Well, it could really be crushingly provincial and conformist, you know.

Woman, you need money—get a husband! Man, you need to firm up that reputation—get a wife!

So much for, rich-enough-to-be-free; more like, “ “ to play by the rules. ~ It’s like, couldn’t almost any idiot do that? 😬🤪

So yeah, it occurs to me that this book, and many books like this, aren’t exactly positive/fun; they’re ambiguous. Not subtle: by anyone’s fucking imagination. But ambiguous. It’s not really fun….

I mean, it’s not negative. A lot of things out there are flagrantly un-positive, you know. This is, Almost, positive…. But not really.

It’s still a break from the books about ambushes and terrorists, you know.

…. Girls can go to school, even get business degrees, but they don’t get as much money, because they’re not “supposed to”; usually the guy with charm makes the money—the girl with charm, on the other hand, is just a ‘trollop’, as the girl in the conversation will be the first to say, you know. And the stiff, un-charming men withdraw to the inner sanctum while women make fun of charmers! 🤪 (And not like they’re practicing philosophy lingo while they gossip-assassinate, either, lol.)

…. It’s unsurprising-yet-amazing how this Codependent Two can subtly want to be with this guy in order to educate him that she knows better than he does how to live his life, you know. This is not like some solidly middlebrow Elin Hilderbrand book, you know. This is just…. (shakes head)

…. Yes, marriage isn’t always positive; sometimes it’s just a business deal, and a dubious one at that….

Family
———
Everything

Ie,

Family
———
Morality

lol.

…. (mother to 7-year-old) Why? What a strange question. You were part of the ‘shebang’—the whole one, that is. It’s part of the image, you know, that goes along with being rich, being responsible, being an adult, you know? Look at it this way: daddy wanted his friends to like him, and if we weren’t raising you, they wouldn’t! That makes you very important! You’re a very important part of this family!…. No, we can’t get ice cream; daddy’s friends wouldn’t like it…. C’mon, I said no…. Now, darling, there is a very particular way in which one throws a temper tantrum when one doesn’t get what one wants, and let me say that your over-literal interpretation is a serious fashion faux pas, my dear…. Aww, let it out, dear; that’s right, cry, mommy is here for you…. And your salad is on the table. And don’t try to get fat next week when I’m away in Rome, either. I left the nanny strict instructions, just like your daddy’s friends leave me strict “instructions”. Too-Dee-loo….

…. OMG she’s TWENTY-FOUR: she’s old! She’s dead! In nomini Domine, filius Christi, mortus art thou, O twenty-something, Ah-men…. (crosses her to give her last rites).

…. “You don’t have to marry him; we’re far from helpless. I only worry about the grandmother. We might have to send her out into the snow to beg. I also worry about life itself. Oh look, a made-for-TV Dickens movie….”

…. It’s hard to comment on such a substandard bride without making it sound like I’m the lawyer for team men, you know. But god, it’s like she’s just going to roll over and die because her dog got sick, and she calls that drawing a line in the sand, you know. “I’m very happy that you’ll be marrying me and giving me all your money; however, I want you to know that I’m the world’s weakest vampire and I’ll be sleeping in the coffin in the basement, not with you, and I might need to take a little vacation sleeping under a tombstone for about two years. While I’m gone you can’t buy orange juice, either.” “Sacre Bleu! But at least do not betray my contacts with the Resistance!” “You’re Italian, not French.” “Oh, is that what I am? What’s my character’s name again, Marzetti, Renzetti, something like that? You’re right; that sounds Italian. Very realistic, if I do say so myself.”

…. I mean, it’s like her theory is: I have nothing to offer, so someone will have to take care of me. It’s like the welfare/church charity theory of marrying up, you know.

…. Why do people get married who don’t like each other, who have nothing in common, who they want to one-up? How can it not reflect on you, who you choose to be with….

…. Families used to stay together—they’d take the beatings, you know; they loved Jesus. Although nowadays, things are good because you can shame the husband, because, at least in fantasy-land, the codependent mother is king.

…. I’m not convinced anymore that Harlequin is really a good brand, you know. Maybe I’ll just have to stop buying their ‘billionaire’ books; they don’t seem to really understand the wealthy, at least not the kind of wealthy person that I’d like to become. Some rich celebrities are okay to read about; generic Harlequin rich people don’t really seem as charming.

…. There are so many dirty romances about repressed people wading through blackwater up to their genitals in denial, you know. It would be strange if it weren’t so common. They teach you algebra and the Krebs cycle and the Industrial Revolution and even “Hamlet”, not because they really think we need to know those things—as if we needed a solid 85% of the population to be mathematicians or as if the people who teach Jane Austen are terribly interested in marriage, their own or other people’s—it’s still a colonial system, at its essence, and colonialists don’t believe in love, and neither do people who teach Jane Austen; even the flights of fancy of female rationality are carefully and quietly kept within the colonial system…. And there are still colonies, you know: one of them is even still expanding: Israel/Palestine—no, but they teach us these things to keep us quiet; they teach us these things as an exercise in stuffing our feelings, and because they have no choice. If they wanted to tell us that we have a heart or a body or are anything other than robots, they could do that exactly once before getting assassinated. There are rumors of omnipotent rebellions past, but they all involved exiting the academic system, really. “In the place of the parent” means in Latin or whatever, “in the place of the superstitious Christian violent person who doesn’t like foreigners or pagans or new ideas”, basically. And it hasn’t changed much. So the teacher says, “stuff your feelings”, and the average person doesn’t have the strength to, you know, hack off their limbs while they’re still conscious to preserve the flow of blood for the Brain, right—but neither can they overcome the shame that’s in it for thinking it’s the right thing and not being able to. And then they write a book like this by and for repressed dirty people who don’t like sex and don’t think ideas and do dirty sexy things…. And the teacher stands at the front of the room and she laughs a cold, hearty laugh and feels vindicated, because the whole point was that You Lot Are Rubbish. Colonialism.

…. (smiles) The maid cooks for him, and the mistress sleeps with him, and the wife has him renovate a house for her.

(Justin Timberlake) Wife: this one’s for you. (echo) This one’s for you….