Disclaimer: I don't own Phantom or Corpse Bride. Or a cream and white wedding dress.
We haven't had a look at Christine for a while, have we? That's odd, considering all the time I devoted to her early one. Why, practically all the chapters in the underground were hers! Well, here she is now, getting married in the morning. Or midday, or whichever you prefer.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two-
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a fat black stake in your heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
From Daddy, by Sylvia Plath
Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.
He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.
I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.
Long Distance, by Tony Harrison
(This chapter is dedicated to my own dad, whom I love more than anything else in this whole world, except my mum and my sister. I don't believe you should have to choose which one of your family members you love the most. Mind you, my parents are very different – in my mind, I probably got my determination from my mum, my touch-paper temper from my dad - Lucie got Mum's calmness in a potentially bad situation - and my pride from both of them. Those two have a lot to answer for. But I have my dad to thank particularly for helping me to fall in love with so much while I was growing up.)
Wishing you were somehow here again
The corset of the wedding dress was incredibly hard to move in, Christine had decided very quickly, soon after being virtually strapped into it earlier in the morning. And the skirt was much too large, a cream silk crinoline of nightmarish proportions, making it even harder to be seated. She walked and sat, when she could, in a tightly bound prison of silk and lace, and she hated it, passionately, determinedly.
Now she was sitting, breathing with rather more difficulty than she was used to, at a dressing table, while Cecile made the last arrangements to her hair, her fingers moving briskly through the soft strands with barely a tug or pull. Cecile had attended Madame Giry's charges since she was fifteen and Christine and Meg were sixteen, and all of them knew exactly how the early morning ritual of brushing and styling hair went.
Today, though, was different. Today Cecile was winding her hair into elaborate plaits, and pinning them carefully to the sides of her head. It was very odd indeed to see her face without it being framed by her hair, whether it was pinned lower down at the nape of her neck in a large bun, or free flowing as it had been for such a long time.
She had an odd wish that Cecile would cease her work and unpin her hair and let it flow out again. She wished that she could draw her locks down over her eyes and nose and mouth, enveloped in the sweet smell of herself. She wished that she could go to her wedding with more than a veil of lace to hide her face; so that she could hide from the whole world.
She listened idly to Cecile's talk as the maid deftly wove more of her hair, keeping up a reserved conversation with Meg and Carlotta, sitting on the other side of the room. Fortunately they didn't seem to expect her to join in, which left her free to look at herself in the mirror. It was a small mirror, one that did not affect Meg too much, so long as she didn't look in its direction. And it gave Christine the chance to look at herself properly for perhaps the first time since she had returned, since she had left.
She had to admit, it was not a particularly inspiring sight. Cecile had had to turn to powder and a little paint to restore the colour apparently completely lost since her sojourn in the Land of the Dead. Her skin had always been rather pale from her Swedish blood, but now it seemed so pale it was coloured with blue instead, the blue of blood beneath the skin. Her lips were pale too. She had tried pinching her cheeks once or twice to bring some colour back to her face – it would not do to arrive at her wedding day, of all days, looking like a freshly risen corpse…
That was in very poor taste.
She raised a hand to her face, to lightly touch her cheek. She was pleased that she could still feel her finger tip through the powder. Well, and why shouldn't she? Cecile had not needed that much powder, after all.
No, it was not that. She had not been worried about the powder. She admitted, if only to herself, that she was surprised that she had felt her finger at all.
She had not told the others how very cold she now felt, how cold she had begun to feel ever since she had woken up and had begun to live again. They had noticed how chill her skin had grown, of course, but that was only the surface of the whole terrible matter.
Why should I speak? she thought, as she idly traced the contour of her cheek. What they have had to suffer for me is far, far worse. I can't even begin to think of it. They are in pain, terrible pain, and it is all because of me. Everything is my fault. The least I can do is bear this with as much patience as they do.
So she had said nothing at all about her gradual loss of sense in her skin and her fingers, and other parts of her body as well. It wasn't painful at all, not like the freezing of snow or the pins and needles that came with lost circulation. She could still use her hands, certainly, with just as much dexterity as before, but…well, it made her cringe now to think of how she had pricked her finger on her needle yesterday, and had been fascinated to feel no pain, even morbidly squeezing her finger to let more blood ooze out, before she finally winced for the benefit of those around her. It was quite restful, in a way. The pain in her body had ceased, so that she might concentrate on the pain in her heart.
"Finished!" Cecile drew back her hands at last, and she focused again on her reflection to see that the maid really had done a good job. Cecile certainly didn't belong among dishes and pans! She had even worked a few tiny flowers into the plaits – silk ones, of course, but no less beautiful for their artificiality. She raised her hand further, to pat her hair, and the fact that she barely felt the strands only slightly curbed her pleasure.
I look…human.
"Thank you, Cecile. You've done a wonderful job."
"Come over here!" Meg called. "Let us see!" While she might tolerate the mirror's presence, she certainly wasn't going to cross the room to stand next to it; so Christine obliged by standing up and going to them, her skirts rustling gently about her as she went. The sunlight shone through the window, catching the shine of the dress spectacularly out of the corner of her eye. Even though she hated the outfit, and would gladly strip it off later, she knew that it flattered her to perfection. Genevieve had said so, when Raoul's sisters had stood in at the fittings earlier in the month, and the final donning of the dress. That had been more than half an hour ago, when the room had been filled with maids chattering happily, pulling tightly at her corset strings, so tightly that she could feel the pain very easily, and pulling her this way and that as Genevieve and Celandine and Madame Giry had looked on, with scrutinizing eyes. Now there was just Christine herself, and Cecile, and Meg and Carlotta, who were smiling at her from their chairs.
"Oh, Christine." Meg rose from her chair, and walked forward slowly, reaching out to take her hands. She looked at her carefully for a long, long time, inhaled, exhaled, and then leaned forward and kissed her softly on the cheek. She was glad that she could still feel that. "Oh Christine, you look so beautiful."
She would have said something else, but Carlotta was already easing herself up and out of her chair, clutching around her the shawl that she needed much more than Christine did. Slowly she stepped forward too, and she actually put her arms around her, hugging her close. Christine was shocked – she didn't need to be able to feel well to know just how thin Carlotta had grown in the last few days.
"Tan hermoso," the Spanish girl murmured, before drawing back. "You look like an angel."
Christine looked down at her hands, biting her lip, hoping no one would see. An angel she might look like, but an angel she most certainly did not feel.
"You've done wonders, Cecile," Meg was saying over her shoulder. "I've never seen Christine's hair look better!"
"Are you insinuating that my hair is anything less than perfect?" It was a deliberate jibe to draw her out, she knew, but she didn't care. It was good to laugh! It brought warmth back to her body and her soul.
But she didn't want to laugh for long. She wanted to think. She wanted to be alone, and she said as much. "But, please…I'd like to be left alone for a little while. You could go and see if Madame Giry and Genevieve and Celandine are ready."
She was met with three very blank stares.
Oh, for- it's not as if I'm going to leap out of the window as soon as the door is closed!
"Christine," Meg began, and then stopped. But she didn't need to speak; all of them could remember very well what had happened the last time she had gone off on her own.
"Please?" she asked again. "I do not think I will ever be alone again after this – may I please have some time alone?"
There was some tension, and then there was none. The other girls understood, as she had hoped.
When they were gone, Christine walked back to her dressing table, sat down once more – with some effort, again – and opened a drawer on the right of the piece of furniture.
She drew out the pictures.
Nobody knew about these – not even Meg, with whom she otherwise shared everything. Would they understand? Perhaps; perhaps not. They might think that it was touching for a girl to carry pictures of her dead parents with her wherever she went – but this was private. This was not for the eyes of the world. And the world would be shocked if it knew that the picture of her mother was there not for any remembrance on her part, but simply because it complimented her father's picture.
Why should I mourn a woman I never knew? she thought, as she opened the hinged frame and the painted faces of her parents stared back at her. I am grateful to her, but how can I love her? And I am tired of being made in her image.
She had hated it when she was younger, and people had always compared her to her dead and buried mother. She had her mother's eyes, her hair, her smile, her way of walking on her toes, apparently. Was there nothing that was hers, only hers, nothing that did not belong to the woman her father had fallen in love with? Even now, years later, when Madame Giry made such a remark – and often with good reason – it secretly made her flare with rejection of the very idea that she was her mother's replacement. Wickedly, she did not want to be her mother's daughter, not if it meant that she took the woman's place. So she looked only briefly upon the face of the woman who had given birth to her, and instead looked at the man, that picture cupped in her right hand.
Daddy. Oh, Daddy…
It was rare that she allowed herself to take out the picture and look upon the man she had loved more than the whole world and everything in it. She did not cry these days when she did it. She had cried all the tears that she could long, long ago, and the anguish of her soul had been a balm to the great wound rent in her heart and mind, when her father was ripped untimely from her. She had soaked her pillows each night until her tears had finally dried, though it had taken more than a year to do so, and during the day she had been a sad little waif indeed.
She had hardly known how to live, without her father. How could she have known? Brought up without a mother, looking to him for all the joy in her life, and he refusing to pass her fully into the hands of a nursemaid – who could wonder that they grew to love each other so very dearly? Their lives had revolved around each other. While they had friends, all that they had truly needed was each other, and nobody else. Few knew of it – the last thing that was needed was the knowledge that the Daaé heir was hysterical for months on end – but his loss had very nearly wrecked her life. After his death she had constantly looked for him whenever she did anything or went anywhere, only to remember that he would not be there and never would be again. The memory of him had haunted her like a ghost. She had had nightmares, she had sleepwalked, searching even in her dreams for the father she had loved and lost. It frightened her deeply now, to think how close she had come to losing her mind from grief.
Now, though, she also had learned to keep her memories of her father where they would not trouble her in waking or sleeping, and only let them come to her when it suited her, for her own safety and peace of mind…such as now. Six years had passed, and her grief was no longer as raw as it had been, nor were her memories as fervent, Truth be told, she went for weeks at a time without thinking of him. She stroked the picture idly, looking at her father's face once again. When had she last done this? It was too long ago. But then, memories of a dead parent surely had no place among the preparations of a wedding.
Well, now they did. Christine's thumb touched her father's painted cheek. She did not regard this picture as a true representation of her father; talking to it would bring no peace, not when she longed for the original all the time. But it gave her comfort, especially now. It was even rarer that she allowed herself to think about that night, the night when her father died – that was guaranteed to make her cry, if nothing else would, yet now she thought of it with a completely dry eye.
She had been old enough to understand why her father was dying, but young enough to still ask emotional, futile questions – Where are you going? Why are you leaving me? Why can you not stay? Nobody had had an answer to any of these questions; not the doctor, who had paid little attention to the slightly hysterical child while he had made efforts to make his patient comfortable and, since there was no question of recovery, let him die with less pain and a little more dignity; nor the normally stoic Madame Giry, who had been crying so much that she could not even speak but could still keep Christine back from the very edge of the bed; nor her father, coughing out his last breaths, his gurgling gasps accompanied by fresh gouts of blood.
That was when Christine Daaé had ceased to be a child and had become a woman, in the very worst way possible. Perhaps it was ironic that the very night that her father had died there had been a pain in her stomach, and she had wondered if she was dying and wished only to follow him. But the gouts of blood that came out of her were perfectly natural, to her secret disappointment, and would come every month from then on. She had tried to stop her tears as she stopped her bleeding, but there were times when she felt as if she could cry blood itself for her dead father.
Those days were well over. Today, she would be married – and her father, the one who had ensured that it would come about, the one who had given her such a glorious future, was not here to see it. She had told Meg that she had not been pleased that he had done it without truly asking her, but now she was never more grateful to him for it. If I never knew Raoul…if I never knew my friends…I would have been a much worse person.
And so she allowed herself to miss him, fully, whole-heartedly. She allowed herself to wish he was here again, if only for a little while. She wished that she could run to him, and he would pick her up and hug her, even though she was far too tall now to do what she had done as a little girl…though not that tall; her lack of height was supposedly yet another thing she had inherited from her mother. She wished that he could tell her that he would always be with her, in everything she said and did.
That could not be. To carry him with her all the time…was an agony. It would overwhelm her, and destroy her truly. The strength of the love between the two had been so dangerous that it had driven her near to distraction, to the sorrow and despair of Madame Giry and Meg. But in the end, she had survived. She had survived and now, here she was, ready to marry into the de Chagny family.
I miss you, Daddy. I miss you so much. I miss you every day, truly I do, but I don't allow myself to feel it. Is that foolish of me?
I wish that I could hear your voice again, but I know that I never will. I wish that I could see you again, but that will never happen until…until…
She put the picture frame down, and looked up into the mirror, her eyes suddenly wide. She had never thought of it. All the time she had been there, and she had never thought of it. What if her father…? No, no. He wouldn't be down there. Not my daddy. He's in heaven, of course he's in heaven! He doesn't deserve to be down there…
What was she saying? None of the people she had met down there were bad people. Bonejangles was certainly coarse, but he hadn't seemed like a bad man, and Nadir and Ayesha were far better than many of the living people she had met. And Erik…
No. You promised yourself that you would not think about him. She had known, after her talk with Raoul, that it was the only safest course. She had to forget the world below, and the mysterious, marvellous one who had taken there. It was either that or go completely insane with her memories of him, and his music that had captured her heart…
Did I truly just think that?
But now she was thinking such things, her thoughts went on, uncontrollable. Daddy might have liked Erik; they both loved music, and they both loved…no! Daddy was nothing like Erik! She snapped the frames shut together, and pushed them back into the drawer, slamming it shut. Erik was…is…Erik. He was himself. He was entirely himself. Nobody will ever be like my father. No one will ever be like Erik. No one will ever be to me what he was. Not even Raoul. Thank goodness.
She leaned her head on her hand, still staring at herself. She truly did wish that her father was here, now. He would know what to do. He would know how to help them all. He would know how to cure them. He would help her to sort out these confused feelings.
I wish that you could forgive me, for all the things that I have done, for all the lies that I have told. But can you forgive me? Can a father forgive his daughter anything she has done? Anything at all?
She had deceived. She had conspired. She had lied, to others as well as to herself. And she had done the most terrible, awful thing that was possible. And yet she did not want a priest to confess to, not because she felt no guilt for what she had done, but because she would never be able to gain forgiveness.
It was not Raoul who had made her want to live again. That was one of her many lies. It had been Erik. It had been Erik who gave her a voice once more, Erik who had given her passion once more, after her calm, quiet, ordered life; Erik who had made her heart beat faster, whether in fear or something else; it was Erik who had loved her enough – why was that? Why? – to defy laws unquestionable to claim her.
And in leaving him behind in that dark, dank lair underground, she had done something far, far worse, far more cruel and cold and wicked, than anything he had ever done, in life or after it.
Give me strength, Daddy. Give me the strength I need to live.
A gasp made her look up. Madame Giry was standing in the door way, her usual black abandoned for dove grey silk striped with a darker grey, her hand upon her heart as she stared.
"Madame Giry." She stood up, presenting a full view of herself for her guardian, letting a smile come to her face.
"Oh, my dear child." Madame Giry hurried forward, reaching out her hands to cup Christine's face. "Oh, oh, my dear." There was a shine at the corners of her eyes. "I didn't want to say earlier, but…oh, you look so beautiful. Your mother and father would be so proud of you now. Your mother especially."
"Really?" She had to work hard not to set her teeth.
"Yes, she would." Madame Giry smiled softly, to her surprise. "You think I do not notice when you hide your mortification when you are compared to your mother? I know you, Christine Daaé. And, like it or not, the people who knew and loved your mother will always see her in you. But not just her outward beauty, Christine." The older woman stroked her cheek. "You have your mother's courage, her grace, her boldness. You may think that you never knew her, but you knew her well enough for her love to touch you."
There was definitely water brimming at the corners of her eyes now. "I knew that I would cry. My mother cried all day on my wedding day, and I cried on your mother's wedding day. The happiest day of your life, and yet everyone is in tears. Where is the sense in that?"
"Madame Giry," she whispered, and then she leaned forward and put her arms around her guardian of six years. "Thank you, so much. Thank you for being as good as a mother to me. I love you, and I will sorely miss you."
"Christine, I-"
But whatever Madame Giry had to say was interrupted, as at that moment more rustling, clucking shapes came through the door. Genevieve and Celandine, dressed in all their glory, had come to behold the completed bride, and were very pleased with what they saw indeed, making her turn this way and way, touching her hair and noting with approval the good job Cecile had done. Meg and Carlotta had followed, clad in the finished finery of bridesmaids, with Meg carefully guiding Carlotta back to the arm chairs.
Christine managed to escape from her future sisters-in-law, who had engaged Madame Giry in conversation about her own wedding day and what she had worn, and walked quickly over to where Meg was now helping Carlotta to sit down.
Meg looked up quickly. "Christine? Did Mother have a chance to speak to you?"
"Yes." Christine idly stroked her lace cuff. Despite their closeness, she did not really wish to speak about had been, essentially, a farewell.
"Did she ask about your condition?"
What? She stared at Meg, as did Carlotta. "Meg, how does…you told her?!"
"Yes," Meg said bluntly, tucking Carlotta's shawl about her more firmly. "I told her about all of us, and everything that had happened." Carlotta squirmed under her gentle fingers.
"You can stop that, Meg. I am not quite an invalid yet. And why did you tell your mother, of all people?"
Meg pouted, as she drew back in offence, her dress murmuring, reflecting her annoyance. "You make it sound as if Mama is stupid. She isn't. She knows what to say and when to say it. And she knows lots of things." She looked over at where Madame Giry was talking to the two sisters, her face lively and animated and her head inclined in the charming way she did so well; when Meg turned her own face back again, it was filled with purpose. "She knows something very important, Christine. She told me the morning after you came back, and we've decided that you should know, now, while there's still time."
Christine was caught by the urgency of Meg's voice, and leaned closer so that she should not miss one word. Something important? About what? "About…about Erik?" She hardly dared name him here, in her own bedroom, only an hour or so before her wedding.
"Yes!" Meg leaned forward as well. "Mama knows who he was when he was alive, and why he died; she said that he was hunted down and killed not far from here." The news was not as much a surprise to her as she had expected, though it was considerably calmer than Bonejangles' gruesome song, but it still shook her to know that someone, someone she knew at that, knew who Erik had been in life. Meg went on, ignoring her apparent lack of surprise. "The story Buquet told us, you remember? Well, it was true. It was all true. Erik is the ghost in the woods. And Mama knows who killed him as well, or at least who ordered him dead."
Meg drew breath to speak more, but the chatter in the room was interrupted by Cecile's voice from the doorway. "Excuse me, ladies?"
Christine and Meg, distracted, turned to see, of all things, Cecile walking slowly into the room, carrying a loaded tray with no less than six glasses upon it, all seemingly full, and a wine bottle as well. The maid peeped anxiously over the top of her load, as the bottle wobbled slightly.
Christine decided to take the initiative – after, Cecile was her maid. "Cecile, what is this?"
"A gift from the men of the house, mademoiselle" Cecile said quickly, stepping forward. "The Comtes' and the Vicomte were toasting the wedding to come, and they thought that the ladies should have a chance to do so as well." She held out the tray. Now Christine could see that at least three of the glasses were stamped with respective seals of the main titles of the family currently residing in the house, as well as three other plainly but intricately carved ones. All of them were filled with red wine.
"Red?" asked Genevieve, who had bustled up as well, and was staring at the glasses with some confusion. "He expects us to toast with red wine?"
"Yes, Madame," Cecile said quietly, bowing her head. "The Comte Philippe the Elder said that there would be enough champagne at the wedding lunch without having it before hand."
Drinking the toast was more difficult than Christine had anticipated. For a start each glass appeared to be intended for a specific hand. Christine received, as the Vicomte's bride-to-be, the glass with the de Chagny crest upon it; Genevieve's glass had the du Cahrbourg crest, and Celandine the crest of the du Barry. Carlotta, Madame Giry and Meg, not seen as members of any particular family, made do with plain glasses. Even then Meg made a great fuss about Christine spilling so much as a drop of wine upon her flawless, hated dress, so she drank much of the toast with Meg holding her handkerchief under her hand and chin.
She felt like such a child. She felt so lonely, and helpless, and afraid. Would Meg have a chance to tell her what she wanted to know? She doubted that they would have time alone again together enough for that. She wanted, so desperately, to know.
I want to know why you died, Erik.
Carlotta had already drained her glass, and when she looked pleadingly at her, she broke with decorum and passed over her own barely touched glass as well, not fearing the disapproval of the elder women since they were busy making the final adjustments to her wedding veil. Or at least, Genevieve and Madame Giry were. Celandine, she saw to her surprise, had drained her own glass as well, and had now sat heavily down in one of the armchairs, staring into the empty fireplace.
"Don't drink too much," she murmured, as Carlotta tipped the glass back, drinking thirstily. "You'll get drunk at this rate."
"I doubt it," Carlotta replied softly. "And even if I do, I cannot attend the wedding lunch in any case, so I might as well enjoy myself now."
That stung Christine. It was her fault that Carlotta had to resort to drinking large amounts of wine to get any nourishment. It was her fault that Meg never looked towards that area of the room where her mirror was. It was her fault that Raoul had probably winced in agony even as he had lifted his glass, nervously hoping the dye in his hair hadn't already worn off.
And it was her fault that Erik might well hate her now…hate her enough to kill her, and all those she loved.
Now I'm just being silly. Erik would never hurt me. Never. He can't get to me. He is dead, and I am alive. He cannot ever reach me again.
She was startled by the dull feel of something being placed upon her head, and a cascade of lace falling down in front of her eyes. Celandine stepped into her muffled view, smiling gently, her face tired but full of warmth. "They had finished it, and I asked that I be the one to put it on." And if Christine had been startled before, it was nothing now when Celandine, who had always been so distant even when she was a child, who had hardly spoken two words to her since she had first come, threw her arms around her and hugged her tight.
"I know I have not been as I was, Christine. I hope that might change." Celandine drew back and her eyes, from what Christine could see through the veil, were shining brightly. "You're a good and kind and brave woman, Christine. I'm proud that you're my sister."
And Christine bent her head, confident that the veil would shield her face from anyone seeing, when all she wanted to do was weep her heart out. She wanted to sink down upon the floor, and pull all the finery that she didn't deserve off, and cry until she could cry no more.
I want…I want my daddy. I want him so much.
I want to say sorry. I'm sorry for all that I've done, all the terrible things I've done. I'm a wicked person. I don't deserve to be happy. I don't even deserve to live.
But she could not think like this. She did deserve to live, for Raoul, and for Meg, and for everyone that she loved. She had to live for herself, so that she might atone for what she had done.
She took the lace gloves that Genevieve held out to her. Meg already held her bouquet, ready to carry down the aisle, and as she finished slipping on the gloves she handed it to her. To her surprise, Meg winked; she could only hope that this meant she would tell Christine what she wanted to know later.
Christine looked around at the women who surrounded her. Meg, Carlotta, Cecile, Madame Giry, Genevieve, Celandine. Bold, proud, timid, wise, arrogant, loving, weak, faithful, determined, ignorant, aware; each one urging her to live in their own way.
This is my time now.
She sighed softly, now thinking of that painted face in the drawer, the blue eyes still shining at her. Help me too, Daddy.
Help me to say goodbye.
My, Christine isn't too friendly towards her mum, is she? Then again, looking like your dead mum isn't exactly great in fiction. I mean, it might cause your dad to fall in love with you when you grow up because of some stupid promise he made his wife on her death bed about only marrying somebody as beautiful as her, and wanting to marry you, and you running away after you've gotten a few really pretty dresses and a cloak of furs or skins out of the deal, and hiding in a prince's palace to hide from your incestuous dad; and I really read too many fairy stories, don't I?
Anyway, I think this is the good place to have a little rant about parents in stories – most specifically, in epics, or epic films. Think of all the times a young man has been brought up by foster parents in the wilderness and has had his true destiny revealed to him i.e. something like a mysterious stranger coming along and saying, "Oh, yes, your father was so-and-so. He was this and this and this. The bee's knees, is what I'm trying to imply here. Here's his really big sword, which he was obviously compensating for something with. He even gave it a name! Now go and avenge his death, or defeat a dark lord, or whatever floats your boat." All well and good so far. But has anyone heard of this situation when the boy asks, "What about my mother? You know – my mother? The woman who carried me in her womb for nine months? The woman who pushed me out between her legs, both of us screaming all the way? Did she die giving birth to me, or open a hairdresser's, or what?"
Let's take a rather famous example. Luke Skywalker gets a big revelation about his father in A New Hope, even though his reaction to the even bigger paternal revelation in The Empire Strikes Back will be far more entertaining. Coming to you live from Ben's rock house:
Ben (or Obi Wan, whatever suits you): Your father wasn't a space pilot after all; he was a Jedi knight who went about the galaxy keeping the peace and generally being groovy. Well, right up until he got squelched by Darth Vader, who killed anyone who was daft enough to turn their backs on a guy dressed all in black with an asthmatic mouth-guard.
Luke: Wow. Hey, watch me cut dust motes with my father's spiffy light sabre!
And that, as far as I know, is it. Luke doesn't even begin to wonder about his mum (at least on screen) until Return of the Jedi, and that's only because he's found out that he and Leia are twins and Vader's their father, and they need to share the love. (And if I've just ruined all three films for you then I'm sorry, but it's something you should automatically know anyway. Like E.T. wants to phone home, Jaws gets accompanied by dramatic chords whenever he munches someone into chum - which I should think puts him off a bit - Psycho has a rather nasty shower scene that put the actress involved off showers and chocolate sauce for life, and The Lord of the Rings is chockfull of really beautiful people with pointy ears or really short people with pointy ears and big hairy feet. Those films were good, but too many people had pointy ears!)
The point of all this – there's a point? Oh, goody – is that children often seem to be closer to the parent of their gender in stories, even if they've never met them. Is it automatic, do you think? Do you think people who make up stories think that children gravitate to their mother or father, depending on what gender they are?
Maybe not. But human nature is a funny thing. Perhaps the child is more likely to imprint upon the parent who will teach it what it needs to live. Plus in the old days boys were more thank likely to inherit their father's title, or business or whatever, and so have to live up to their expectations, while the girls learn spinning and household affairs from their mothers – if they're not rich enough to get handed to a nanny straight away.
But I really think it's a good thing when a child had a good relationship with both its parents, not just its mother or its father. This is partly why I love A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett so much. Even though Sara gets potentially spoiled by her dad, they love each other so much its beautiful. Come on, everyone, give both your parents a big hug! (Unless you don't want to, which is entirely up to you.)
Incidentally, despite the fact I have little to no idea on how weddings work, having only been to about one in my life and never having been a bride's maid (and I'm not bitter about that at all, by the way), I do know that only brides are supposed to wear the veils across their faces, and not if you're taking your First Communion. Which is just as well, since if there was a row of little girls dressed up in white dresses and lacey gloves and with veils across their faces…a little too like The Handmaid's Tale.
A note on crinolines; since, as I've said before, this is in the late 1860s, crinoline's would have been all the rage at this point – big iron cages to hold the skirts out, so ladies often looked like walking circus tents. However, by the 1870s crinolines were out, and great big bustles that made your bottom look like it was about to burst were the big fashion. They had some very strange ideas in the 19th century. I've considered that our girls would probably all be wearing crinolines, and so wouldn't be able to move around very easily, let alone go riding or kneel on the carpet vomiting their guts out – and then I decided to ignore it, since this is a story, and it doesn't necessarily have to make sense. (Says she who turned Erik into a zombie – a hot zombie, but a zombie nonetheless.)
And also, Sylvia Plath's poem doesn't really reflect Christine's feelings towards her father- it's just symbolic of a final farewell to her childhood, and perhaps an attempt to say a special goodbye to someone else, too. Mind you, I find it hard to trust the point of view of someone who eventually stuck her head in a gas oven anyway.
I'm getting excited. The next chapter will be a long one, and I've been waiting to write it for nearly two years now. So, I will leave you all in anticipation.
Review, please! The tension is mounting for the half-Irish seamstress!
