Through the Looking Glass...
What got me started on this vain exercise was a conversation with my dad. A couple of days ago we were discussing something serious and just at the point when I was dangling on the line for his answer, he peppered his reply with, as you say, Madame Defarge. My dad has this habit of calling me Madame Defarge at the unlikeliest of times and therefore, surprising and irritating me. Naturally, I fumed in response, adding to his delight. After that conversation, still clueless as to why he chose the Defarge woman, I resorted to selecting fictional characters that I would be able to nod my head at with a that's me cry.
The vain feel-good exercise that it is, it deserves a Venetia like choice for starters. There is a certain maturity yet guilelessness about Heyer's Venetia that one wouldn't mind being alluded to her at all. While on Heyer, the Grand Sophy Stanton-Lacy would also suit so well, with her assertive, assured self. Maybe then, if one stepped out of the Heyer world, one would see how much of a Sammy Mountjoy one is, always looking for the point when one let it all fall. Or perhaps, one would recall the moments when a Scout Finch like self speaks first and then learns. Hard it would be to admit that Aunt Norris shows herself up at times, causing both mirth and loathing in oneself.
Weird, odd, perfectly understandable it is to see that one's choices span across awfully different, unconnected characters. But then, is anything unconnected? As Pamuk points out touchingly in his Nobel Lecture,
A writer talks of things that everyone knows but does not know they know. To explore this knowledge, and to watch it grow, is a pleasurable thing; the reader is visiting a world at once familiar and miraculous. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end to hone his craft – to create a world – if he uses his secret wounds as his starting point, he is, whether he knows it or not, putting a great faith in humanity. My confidence comes from the belief that all human beings resemble each other, that others carry wounds like mine – that they will therefore understand. All true literature rises from this childish, hopeful certainty that all people resemble each other. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end, with this gesture he suggests a single humanity, a world without a centre.everything resembles everything else.
Finally, I return to a teenage reference that I always remember with fondness: When best friend N, after a reading of Doctors in school, said, You know, you are like Barney Livingston. In a thermostat kind of way. And that is still what I enjoy being the most, a thermostat in a human kind of way. And I suppose I will still be Madame Defarge, in a dad's teaser kind of way. And a little of everyone else, in the life kind of way.
