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"The operation was a success but the patient died" is a hoary old joke though. O'Brian does love to poke fun at the doctors sometimes. I forget which book it is where Stephen and another doctor get seasick, but of course it can't be as simple as that so they are diagnosing and prescribing each other, and when the rough seas end decide all their cures worked at the same time while Jack and the other sailors just smirk knowingly.
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# ¿ Jun 17, 2018 02:50 |
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# ¿ Mar 28, 2024 17:15 |
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He doesn't hate the shirts, it's that he and Padeen JUST got done packing the sea trunk as tight and neat as could be with ropes and fancy knots, and were not going to open it again to put in some shirts. edit: However Stephen does remember his laudanum, and I'm sure if it had been left out they would have repacked the chest. Sax Solo fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Oct 7, 2018 |
# ¿ Oct 7, 2018 10:28 |
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MeatwadIsGod posted:since it's probably my favorite action sequence of the series (so far). Oh for me it's gotta be the Waakzaamheid.
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# ¿ Oct 7, 2018 18:18 |
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I don't know if I could pick a second favorite ship action. The one in the beginning of Post Captain where Jack is a passenger on an Indiaman and helps defend against a French privateer was good with an unusual, non-quarterdeck, POV. (This is the one where the Misses Lamb are posing as powder boys, but Jack doesn't recognize them and cusses them out.) My least favorite ship action is easily the Shannon/Chesapeake fight in Fortune of War. It's a boring battle in the first place, and there's a faint stink of national pride in the writing, too.
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# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 04:00 |
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Back when I started this last read-through I went looking for videos on youtube and found a couple decent ones: - Star of India - How to Sail a Full-Rigged Ship: Sørlandet I especially like the first video of the Star of India video about weighing anchor. I had no idea what was going on there.
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# ¿ Oct 25, 2018 01:05 |
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Martin's death is only in spirit, as he starts to bore and annoy Stephen, and Stephen starts to hate the living poo poo out of him. Martin fucks himself up so badly over Clarissa that Stephen has the pretext to just boot him out of the ship and his life completely.
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# ¿ Mar 14, 2019 01:27 |
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Genghis Cohen posted:I think this is a rather harsh interpretation! I exaggerated a little, but Stephen can be a harsh character. Stephen is blind to some aspects of himself and I think it's interesting to read the books with that in mind. For example at some point Stephen writes to Diana that a large part of Martin's downfall was that Jack did not like him, and the crew sensed this and never fully warmed up to him. Stephen says that in short Martin did not, "accomplish the feat of making a friend of his friend's close associate." Yet earlier, when Martin begs off a social event to avoid Clarissa: quote:There were some of the exactly-timed evolutions and manoeuvres they had seen far to the south, in Annamooka, and they were received with applause; but not with nearly such hearty applause as the much freer hula, danced with great skill, grace and enthusiasm by a number of young women. Later when Martin criticizes habitual drug use, Stephen actually goes kind of broke-brain about it: quote:'...Yet providing we do not die of thirst, I comfort myself with the thought that even this languid pace brings us nearly a hundred miles closer to my coca-leaves – a hundred miles closer to wallowing in some clear tepid stream, washing the ingrained salt from my person and chewing coca-leaves as I do so, joy.’
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# ¿ Mar 15, 2019 07:15 |
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I don't think Stephen ever quite understands Diana, like a naturalist doesn't exactly understand a wild animal, though he may want to admire it, keep it, and put his name on it. When it comes to who did what with whom, I wonder if Sophia ever did her revenge-affair on Jack and had like the first orgasm of her life.
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# ¿ Apr 25, 2019 07:05 |
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builds character posted:Wasnt there a local squire that Diana and maybe someone else introduced her to? I could have sworn its implied that she figures things out with him. Captain Apollo lol; he gave a splendid ball you know: TYA; Diana talking to a probably very uncomfortable-looking Stephen posted:'... Then I said, but in a tone I thought she would understand, that what she most urgently needed was a really kind, gentle and considerate lover to put her in tune and show her what all the talk and poetry and music and fine clothes were really about, and how it justified them all. A man like Captain Adeane, who danced with her at all the last Dorchester assemblies and who was so discreetly particular. Do you know him, my dear?’
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2019 14:00 |
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I wouldn't like it if the narrative was too neat and tidy; it really does help the feeling of verisimilitude. That said, it does acquire an edge of laziness in later books and fast-forwarding through sea battles (like with the Xebec full of gold in one of the last few books, iirc) is sad.
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# ¿ Jun 21, 2019 05:46 |
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That's beautiful, I wonder if the canvas like that on deck is what "rigged for church" looks like? I feel POB would be disappointed in the stern windows, no curving sweep of glowing light.
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# ¿ Jul 31, 2019 04:04 |
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the vile
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# ¿ Sep 7, 2019 04:58 |
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No, I think PlushCow has a really good eye and the overhead view is wrong. (e: or else now I have the brain sickness too.) The wheel is going right and the tiller goes right. Coincidentally, I was just reading in Cochrane: the Real Master and Commander, that the Speedy had a hand tiller, not a wheel -- in contradiction to Cochrane's own autobiography. You can see it in Geoff Hunt's painting of the Speedy, too: (Sophie is definitely written as having a wheel though.) Sax Solo fucked around with this message at 11:49 on Oct 8, 2019 |
# ¿ Oct 8, 2019 11:45 |
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Note that this question is discussed on the talk page for that Wikipedia entry. I think it's just a case of an overhead view of a spinning wheel being ambiguous, a la https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_Dancer Well unfortunately not everyone is right on the internet. I don't think it's ambiguous -- tricky and difficult but not ambiguous. However! Even if we ignore the wheel movement, the tiller/rudder is moving wrong because the image is supposed to be synchronized, but it's not. To see it.. I'll add port and starboard labels to the two views. I pray I do not gently caress it up: Now look at the movement of the two tillers. They are going (right left right left) in sync together on your screen, right? But that means they're not going (port starboard port starboard) together in those views. Therefore, wiki gif is wrong.
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# ¿ Oct 9, 2019 13:30 |
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Sophie is also especially sheltered and detached from reality, sort of by choice/temperament.
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# ¿ Nov 1, 2019 02:52 |
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PlushCow posted:Stephen felt his mouth widen involuntarily, his diaphragm contract, and his breath beginning to come in short thick pants. Even in narrator voice, it can't quite be called laughter.
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# ¿ Jan 21, 2020 02:18 |
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freebooter posted:What exactly is the deal with the child in India? I'm still wondering what was the deal with the child "bed companion" in Pulo Prabang in the Thirteen Gun Salute. edit: The most generous reading I can come up with is that it's part of a cover, and/or some kind of weird daughter attenuation training. Sax Solo fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Jan 22, 2020 |
# ¿ Jan 22, 2020 00:55 |
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Kylaer posted:I didn't pick up on her being described as a child, I thought she was an adult prostitute and it was just another example of what an oddball Maturin is (and maybe a bit of intentional misdirection on his part to make people misjudge him). Maturin may have referred to her as a child (although I don't remember him doing so) but he routinely does that to women who are adults. As for Dil, I think she is sort of an illustration of the problem Stephen is having with Diana. It's through her he decides to make a go of it, though it's not exactly looking like "this way to a happy ending".
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# ¿ Jan 22, 2020 09:51 |
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Nuclear War posted:He is not a nice person. having juat gone through the audiobooks up to 18, i genuinely dont like him much anymore. different times or no. Jack's a different matter Yeah Stephen becomes rather self-absorbed and complacent, and kinda drifts away from being in love with Jack. This could be more tolerable if we got equal time w/ Jack, but the books become more and more just what Stephen thinks and does, and we stop getting Jack's POV -- so in the books we also feel like we're losing Jack too, or only seeing him through Stephens (often uncharitable) eyes, e.g. a Stephen who very much wants to let us know that his daughter is beautiful and brilliant, not like Jack's fat stupid kids. The growing undercurrent of Stephen having surpassed Jack, or the books becoming 100% about Stephen's life and 0% about Jack's, was so strong to me that I had a dream of the culmination of their friendship, where Jack and Stephen get marooned on an ice floe, and Stephen cuts open Jack like a tauntaun for warmth, feeling only a mild fond gratitude for this last bit of friendship from his useless uninteresting old friend.
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# ¿ May 22, 2020 00:46 |
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freebooter posted:Just finished The Letter of Marque. What's the deal with Stephen and Padeen hiding Stephen's freshly laundered shirts on top of the wardrobe (I think that's what they're doing?) and being ashamed when the maid catches them? I think it's that Stephen and Padeen just got done sealing up the trunk, and they don't want to re-do it, so they hide the freshly cleaned and pressed shirts, getting them immediately filthy with dust and newsprint.
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# ¿ May 22, 2020 04:38 |
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Genghis Cohen posted:Is it because Aubrey becomes more the 'great man' with high responsibilities? I'm tempted to think it's just because Maturin has more of the author in him. O'Brian didn't mind yanking Jack's career towards the story he wanted to write, so I don't think it's a case of his hands being tied narratively. I think he identified more with Maturin, sure, but I think PoB is a good enough author to know what he was doing.
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# ¿ May 23, 2020 11:25 |
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I feel that passage, where Stephen is in awe of Jack's violin playing -- while charitable -- confirms the alienation from Jack.
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# ¿ May 26, 2020 18:19 |
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Oh, I read it as.. It's not just any old reveal of a new facet, like, "Oh I didn't know you cared about boxing." It's the very last thing, the last little bit of Jack that Stephen can't understand. And IMHO it's presented like, what is knowable is fully known, and what remains is not for Stephen at all. He has come to the limit of the land, and had gazed at what lies beyond, unreachable, before he turns away. The last little bit of mystery, the last pulse of a love that's become inert. It's like an old marriage where one person has taken the other extremely for granted and realizes it possibly too little too late; not something that can be acted on -- merely bittersweetly appreciated.
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# ¿ May 27, 2020 06:26 |
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I don't mean to over-object to a single word, but Stephen is never actually poor. He is indifferent to money. He broadcasts "shabby", but, aside from his enormous pile of gold that he nearly bumbles away, he has his estate in Spain, which he downplays all the time but turns out to be substantial; he was always rich. Furthermore, despite his bastard status, AFAIK his claim on his inheritance is never troubled -- unlike Jack, who lives in fear during his early career that he will not inherit from his jerkwad father who has remarried scandalously, and he's also harming Jack's career and ruining his family name in politics to boot. Jack's career would not happen without Stephen's repeated use of connections; he'd likely be just some rando earless captain of a merchantman.quote:So at least here I think you have to cut the guy a little slack for looking at himself in the mirror and looking at his daughter and doing the same with Jack and his multiple children and being just a teeny bit defensive and overprotective. Stephen disregarded Jack's kids from day one, though, before he even had his own. I think the deal is that Stephen is kind of like a grumpy uncle at first. He finds common familial life pretty boring, especially other people's. He thinks he doesn't really want it, which is part of his pursuit of special, non-domestic Diana, but he kind of wants it all along, hence his insistence that they be properly married. I think he starts to change with the arrival of his daughter. Also, I think a really important episode happens in The Wine-Dark Sea. I think the destruction of Martin and Stephen's friendship is fascinating and incredibly well written. A big part of it is that Martin has become boringly self-absorbed and domestic, and is not paying total attention to Stephen, and Stephen hates it. Now things that were tolerated become intolerable, and Stephen projects alllll over the place, and all the negatives come out until Stephen can finally boot Martin out of his life entirely blaming him entirely for everything while nothing is Stephen's fault at all. O'Brian LOVES extremely dry undercutting, and, like, I think people who would defend Stephen from criticisms are actually selling O'Brian short as a writer. So perhaps by this reading, becoming a dad then a single dad transforms him, and he awakens to his own desire to become a patriarch, finally adding the potto lady to his orbit to match his daughter, Clarissa, Padeen and My main complaint is that Stephen's quest to become a patriarch is kind of wholly focused on Stephen, and wholly consumes the narrative. Yes, Jack's progress is a major focus of earlier books, but during those times we get a mixture of Jack and Stephen and Stephen is deeply involved in the process. When it's Stephen's turn, there is only Stephen. Stephen kinda stops caring about other things, and there's essentially no other voice, no other view. And I don't really like it, because a whole point of these characters is that alone, they are much less than they are together. Maturin triumphant, flaws unameliorated, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Anyway I'll shut up about this for now! Sax Solo fucked around with this message at 12:27 on May 28, 2020 |
# ¿ May 28, 2020 12:25 |
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FWIW I like Austen and POB, but I couldn't stand Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel. It might be because faerie stuff bores the bejeezus out of me. I don't recall it seeming especially clever or well written though; it seemed more fannish than human. Is it really better than Little, Big? I couldn't finish that but at least it did seem like there was something there.
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# ¿ Jul 5, 2020 00:32 |
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Even when POB's plots are pretty clunky his writing is still pretty sharp IMHO.
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# ¿ Jul 6, 2020 04:05 |
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Xander77 posted:I heartily recommend the Sharpe series - having read through Hornblower and Aubrey-Maturin, "Sharpe's Trafalgar" was probably the best described and most interesting navel battle I've ever read. It's also a lot less repetitive than the AM novels. I just read it. It's pretty good! Though it's also fairly laddish, I guess is the word.
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# ¿ Jul 22, 2020 07:41 |
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They did an all right job. There's not really any sailing maneuver stuff, IMO Bettany is some character that really isn't Stephen Maturin, and the jingoistic undercurrent is garbage ... but what's there is really good for what it is; many things are done well.
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# ¿ Aug 7, 2020 15:53 |
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When I first read the books, my mental casting for Bonden was Prime Suspect era Craig Fairbrass. Big and tough, but a little soft and dopey too.
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# ¿ Aug 7, 2020 19:54 |
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Even Jack's maximum 17 stone, 238 lbs, is not that overweight for a fit dude over 6'+. It's like Channing Tatum at prime movie weight +50 lbs. Jack's not really fat as much is Stephen is caustic and PoB English.
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# ¿ Aug 10, 2020 10:47 |
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freebooter posted:What the novels leave us with, and what emerges more fitfully from this film, as if in shafts of sunlight, is the growing realization that, although our existence is indisputably safer, softer, cleaner, and more dependable than the lives led by Captain Aubrey and his men, theirs were in some immeasurable way better—richer in possibility, and more regularly entrancing to the eye and spirit alike. As Stephen says of the Iliad, “The book is full of death, but oh so living.” Just so; if you died on board the Surprise, it would not be for want of having lived. To me this is like.. the Big Lie of individualism, or romanticism, or something. It's a fine thing to believe, sure.
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# ¿ Aug 12, 2020 16:31 |
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Also, I think O'Brian is not trying to romanticize things much himself. Well, he is, but he is also has no illusions, and I think his attitude is like, "Let us look at this one Goldilocks captain who almost never whips his men, but they love him anyway, on a ship neither too big nor too small, far from the disgusting corrupt societies of land, and maybe we can imagine some romantic beauty and wonder of the age, with these two special friends playing music together by the glorious sweep of stern windows." It's a delicate picture and I think POB is aware of it as a pleasing fiction, and he surrounds it with hard facts and skepticism, which makes it stronger. The movie's portrayal is not as subtle or fleshed out, but most historical movies are such garbage anyway; compared to Gladiator it's a masterpiece. vvvvv I agree that Crowe was a better Maximus than a Jack, in the way that Mel Gibson was an acceptable Hamlet, but would be even better as a roll of toilet paper. Sax Solo fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Aug 19, 2020 |
# ¿ Aug 19, 2020 01:03 |
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Here's a thread with some great pictures of some guy's fantastic model of the Surprise showing some boat storage and newfangled quarter-davits in action: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/5146-hms-surprise-by-navis-factorem-finished-175/page/9/
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# ¿ Nov 1, 2020 05:39 |
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(That ships' wheel gif was still hosed so I fixed it up, lol ... Can't wait to be wrong, or to be right and still the wiki fuckers out-stubborn me.) e: it seems the person who made the image has been permabanned from wikipedia for trying to get paid, so maybe it'll stick. Sax Solo fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Jan 10, 2021 |
# ¿ Jan 10, 2021 19:01 |
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If you've read the books the movie is a must see even if you won't particularly like it. Can't imagine not seeing it. The best thing to do is to read the books again afterwards to cleanse your brain. Like, the movie's all right, it has some good things! It has a kind of "Rah rah our boys at sea" tone to the ending which is kind of terrible and a painful clash with POB's cynicism. Coming out in 2003 with the buildup to war in Iraq there was a bit of contextual stink to it that probably can't be felt now. Otherwise though the choice of HOW to end it is very good. I do think Jack and Stephen have most of their character removed. Movie Aubrey is too much a daddy who is always right, and Movie Stephen is too much merely a silly geek. They're pretty bland. But idk, they do the weevil and dog watch things maybe that's enough for ppl. There isn't really any sailing in it sadly. The Waakzaamheid battle is not in it.
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# ¿ Feb 14, 2021 21:22 |
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Also interesting how they played the Jonah/Hollum arc straight when it's a such a clusterfuck (or clustercuck I guess) in the book.
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# ¿ Feb 18, 2021 08:16 |
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Lockback posted:Crowe was too well built and generally dashing for Aubrey but in general I thought the energy he brought more than pulled it off. I think Crowe did a good job but he didn't seem like Jack from the books to me. Aubrey gets dashing for free from his uniform and exploits, and he's a big physical guy. He seems to have a lot of success with women despite having no game whatsoever. Women like him and want to take him for a spin knowing he'll be off to sea soon. I tend to think pudgy Channing Tatum could play pretty well. For Stephen, idk, you could probably ugly down James McAvoy enough. Or grab any weedy ugly guy like Burn Gorman off the rack.
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# ¿ Feb 24, 2021 07:21 |
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Also, O'Brian is an excellent writer. Every other sentence is like an acrobatics routine. It's just a joy to read.
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# ¿ Apr 2, 2021 23:38 |
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The whole topic is a fun display of clashing social assumptions, where on the one hand you assume that any woman who was alone with a man for more than a few moments was probably loving, or rather a detached idea of 'scandal' arises from the situation... On the other hand there is gentlemanly conduct, where it is incredibly uncouth and insulting to act as if anyone is ever doing anything untoward, especially when it comes to the conduct of and kindness to women. And so O'Brien can create a big cloud about it where characters can talk both like it's nothing and like it's everything, and part of the confusion is bc Stephen is grappling with the situation on these terms too. The book doesn't even cover until after the fact how Jack is lingering around port in the Polychrest being a kind of lovely captain because he's always sneaking off to see Diana, and it might be the blatancy of that which drives Stephen to challenge him. It's too clear to everyone, and the world of gentlemanly make-believe is unsustainable. Another element at play, maybe, is that Stephen is continually nuking his sex drive with drugs. IIRC, even after he's married to Diana, it's not until he tones down the laudanum that he's actually like regularly amorous, though I'm not sure how much this applies in the Post Captain days.
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# ¿ May 18, 2021 02:49 |
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# ¿ Mar 28, 2024 17:15 |
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Yeah it's my favorite of the books I think. Some people criticize it of being derivative of Austen. I don't think it is, and to the extent it may be -- well, I like Austen too!
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# ¿ May 18, 2021 05:03 |