Booklogging: A Countess Below Stairs
May. 24th, 2011 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katewritesThis book is like really surreal A Little Princess fanfic.
One of the charms for me about A Little Princess is that it's super clear Sara Crewe is a little weird. She's charming and polite and perfect, but all that perfection makes her seem really, really weird to her classmates and a lot of the adults around her.
Then she loses everything and has to deal with indentured servitude, but rises above it. I have to admit I have a major weakness for that type of thing in fiction.
In this book the main character, Anna, starts out as a perfect Russian Countess, becomes a perfect emigree in light of the revolution, and then becomes a perfect servant, then a perfect alternate love interest, then a perfect Countess again. She never once expresses fear or hopelessness or even desperation. In fact, going to work as a maid seems to kind of be a choice. As in something she doesn't have to do.
And unlike Sara Crewe, only the evil, bad characters find her perfection off putting. Everyone else finds her charming and perfect and adores her, because she's so perfect.
I spent the whole interview thinking about that job interview question. What would you say is your greatest flaw? Oh, I work too hard. Only that's never anyone's greatest flaw. Their greatest flaw is pride or hubris or greed. The working too hard is a result of those flaws.
Anna works too hard because... she works too hard. It's not even explained as she's used to being perfect so in her new role she tries too hard to be perfect. She's just the perfect employee.
When you're reading a book about a character that starts out perfect, there's nowhere to go from there. As a character they can't develop because they're already effectively at the end of their journey.
Also, every woman in this book who isn't Anna is either a: detested for husband hunting (while the book refuses to acknowledge that this wasn't a time when women of gentle breeding could get by without one), b: a servant (and thus, strangely asexual - none of the servants had relations with each other or had spouses), or c: physically handicapped.
While there were strange touches of reality - the mention of the number of men lost to WWI - there was this sense of complete disconnect as well. We were supposed to root for the Russian countess who was fleeing from the revolution without even a hint of acknowledging the social problems that caused the revolution. Instead we were supposed to feel bad for all these Russian emigres, robbed of their titles and jewels.
One of the charms for me about A Little Princess is that it's super clear Sara Crewe is a little weird. She's charming and polite and perfect, but all that perfection makes her seem really, really weird to her classmates and a lot of the adults around her.
Then she loses everything and has to deal with indentured servitude, but rises above it. I have to admit I have a major weakness for that type of thing in fiction.
In this book the main character, Anna, starts out as a perfect Russian Countess, becomes a perfect emigree in light of the revolution, and then becomes a perfect servant, then a perfect alternate love interest, then a perfect Countess again. She never once expresses fear or hopelessness or even desperation. In fact, going to work as a maid seems to kind of be a choice. As in something she doesn't have to do.
And unlike Sara Crewe, only the evil, bad characters find her perfection off putting. Everyone else finds her charming and perfect and adores her, because she's so perfect.
I spent the whole interview thinking about that job interview question. What would you say is your greatest flaw? Oh, I work too hard. Only that's never anyone's greatest flaw. Their greatest flaw is pride or hubris or greed. The working too hard is a result of those flaws.
Anna works too hard because... she works too hard. It's not even explained as she's used to being perfect so in her new role she tries too hard to be perfect. She's just the perfect employee.
When you're reading a book about a character that starts out perfect, there's nowhere to go from there. As a character they can't develop because they're already effectively at the end of their journey.
Also, every woman in this book who isn't Anna is either a: detested for husband hunting (while the book refuses to acknowledge that this wasn't a time when women of gentle breeding could get by without one), b: a servant (and thus, strangely asexual - none of the servants had relations with each other or had spouses), or c: physically handicapped.
While there were strange touches of reality - the mention of the number of men lost to WWI - there was this sense of complete disconnect as well. We were supposed to root for the Russian countess who was fleeing from the revolution without even a hint of acknowledging the social problems that caused the revolution. Instead we were supposed to feel bad for all these Russian emigres, robbed of their titles and jewels.
