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Series Intro: to celebrate the 50th anniversary of my FAVORITE BOOK EVER, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, I am filling 2012 with BLOG POSTS EXPLORING EVERY POSSIBLE ASPECT OF THIS BOOK IN GREAT DEPTH. I call it the Year of the Tesseract, and you can see what I've written already by clicking the year of the tesseract tag. There WILL be spoilers for Wrinkle and possibly other books throughout. So just go read it, already. Moving on:
Edit 2018: A newer (and probably better?) version of this post can be found at the GeekMom Blog.
I have never been a big fan of romance in my stories, and still today I prefer my romance firmly relationship-based rather than gooey-swoony eye-making-at-the-other-beautiful-person (and I still hate sex scenes! Yes, 13-year-old self, that isn't just you being weirdly undeveloped and childish compared to your peers, that's an actual legitimate opinion that can even be held by adults who, like, don't hate sex!), but when I was nine I ACTIVELY DESPISED it. Maybe it was just a reaction against the more "popular" girls in my class, who followed fashion trends and giggled about Who Liked Who while they weren't, you know, shunning me, so I made a point of letting the world know that I had no INTEREST in Who Liked Who, and furthermore I would NOT read those Sweet Valley High books They were reading, or ANY OTHER book that showed a girl and a boy looking swoony at each other. I wanted NOTHING to do with Romance, so don't even suggest it! And then I read a book that singlehandedly mellowed my opinion on the matter out to the "I like my romance woven organically into a plot about SOMETHING ELSE BESIDES ROMANCE" that I still hold today. And that book was? Yep. You guessed it.
The romance in Wrinkle is subtle, so subtle it is never outright referred to AS a romance. It seems, as I mentioned in a comment last week, that Calvin is swept directly up by the entire Murry family, and is never singled out as being particularly more Meg's. Of course, I've always suspected Calvin of secretly crushing on Mrs. Murry-- not so secretly, even! He refers to her stunning looks at least twice-- and then conveniently projecting that crush onto the convenient girl conveniently his age of the family. He wants to be a Murry, dangit, even if he has to hit on this bitter nerdy chick to do it!
Okay, right, Calvin is way more awesome than that. In fact at their first meeting, while he's being grilled by Charles Wallace, Calvin is making an effort to keep Meg involved in the conversation, to gauge her reactions, to... JUST BE QUITE SWEETLY POLITE TO HER even though her brother is treating him like a burglar. Even before he sees her mother, he's paying her attention. What's going through his MIND at the beginning of chapter three, as he walks with "his fingers barely touching her arm in a protective gesture"? "Maybe we weren't meant to meet before this... I knew who you were in school and everything, but I didn't know you. But I'm glad we've met now, Meg. We're going to be friends, you know." Friends? Is he thinking "friends"? Is he thinking "my intuitive compulsions that I always listen to are telling me I'm going to make lots of babies with you someday"? Is he thinking, "what the heck, I'm bored," or "this chick actually would be pretty hot if she gave a crap"? I DON'T KNOW, because as I said last week, we're getting this from Meg's point of view, and Meg is busy being completely befuddled that the school basketball star is walking home with her in the first place! Also that bit about meeting strange cryptic old ladies in a haunted house in the woods who claim they know things about her long-missing father. That can make a person feel befuddled, too. But back to the subject of romance.
Actually, I don't think I ever realized exactly how much flirting the future Mr. and Mrs. Murry-O'Keefe DO their first afternoon together until this past read-through. I mean, look at this passage once they're back at the house, and Calvin's just found a picture of Mr. Murry:
"He's not handsome or anything. But I like him."
Meg was indignant. "He is too handsome."
Calvin shook his head. "Nah. He's tall and skinny like me." OH COME ON, CAL, you're just fishing, now.
"Well, I think you're handsome," Meg said. WHAT'S WITH PEOPLE THINKING MEG'S A SHY WALLFLOWER? Oh, right, that was just me projecting. And then she adds this, just in case Calvin didn't pick up that she was REALLY STARING AT HIM: "Father's eyes are kind of like yours, too. You know. Really blue. Only you don't notice his as much because of the glasses."
Which of course brings us to, later that evening, THE MOMENT WITH THE GLASSES. That is so apparently a widespread fantasy of bespectacled girls everywhere, it just keeps coming up whenever they talk about Calvin's swooniness. I know I often thought something like that, that maybe as soon as HE (whoever the particular "he" was) saw me without my glasses maybe he'd realize that I'm SECRETLY GORGEOUS. Then I got contacts and this never happened. Heck, I'd grown Rapunzel hair and a C-chest by then, NOBODY was looking at my eyes, let alone HIM (and HE never seemed to be looking at the hair or chest, either. HE was ridiculously oblivious. Why did I always fall for the oblivious ones?). Which are a non-stunning-nor-particularly-memorable dark blue, if you wondered.
But never mind the glasses thing. The swooniest moment in the book, that planted itself indelibly in my romantic fantasies forever after, is actually the moment just BEFORE this. There's Meg, crying ("too much" as she says-- I can relate to that). And there's Cal, comforting her. And she's sure she's making a terrible impression on him and then he says, "Don't you know you're the nicest thing that's happened to me in a long time?"
To be the nicest thing to happen to somebody (particularly when you're feeling your worst)! I've always been partial to any confession of love that involves some statement along those lines, and I don't think I realized until now that it probably traces right back to here. Page 53 of this copy of A Wrinkle in Time.
Page 53 of 190. I point this out to show how little the romance is the point of the story-- it isn't your typical will-they-won't-they LONGING for the course of the book, only to come to fruition at the end; it's pretty well out-there and settled 1/4 of the way through. Meg's story is not about getting her dream guy. In fact, Calvin has, for the moment, unwittingly become an obstacle in Meg's arc!
As we said in the post about it, Meg's character arc involves learning not to expect others to solve all her problems for her-- learning to be brave and strong on her own. At the beginning of the book, she wants people to swoop in and comfort her, protect her, and along comes Calvin, who has this crazy chivalrous streak. He's "the kind of guy who needed to be needed," as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elouise82 said in a comment last week. He instinctively seems to sense that Meg is feeling vulnerable, and from the beginning he's reaching out to her to offer support at every opportunity. EXACTLY WHAT SHE WANTS. But is it what she needs? I'm like Meg-- a knight in shining armor who's going to protect and comfort and shelter you is oh how nice... which is why I didn't realize exactly what was going on until this last reread. Calvin, really, is OVERprotective. And Meg needs to learn self-sufficiency. It was hard for her to do before, but now, now that she has someone who WANTS to protect her, letting someone else keep protecting her is such a WARM AND CUDDLY AND ROMANTIC option compared to standing strong on her own!
Which makes it so much more awesome when she overcomes the COZINESS of inertia and goes off to face down IT on her own. And Calvin, for his part, aselouise82 also points out, has to step back and let her... with a kiss for luck.
He chickens out on that kiss in the movie version... which I always intended to post about during Oscars Week this year. Which turns out to be this coming week. So that will be my next Year of the Tesseract post-- my movie review! I know you're looking forward to it-- I've been wanting to write it myself for the past several years!
Edit 2018: A newer (and probably better?) version of this post can be found at the GeekMom Blog.
I have never been a big fan of romance in my stories, and still today I prefer my romance firmly relationship-based rather than gooey-swoony eye-making-at-the-other-beautiful-person (and I still hate sex scenes! Yes, 13-year-old self, that isn't just you being weirdly undeveloped and childish compared to your peers, that's an actual legitimate opinion that can even be held by adults who, like, don't hate sex!), but when I was nine I ACTIVELY DESPISED it. Maybe it was just a reaction against the more "popular" girls in my class, who followed fashion trends and giggled about Who Liked Who while they weren't, you know, shunning me, so I made a point of letting the world know that I had no INTEREST in Who Liked Who, and furthermore I would NOT read those Sweet Valley High books They were reading, or ANY OTHER book that showed a girl and a boy looking swoony at each other. I wanted NOTHING to do with Romance, so don't even suggest it! And then I read a book that singlehandedly mellowed my opinion on the matter out to the "I like my romance woven organically into a plot about SOMETHING ELSE BESIDES ROMANCE" that I still hold today. And that book was? Yep. You guessed it.
The romance in Wrinkle is subtle, so subtle it is never outright referred to AS a romance. It seems, as I mentioned in a comment last week, that Calvin is swept directly up by the entire Murry family, and is never singled out as being particularly more Meg's. Of course, I've always suspected Calvin of secretly crushing on Mrs. Murry-- not so secretly, even! He refers to her stunning looks at least twice-- and then conveniently projecting that crush onto the convenient girl conveniently his age of the family. He wants to be a Murry, dangit, even if he has to hit on this bitter nerdy chick to do it!
Okay, right, Calvin is way more awesome than that. In fact at their first meeting, while he's being grilled by Charles Wallace, Calvin is making an effort to keep Meg involved in the conversation, to gauge her reactions, to... JUST BE QUITE SWEETLY POLITE TO HER even though her brother is treating him like a burglar. Even before he sees her mother, he's paying her attention. What's going through his MIND at the beginning of chapter three, as he walks with "his fingers barely touching her arm in a protective gesture"? "Maybe we weren't meant to meet before this... I knew who you were in school and everything, but I didn't know you. But I'm glad we've met now, Meg. We're going to be friends, you know." Friends? Is he thinking "friends"? Is he thinking "my intuitive compulsions that I always listen to are telling me I'm going to make lots of babies with you someday"? Is he thinking, "what the heck, I'm bored," or "this chick actually would be pretty hot if she gave a crap"? I DON'T KNOW, because as I said last week, we're getting this from Meg's point of view, and Meg is busy being completely befuddled that the school basketball star is walking home with her in the first place! Also that bit about meeting strange cryptic old ladies in a haunted house in the woods who claim they know things about her long-missing father. That can make a person feel befuddled, too. But back to the subject of romance.
Actually, I don't think I ever realized exactly how much flirting the future Mr. and Mrs. Murry-O'Keefe DO their first afternoon together until this past read-through. I mean, look at this passage once they're back at the house, and Calvin's just found a picture of Mr. Murry:
"He's not handsome or anything. But I like him."
Meg was indignant. "He is too handsome."
Calvin shook his head. "Nah. He's tall and skinny like me." OH COME ON, CAL, you're just fishing, now.
"Well, I think you're handsome," Meg said. WHAT'S WITH PEOPLE THINKING MEG'S A SHY WALLFLOWER? Oh, right, that was just me projecting. And then she adds this, just in case Calvin didn't pick up that she was REALLY STARING AT HIM: "Father's eyes are kind of like yours, too. You know. Really blue. Only you don't notice his as much because of the glasses."
Which of course brings us to, later that evening, THE MOMENT WITH THE GLASSES. That is so apparently a widespread fantasy of bespectacled girls everywhere, it just keeps coming up whenever they talk about Calvin's swooniness. I know I often thought something like that, that maybe as soon as HE (whoever the particular "he" was) saw me without my glasses maybe he'd realize that I'm SECRETLY GORGEOUS. Then I got contacts and this never happened. Heck, I'd grown Rapunzel hair and a C-chest by then, NOBODY was looking at my eyes, let alone HIM (and HE never seemed to be looking at the hair or chest, either. HE was ridiculously oblivious. Why did I always fall for the oblivious ones?). Which are a non-stunning-nor-particularly-memorable dark blue, if you wondered.
But never mind the glasses thing. The swooniest moment in the book, that planted itself indelibly in my romantic fantasies forever after, is actually the moment just BEFORE this. There's Meg, crying ("too much" as she says-- I can relate to that). And there's Cal, comforting her. And she's sure she's making a terrible impression on him and then he says, "Don't you know you're the nicest thing that's happened to me in a long time?"
To be the nicest thing to happen to somebody (particularly when you're feeling your worst)! I've always been partial to any confession of love that involves some statement along those lines, and I don't think I realized until now that it probably traces right back to here. Page 53 of this copy of A Wrinkle in Time.
Page 53 of 190. I point this out to show how little the romance is the point of the story-- it isn't your typical will-they-won't-they LONGING for the course of the book, only to come to fruition at the end; it's pretty well out-there and settled 1/4 of the way through. Meg's story is not about getting her dream guy. In fact, Calvin has, for the moment, unwittingly become an obstacle in Meg's arc!
As we said in the post about it, Meg's character arc involves learning not to expect others to solve all her problems for her-- learning to be brave and strong on her own. At the beginning of the book, she wants people to swoop in and comfort her, protect her, and along comes Calvin, who has this crazy chivalrous streak. He's "the kind of guy who needed to be needed," as
elouise82 said in a comment last week. He instinctively seems to sense that Meg is feeling vulnerable, and from the beginning he's reaching out to her to offer support at every opportunity. EXACTLY WHAT SHE WANTS. But is it what she needs? I'm like Meg-- a knight in shining armor who's going to protect and comfort and shelter you is oh how nice... which is why I didn't realize exactly what was going on until this last reread. Calvin, really, is OVERprotective. And Meg needs to learn self-sufficiency. It was hard for her to do before, but now, now that she has someone who WANTS to protect her, letting someone else keep protecting her is such a WARM AND CUDDLY AND ROMANTIC option compared to standing strong on her own!Which makes it so much more awesome when she overcomes the COZINESS of inertia and goes off to face down IT on her own. And Calvin, for his part, as
elouise82 also points out, has to step back and let her... with a kiss for luck. He chickens out on that kiss in the movie version... which I always intended to post about during Oscars Week this year. Which turns out to be this coming week. So that will be my next Year of the Tesseract post-- my movie review! I know you're looking forward to it-- I've been wanting to write it myself for the past several years!
