#hoy es putiviernes y tu cuerpo lo sabe

[lafcadiosadventures]

Madame Putiphar Groupread. Book Two, Chapter XXXII

This chapter has two main blocks, first we enter Debbie's mind and see the aftermath and damage of her husband's violent disappearance. We then return to the recurrent theatrical dialogue form.

[allusions to suicidal thoughts and self harm are discussed within]

{co-readers: @sainteverge + @counterwiddershins}

La Pucelle on a Battlement, Illustration for Shakespeare's Henry VI, By John Gilbert, Engraved by The Dalziel Brothers.

We begin right in Deborah’s room. The narration starts from a psychological close up shot of Debbie, so to speak. It then slowly moves apart from her (hand held camera maybe) to reveal through the narration that she is not alone at home. We learn this because we are told she is asking to be left alone as to avoid the empty consolations of strangers. Also, that someone begged her to accept the cares of a guard, but she refuses it:

“(...)to keep away any witness before whom she would have needed to make a spectacle of her pain(...)”

(tr. @sainteverge )

Making a spectacle of her pain, a guard, it all makes me think, given the context, of modes of punishment contemporary to Borel's wrting of the novel, such as future prisoners's expositions before being walked away to the different bagnes or urban jails, for example.

So her house is full of strangers, and there even is a guard in it. The palace’s men who had helped attack her husband are now inside her house. They have probably taken her to her room after she fainted, we don't know why they did this instead of leaving her on the street. The men also show no sign of wanting to leave, is she being detained by them in her own house? She definitely reads like a prisoner for the duration of the first half of the chapter. Borel is making explicit what he had only insinuated before, that any place is susceptible of becoming a cell if an aristocrat who willed it so (or their henchmen) is present.

We get as well, in this very short intro paragraph, the concept of kindness and consent being used by authorities to force into submission. The people who invaded her house and trapped her in it are also outwardly worried for her wellbeing and asking to accept care from one of the guards who maybe stabbed and fought and then took her husband away.  

But it appears that she is finally left alone reflecting on her situation, and her clear thoughts on how the world worked start to crumble.

But even if the men left, she still reads like a prisoner in anguish locked within four walls.

This is to me a novel of internal rebellions. When characters are alone acting aginst the powers that be, they cannot defeat them through actions, but they can win spiritually even if it costs them their lives.

The fiercefully religious Deborah (religion seems to be her rock and a political stance as well, in her social context it works for her as a tool for her to set boundaries in respect of her body autonomy that would be otherwise disregarded) starts to get angry at God, then at herself for getting angry at God. In her desperation she falls into self harm, but what she seeks through it, is freedom:

“(...) she struck her chest like a prisoner strikes the wall of his cell, to break it down and open a way out for her captive soul, revolted by the body that was forcing her to live.” *

(tr. by Cam)

Deborah had reflected about how the modern city is a prison in itself. The houses are boxes and corsets. But now even her own body has become a jail. Lorded by her brain, her body becomes an instrument of torture. The Night ofDeath that offered the Narrator sweet relief from mundane sufferings seems to suggest to Deborah that breaking her body would be a way to allow her soul to escape from the pain.

But she remembers her son, and her suicide attempts are aborted. She blames her son in a way for forcing her to stay alive.

She even wonders if it is fair for her son having given him a life he did not ask for, is existence such a valuable gift, she asks herself.

The next morning her bell rings, the narrator announces, revealing that this arduous process of self harm and suicidal thoughts that seemed eternal to the reader has lasted hours, reflecting the effect grieving and stress can have in a person. She is completely exhausted, but she makes the effort because she keeps the vain and irrational illusion that it might be Patrick (whom she thinks she saw die) saved from Death and free from his captors. The guards are gone, the strangers in her apartment as well. She opens the door and finds Fitz-Harris behind it. She tries to slam the door at him, he forces himself in because he wants to apologize to Patrick before leaving Paris, since he has been deported. Deborah thinks this is refined mockery on FH’s behalf, she thinks he was among the men who fought him the day before and killed him (this is when the theatrical mode section begins) FH reaction reveals that he hasn’t actually stabbed Patrick, Deborah sees that in his face because some attitudes cannot be faked. But she says F-H’s actions have lead to her husband’s death even if he hasn’t actually stabbed him.

F-H offers to help Deborah escape France, return to Ireland with him. If she doesn’t want to return to Ireland, he is willing to deprive himself for her sake. He sounds kind of flirty in a way that is completely out of place. Deborah refuses his offer because she hates him. She forbids him to approach her ever again. F-H, like Villepastour before him, calls her inhuman. I do believe there are echoes of Villepastour in F-H, he forces the door, attempts to flirt with her when she is in an extremely vulnerable position. The power imbalance is smaller here, but he is imposing his presence via physical strength, and now he attempts to manipulate her by calling her inhuman. He then reproaches her for not being as generous as Patrick was.

I never forgive, she replies. And like Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (ugh vag joke why) she complains that only because she is a woman she doesn’t strike him down with a sword. Since she is a woman, and men’s weapons are out of her domain, she can only use old people’s weapon’s: a curse. (i like how Borel here introduces the idea that the aspects of femininity that are forced on propper women are a form of invalidity. She is completely able, yet she is forced into a role of physical submission to men. she doesn’t know how to use a sword, when men of her age and social standing all do) F-H leaves, not without making her responsible of his death because of her hard and unforgiving nature. He claims his repentance is sincere,,,

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Annex:

*[I never forgot the part in The 3 Musketeers where an imprisoned Milady, chest rising and falling like waves crashing against a fortress, laments that her powerful, masculine (just transcribing here, not agreeing) brain is trapped inside the weak body of a woman. It’s interesting to compare this passage with Deborah’s situation. On the one hand, Deborah is more self destructive than Milady who dreams of freedom and vengeance, but on the other, Deborah is confined by feminity in a cultural, not essentialist/constitutive way. Finally, Dumas and Borel do an Imagery handshake at representing the body itself as a jail]:

“What hatred she distills! Motionless, with her burning and fixed glances, in her solitary apartment, how well the outbursts of passion which at times escape from the depths of her chest with her respiration, accompany the sound of the surf which rises, growls, roars, and breaks itself like an eternal and powerless despair against the rocks on which is built this dark and lofty castle! How many magnificent projects of vengeance she conceives by the light of the flashes which her tempestuous passion casts over her mind against Mme. Bonacieux, against Buckingham, but above all against D’Artagnan—projects lost in the distance of the future. Yes; but in order to avenge herself she must be free. And to be free, a prisoner has to pierce a wall, detach bars, cut through a floor—all undertakings which a patient and strong man may accomplish, but before which the feverish irritations of a woman must give way. Besides, to do all this, time is necessary—months, years; and she has ten or twelve days, as Lord de Winter, her fraternal and terrible jailer, has told her. And yet, if she were a man she would attempt all this, and perhaps might succeed; why, then, did heaven make the mistake of placing that manlike soul in that frail and delicate body?”

[from the project gutenberg translation]

we will see later on if women in Borel are also overwhelmed physically and physiologically if not mentally by the task of Escaping