Two Pursuits
Jun. 1st, 2021 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessThe Pursuit of Love episode 2/3
This felt even more frantic than the opening episode, as we covered years at a gallop, and there were some scenes where I really wasn’t sure what was going on. I may have sometimes got Davy and Merlin mixed up.
With Linda and Fanny grown up, and the latter quickly married after Linda, they and their families now had to deal with how they were the products of their upbringings (or abandonment in Fanny’s case.) Politics became even more important (the mid to late 1930s, don’t you know), with Linda reacting to Tony’s avarice and cordiality towards fascism by falling for a devastating communist. She had a point about the hypocrisy around how their infidelities were treated, but the women seemed to be mainly aghast at her abandonment of Moira (you might argue it was initially post-partum issues from the referring to Moira as ‘it’ and refusal to engage with her as a baby. Linda seemed to feel a little more like connecting with her later.) Like everyone, Linda wondered if she was the Bolter all over again, as Fanny identified with Moira as the one that Linda abandoned in her pursuit of love, never mind what she said.
Fanny might also have been jealous that Linda had a stint running a bookshop, while she, after the first rush of children, was seen as the staid one the family could turn to to talk to her more rebellious cousins. Not that they listened. She was also feeling trapped, not so much by her beloved husband’s obsessive compulsive tendencies, but the system, how ladies withdrew so the men could have interesting conversations over port, and Oxford still being mainly geared for celibate academic men. (I wondered what opportunities the war would afford her.)
Matthew and Sadie realised that it wasn’t just their adulterous divorcee daughter Linda who was a disappointment (not that they fully grasped that the problem might have been their upbringing.) Merlin’s response to Linda’s first divorce was interesting (it suggested fascination but not love) while his relations with animals continued to be ‘eccentric’/cause to phone the RSPCA.
And then there was the bit with the bearded Frenchman (the only characer not to get that scrawled introduction) who I thought Linda ought to have biffed with her case instead of following meekly, but then she is the type who is going to have an affair with him, and I’m way more like Fanny, who probably wouldn’t have used the case as a weapon, just wished she could.
Oh, and in that closing scene where she’d just woken up, Lily James did weirdly have a look of Dominic West about her face.
Episode 3/3
This was better than the previous episode, probably because it covered a more condensed period of time. We picked up where we left off: Fanny with a baby I didn’t remember having been born was worried sick that Linda hadn’t turned up in Chelsea as per her phone call.
About the first half of the episode was Fanny being angry about how her attempts to rescue Linda weren’t wanted, and Linda being selfish while claiming to love her. I would later wonder how Fanny was meant to have gained the insight she showed about what Linda really felt at this point, because she and Linda were so much on the outs. Linda transmuted her sexual attraction for attentive Fabrice into love, and with the approaching war that he was aware of, but she wasn’t, one wondered if he was really sincere in his declarations of love, and if they could have worked it out until he was 90 like Fanny later wanted to believe.
As if Frenchwomen of that class would gossip about the wicked Duke and his many mistresses in English.
Really, though, apart from his also being fascinated by Linda like Merlin, why was Davy in Paris too?
Fanny’s war didn’t go quite like I thought it would, but she angsted over being a sticker and whether she was fulfilled or not with her disappointing husband and the demands of motherhood. No opportunity to open up a bookshop for her.
We caught up with the flashforward, now knowing what Linda’s five months of happiness was. She’d got very patriotic for someone who reflexively loved abroad. Tony still being pro-Germany felt horrible, and Linda tried to justify her keeping her distance from poor Moira over the years. But she couldn’t really justify her being influenced by Tony as a result.
But then there was the sisterhood of pregnant women (I’d almost forgotten who Louisa was), with circumstances making most of the family come back together, including the Bolter (making both Linda and Fanny struggle with whether they were like her.) Alfred turned up, finally twigging to Fanny’s dissatisfaction, but the fact he was willing to stay with her in the linen closet suggested he was willing and able to take her as she was (up to a point). Though with all her children, it was clear that sex wasn’t their problem.
Until the voiceover about Linda clearly not meaning her comment about Fanny looking after Plom Plom, I wasn’t expecting Linda’s demise, even though I had clocked as much as Fanny had that she wasn’t meant to carry another child. I liked the honesty of Fanny admitting to perhaps loving Linda’s orphaned son (how romantic for both his actual parents to be dead, and how messed up that he was legally Christian’s son, when he hadn’t even appeared in the episode, and how much better for him to be brought up by Fanny) more than her kids. On the comment about hoping girls in the future wouldn’t have such limited options, I’m fairly sure that women had more options even then than those characters were admitting. As I haven’t read Mitford, I don’t know if she actually wrote it, but it felt like an on the nose comment from today. I also wished they’d been a little firmer about Fanny deciding to write Linda’s story and seeing her start to do it somehow. But I’m glad that we ended with her, having arrived with the older generation, instead of Merlin and the dog (don’t paint it, dude) or the house.
This felt even more frantic than the opening episode, as we covered years at a gallop, and there were some scenes where I really wasn’t sure what was going on. I may have sometimes got Davy and Merlin mixed up.
With Linda and Fanny grown up, and the latter quickly married after Linda, they and their families now had to deal with how they were the products of their upbringings (or abandonment in Fanny’s case.) Politics became even more important (the mid to late 1930s, don’t you know), with Linda reacting to Tony’s avarice and cordiality towards fascism by falling for a devastating communist. She had a point about the hypocrisy around how their infidelities were treated, but the women seemed to be mainly aghast at her abandonment of Moira (you might argue it was initially post-partum issues from the referring to Moira as ‘it’ and refusal to engage with her as a baby. Linda seemed to feel a little more like connecting with her later.) Like everyone, Linda wondered if she was the Bolter all over again, as Fanny identified with Moira as the one that Linda abandoned in her pursuit of love, never mind what she said.
Fanny might also have been jealous that Linda had a stint running a bookshop, while she, after the first rush of children, was seen as the staid one the family could turn to to talk to her more rebellious cousins. Not that they listened. She was also feeling trapped, not so much by her beloved husband’s obsessive compulsive tendencies, but the system, how ladies withdrew so the men could have interesting conversations over port, and Oxford still being mainly geared for celibate academic men. (I wondered what opportunities the war would afford her.)
Matthew and Sadie realised that it wasn’t just their adulterous divorcee daughter Linda who was a disappointment (not that they fully grasped that the problem might have been their upbringing.) Merlin’s response to Linda’s first divorce was interesting (it suggested fascination but not love) while his relations with animals continued to be ‘eccentric’/cause to phone the RSPCA.
And then there was the bit with the bearded Frenchman (the only characer not to get that scrawled introduction) who I thought Linda ought to have biffed with her case instead of following meekly, but then she is the type who is going to have an affair with him, and I’m way more like Fanny, who probably wouldn’t have used the case as a weapon, just wished she could.
Oh, and in that closing scene where she’d just woken up, Lily James did weirdly have a look of Dominic West about her face.
Episode 3/3
This was better than the previous episode, probably because it covered a more condensed period of time. We picked up where we left off: Fanny with a baby I didn’t remember having been born was worried sick that Linda hadn’t turned up in Chelsea as per her phone call.
About the first half of the episode was Fanny being angry about how her attempts to rescue Linda weren’t wanted, and Linda being selfish while claiming to love her. I would later wonder how Fanny was meant to have gained the insight she showed about what Linda really felt at this point, because she and Linda were so much on the outs. Linda transmuted her sexual attraction for attentive Fabrice into love, and with the approaching war that he was aware of, but she wasn’t, one wondered if he was really sincere in his declarations of love, and if they could have worked it out until he was 90 like Fanny later wanted to believe.
As if Frenchwomen of that class would gossip about the wicked Duke and his many mistresses in English.
Really, though, apart from his also being fascinated by Linda like Merlin, why was Davy in Paris too?
Fanny’s war didn’t go quite like I thought it would, but she angsted over being a sticker and whether she was fulfilled or not with her disappointing husband and the demands of motherhood. No opportunity to open up a bookshop for her.
We caught up with the flashforward, now knowing what Linda’s five months of happiness was. She’d got very patriotic for someone who reflexively loved abroad. Tony still being pro-Germany felt horrible, and Linda tried to justify her keeping her distance from poor Moira over the years. But she couldn’t really justify her being influenced by Tony as a result.
But then there was the sisterhood of pregnant women (I’d almost forgotten who Louisa was), with circumstances making most of the family come back together, including the Bolter (making both Linda and Fanny struggle with whether they were like her.) Alfred turned up, finally twigging to Fanny’s dissatisfaction, but the fact he was willing to stay with her in the linen closet suggested he was willing and able to take her as she was (up to a point). Though with all her children, it was clear that sex wasn’t their problem.
Until the voiceover about Linda clearly not meaning her comment about Fanny looking after Plom Plom, I wasn’t expecting Linda’s demise, even though I had clocked as much as Fanny had that she wasn’t meant to carry another child. I liked the honesty of Fanny admitting to perhaps loving Linda’s orphaned son (how romantic for both his actual parents to be dead, and how messed up that he was legally Christian’s son, when he hadn’t even appeared in the episode, and how much better for him to be brought up by Fanny) more than her kids. On the comment about hoping girls in the future wouldn’t have such limited options, I’m fairly sure that women had more options even then than those characters were admitting. As I haven’t read Mitford, I don’t know if she actually wrote it, but it felt like an on the nose comment from today. I also wished they’d been a little firmer about Fanny deciding to write Linda’s story and seeing her start to do it somehow. But I’m glad that we ended with her, having arrived with the older generation, instead of Merlin and the dog (don’t paint it, dude) or the house.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-09 08:12 pm (UTC)I wonder how many options women had at that time if they wanted to remain within that particular strata of society, and continue to be supported by their men.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-10 04:35 pm (UTC)It's hard to know, isn't it? The show sugests they're very limited in the examples they had, although you think there must have been exceptions (but they'd be very remarkable), and there was plenty of travelling and opportunities to interact with other classes in Spain and the US. The first world war happened too early for Fanny and Linda and the second too later