In a message dated 7/24/2008 10:50:23 PM Central Daylight Time, nabokv-l@UTK.EDU writes:
She wants to look a mess
J. Friedman: Or consolation for herself and John--Hazel
is happy looking the way she is. (Sure.) But now that
you mention it, I agree that it can be read as blaming
Hazel.
LH: It sounds at least as if Sybil was exasperated by Hazel's ways. If
it was meant as consolation, she wouldn't have used the words "look a mess"
which are cruel. She would say something more or less along the
lines "she's indifferent to her looks". This particular sentence contrasts
with the rest of Sybil's speech, as if it had slipped out. VN often uses
these abrupt changes in tone to signal another level of reading (as for
instance lines 902-903 "Now I shall speak...")
Lots of parents, of both male and female children, must have uttered something like "wants to look a mess" over the years. Hazel is a child of the 50s, when teenage rebellion began to take the form of weird clothing, hair, bad posture, etc. And it got worse in the 60s. Shade makes it pretty clear that he's ashamed of having passed on his ugliness genes to Hazel, who got none of Sybil's attractive ones. I can imagine their frustration over having had an ugly duckling who has given up on trying to transform herself. As Shade says somewhere, "Everything we tried turned out wrong." The school in France doesn't necessarily sound like a "finishing school" though the Shades doubtless thought it might help Hazel to gain a little "polish." I expect the Shades (and VN) had seen Now Voyager and had some hopes that Hazel could morph like Bette Davis.
Sam
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