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May. 5th, 2022 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsWhen I went home a few weeks ago, I brought Dana Lyons' The Tentacles/Spin the Web Tight (a two-novel anthology) with me as my emergency Gothic, which I had picked up a few years ago in a used bookstore for the princely sum of one dollar a few years ago because the cover looked like this and I had to know:
I was disappointed to discover that the tentacles were entirely metaphorical; or, rather, to be more specific, the tentacles were misogyny all along!
The Tentacles opens with heroine Hilda, having had a rapturous whirlwind romance and marriage, meeting her husband's amiable fun-loving father and cold abrasive status-obsessed mother for the first time; in a surprise twist, she starts to bond with her rude and socially awkward but overall well-meaning mother-in-law while realizing that her father-in-law is, like. always around? ALWAYS around?? talking about how his wife and Women In General have ruined his life and it's a little uncomfortable??
After the mother-in-law dies, the father-in-law convinces Hilda's husband that he's simply desperately in need of company and the family must come back to live in the family mansion with him, after which he gradually begins maneuvering the situation so that Hilda's life becomes more and more constrained while her husband happily quits his job and plays golf and drinks at the country club.
The portrayal here is so interesting because, like, it's a truly and genuinely terrifying portrait of gaslighting and erosion of autonomy and the ways that men close ranks against women, it was really very effective for me, And Also the life that Hilda desperately loved and is desperate to get back to is being a suburban housewife, with her husband miserable at a job he hates that he goes to for eight hours every day BUT leaves her alone in her own space so she only has to prepare one big meal for dinner instead of dinner AND lunch -- and like this is genuinely presented as an ideal, not ironic, and the fact that the husband does not want to go back to the job he hates is a sign of the father-in-law's pernicious influence (at least from Hilda's POV, as much as one takes it at face value.) Also there's a whole thread about corporal punishment which Hilda, the mother-in-law, and the narrative all think is necessary and important for child-rearing and the men frame as another example of Abuse Of Men By Women. So an artifact of its time, but in compelling ways and with a compelling anger and fear driving it.
(Then the sequel takes it a step further by positing that now that Hilda's husband is trying to kill her for the presumed crime of murdering her father-in-law, the Right Man for Hilda is in fact her husband's counterculture cousin who lives in a hut on the beach and interviews beatniks, and I agree he's a more compelling figure but I do have a hard time seeing how Hilda who DESPERATELY loved her little suburban house could mesh well with this particular lifestyle ....)
I was disappointed to discover that the tentacles were entirely metaphorical; or, rather, to be more specific, the tentacles were misogyny all along!
The Tentacles opens with heroine Hilda, having had a rapturous whirlwind romance and marriage, meeting her husband's amiable fun-loving father and cold abrasive status-obsessed mother for the first time; in a surprise twist, she starts to bond with her rude and socially awkward but overall well-meaning mother-in-law while realizing that her father-in-law is, like. always around? ALWAYS around?? talking about how his wife and Women In General have ruined his life and it's a little uncomfortable??
After the mother-in-law dies, the father-in-law convinces Hilda's husband that he's simply desperately in need of company and the family must come back to live in the family mansion with him, after which he gradually begins maneuvering the situation so that Hilda's life becomes more and more constrained while her husband happily quits his job and plays golf and drinks at the country club.
The portrayal here is so interesting because, like, it's a truly and genuinely terrifying portrait of gaslighting and erosion of autonomy and the ways that men close ranks against women, it was really very effective for me, And Also the life that Hilda desperately loved and is desperate to get back to is being a suburban housewife, with her husband miserable at a job he hates that he goes to for eight hours every day BUT leaves her alone in her own space so she only has to prepare one big meal for dinner instead of dinner AND lunch -- and like this is genuinely presented as an ideal, not ironic, and the fact that the husband does not want to go back to the job he hates is a sign of the father-in-law's pernicious influence (at least from Hilda's POV, as much as one takes it at face value.) Also there's a whole thread about corporal punishment which Hilda, the mother-in-law, and the narrative all think is necessary and important for child-rearing and the men frame as another example of Abuse Of Men By Women. So an artifact of its time, but in compelling ways and with a compelling anger and fear driving it.
(Then the sequel takes it a step further by positing that now that Hilda's husband is trying to kill her for the presumed crime of murdering her father-in-law, the Right Man for Hilda is in fact her husband's counterculture cousin who lives in a hut on the beach and interviews beatniks, and I agree he's a more compelling figure but I do have a hard time seeing how Hilda who DESPERATELY loved her little suburban house could mesh well with this particular lifestyle ....)
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Date: 2022-05-06 12:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-22 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-06 02:04 pm (UTC)Interesting!
This feels like it's maybe in conversation with The Feminine Mystique?
Looking at the cover, though, I'm guessing it's prior?
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Date: 2022-05-22 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-06 02:46 pm (UTC)Also fascinated by the details of this particular Emergency Gothic! The fun-loving father who is not-so-secretly a jerk, the abrasive mother-in-law who is secretly well-meaning, the... joys of being a suburban housewife? I mean compared to being trapped in Father-In-Law's mansion cooking TWO full meals a day while the men play golf for a living, I can see why Hilda would dream of the good old days in her own personal private home that FIL did not live in.
However, like you, not sure how well she would adjust to the beach hut life. Maybe as long as the counterculture cousin does not allow the beatniks to wander through the beach hut? Perhaps the important thing is not SUBURBIA but PRIVATE DWELLING.
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Date: 2022-05-22 12:53 pm (UTC)PRIVATE DWELLING really seems to be a key. And admittedly the beach hut would probably involve much less cleaning, which also seems to be relevant -- one major aspect of the psychological warfare is that they've got, like, a full staff to clean the big house, and then the father-in-law gradually lets them all go because Hilda can simply do it now, right? and Hilda is like NO I SIMPLY CANNOT but, crucially, never actually finds herself able to explain NO I SIMPLY CANNOT, just seethes resentfully over it. After all that having just one room to be responsible for might be a pleasant break!
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Date: 2022-05-06 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-22 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-06 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-22 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-07 03:08 am (UTC)I feel like if he leaves her a lot of time to herself and at least handles his own lunch, they might have a chance? The beach hut might still be a dealbreaker.
(This novel sounds genuinely fascinating.)
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Date: 2022-05-22 01:00 pm (UTC)(It really was -- simultaneously deeply relatable and relevant, and a deeply alien window on a completely different set of cultural expectations.)