Looking for a woman’s perspective on a passage in ‘Parade…
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Looking for a woman’s perspective on a passage in ‘Parade’
In ‘Parade’ by Rachel Cusk, I came across the following passage and I feel like I’m missing a bit of perspective in order to fully understand what the author is saying. While interrogating G on her paintings, the painter finishes with “Obviously, … I wouldn’t ask that question to a man.” In this interrogation to G, is the painter asking if her daughter has been incorporated into her paintings in a way that includes the daughters femininity in a way that a man wouldn’t be able to because he isn’t able to (or is incredibly unlikely to) really understand that aspect of his daughter’s life? Or is there another reason that I’m missing that she wouldn’t ask this question to a man?
The passage:
“The painter, only half-joking, asked G whether she was living a double life, and G remembered the evening of the dinner party, when she had suddenly felt her conventionality on humiliating display. The painter had seen it all, she knew, and G wanted to protest that she hadn't chosen what the painter saw, but the fact was that she had. She had chosen it, had sometimes even forced it to be. What she wanted was for someone to ask her why she had, to see through her as her husband did but from the other side of the mirror. The painter asked her where her daughter was in the paintings. G felt a lurching motion beneath her at this question, as though she were on a suddenly listing boat. The inescapability of her life shrank in an instant to this small and unstable boat. Obviously, the painter said, before G could say it herself, I wouldn't ask that question to a man.”
#entertainment
In ‘Parade’ by Rachel Cusk, I came across the following passage and I feel like I’m missing a bit of perspective in order to fully understand what the author is saying. While interrogating G on her paintings, the painter finishes with “Obviously, … I wouldn’t ask that question to a man.” In this interrogation to G, is the painter asking if her daughter has been incorporated into her paintings in a way that includes the daughters femininity in a way that a man wouldn’t be able to because he isn’t able to (or is incredibly unlikely to) really understand that aspect of his daughter’s life? Or is there another reason that I’m missing that she wouldn’t ask this question to a man?
The passage:
“The painter, only half-joking, asked G whether she was living a double life, and G remembered the evening of the dinner party, when she had suddenly felt her conventionality on humiliating display. The painter had seen it all, she knew, and G wanted to protest that she hadn't chosen what the painter saw, but the fact was that she had. She had chosen it, had sometimes even forced it to be. What she wanted was for someone to ask her why she had, to see through her as her husband did but from the other side of the mirror. The painter asked her where her daughter was in the paintings. G felt a lurching motion beneath her at this question, as though she were on a suddenly listing boat. The inescapability of her life shrank in an instant to this small and unstable boat. Obviously, the painter said, before G could say it herself, I wouldn't ask that question to a man.”
#entertainment
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