Eh, I'm sure that anyone who spent their teenage years cheek-by-jowl in the midshipman's berth is well-schooled in the art of being absolutely silent. They'll manage.
Oo, I would have liked to have heard that talk at the Maritime Museum! And yes, that sounds legit -- more privacy, and more reason to associate in private, to boot.
We hear nothing about the last seven months of the Hotspur, beyond the incident of Bush showing up wasted at the Hornblowers' door, ecstatic that NO ONE got any prize money, and accidentally giving Maria reason to believe that Hornblower is keeping secrets from her. (Which she takes very well, being Maria.) So yes, you have ample room to work with there!
I suspect we're talking at cross purposes wrt the "Not Like Other Girls" trope. The heart of that trope is a willingness to throw other women under the bus in the quest for male approval. It's very much a male fantasy: the ideal woman is one who not only prefers to do "male" things that you like, thereby not annoying you with her icky female interests, but one who also repudiates alliances with women in the same stroke, cleaving to men like you for her social validation. So when Forester goes on about how "mannish" Barbara is, how well she fits herself into the male world of the Lydia, and how she likewise spends her time associating with men and not with women, that's the heart of the "Not Like Other Girls" trope. (Maria, in contrast, is considered repulsive in her loyalties to her sex: not only does she have her own domestic world in which Hornblower is superfluous, but she also maintains her relationship with her mother. As I recall, there's also a suspicion that she associates with other officers' wives while he's away at sea: again, she unforgivably draws strength from alliances with her gender. In Atropos, too, we see her in the company of other women.)
That Barbara eventually becomes a doting wife is actually just the logical extension of the "Not Like Other Girls" trope -- she gets all her validation from men, so of course she becomes the ideal wife, finding fulfillment in his child, in perfectly understanding and supporting his going off to war (even unto gifting him weapons to do so), in putting aside her life in Smallbridge to join him in his posting in Le Havre... Marie is similar: not a single female alliance in sight, getting all her approval from men, and taking up weapons to stand at Hornblower's side in battle, even dying for him. And of course both Barbara and Marie could give a fuck for the woman Hornblower already has at home: they get their social validation from men, not women.
Anyway, given that the heart of the trope is rejecting women and femininity in the quest for male approval, the remedy isn't to become more atypically mannish, but to forge alliances with women. Which is why I so badly want the Maria x Barbara story hinted at in A Ship of the Line. Maria shows every sign of forming an alliance with Barbara there, and the godmother relationship suggests that it might actually have come to fruit.
So, yes, I enjoy it when Barbara tells Hornblower to fuck off (as she does in Admiral, as she does at the end of Lord), but what I crave is her telling Hornblower to fuck off to the point of herself forging a bond with another woman.
...and that's the rant I wasn't going to make, sorry.
Anyway, back to cheerier topics: hurrah, more fic! *does the more fic dance*
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branchandroot
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Date: 2019-09-15 06:16 pm (UTC)Oo, I would have liked to have heard that talk at the Maritime Museum! And yes, that sounds legit -- more privacy, and more reason to associate in private, to boot.
We hear nothing about the last seven months of the Hotspur, beyond the incident of Bush showing up wasted at the Hornblowers' door, ecstatic that NO ONE got any prize money, and accidentally giving Maria reason to believe that Hornblower is keeping secrets from her. (Which she takes very well, being Maria.) So yes, you have ample room to work with there!
I suspect we're talking at cross purposes wrt the "Not Like Other Girls" trope. The heart of that trope is a willingness to throw other women under the bus in the quest for male approval. It's very much a male fantasy: the ideal woman is one who not only prefers to do "male" things that you like, thereby not annoying you with her icky female interests, but one who also repudiates alliances with women in the same stroke, cleaving to men like you for her social validation. So when Forester goes on about how "mannish" Barbara is, how well she fits herself into the male world of the Lydia, and how she likewise spends her time associating with men and not with women, that's the heart of the "Not Like Other Girls" trope. (Maria, in contrast, is considered repulsive in her loyalties to her sex: not only does she have her own domestic world in which Hornblower is superfluous, but she also maintains her relationship with her mother. As I recall, there's also a suspicion that she associates with other officers' wives while he's away at sea: again, she unforgivably draws strength from alliances with her gender. In Atropos, too, we see her in the company of other women.)
That Barbara eventually becomes a doting wife is actually just the logical extension of the "Not Like Other Girls" trope -- she gets all her validation from men, so of course she becomes the ideal wife, finding fulfillment in his child, in perfectly understanding and supporting his going off to war (even unto gifting him weapons to do so), in putting aside her life in Smallbridge to join him in his posting in Le Havre... Marie is similar: not a single female alliance in sight, getting all her approval from men, and taking up weapons to stand at Hornblower's side in battle, even dying for him. And of course both Barbara and Marie could give a fuck for the woman Hornblower already has at home: they get their social validation from men, not women.
Anyway, given that the heart of the trope is rejecting women and femininity in the quest for male approval, the remedy isn't to become more atypically mannish, but to forge alliances with women. Which is why I so badly want the Maria x Barbara story hinted at in A Ship of the Line. Maria shows every sign of forming an alliance with Barbara there, and the godmother relationship suggests that it might actually have come to fruit.
So, yes, I enjoy it when Barbara tells Hornblower to fuck off (as she does in Admiral, as she does at the end of Lord), but what I crave is her telling Hornblower to fuck off to the point of herself forging a bond with another woman.
...and that's the rant I wasn't going to make, sorry.
Anyway, back to cheerier topics: hurrah, more fic! *does the more fic dance*