almost nothing else does, writing about a MF relationship in Platonic terms. And it was 1938. Heck, even in 1981 this book was a revelation -- bi people!
All of her contemporary novels have something wrong with them. (Except The Charioteer.)
And yes, she got a lot better and she was learning how to write novels when she wrote this one.
But I think she deserves credit for even attempting to examine the question of who is the lover and who is the beloved in a male-female couple, in 1938. Nobody else was even interested in the question. Maybe nobody is now, because they're sure not writing about it. Maybe I am the only other person in the world who ever thought about this? I've been thinking about it a lot recently because it's thematic for _Thessaly_.
(They'd have been able to cure the TB before it killed him. If they survived WWII.)
no subject
All of her contemporary novels have something wrong with them. (Except The Charioteer.)
And yes, she got a lot better and she was learning how to write novels when she wrote this one.
But I think she deserves credit for even attempting to examine the question of who is the lover and who is the beloved in a male-female couple, in 1938. Nobody else was even interested in the question. Maybe nobody is now, because they're sure not writing about it. Maybe I am the only other person in the world who ever thought about this? I've been thinking about it a lot recently because it's thematic for _Thessaly_.
(They'd have been able to cure the TB before it killed him. If they survived WWII.)