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Originally Posted by Hamlet53
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The third major problem, for me at least, was McKenna's referring to many of the characters sometimes as female and sometimes as male ( eg Ernest Boulton or Stella Boulton.) and what's more seemingly at random, that is not governed by the context. I would speculate that the author did this to give the reader an idea of the confusion the characters felt about their own sexual identity, or the similar confusion by those around them, or maybe even to provoke such confusion in the readers of the book? Unfortunately, for me at least, it often just led to total confusion about whether or not what was supposedly going on even made sense. As an example quoting from the book:
This is in reference to the occasion when Ernest Boulton takes a position at a bank that his father has arranged for him. Or at least that has to be the case from the surrounding context, not that his father arranged a position for Ernest in drag as Stella. So why the use of Stella here? In the end it just all too often left me totally confused about what was going on and whether Ernest (or the other characters this could be applied to) was done up as a man (Ernest) or as a woman (Stella)? It does matter, or did to me, in trying to understand whether or not the surrounding story and behavior of the cast of characters made sense.[...]
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I can't say I liked the way he used the different gender pronouns, but my perception was that he was trying to honour what he thought Fanny and Stella would've wanted - to be referred to as female - and that he only used the male pronouns in the beginning and afterwards only when he thought absolutely necessary.
I think it was confusing because it did create difficulties at times in discerning whether Fanny and Stella were appearing as men or women at a particular time, but after the first bit I got used to it and I respect that he might've been trying to honour what the two would've wanted to be referred as even if I didn't quite agree with his approach.
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Originally Posted by Hamlet53
[...]One final minor perhaps observation on the use of the word hermaphrodite to refer to Fanny and Stella. I had to verify the definition of that word which is: an individual in which reproductive organs of both sexes are present. Now Boulton in particular was by observation a very effeminate man, but there was nothing presented to suggest that he was a hermaphrodite.[...]
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I don't think he was quite suggesting he was a hermaphrodite, or at least that's not how I took it. I could be forgetting some other part of the book, but I remember the term coming up when he was was discussing how the people at the time thought of the possibility, and that Stella and Fanny even used it as a tantalising tease or excuse to some of their paramours.
I never thought they might actually be hermaphrodites. I think the physical exams put that out of question (unless it was an "inside" physical sort of hermaphroditism, which I really don't know if that's possible or not). I just think it was a speculation from some people during the time and something the "he-shes" used to sometimes better explain themselves even though it wasn't really true for most of them. This is just my take-away on it from the reading.
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Originally Posted by Hamlet53
[..]Yes, despite McKenna's efforts to often make their lives seem happier than probable reality, including some of his speculations (eg. Stella's renewed affair with the supposedly still living Lord Arthur Clinton in New York after the trial), their lives struck me as ultimately sad given the constraints of society at the time. Even Stella must have know that her fantasy of marriage to a nobleman could never be more than a fantasy. I have to offer an in the news comment, congratulations to England for just recently extending marriage rights to same sex couple.
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Wales too, by the way!
As to the happiness of their lives, I find your thoughts interesting and would say I both agree and disagree with them. I was even thinking to myself before reading this thread that their lives did seem sad in a way even apart from the trial and legal matters, but I also think the story was so embellished by the author that the weight of our thoughts on the titular heroes really fall on him, and I think it may have a been a fault of his imagination or creativity (or talent) that he so wanted to put as much joy into their story as possible but instead couldn't help but imbuing it with a sort of melancholy. Of course he was up against a big task now knowing the broad stroke of their entire lives, but still I think he took on the challenge and didn't quite succeed.
I think the fantasy of Stella "marrying" a nobleman could've "sort of" worked, if the legal system hadn't come after them. She had shacked up with a nobleman after all, and he had accepted that she was his "wife". If they hadn't encountered the legal troubles, I don't see it so far fetched that they could've lived that way for a good long while.
While I see their lives as sad like you, I still think there's much we don't know about them and they didn't seem like the type especially prone to depression, and they certainly were courageous and had their share of fun and romance along the way, so
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Originally Posted by issybird
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I mentioned The Swerve above. Ultimately, I thought Greenblatt's book, while interesting, didn't do justice to his subject and I thought the narrative style inappropriate for a work of intellectual history. On the other hand, I thought McKenna, even while adopting a much more exaggerated style than Greenblatt yet given the squishier nature of his subject matter, largely succeeded in his aims.
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Though I didn't read The Swerve, I agree with you that though the skill level may be lower in the writing of Fanny and Stella, I am much more willing to accept writing faults with it than with The Swerve. What turned me off about The Swerve is that it's such a very large, important and talked-about subject historically and the author is a very learned and talented scholar, and the book won some very prestigious awards, so I think a (much) higher standard applies to that work. Whereas with Fanny and Stella, while there were many problems with the writing, I can't deny that it fit the spirit of the story it was telling and that this was a story that could've easily, ahem, faded away, into oblivion, so for this rather specific story to be told at all and with at least a modicum of skill is notable, even if I wished that it could've been handled better.