whiplash girlchild in the dark
Jul. 22nd, 2009 07:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
recordAt mousetrout 's suggestion, I've been trying Daily Lit, and receiving a chapter a day from various books in my inbox. I decided to try a good variety: a "modern memoirs" compilation of first chapters from various confessionals, Shakespeare's sonnets (which are just short enough that they make perfect between-paragraphs-at-work reading), and a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale anthology. So, this is the story I got this morning, and then I want to discuss it a little bit. Cut for length at first, perhaps content a little bit later.
THE REAL PRINCESS
There was once a Prince who wished to marry a Princess; but then she must be a real Princess. He travelled all over the world in hopes of finding such a lady; but there was always something wrong. Princesses he found in plenty; but whether they were real Princesses it was impossible for him to decide, for now one thing, now another, seemed to him not quite right about the ladies. At last he returned to his palace quite cast down, because he wished so much to have a real Princess for his wife.
One evening a fearful tempest arose, it thundered and lightened, and the rain poured down from the sky in torrents: besides, it was as dark as pitch. All at once there was heard a violent knocking at the door, and the old King, the Prince's father, went out himself to open it.
It was a Princess who was standing outside the door. What with the rain and the wind, she was in a sad condition; the water trickled down from her hair, and her clothes clung to her body. She said she was a real Princess.
"Ah! we shall soon see that!" thought the old Queen-mother; however, she said not a word of what she was going to do; but went quietly into the bedroom, took all the bed-clothes off the bed, and put three little peas on the bedstead. She then laid twenty mattresses one upon another over the three peas, and put twenty feather beds over the mattresses.
Upon this bed the Princess was to pass the night.
The next morning she was asked how she had slept. "Oh, very badly indeed!" she replied. "I have scarcely closed my eyes the whole night through. I do not know what was in my bed, but I had something hard under me, and am all over black and blue. It has hurt me so much!"
Now it was plain that the lady must be a real Princess, since she had been able to feel the three little peas through the twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. None but a real Princess could have had such a delicate sense of feeling.
The Prince accordingly made her his wife; being now convinced that he had found a real Princess. The three peas were however put into the cabinet of curiosities, where they are still to be seen, provided they are not lost.
Wasn't this a lady of real delicacy?
Okay! So, I don't know what might have jumped out at you when you read this little gem,. but I want to talk about two things: grammar and sadistic undertones. (I should also say something about the elusive nature of "reality" and the ideal Princess, and that odd rhetorical question at the end, but I really have to go to work at some point...)
First of all, there is a LOT of weird sentence construction up in here. Before I took Latin, I didn't know what a passive sentence really was, but man, had I absorbed the concept that they were a Bad Idea. I had a boss of mine (a graduate of our top-ranked MFA program!) explain to me that a passive sentence is any sentence containing the verb "to be." Anyone who reaches a high enough level of academic anxiety is terrified of committing any number of grammar faux pas, but I'm not sure any one of them is less understood than "passive voice." The thing is, most of us recognize a bad sentence when we see it, and even if it's not technically passive, most of the sentences that have been marked as "passive" by teachers on my papers (see, see what I just did there?) were not very strong sentences. Confusion about agency might not be "passive voice," but it's not a good thing. Anyway! Back to the story! "...There was heard a violent knocking at the door." So, agency, right? "There was heard," by whom? But I think "a violent knocking" is also a strange way of phrasing this. It's just an odd place for an indefinite article.And speaking of strange sentences: "Thundered and lightened"? Really?
Then you get to the next point in my argument. I mean, just look at the word choice alone: the prince was "cast down," and there's something about reversing the word order that's so much more violent than "downcast," right, because you actually think about what it means? Then, meet your princess: "sad condition," and her "clothes clung to her body." So she's not just pitiable...she's a ho?
And do I even have to say anything about "something very hard under me"?
But the part that really got me was "am all over black and blue." I think the only time I've heard that sentence construction before was in a U2 song; maybe it's a British idiom? I wonder whose translation this is. Anyway, the moral of the story is if it hurt her so much, it's true love. How sweet! And tender! And heartwarming! I think I ought to read this to an impressionable child! (If the child's anything like me...screw the twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds....I'd just be imagining the bruises.)
mousetrout 's suggestion, I've been trying Daily Lit, and receiving a chapter a day from various books in my inbox. I decided to try a good variety: a "modern memoirs" compilation of first chapters from various confessionals, Shakespeare's sonnets (which are just short enough that they make perfect between-paragraphs-at-work reading), and a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale anthology. So, this is the story I got this morning, and then I want to discuss it a little bit. Cut for length at first, perhaps content a little bit later.THE REAL PRINCESS
There was once a Prince who wished to marry a Princess; but then she must be a real Princess. He travelled all over the world in hopes of finding such a lady; but there was always something wrong. Princesses he found in plenty; but whether they were real Princesses it was impossible for him to decide, for now one thing, now another, seemed to him not quite right about the ladies. At last he returned to his palace quite cast down, because he wished so much to have a real Princess for his wife.
One evening a fearful tempest arose, it thundered and lightened, and the rain poured down from the sky in torrents: besides, it was as dark as pitch. All at once there was heard a violent knocking at the door, and the old King, the Prince's father, went out himself to open it.
It was a Princess who was standing outside the door. What with the rain and the wind, she was in a sad condition; the water trickled down from her hair, and her clothes clung to her body. She said she was a real Princess.
"Ah! we shall soon see that!" thought the old Queen-mother; however, she said not a word of what she was going to do; but went quietly into the bedroom, took all the bed-clothes off the bed, and put three little peas on the bedstead. She then laid twenty mattresses one upon another over the three peas, and put twenty feather beds over the mattresses.
Upon this bed the Princess was to pass the night.
The next morning she was asked how she had slept. "Oh, very badly indeed!" she replied. "I have scarcely closed my eyes the whole night through. I do not know what was in my bed, but I had something hard under me, and am all over black and blue. It has hurt me so much!"
Now it was plain that the lady must be a real Princess, since she had been able to feel the three little peas through the twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. None but a real Princess could have had such a delicate sense of feeling.
The Prince accordingly made her his wife; being now convinced that he had found a real Princess. The three peas were however put into the cabinet of curiosities, where they are still to be seen, provided they are not lost.
Wasn't this a lady of real delicacy?
Okay! So, I don't know what might have jumped out at you when you read this little gem,. but I want to talk about two things: grammar and sadistic undertones. (I should also say something about the elusive nature of "reality" and the ideal Princess, and that odd rhetorical question at the end, but I really have to go to work at some point...)
First of all, there is a LOT of weird sentence construction up in here. Before I took Latin, I didn't know what a passive sentence really was, but man, had I absorbed the concept that they were a Bad Idea. I had a boss of mine (a graduate of our top-ranked MFA program!) explain to me that a passive sentence is any sentence containing the verb "to be." Anyone who reaches a high enough level of academic anxiety is terrified of committing any number of grammar faux pas, but I'm not sure any one of them is less understood than "passive voice." The thing is, most of us recognize a bad sentence when we see it, and even if it's not technically passive, most of the sentences that have been marked as "passive" by teachers on my papers (see, see what I just did there?) were not very strong sentences. Confusion about agency might not be "passive voice," but it's not a good thing. Anyway! Back to the story! "...There was heard a violent knocking at the door." So, agency, right? "There was heard," by whom? But I think "a violent knocking" is also a strange way of phrasing this. It's just an odd place for an indefinite article.And speaking of strange sentences: "Thundered and lightened"? Really?
Then you get to the next point in my argument. I mean, just look at the word choice alone: the prince was "cast down," and there's something about reversing the word order that's so much more violent than "downcast," right, because you actually think about what it means? Then, meet your princess: "sad condition," and her "clothes clung to her body." So she's not just pitiable...she's a ho?
And do I even have to say anything about "something very hard under me"?
But the part that really got me was "am all over black and blue." I think the only time I've heard that sentence construction before was in a U2 song; maybe it's a British idiom? I wonder whose translation this is. Anyway, the moral of the story is if it hurt her so much, it's true love. How sweet! And tender! And heartwarming! I think I ought to read this to an impressionable child! (If the child's anything like me...screw the twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds....I'd just be imagining the bruises.)