But those possible other Elsa’s aren’t freighted with monstrosity or nightmare. The doppelganger is sort of a stand-in for Elsa’s mother while also being a stand-in for Elsa herself or for who Elsa might be. August Blue isn’t a gothic, like Frankenstein or Rebecca, shot through with anxiety, violence and terrifying revelations. Those fears are real fears, but they aren’t paralyzing terror. She’s afraid to find out her mother didn’t love her-and afraid to find out who she is or might be.
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Arthur has given her documents that provide a full accounting, but she refuses to read them. Elsa doesn’t know who her real mother is. Arthur adopted her when she was a young child, removing her from her foster family. Then Marcus’ father fires Elsa for her display of flamboyance-and, implicitly, for accepting and celebrating his child’s queerness.Įlsa’s teacher and father figure, Arthur, is gay she meets his lover when she goes to be with him in his final illness. Elsa’s first student, Marcus, is nonbinary she and they instantly hit it off, and they perform an impromptu dance to Schubert. Elsa doesn’t raise that possibility herself, but the novel acknowledges it elliptically, by introducing a number of other queer people and relationships. “To think about her was to speak to someone known, inside myself, someone who was slightly mysterious to me, someone who was listening very attentively.”Įlsa’s obsession with this other woman-the way she scopes her out from afar, the way she flirts with her by picking up the hat so she can return it later-could certainly be read as sexual or romantic. And that double also insinuates herself into Elsa’s consciousness, asking her pointed questions and offering pointed suggestions. The mysterious woman with the horses appears again and again wherever Elsa goes in Europe, wearing the same (sinister?) snakeskin shoes. On the surface, August Blue is in the gothic tradition. How can you know yourself if you are terrified of who you might be? Homophobia terrorizes everyone because it declares certain human possibilities to be inhuman, beyond discussion or recognition. If one looks into one’s heart, will one find the wrong kind of love? The terror of affection creates a split self-a monster-which desires itself and polices that desire. Instead, she’s saying that the paranoia in (for example) Frankenstein is powered by the fear of queer possibilities. Sedgwick isn’t arguing that these characters are really, secretly homosexual. Following Freud, Sedgwick suggests that such a narrative “represents the fearful, phantasmic rejection by recasting of an original homosexual (or even merely homosocial) desire.” The classic gothic canon, Sedgwick argues, often centers on plots in which one character is haunted by, stalked by and obscurely controlled by, a same-sex double. Queer theorist Eve Sedgwick argued that doubles and doppelgangers in the works of canonical authors like Henry James and James Hogg or (a female example that Sedgwick doesn’t discuss) Daphne du Maurier evoked a kind of homosexual panic. Then, impulsively, she steals the other woman’s momentarily forgotten black trilby hat. “We obviously wanted the same things,” Elsa muses. Elsa wants the toys for herself, but the other woman-who looks uncannily like Elsa-has gotten the last ones. It’s then that she sees another woman purchase two toy horses in a stall they play music when you raise the tail. Confused and with her career in shambles, Elsa prepares to give private lessons to a number of students across Europe to make ends meet. At her next concert in Vienna, she suddenly stopped playing Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No.2 and began to perform-something else. The pianist dyed her hair blue on a whim. # center:has(> ins.Elsa meets that doppelganger in Athens in the midst of a rolling personal crisis. # section.top-maincol-sect:has(> )ī # $ image, 1p, domain = Paiza.io #bottom-component > -info.no-padding ! for firefox to allow access via cname cloaking ! ^*/satellitelib- $ script, domain = au.com| .jp| */ */ */ *-librar圜ode_ $ script, domain = | au.com| .jp| |
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