Probably a much larger scale, if you were almost mean spirited about it- and I'm so glad you weren't. Thank you.
I stand by my reaction to the book, but I completely understand that that particular bit of it is all about my issues and not, you know, objective quality, and the issue is difficult as hell and I apologize for being flippant about it.
I understand (intellectually, if not really...) what an incredibly strong and emotional desire that can be, and lots of the things that bothered me- the way Clare doesn't seem to exist as her own person at all, the way she lets this nearly ruin the marriage- is me being annoyed at the author more than the character. Obviously a person in that position deserves a lot of empathy, and I really hope that doesn't sound like a straining-at-gnats sort of distinction.
The thing that bugged me was the sensation that she didn't much care about the baby at all. By which I mean, at this point in her life she sees that the time-traveling is incredibly dangerous to Henry, a complete curse, and it's put him in situations that are life-threatening and turn him into a little bit of a violent sociopath. She insists on having a child who is going to, at the age of five years old, end up naked and alone in uncontrollable situations and need to run for her life and steal to survive (sure, it turns out better for Alba than for Henry, but Clare has no way of knowing that), and she's risking that child having to do that without a mother as well as without a father. All so that she can have, not a family with a child, but a well-preserved DNA sample of Henry.
I know that that's a really unsympathetic reading of her. It's just- I've known women (lots, back when I was very involved in the Mormon church) who were desperate for biological children, and two who ended up having to adopt and will fight tooth and nail against any insinuation that they aren't a "real" family now. Clare just lost my sympathy when she called adopted children "fake," even though I know that was an incredibly emotional moment for her and I know that she was trying to hold on to Henry as much as trying to have a kid. I'm sure I was inclined to not give the benefit of the doubt at all, just because of my opinion of the book on other fronts.
Anyway, I wanted you to know where that's coming from. I did a piss-poor job up there separating my annoyance at the book as a whole from annoyance at a character in particular, and it was failure of empathy and me being an ass on the internet and I'm really sorry.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-04-03 04:26 am (UTC)I stand by my reaction to the book, but I completely understand that that particular bit of it is all about my issues and not, you know, objective quality, and the issue is difficult as hell and I apologize for being flippant about it.
I understand (intellectually, if not really...) what an incredibly strong and emotional desire that can be, and lots of the things that bothered me- the way Clare doesn't seem to exist as her own person at all, the way she lets this nearly ruin the marriage- is me being annoyed at the author more than the character. Obviously a person in that position deserves a lot of empathy, and I really hope that doesn't sound like a straining-at-gnats sort of distinction.
The thing that bugged me was the sensation that she didn't much care about the baby at all. By which I mean, at this point in her life she sees that the time-traveling is incredibly dangerous to Henry, a complete curse, and it's put him in situations that are life-threatening and turn him into a little bit of a violent sociopath. She insists on having a child who is going to, at the age of five years old, end up naked and alone in uncontrollable situations and need to run for her life and steal to survive (sure, it turns out better for Alba than for Henry, but Clare has no way of knowing that), and she's risking that child having to do that without a mother as well as without a father. All so that she can have, not a family with a child, but a well-preserved DNA sample of Henry.
I know that that's a really unsympathetic reading of her. It's just- I've known women (lots, back when I was very involved in the Mormon church) who were desperate for biological children, and two who ended up having to adopt and will fight tooth and nail against any insinuation that they aren't a "real" family now. Clare just lost my sympathy when she called adopted children "fake," even though I know that was an incredibly emotional moment for her and I know that she was trying to hold on to Henry as much as trying to have a kid. I'm sure I was inclined to not give the benefit of the doubt at all, just because of my opinion of the book on other fronts.
Anyway, I wanted you to know where that's coming from. I did a piss-poor job up there separating my annoyance at the book as a whole from annoyance at a character in particular, and it was failure of empathy and me being an ass on the internet and I'm really sorry.