Blood, love and rhetoric...

[fajrdrako]

auriaephiala sent me a link to this essay, quite rightly thinking I'd find it interesting.

And now I'm pondering the question of 'blood' and whether I think she's right. Or whether Stoppard is right. My first thought was 'no', certainly in the way she defines 'blood' - i.e., that blood=conflict, and without conflict you don't have a story. But my first reading of 'blood' was of physicality, visceral feelings, instincts. Different slant entirely.

I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory — they’re all blood, you see.

So can I think of stories, good stories, that have love and rhetoric without the blood? Jane Eyre? No, the first Mrs Rochester had to die before Jane and Mr Rochester could resolve their love. The Game of Kings? Sure, there's lots of blood, there's a war and duels and stabbings in the back, but I was thinking of that of peripheral - the story and its resolution are quite different - but then I remembered the scene with Richard in the clearing, which could never have happened if Lymond hadn't been physically shot and in extremis; and it was Lymond's stabbing of Janet Beaton (however incidental that may have been!) that set everything into motion in the first place. So. Yes. Blood.

And of course if you take 'blood' to include 'blood relationships', it's the core of the whole Lymond opus and the Nicholas books besides.

Is blood central to the Bujold novels? Blood-ties, yes, including that of clones. War and its connotations of killing is central to most of the Vorkosigan novels... Memory in particular, where the action of the story centres on the fact that Miles killed someone (even if his victim survived) and failed to reveal his full crime.

And if you follow the train of thought, that blood, in the sense of our physicality, and blood in the sense of our bloodlines and families, and blood in the sense of our conflicts and/or our fear of conflict and of death... If blood is identity, then all stories are about blood.

I think this may be an elegant restating of the idea that all stories are about sex and death. "Blood" covers both categories rather nicely.

But I think all stories are about identity.

Comments

[gillo]

SPIKE: You're *not* friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love till it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other till it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends. (points at his temple) Love isn't brains, children, it's blood... (clasps his chest) blood screaming inside you to work its will. *I* may be love's bitch, but at least *I'm* man enough to admit it.

That's from his one S3 appearance, in

Lovers' Walk

.

Rather later than you've reached, he says:

SPIKE: Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's what keeps you going, makes you warm, makes you hard, makes you other than dead. 'Course it's her blood.

There's always a Buffy connection, just as all roads lead to DD.

As for Miles, surely his physical weaknesses, deformity and vulnerability are "in the blood"?

I think you could possibly argue that

Pride and Prejudice

has love and rhetoric without the blood, mind you. Much as I adore Austen I have to admit she wasn't so big on the bloodthirstiness.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

There's always a Buffy connection, just as all roads lead to DD.

I have the feeling I ought to be able to spring up with some beautiful Lymondesque quote about blood, but so far nothing has spring to mind.


As for Miles, surely his physical weaknesses, deformity and vulnerability are "in the blood"?

Not genetic, but... certainly a part of his physicality and there for his life, and therefore of course, his psychological make-up, and therefore his personality.

I think you could possibly argue that Pride and Prejudice has love and rhetoric without the blood, mind you.

Unless you think of romance and desire as being 'in the blood'.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

"Bloodless" is very much how I regard Austen. Passionless.

I'm more interested in death than sex. Sex is optional (indeed, it's something I long ago opted out from), life v. death isn't. Passion doesn't necessarily involve sex, and I think life without some kind of passion, intellectual or any other kind, would be pointless.

Blood: yes. "The blood is the life". I'm currently toying with ideas for vampire fiction myself.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

"Bloodless" is very much how I regard Austen. Passionless.

Oh, very much so. Her stories are all cerebral.

Any kind of passion is interesting to me in fiction. Maybe I shouldn't say that so unequivocally - there may be exceptions, but I can't think of any.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Oh, very much so. Her stories are all cerebral.

The word I would use is "commercial". Economic advantage is the underpinning for all the relationships in her books. Passion is "bad" or has bad consequences, e.g. Lydia, Mrs Price, the Crawfords. Prostitution is only slightly more up-front about the commercial basis for liaisons.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

She certainly focussed on the economic aspects of her society, and their implications. I can see (or guess at, or have been told) her reasons for doing so, but it isn't particularly interesting to me to read about.

[gillo]

The word I would use is "commercial". Economic advantage is the underpinning for all the relationships in her books. Passion is "bad" or has bad consequences, e.g. Lydia, Mrs Price, the Crawfords. Prostitution is only slightly more up-front about the commercial basis for liaisons.

Except that all her characters who marry solely for money do badly - Charlotte Lucas is shocking, for example, Mr Elton a mercenary scavenger, Isabella Thorpe a heartless trollop. Lydia is bad because she is heartless towards her family, Mary Crawford because she cannot understand how shocking Henry's behaviour is, Henry because he couldn't be bothered to wait to win Fanny round. Passion when it is wholly self-centred is bad; but the intensity of feeling her heroines have is real - look at the proposal scene in Emma, or the point when she thinks Knightley might care for Harriet.

Money is a factor, yes - as it is in most real-life entanglements. And Jane couldn't marry Rochester without it. Heathcliff becomes rich and his heirs settle to a comfortable contentment after his death. Austen is clear-eyed about teh importance of money in a relationship, but also very clear that while it is imprudent to marry without money, it is criminal to marry

for

it.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Except that all her characters who marry solely for money do badly

Yes, and I don't mind that. I really don't mind anything that happens - it's just that people marrying for money (whether they do well or badly) isn't a theme I much enjoy; at least, not as she presents it. Whether or not it's a real-life preoccupation, it's the way the author presents it that makes the difference. There are many real-life preoccupations in this world that I don't relate to very well.

If it's any consolation, I like Wuthering Heights infinitely less than any Austen novel.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

It's the classic 'romance novel' having-cake-and-eating-thereof: the narrative condemns blatant gold-digging, but marrying in a way that's disadvantageous is a disaster. It remonds me of that other classic romance genre piece of doublethink: the 'innocent temptress', which Fielding skewered so wonderfully in Shamela.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

narrative condemns blatant gold-digging, but marrying in a way that's disadvantageous is a disaster.

I'm not sure that this would be a problem for me if it were written in a more romantic, character-driven way. As it is given, I always get the feeling that the marry-for-money crowd are getting their way in the end, even while the author is scorning them.

Except in Persuasion.

[gillo]

Oh, very much so. Her stories are all cerebral.

I disagree. The sufferings of Anne Elliot are no less real for being understated. What Austen is concerned with, though, are the social repercussions of passion when it is allowed to rule heedless of the needs of others. Lydia is wrong not because she ran away with Wickham but because she did so in the full knowledge that it would destroy the chances of marriage of her sisters and ruin the happiness of her entire family. The letter she leaves for her friend in Brighton is a masterpiece of selfishness. The real passion is in the reactions of her family.

Sticking with P&P, what about Darcy's passion for Elizabeth, or her reactions as she realises she loves him just as she understands (she thinks) that all hope of him is gone? Or the intensity of her argument with Lady Catherine?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

The sufferings of Anne Elliot are no less real for being understated.

Well, Anne Elliot is my favourite Austen character and Persuasion by far my favourite book, so I won't argue with you there. And I like understatement, a lot. It's really just the Austen style I don't like, not that she understated but they way she did it - her values in both the craft of writing and in human psychology. I'm not saying it's something wrong with her, just that it isn't much to my taste - particularly not compared to the writers who really get my emotions tied up in their words.

I understand what you're saying, but you're addressing the plots of her books. My problems are entirely with her style and her ways of addressing her concerns - her use of viewpoint, her approach to themes. Her style of humour.

I like Darcy's passion for Elizabeth but it never moved me. I like the plot, but don't feel emotionally involved with any of the characters, even when I should be.

[gillo]

"Bloodless" is very much how I regard Austen. Passionless.

That's pretty much the stereotyped Charlotte Bronte view of her. I disagree - you only have to read the closing chapters of Persuasion to realise the real depth of passion there. She doesn't go for the sweeping romantic effects of the Brontes, of course, and she's always very conscious of the impact passion has on others - the families and friends tangled up in the mess caused by an elopement or a desertion. And she always has a profound moral purpose too, which adds impact to her irony.

I'm more interested in death than sex. Sex is optional (indeed, it's something I long ago opted out from), life v. death isn't.

For the individual, no. For the race, it kinda isn't!

Passion doesn't necessarily involve sex, and I think life without some kind of passion, intellectual or any other kind, would be pointless.

True. I don't quite see that it has to be overt and flamboyant, though.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much the stereotyped Charlotte Bronte view of her.

I don't rate Charlotte Brontë highly, either.
I love Hardy, and I love the Russian and French 19C novelists. And Thomas Mann and Joseph Roth.
I think Austen is extremely limited in vision.

For the individual, no. For the race, it kinda isn't!

You're also assuming there that the sex has to be heterosexual and involve breeding, to which the answer is again, not necessarily. And again, it isn't compulsory.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't rate Charlotte Brontë highly, either

While Jane Eyre is one of my favourite books.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much the stereotyped Charlotte Bronte view of her.

I like that dichotomy. I am, of course, a huge Charlotte Bronte fan - a classic example of the Other Side of the Coin. My feelings about Austen are mixed, but I find her way so clever, ironical and detached that I don't get into her books. I can appreciate their intelligence but they don't make me feel much. Except Pesuasion.

you only have to read the closing chapters of Persuasion to realise the real depth of passion there

No coincidence that Persuasion is my favourite Austen novel by far.

I don't quite see that it has to be overt and flamboyant, though.

In RL, no, it doesn't have to be. Even in fiction, nothing has to be anything - it's up to the creative focus of the author. But. I love, totally love, works of passion and high drama. (Opera. Comic books. Certain kinds of television drama.) Just can't get enough of the passionate stuff. I'm a bit of a fictional passion junkie.