It's a bit hard to say how Éléonore really looked based on portraits, but I certainly think that if Mantel was looking at the one in my icon, she's rather exaggerated her plainness.
Even if that portrait was quite flattering and Éléonore wasn't conventionally pretty does it really merit a mention every time she turns up in the story? I mean by all accounts Danton was eyewateringly ugly but nobody would be so crazy as to suggest his alleged sluttiness and need for money was him trying to compensate for his poor self-esteem due to looking like the back end of a bus. Similarly Mantel doesn't have a comment on his fugly every time he turns up, it's just raised when it needs to be mentioned.
Also, so what if she wasn't pretty? I've met enough boys with crushes on PJ Harvey and Patti Smith to know - contrary to most women's magazines - one doesn't have to be picture perfect to be hot. Maybe Robespierre was one of those men who got off on the excitement of a shared project, on intellectual stimulation, whatever. Mantel seems to have a very stereotyped view of sexuality - Bull male and Kitty-cat female and can't seem to countenance even heterosexuality comes in many different flavours and modes of expression.
Incidentally - where does the 'ame virile' quote come from? I read it in Scurr and while it is a bit fatalistic it's certainly not disinterested.
Or perhaps she *is* jealous I have a feeling I've read to much crappy fanfic but it's certainly a trope of badfic that all canonical female characters get turned into monsters, usually to make room for a self-insert Sue or the one true slashlove. I had the feeling I was reading bad fanfiction when I was going on with the awful characterisation of bi!Camille and the gratuitous abuse of Éléonore is really not helping matters.
I'm not sure which is worse, her view or Zizek's: that all those things are true, but good!
A friend of mine that I hadn't seen for some time found the Robespierre's speeches in my bag and went off on a very long rant about how Zizek was "the most irritating man alive." I really don't know who listens to him.
Pity. Still, your explanation of how he could have come to like the scent is truly Gallo-worthy.
I think half the reason I dislike psychoanalytical approaches to history is that I could sit around and write crack theories on history all day - why should these guys get paid for it? Perhaps because I know my theories are crack?
I've only read summaries of Gallo it has to be said, so I don't know if I've quite got him but I don't buy the whole mind-in-trauma thing for various reasons, perhaps the main one being I think Robespierre is remarkably sane.
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Even if that portrait was quite flattering and Éléonore wasn't conventionally pretty does it really merit a mention every time she turns up in the story? I mean by all accounts Danton was eyewateringly ugly but nobody would be so crazy as to suggest his alleged sluttiness and need for money was him trying to compensate for his poor self-esteem due to looking like the back end of a bus. Similarly Mantel doesn't have a comment on his fugly every time he turns up, it's just raised when it needs to be mentioned.
Also, so what if she wasn't pretty? I've met enough boys with crushes on PJ Harvey and Patti Smith to know - contrary to most women's magazines - one doesn't have to be picture perfect to be hot. Maybe Robespierre was one of those men who got off on the excitement of a shared project, on intellectual stimulation, whatever. Mantel seems to have a very stereotyped view of sexuality - Bull male and Kitty-cat female and can't seem to countenance even heterosexuality comes in many different flavours and modes of expression.
Incidentally - where does the 'ame virile' quote come from? I read it in Scurr and while it is a bit fatalistic it's certainly not disinterested.
Or perhaps she *is* jealous I have a feeling I've read to much crappy fanfic but it's certainly a trope of badfic that all canonical female characters get turned into monsters, usually to make room for a self-insert Sue or the one true slashlove. I had the feeling I was reading bad fanfiction when I was going on with the awful characterisation of bi!Camille and the gratuitous abuse of Éléonore is really not helping matters.
I'm not sure which is worse, her view or Zizek's: that all those things are true, but good!
A friend of mine that I hadn't seen for some time found the Robespierre's speeches in my bag and went off on a very long rant about how Zizek was "the most irritating man alive." I really don't know who listens to him.
Pity. Still, your explanation of how he could have come to like the scent is truly Gallo-worthy.
I think half the reason I dislike psychoanalytical approaches to history is that I could sit around and write crack theories on history all day - why should these guys get paid for it? Perhaps because I know my theories are crack?
I've only read summaries of Gallo it has to be said, so I don't know if I've quite got him but I don't buy the whole mind-in-trauma thing for various reasons, perhaps the main one being I think Robespierre is remarkably sane.