Subject: Re: wimmen talking
From: Suzanne Morine (suzannem@dimensional.com)
Date: Sat Oct 21 2000 - 17:49:19 GMT
At 09:26 AM 10/19/2000 +0100, you wrote:
> But is the above REALLY a sample of how you talk when
> alone in your boudoirs? 'Not that damn little-boy sweet ...
> a special kind of sweet .....' ? 'That DARLING blue cardigan...'?
> Oh God, not that. Not that DARLING blue. Anything but
> that.
>
> This is stereotypical gal speak, not the real thing, surely.
> It's on a par with the kind of slavering guy speak fondly
> imagined - & hopelessy wrong - by Danielle or Edwina.
My two cents here. Wasn't Salinger raised in New York, by well off or
aspiring to be well off, people? I imagine as a young boy he certainly had
time around his mother and her friends talking, who didn't worry about his
presence or his being in the next room quitely playing. Because of this
experience, on some level, guys have a sense of what women talk like among
themselves. Well, specific women of a specific generation, anyway.
This story was written in the forties or early fifties. It's not my
generation, but I have an impression from old movies, and a sense of some
people's idea of the desirable way to be, of a '40s concept of cool as
being breezy, suave, smooth as ice, well off, and having a high tolerance
for alcohol -- much like the ideals of the aspiring phonies in The Catcher
in the Rye. Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut fits beautifully with that:
because the fashionable way to be for any time is going to inevitably have
to mesh with other values. The women are tired, disappointed, have
responsibilities.. They're getting drunk.. There's frankness, humor,
wistfulness, bitterness there, yet their old ideals are still popping up.
Maybe Mary Jane can't remember that cardigan. It's not smooth to get at the
specific one and it certainly isn't breezy and suave. In fact, it's breezy
and suave to not give a sh*t which cardigan it was and to keep the
conversation going by agreeing. Eloise didn't even seem to care if she
remembered.
In fact, writing about this I see that lot of the appeal of this story for
me is seeing people who value a cold, suave and sophisticated ideal still
have something of a heart somewhere: Eloise suddenly remembers herself as a
girl from Boise as unfashionable yet as a better person, in a very vital
way, than the person she is at this later point in her life.
Sniff.. :-/
Suzanne
P.S. On another matter entirely, as recently as seven years ago, Florida
was still a place where rich New England women vacationed in the winter and
shopped for very expensive clothes. My grandmother was doing alterations
for them at that point. She had a regular clientele. I mean I got the
impression that Florida has long been a place to buy new designer fashions
as well as a nice place to be in the winter.
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