I really hate the time period this book was set in. I hated how extremely feminine and helpless the women were supposed to be. I hated how emotional they were taught to be, how simple-minded, how manipulated they were, and how they were overall as females. I was practically grinding my teeth when Stephen was sitting in the "tea" party with the two her age. Whimpering lips and crying or screaming because they tea party isn't going your way? Especially when the conversation is not about you at all and there are bigger and more important issues going on? The girl just annoyed e in every possible way. She wanted to grow up an be a "good housewife", which, okay sure, it's nice to be a good wife, but to only want to sit and knit or being valued based on your abilities to do such? I know it's just how things were and that's just what happened at that period. I'm not some extreme, raging, feminist, but it sets me off.
I'm glad that Stephen's character wasn't forced to be as feminine and that her father let her do more of what she wanted. However, when she was asked to leave the family for her father's sake (which in my pinion was really just for the mother's), I was angry. Pride and honor take place over child? Way to be fucked up, society. Yeah, it happens, but it shouldn't. I don't even really understand how that conversation went and why Stephen was so willing. It was manipulative.
When she went into her dad's study and find's "Krafft Ebing's book", I knew it was Psychopathia Sexualis. How Stephen was supposed to be able to read and understand that book at her age only adds to how fictitious this book is. If the author read that book, wouldn't he know that Stephen wasn't strictly a lesbian? I obviously don't know what's in the book exactly, but if Stephen wasn't interested in being female, she probably didn't like them either-or at least the ones around her in a hyper feminized way. I wouldn't say she was a butch either, as she was more of a tomboy. I liked being a tomboy and I still like doing more manly things than female. I'll take hunting over knitting of cooking any day. I'd rather wear pants than a dress. I'd hate to have my hair done. I wouldn't want to go off in war and marry someone to start a family, but maybe as a man I actually would for my pride and self-interest. I don't feel like I would be a good mother, but maybe a better father, but this is all a different topic. I feel like she was officially diagnosed by her father without even getting to know her. Wouldn't someone at the time bring in doctors all the time to help their child? When she started talking about the bible, I kind of just drifted out. I don't know anything about the bible or it's contents, and I asked a Catholic friend to summarize the whole "marked" thing to me, but I still didn't understand it in the context of the reading. She didn't murder or lie to a god, so why was she marked? She could be marked with a curse, but then the religious reference wouldn't be necessary. Any religious references went over my head, so my understanding of the reading is probably much less than those of others.
I found it very important that when Stephen was having her breakdown while reading the books that she asked why nobody told her because she thought she was alone, when in fact, she wasn't. She at least found that there are others like her in some way or another, and that she wasn't the only cursed being in the span of existence. It's important that she's not alone. If she had moved to the city for work with the mindset that she was alone, it would have taken her much longer to figure out that there were those around her with similar experiences and feelings. She might not have ever realized it. She found Mary, and I'm not sure if I understood this right, but she also helped find Valerie by helping her find herself. She said "...you're the coming winter... 'you were Valerie Seymour's lion."
As for the analysis on the book itself, I understood maybe a fourth of it. It was a little unnecessarily over-academic and you had to think about every sentence to process it (but maybe I should stop reading these at midnight so I can actually think). The book is famed for being about a lesbian, which is incorrect, but in fact about an invert. I didn't completely understand what an invert was, even though we talked about it. We'll probably talk about it today though, which will help. There was less reading from the analysis than the book but I think I spent more time reading the analysis and it felt like it was longer. Some of the religious references were kind of explained, but they're still out of my knowledge. I liked that Stephen was given that she would at least be able to write and have some fame from her perspective given "what she was". It gave her at least that something. The analysis says that transsexual individuals weren't talked about until the 40's, but this would probably be a case of such.
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