Have you hugged your rapist today?
Oct. 30th, 2009 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieSpent most of the evening reading particularly horrifying passages of Ethel M. Dell's The Bars of Iron (a huge 1916 romantic bestseller) out loud to Mr. Mousie.
Bars features a most unfortunate heroine - an impoverished widow whose child has died, she attracts the love of a younger, gorgeous heir to a Baronetcy. Alas, when Avery and Piers marry, she finds out that Husband n.2 is the one who murdered Husband n.1.
Upon realization of said fact, Wife runs away back to husband's ancestral home to try to collect her wits, only for Husband n.2 break the door of her bedroom down, behave in such a manner that if I didn't know better, I would have assumed this was a horror novel about an abused woman locked in with an ax murderer, and cap the evening of fun and games by raping his pregnant wifey.
Did I mention he's the hero?
We are supposed to feel deeply for his pain as he feels so guilty for killing Husband n1 in a brawl and running away and then falling for a gal only to find out he made her a widow and he can't tell her the truth. The only emotion Husband n2 inspires in me, however, is a strong desire to brain him with a frying pan until his brains leak out his ears.
There is also a saintly dying child who murmurs religious platitudes. Because having a thirteen-year-old girl die painfully from tuberculosis is a good way to get Wife and Husband n.2 in the same house - you have got to be kidding me - I am supposed to care about romantic intrigue between a brainwashed weeping pot and a murdering rapist and not the poor dying child, wtf??? Did I mention that said child was sent to stay with Wifey by child's mother, Wifey's best friend, as a result of Wifey telling her about the rape because that would help them reconcile. Yeah, Mother of the Year she is, sending her teen daughter into a house with a murdering rapist. Awwww.
Also, Husband n.2 is very excited to go off to fight in WW1 and thinks it's the best thing to happen ever and will make men of everyone. I was very excited for him to go off too, because there was a chance he might get blown up or eaten by rats in the trenches.
Alas, no luck. At the end he comes back wounded and they reconcile. Happy end. Cue my barfing.
The only way I got through this is by mocking bits to Mr. Mousie who had to be repeatedly convinced that guy was the hero. We had an interesting discussion as to why those old-time lady novelists had a rape fixation (I shall never get that). I told him he was an awesome husband because he never raped or murdered anyone and he said I had interestingly low standards :P Not according to Ms. Dell.
I consider self taken in - this is the fourth novel of hers I read (I love trashy old books) and this is the first with rape. I thought I lucked out and found a trashy teen-twenties novelist who didn't have that, but no luck.
The prose, however, is so deliciously purple a whole new color palette should be invented for it.
Piers went like an automaton, but he could not utter a word. His mouth felt parched, his tongue powerless.
Avery! Avery! The woman he had wronged--the woman he worshipped so madly--for whom his whole being mental and physical craved desperately, yearning, unceasingly,--without whom he lived in a torture that was never dormant! Avery! Avery! Was she lying dead behind that lighted window? If so, if so, those six months of torment had been in vain. He would end his misery swiftly and finally before it turned his brain.
Maxwell Wyndham was guiding him towards the conservatory where a dim light shone. It was like an altar-flame in the darkness--that place where first their lips had met. The memory of that night went through him like a sword-thrust. Oh, Avery! Oh, Avery!
Bars features a most unfortunate heroine - an impoverished widow whose child has died, she attracts the love of a younger, gorgeous heir to a Baronetcy. Alas, when Avery and Piers marry, she finds out that Husband n.2 is the one who murdered Husband n.1.
Upon realization of said fact, Wife runs away back to husband's ancestral home to try to collect her wits, only for Husband n.2 break the door of her bedroom down, behave in such a manner that if I didn't know better, I would have assumed this was a horror novel about an abused woman locked in with an ax murderer, and cap the evening of fun and games by raping his pregnant wifey.
Did I mention he's the hero?
We are supposed to feel deeply for his pain as he feels so guilty for killing Husband n1 in a brawl and running away and then falling for a gal only to find out he made her a widow and he can't tell her the truth. The only emotion Husband n2 inspires in me, however, is a strong desire to brain him with a frying pan until his brains leak out his ears.
There is also a saintly dying child who murmurs religious platitudes. Because having a thirteen-year-old girl die painfully from tuberculosis is a good way to get Wife and Husband n.2 in the same house - you have got to be kidding me - I am supposed to care about romantic intrigue between a brainwashed weeping pot and a murdering rapist and not the poor dying child, wtf??? Did I mention that said child was sent to stay with Wifey by child's mother, Wifey's best friend, as a result of Wifey telling her about the rape because that would help them reconcile. Yeah, Mother of the Year she is, sending her teen daughter into a house with a murdering rapist. Awwww.
Also, Husband n.2 is very excited to go off to fight in WW1 and thinks it's the best thing to happen ever and will make men of everyone. I was very excited for him to go off too, because there was a chance he might get blown up or eaten by rats in the trenches.
Alas, no luck. At the end he comes back wounded and they reconcile. Happy end. Cue my barfing.
The only way I got through this is by mocking bits to Mr. Mousie who had to be repeatedly convinced that guy was the hero. We had an interesting discussion as to why those old-time lady novelists had a rape fixation (I shall never get that). I told him he was an awesome husband because he never raped or murdered anyone and he said I had interestingly low standards :P Not according to Ms. Dell.
I consider self taken in - this is the fourth novel of hers I read (I love trashy old books) and this is the first with rape. I thought I lucked out and found a trashy teen-twenties novelist who didn't have that, but no luck.
The prose, however, is so deliciously purple a whole new color palette should be invented for it.
Piers went like an automaton, but he could not utter a word. His mouth felt parched, his tongue powerless.
Avery! Avery! The woman he had wronged--the woman he worshipped so madly--for whom his whole being mental and physical craved desperately, yearning, unceasingly,--without whom he lived in a torture that was never dormant! Avery! Avery! Was she lying dead behind that lighted window? If so, if so, those six months of torment had been in vain. He would end his misery swiftly and finally before it turned his brain.
Maxwell Wyndham was guiding him towards the conservatory where a dim light shone. It was like an altar-flame in the darkness--that place where first their lips had met. The memory of that night went through him like a sword-thrust. Oh, Avery! Oh, Avery!
