Female protagonists

I figure I should set the pen in motion again, this time not only just to avert a fungi attack on my mental faculties, but also an internal pandemic of unhealthy perfectionism. In other words, I have to loosen the braid of the rope which governs the creation of each blog post (coming up with this statement alone had cost me a span of five minutes, during which I held an internal debate, oscillating between decisions to use a pot of stew or a rope as a metaphor for what I wish to express. I decided on the latter) in order for myself to remain accountable to this blog, and the beings on Earth and galaxies beyond which may be interested in it. And in simpler, more unrefined terms yet, I have to stop being a chicken when it comes to creation, both for myself and for other people -and I'm only working in prose now, no visuals. So it's supposed to be a breeze, so I'm supposed to be able to make peace with the plain text I'm offering to you. Which today would begin with...

The Life and Times of Female Protagonists in Film and Literature

Or, the lace-shrouded, bonbon-wrapped interactions they have had with the author-in-question, including conversations held over cold English tea and Madeleines, in between recitations of French poetry and Valentine's Day cards, garlanding of flowers and making sculptures of scented wax; how she identifies and empathizes with them, marvels at the antics of teenage girlhood in different eras and places all around the globe, and muses about her own reactions had she been clothed in corsets and late Victorian-era dress and sent to a certain mystical geographical landmark or had she a wealthy benefactress to fund her education and enrich her travel experiences, like some of the characters have. 

1. Isabel Archer, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

She will have no pictorial representation, because not a single one (covers of various editions of the novel, portrayals in movies, interpretations done up by artists scattered around the Internet) to be found fulfills my vision of her; and if I can venture further to make the selfish assertion, does sufficient justice to her portraiture. It is a selfish declaration, one that is tipped with the poison of literary hypocrisy as deadly as belladonna, because I'm giving myself a deliberate break from my personal policy, and probably also the policy held by most if not all the people who have literary indulgences, which holds that there is no set interpretation of any piece of art, because the character-in-question stares out from the novel at me with a conviction and definite quality that can only be conveyed through ones reflection in the surface of a lake, or a piece of self-portraiture, or one done by someone who loves you, who seeks to comprehend you. I have overstepped my authority as a reader, because not only have I kidnapped the character-in-question on the pretext of a laughably commonplace occurrence of having established an immediate connection with her upon our acquaintance, I am also attempting to dictate other readers' response towards her -a crime as a literary student, a double penalty as one who respects, at the utmost, the liberty of an artist. 

In any case, Henry James, in his characteristic florid writing style which spares no detail and deals with things from under wraps, rolled out each shade and gradient of color of Isabel's character with majesty. (He writes of the highly 'original' beauty who, at the core of her remarkable worldview, values her independence over everything else, "She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movements of her own soul and the agitations of the world.") But this post isn't a review of James' writing style, and I guess I should try and provide a decoding of why the bells of resonation were struck so audibly when I met Isabel. Perhaps to tell you that both her overt actions and internal landscape, others outward perception and inward sentiment towards her completely correspond with that of my own is my best explanation. But because one doesn't usually claim a "beautiful, intelligent and independent" (as quoted from the blurb) female protagonist to be ones alter ego (and because I know for a fact that I fall short of Isabel of her many traits, most notably her sharpness when interacting with others), I only have the capacity to assert that her "lava of existence" (refer to my first post) is not dissimilar to my own. 

For that reason, she remains faceless in this blog post, only unveiling herself to me and her creator, Henry James.

The following characters do have faces though:

2. Victoria Winters (played by Bella Heathcote♥) and Carolyn Stoddard (played by Chloe Moretz♥), Dark Shadows by Tim Burton

Film stills

My attraction to Victoria Winters began the very instant she was introduced in the film; the alacrity and quiet smile with which she pronounced her newly assembled name, the flame of mystery she spoked in the hippie van from which she hitched a ride and her trek towards the monumental dwelling of the Collins in her neat and quaint uniform rustling vaguely of the 70's. Her slightly airy, ethereal quality was rekindled and intensified at certain points of the film -where we witness her interactions with the ghost of Josette du Pres, for instance -the context of her very beginning was also reminiscent of another proclaimed novel of Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, which too speaks of a governess, except that Winters was better able to accommodate the vast, ornamented interior of the Gothic architectural fixture she was situated in, as compared to the governess in Henry James' tale who internalized her bewilderingly romantic situation and haunting beauty of her surroundings and companions to the point where her sanity was threatened. 

I think Carolyn is really a more intense version of anyone who is thick in the teenage girlhood experience, in the sense she is so brutally honest about it -and she is probably also an encapsulation of all the brooding and angst that bleeds out of our hearts during this phase. I mean, how many of us have not built a fortress out of our room in defense of everything else that lies outside, drenched it with references to popular culture, and danced to ourselves against a backdrop of strange, hypnotic music blaring out of a gramophone? But what gives her poignant Riot Girl character an individualized edge is the juxtaposition of her external landscape with her internal. The enemy she is pitted against is of a literally much more daunting scale than compared to ours -the four walls keeping her from eloping to New York and with Alice Cooper are those belonging to the Gothic tradition, her room is her defense mechanism against and escapade from a surrounding steeped in excessive aesthetics and tradition but one which is fertile ground for romantic adventures. Then again, this would all feel very familiar to a teenager trapped in suburbia -it shows that the rebellion unique to teenage girlhood can resist even Goth architecture, and that the werewolf Carolyn turns out to be lives within all of us.

3. Miranda St Clare (played by Anne Louise Lambert), Picnic at Hanging Rock by Peter Weir

Film still

"I know that Miranda is a Botticelli angel." 

How else can one respond to a film which revolves around a geographical presence symbolizing the epitome of Nature's mystery -its elixir of life, with a flock of girls in their budding teenage years donned in the delicate fabric and elaborate silhouettes of late Victorian-era dress under the guardianship of an isolated educational institution as its main players, and a yet stronger soundscape simmering with the excitement of a St. Valentine's celebration, sexual repression and flute-playing, other than to be shaken thoroughly to ones hearts core at the end of it, trembling with the terrifying beauty of it all? Relenting myself to the annoying tendency of a 21st century viewer to re-imagine the movie in the light of contemporary times, I would have liked the same Victorian dresses -corsets intact, but this time knee-length. But in the modern Digital and Information Age, I think it would be close to impossible to re-enact the effect which the girls' disappearance gripped the local neighborhood and their school -the effect which was like the permeation of slow poison and the viscosity of honey, the suspense accentuated by the sensual pace with which everything unraveled. 

4. Cecelia Lisbon (played by Hanna R. Hall), The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola

Film Stills of Cecelia's room

Cecelia was the youngest of the Lisbon sisters -the sister who documented her life in a rainbow-emblazoned journal, the sister who an had exceptional Virgin Mary presence in her life, the sister who was the first to go.

We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.