Peg Kerr's Journal

I got together with 1minnesotagirl and alfreda89, who are up from Texas. We got together at Cafe Latte, where they had dinner and we ate decadent desserts, including their famous diablo chocolate torte (with cinnamon and a dash of cayenne pepper). It was a lovely evening, my first chance to meet alfreda89, and conversation ranged over a wide variety of topics. I blew my calorie count for the day out of the water. Ah well, special occasion.

I was listening to the next episode of Snapecast (snapecast) on the way home. Naturally, since I've been thinking about the This Slytherin Life essay I submitted to them that they will be broadcasting next month, and because I ingested too much chocolate and caffeine tonight, I am sitting down to mull over hearts of flesh and hearts of stone again, instead of going to bed like a sensible person.

I have been reading Dickens' Bleak House (through my Daily Lit e-mails) which I've never read before, as well as Pamela Aidan's Darcy trilogy, her rewriting of Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point of view. Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, I've always maintained, have plumbed this theme in depth. I talked with kijjohnson some about this in the past month or so, too. She was challenging the rather simple dichotomy I've set up. Am I simply saying that heart of flesh = good and heart of stone = bad? Well, true, I need to refine this further.

I think Austen was examining this quite closely in Sense and Sensibility, and the movie developed it further quite beautifully. Marianne initially made the mistake of believing that she could discern someone's heart by their outspokenness, their response to poetry, their immediate openness. What she eventually learned, to her sorrow, was she could not accurately judge Willoughby's character by his initially open manner. Like Marianne, he prided himself in speaking his mind without pretense (or bothering much about the feelings of others). He seemed to be all openness; he shared her passionate love of books and music. And yet (she discovered too late) that all that surface openness hid a heart of stone, a secret furtiveness, and a hard selfishness that made Willoughby, in the end, cruelly abandon her because doing so served his economic interest.

Marianne also made the mistake of dismissing Elinor as hardhearted, because she refrained from talking about her own feelings, not realizing that her reserve hid deep and painful hurt. I remember hearing an interview with Ang Lee, the director of the movie (made with Emma Thompson's excellent screenplay). At the point where Marianne walks through the Palmers' garden through the rain to go look upon Willoughby's property, there are two hedges on either side of the walk. "On one side of the path the hedges were damaged by frost," Lee said, "and so the gardeners sculpted them into these fantastic flowing shapes: that side represented Sensibility, The hedges on the other side were very formal traditional geometric shapes: cones, etc. Those represented Sense."

Elinor is a continual reminder that what may be initially taken as a heart of stone may be something more complex. I have often used this as a personal metaphor: when I say that I am feeling Elinor Dashwoodish, I am saying that there is more going on under the surface than I am willing to reveal at this time. I think that the heart of flesh must feel, but at the same time I realize that it is not always prudent to reveal all that is going on for all the world to see.

Severus Snape, of course, would have nothing but contempt for Marianne Dashwood, but would approve of Elinor. (I find the fact that Alan Rickman portrays both Severus Snape and Colonel Bradford, who eventually becomes Marianne's true lover, doubly and deliciously ironic.)

Marianne, of course, would be terrible at Occlumency. Elinor might actually be pretty good at it.

There are also times when it is the right thing to do to "harden one's heart." Parenting is the first arena that comes to mind. If I give in to my girls every time they cry, I would be a very bad parent indeed. Think of Vernon and Petunia Dursley: they might consider themselves tenderhearted because they have always given their son everything he has ever wished and they cannot bear to deny him anything. Dumbledore, however, chides them for this, noting that they have spoiled their son very badly indeed by doing so.

Sometimes resisting evil or wrongdoing requires hardening one's heart, as Elinor had to do in her interview with Willoughby.

I am only about one third of the way through Bleak House, as I've said, and do not have any idea of how things will turn out. So far, however, Lady Dedlock is reminding me quite a bit of Severus Snape: hints of ruthlessness and a secret past, combined with total inscrutability. I will be interested to see whether I am right.

Enough mulling over theme. This is absurd; I need to get to bed.