Pardon the language... But I think this image is relevant to The Golden Notebook. Perhaps we can even hear Anna saying that. I thought of the yellow notebook and Ella's letters that she receives for Women at Home. We mentioned in class yesterday how Ella and Paul refer to the letters as "Mrs. Browns," thus reducing all of the letter writers into one category. Most of them are housewives with mental problems, and our protagonist in the story wants to escape that, to be a "free woman." I also thought about when Ella goes to Paul's house and notices that his wife reads Women at Home. Ella doesn't believe that his wife can possibly be happy, but Paul insists that she is. The image above represents the women, like Ella/Anna, wanting more out of life than "fifties housewife bullshit."
I have also researched the Czech Sabotage Trial, mentioned on page 236 in the text. Also referred to as the Slánský trial, Communist Party General Secretary, Rudolf Slánský and his thirteen co-defendants were arrested, unjustly accused, tried, and executed as traitors and western spies. The trial was orchestrated by Soviet advisors, sent to Prague by Stalin, and assisted by Czechoslovak Secret Service interrogators and members of Czechoslovak Communist Party Central Community. They were thought to have adopted the line of the maverick Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito and were accused of participating in a Trotskyite-Titoite-Zionist conspiracy. The trial was the result of a split within the Communist leadership on the degree to which the state should emulate the Soviet Union and was part of a Stalin-inspired purge of "disloyal" members as well as a purge of Jews from the leadership of Communist parties. After Stalin's death, the victims of the trial quietly received amnesty one by one.
Love the image Blythe. Do you--or other--think there is any way the text could be suggesting that Paul's wife is *not* in bad faith? That is, could she be happy? Could Paul be right about her? Or is that only a delusion? Another way to ask this is: does the novel agree with Ella's reading of the situation?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure we can fully know since we don't actually get the wife's perspective, but since Paul is made out to be a villain, it seems that perhaps the novel does side with Ella--if only because of Paul's attitude. On page 211, Paul's defense: "Besides, she'd be lost without me." Also "It's true, I'm a sort of father, she depends on me completely." It's as if his wife has no individuality. And yet, Ella's situation is no better. Paul says, on the same page, "Muriel might just as well say of you: Why on earth does she put up with being my husband's mistress, what security is there in that? And it's not respectable." And of course, Paul leaves Ella destitute (she cannot function without him).
ReplyDeleteI'm realizing as I'm writing that it's hard to say because neither Ella nor Paul's wife is in an ideal situation. I'm not sure the novel sides with either Ella or Paul on this matter. They both seem unreliable.