The Vine: January 21, 2011
Dear Vineyarders,
I have a question about a movie or TV series I once saw. Before I describe it, let me announce a trigger warning for those sensitive about sexual assault.
I saw only flashes of it on TV when I was very young, so I have limited information. It’s a period costume drama made in the eighties/early nineties, so of course everyone has a British accent and corsets. In it, a woman is raped. She is so anguished that she decides that she will die. Whether this is through starvation or a metaphorical “broken heart” I don’t know.
Everyone around her knows what she’s doing, as well as who raped her. Many try to argue her out of it. I remember one scene in which a clergyman tells her that even if a body is violated, a soul can remain pure. She disagrees. Meanwhile the rapist is coming apart, and trying to justify himself. I seem to remember him asking, “Is death a natural consequence of rape?” but I can’t be sure of the wording.
I don’t know how it ends or the exact circumstances, and of course Google searches only turn up god-awful true stories. Does anyone know what the title is, or how it turns out?
Lilin
*****
Hi Sars! While waiting for my husband to find a book he was after, I picked up a random book from a table and read a couple of chapters. It piqued my interest, but then the hubby finished his errand and I put it down without making note of the title or author, and I haven’t been able to find it since.
It took place in a possibly-medieval village. A woman and the local midwife/shaman conspired to protect a new baby girl from her grunty warrior father by telling the father that the baby was a boy — I think the baby would have been abandoned/killed otherwise. The midwife told the father that due to some kind of curse/malicious spirit, the child’s genitals must never be seen by others.
Cut to the kid’s point of view some years later, being raised as a boy, having to hide away to pee…and that’s where I put it down.
The results of my Google searches for these and similar keywords have been…interesting, but not particularly helpful, so I’m putting my faith in the Nation.
Katie
Tags: Ask The Readers popcult
Katie: It’s possible you picked up Lynn Flewelling’s _The Bone Doll’s Twin_. She’s a fantasy author, and a durn good one :)
I concur with AK about the Flewelling book for Katie’s question.
Lilin, it’s a long shot, but maybe something in the Poldark series? Although that was 1970s.
Wow, I might actually know one of these! Lilin, the plot you described sounds a lot like Samuela Richardson’s Clarissa, which I read in college (or more accurately, “read,” heh). It appears to have been turned into a TV series in 1991, per IMDB. I never saw it, but the plot sounds so similar, I thought it might be worth a shot.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101066/
Aargh, Samuel, not Samuela. It’s a 17th century British dude.
Lilin – your movie sounds a little bit like 1988’s “Dangerous Liaisons.” The plot points don’t quite match up, but you might take a look at the plot summary on Wikipedia.
I saw a movie with a similar plot line around the same time and I clearly remember it being a masterpiece theater thing on…pbs? I was way young for it and can still see it clearly. I remember the masterpiece theater thing because I refused to ever watch another. So, not an answer, but maybe another place to look?
My guess was a Masterpiece Theater or Mystery thing on PBS, too. I remember an episode of Brother Cadfael that had something similar as one of its plot points, and there are obviously clergymen in that.
@ lillin: The first thing that popped into my head was “Tess of the d’Urbervilles”. Definitely been a while since I read it, so I may be wrong.
Hmm, looking at IMDb, there were a few adaptations made, one in 1998, and one in 1979, so maybe it’s not. Ah, well, it’s still a good book!
Lilin,
It sounds like the Clarissa mini-series made in 1991. I know it starred Sean Bean as the baddie.
I thought of Clarissa as well. Gads, I hate Richardson; he’s all about torturing his heroines to teach them “valuable moral lessons” they don’t really need (although lessons in common sense would be good), and the men get away like effin bandits. Bleargh.
Hey guys, I sent in the second letter. @AK and Banana – close, but no cigar. There was no twin brother, and the “curse” was made up by the midwife, no actual magic or spirits involved. And the setting was a scruffy peasant village, not court society. Thanks for your recommendation though! I’m always looking for more to read. :-)
Lilin, that sounds like a Masterpiece Theater movie I remember seeing years ago. They have a database now so you can search their archives by actor, character, keyword, etc.:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/archive/index.html
I don’t remember a lot of the plot, but I do remember a line from one bad guy character saying something about “after awhile the bird gets to like its pretty cage.” But then he’s really distraught later when she’s dying. Something like that. Not sure why that line stuck with me; does it ring any bells?
Patricia and Nanc are right. It was “Clarissa”, with Sean Bean. Recently watched it, and it did trigger some narsty flashbacks.
@cayenne: WORD on Richardson. Part of why I only “read” Clarissa in college, beside it being 1600 freaking pages of letters, was because I just couldn’t stand how stupid Clarissa herself was, and how the consequences of her mistakes were always so out of proportion to the mistakes themselves.
It’s the Clarissa Masterpiece Theater Mini-series. It is available on NetFlix. I remembered somehow watching it was I young, and it scared me. It’s much different as an adult viewer.
I must have blocked out virtually every detail of Clarissa, because that description did not ring a bell for me at all, despite the fact that I have actually read the entire book. The only two things I remember are the use of the word “saucebox” as an insult (something my grad school friends and I joyously adopted) and my confusion about the fact that Clarissa hides all these forbidden letters by sewing them into the lining of her clothes, and yet no one hears her rustling or in any other way sounding as if she’s wearing an outfit made of paper.
Of course, the idea of Sean Bean as the bad guy kind of makes me want to see that movie…
@LaSalleUGirl: You’re thinking of Pamela, Richardson’s first novel. Believe it or not, t’s much shorter than Clarissa, too.
Reading the Amazon description for The Bonedoll’s Twin made me think of a book I read a while ago, where a brother and sister switch places so the girl can be a knight and the boy can be a magician/wizard. They both have to maintain their disguises for various reasons, although the boy gets found out rather quickly. Then the girl ends up falling in love with the king, who she’s sworn to guard. I think it was a YA fantasy novel, but I can’t remember the title or author. Ring any bells for anyone?
Ahh! Wait, it’s shorter than Clarissa?! Yeesh.
Katie – Berit Haahr’s The Minstrel’s Tale has a female character (not the main character) who thinks she’s a boy. I haven’t read the book though, so I don’t know much about it.
Is the book _The Changeling of Finnistuath: A Novel_? I don’t know how to do hyperlinky things but it’s on Amazon.com.
Katie: Could it be _The Changeling_ by Kate Horsley?
@anotherkate That! That I can answer. That’s Alanna: The First Adventure, the first book in a quartet called “The Song of the Lioness” by Tamora Pierce. …Which is the first quartet in a cycle of, like, three or four quartets. Here it is on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/4cpny78
Yes, they are fantasy novels intended for 12-year-old girls, and I freakin’ LOVED them back in middle school. (…What of it?) They’ve butched up the cover design since then; my copy involved a lot more pink and frilly gold. Eesh.
I’m so excited that for once I could answer! Although I actually dislike Clarissa (both the book and the show)I do adore Sean Bean. I would watch the man sit on an empty stage and read the phone book.
Oh, me too, Nanc. Me TOO.
Katie: Your book sounds like Split Heirs by Lawrence Watt-Evans and Esther Friesner. Very fun read.
Mmmmm. Sean Bean.
Although, I did watch Stormy Monday on On Demand, because he was in it, and waited, like, twenty minutes for Sean Bean to show up before I realized he was the lead. His face definitely changed as he aged. Not complaining, just saying.
….mmmmm. Young Sean Bean.
I used to like Sean Bean well enough, until he started beating up his wives. Seems pretty unrepentant too.
I actually have a copy of The Changeling right here and I agree that it’s likely the book. The dad is a goatherd, not a warrior, but everything else is the same and the first scene in the book is pretty much exactly as described.
@Dub: If I thought he really had beaten up anyone, I’d loathe the air he breathed, but from what I’ve read, his biggest problems are that elbow difficulty and marrying anything that crosses his path. (No reports of domestic abuse until he got involved with someone who’s reputably been described as a bobble off plumb, in other words.)
@Velitari and Jehanne – yes, that’s the one! Thanks! And apparently for sale on Amazon for one penny, plus shipping. :-)
“Saucebox,” hee! Er, as you were.
@anotherkate – unless ‘The Changeling’ is very very very similar, your book is definitely ‘Alanna: The First Adventure’. As Colin pointed out, there are three more books in that series, and the author has written several more series in the same universe (Including the ‘Wild Magic’ books, which I shamelessly re-read at least once a year, so the plot is very vivid in my memory).
@LaSalleUGirl: having gone through a period of hunting down and watching everything Sean Bean was ever in (practically), I can say that the problem with Clarissa, from an ogling standpoint, is that it’s true to period fashion, and those wigs look REALLY stupid on just about anybody, but especially so (IMO) on someone with a face like SB’s.
The mini-series has a bonus in that the secondary male lead is played by Sean Pertwee, whom I also love… but, alas, the wig does him no favors, either.
Maybe it’s just me, but the overall men’s fashion of that period just is sort of anti-sexy to me. Of course, I expect it’s possible that it’s a turn-on for somebody.
SPOILER, in case one is needed–
I have not read the novel, because I do not have my own railroad car to carry it in, and so I must ask: Why, exactly, does Clarissa die?
@Jaybird- grief over having been raped, basically. Now, the rape came after she’d been Lovelace’s prisoner for awhile, so the stress of having been imprisoned and raped is ostensibly why she died. She died secure in her virtue. Blech.
Yet another for the TN t-shirt file: “She died secure in her virtue. Blech.”
Well, yay for virtue, but seriously: Clarissa + lump of coal + 2 weeks = diamond MINE, so “Blech” is right.
If I still taught freshman English this would so go into my Great Opening Lines for Drabbles exercise file. I’m not a t-shirt person but I would love this on a notebook!
@anotherkate I loved the Alanna books and reread them (and other books by the same author) every year. I own the frilly pink and gold copy that @Colin mentions, but the copy I originally read from my public library was the hardcover featuring Alanna holding her sword all badass-like, with the prince and a city in the background.