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vom_marloweSo I finished up the second Sister Jane audiobook (Hounded to Death) and ran smack into another infidelity moment. Sister Jane has a longtime boyfriend, who is out of town. She gets together for dinner with an old friend, they have a lovely time, and they fall into bed. Afterward, Sister Jane feels no guilt but knows she must keep it secret from her boyfriend.
And I headdesked about one million.
I was raised on the border of the South, and sometimes sexuality is presented as more....fluid? (It's a bit of an old fashioned thing, I think.) Sometimes spinster women get practically married, live together, and become Honey and Betty, the way any married couple is. Nobody says they're a couple, but that's how they're treated, and if you asked if they were lesbians, you'd probably get a funny look, because no, they're Honey and Betty, Very Good Friends.
Infidelity (as some would call it) was also presented as fairly normal, in that some people Made Arrangements in their long term marriages. You'd say that Bob was seeing someone, and while you maybe wouldn't have invited that someone to a party along with Bob's spouse, you wouldn't call Bob a skirthound chasing sonofabitch, either, because he and Sue had an Arrangement and sometimes Sue had her own Special Friend.
And I'm cool with that, so long as it's consensual to all parties.
The Sister Jane mysteries take the stance that monogamy just isn't realistic and people stray and so on, and Sister Jane feels absolutely no guilt at sleeping around on her partner and not telling him.
What baffles me is that given the cultural context, it's possible to write her as having an open relationship, as having an Arrangement, as being what I'd now (here, today, given what I know) call poly, but she choose not to.
No, narratively Brown chooses to keep the secrecy and the betrayal, and that makes me very frowny.
What I was looking for in the Sister Jane mysteries, besides the foxhunting, was that the narrator was an active, happy, still sexual widow with gray hair and strong opinions. I gotta admit that when the writer expresses that sexuality in such a partner-betraying way, it makes me sad. In the book, it's portrayed as wisdom.
Back when I was a young Vom, frolicking in college and learning about love, I fell in love with a man who was actually pretty great. He had many fine qualities--he was smart, kind, he made me laugh, he was good in bed, he worked hard, he made good pie, you know, the usual. But he also had the approach about fidelity that Sister Jane has. It wasn't until after we were together for a while that I discovered that he was still seeing someone else, his first love, who'd moved in with his best friend. That kind of crushed my youthful innocent heart, and as I'm sure you've all guessed, he went on to do it again, even though we had a Very Important Talk and he agreed that he wanted to be monogamous with me.
Only after the second betrayal did he say he would like to have an open relationship, and by then, my trust in him was shattered.
What saddens me is looking back at all that fallout. Several people were involved in this complicated, multifaceted decahedron of ties, and iall those relationships went pear-shaped through denial, betrayal, secrecy, and lies. It was just so needless.
Many years later, I ended up at a Bob Jones, eating pancakes with too much syrup, on a threesome date with a married couple, and it was just not the same. That didn't work out, but I feel no regrets, no sadness, so wistfulness, no lingering pain. (Although I gotta say that Bob Jones adds too much sugar to everything, for serious.) Everything was open and aboveboard and fun and the shared time was just fine.
Nobody got hurt.
I wasn't exactly going to advertise what I did to people at work, mind you, but I feel no regrets at being on a date with an officially married couple, because that was their marriage and we were all following the rules they'd laid down. Win-win.
I feel like it's just a shame that this series, which portrays the adventures of an older woman with a lot of strengths, has to fall back on the old saw of infidelity and betrayal. Why couldn't it be an open relationship? Why couldn't she just have an understanding that she'd also have enjoyable romps with friends from time to time? *scratches head*
I dunno. Maybe it's not something that will bug anyone else. But I found it annoying enough to take some of the shine off the rest of the story. The horses were still good, the subplots kind of interesting, and the reader was a delight, but eh. I think I'm done with this cozy series (also the rest are read by the author, which is usually a mistake.) YMMV.
And I headdesked about one million.
I was raised on the border of the South, and sometimes sexuality is presented as more....fluid? (It's a bit of an old fashioned thing, I think.) Sometimes spinster women get practically married, live together, and become Honey and Betty, the way any married couple is. Nobody says they're a couple, but that's how they're treated, and if you asked if they were lesbians, you'd probably get a funny look, because no, they're Honey and Betty, Very Good Friends.
Infidelity (as some would call it) was also presented as fairly normal, in that some people Made Arrangements in their long term marriages. You'd say that Bob was seeing someone, and while you maybe wouldn't have invited that someone to a party along with Bob's spouse, you wouldn't call Bob a skirthound chasing sonofabitch, either, because he and Sue had an Arrangement and sometimes Sue had her own Special Friend.
And I'm cool with that, so long as it's consensual to all parties.
The Sister Jane mysteries take the stance that monogamy just isn't realistic and people stray and so on, and Sister Jane feels absolutely no guilt at sleeping around on her partner and not telling him.
What baffles me is that given the cultural context, it's possible to write her as having an open relationship, as having an Arrangement, as being what I'd now (here, today, given what I know) call poly, but she choose not to.
No, narratively Brown chooses to keep the secrecy and the betrayal, and that makes me very frowny.
What I was looking for in the Sister Jane mysteries, besides the foxhunting, was that the narrator was an active, happy, still sexual widow with gray hair and strong opinions. I gotta admit that when the writer expresses that sexuality in such a partner-betraying way, it makes me sad. In the book, it's portrayed as wisdom.
Back when I was a young Vom, frolicking in college and learning about love, I fell in love with a man who was actually pretty great. He had many fine qualities--he was smart, kind, he made me laugh, he was good in bed, he worked hard, he made good pie, you know, the usual. But he also had the approach about fidelity that Sister Jane has. It wasn't until after we were together for a while that I discovered that he was still seeing someone else, his first love, who'd moved in with his best friend. That kind of crushed my youthful innocent heart, and as I'm sure you've all guessed, he went on to do it again, even though we had a Very Important Talk and he agreed that he wanted to be monogamous with me.
Only after the second betrayal did he say he would like to have an open relationship, and by then, my trust in him was shattered.
What saddens me is looking back at all that fallout. Several people were involved in this complicated, multifaceted decahedron of ties, and iall those relationships went pear-shaped through denial, betrayal, secrecy, and lies. It was just so needless.
Many years later, I ended up at a Bob Jones, eating pancakes with too much syrup, on a threesome date with a married couple, and it was just not the same. That didn't work out, but I feel no regrets, no sadness, so wistfulness, no lingering pain. (Although I gotta say that Bob Jones adds too much sugar to everything, for serious.) Everything was open and aboveboard and fun and the shared time was just fine.
Nobody got hurt.
I wasn't exactly going to advertise what I did to people at work, mind you, but I feel no regrets at being on a date with an officially married couple, because that was their marriage and we were all following the rules they'd laid down. Win-win.
I feel like it's just a shame that this series, which portrays the adventures of an older woman with a lot of strengths, has to fall back on the old saw of infidelity and betrayal. Why couldn't it be an open relationship? Why couldn't she just have an understanding that she'd also have enjoyable romps with friends from time to time? *scratches head*
I dunno. Maybe it's not something that will bug anyone else. But I found it annoying enough to take some of the shine off the rest of the story. The horses were still good, the subplots kind of interesting, and the reader was a delight, but eh. I think I'm done with this cozy series (also the rest are read by the author, which is usually a mistake.) YMMV.