![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(I am catching up on comments, really I am. Slowly but surely...)
It's sort of funny that it's not until someone who uses a screen reader to read "Slave Breakers" hears "Yves" as "Eve" (they are, of course, pronounced the same) that I realize Holden and Yves have hair analagous in color and style (if not in length) to that of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost. I went to look up the passage in question to see if I was remembering correctly that Adam's hair was supposed to be thick and dark and Eve's loose-curled and blond, and-- well, here's Milton's first description of the couple, in Book IV:
His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadornèd golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay.
Now am I reading in, or did he just say that curly hair implies submissiveness?
*looks at the hair of various Slave Breakers characters*
*thinks about various iterations of Western pop culture, including Adam Bede and Working Girl, and of certain cultural tendencies along lines of gender and race*
*blinks*
I am so writing my dissertation on this.
It's sort of funny that it's not until someone who uses a screen reader to read "Slave Breakers" hears "Yves" as "Eve" (they are, of course, pronounced the same) that I realize Holden and Yves have hair analagous in color and style (if not in length) to that of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost. I went to look up the passage in question to see if I was remembering correctly that Adam's hair was supposed to be thick and dark and Eve's loose-curled and blond, and-- well, here's Milton's first description of the couple, in Book IV:
His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadornèd golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay.
Now am I reading in, or did he just say that curly hair implies submissiveness?
*looks at the hair of various Slave Breakers characters*
*thinks about various iterations of Western pop culture, including Adam Bede and Working Girl, and of certain cultural tendencies along lines of gender and race*
*blinks*
I am so writing my dissertation on this.
