"You play; you win." | The Passion

There she meets her husband, who literally steals her heart. After leaving & meeting Henri, they set off to reclaim her heart from her husband’s house. 

I need to revisit The Passion. I read it quickly in my first year to keep up with term & the reading list. I borrowed rather than bought a copy to cut down on costs. It was quickly supplanted by 'Oranges for which I cared a great deal more. Even so, I remember reading of the above adventure. The concept has always moved me. Winterson's metaphor made literal; the lost heart recovered.

Passion, to Winterson, is a love of life, a love both of the defeats and of the victories. Passion is playing at life without pacing oneself. Passion is betting everything on the rounds of life. When Villanelle gives her heart to her wealthy lover, she has exhibited passion. She loses, but because she already is a gambler at life, she is not destroyed; she instead becomes a wiser gambler at life than she was before her loss.

One troubling aspect of Villanelle is the manner in which she describes love. She always seems to speak of someone stealing her heart rather than her giving it to someone. Yet she understands the gamble of playing with her heart. In the middle of the war, she is grateful for the absence left by her heart. Salvadore wishes to exchange hearts with Villanelle yet it has been stolen by another. It seems that she gave it or gambled it, not that it was stolen. She speaks of her desire for someone to steal Henri’s heart, but does not realize that she is the one to whom he has given it already. Why does Villanelle refer to her heart as stolen when it was actually lost in a wager? She speaks that way because she fancies herself as a smart gambler and one who does not lose.

- students.depaul.edu/~jabsher/undergrad/novel/Youplay.doc

Childhood Storybook Memories...

I headed out with a group of friends last night to see The Secret Garden musical on its closing night at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh. Technically speaking, an imaginative & artistic set, well lit & well costumed (thanks to Wimbledon graduate, Francis O'Connor). The performances from the cast in terms of both singing & acting were also top-notch.

It surprised me how much I could recall from my reading of it as a girl as I gave a brief synopsis to my friends beforehand. I cannot remember for the life of me as to who published the book we owned. If I could, I would track it down again & buy it back in a snap as that one of ours was swept away by the tidying ravages of time. The book was beautifully illustrated & I can see the very captions acompanying the images, starting out with "Mary Lennox was a sickly sallow and sour-faced girl."

I think part of my reason for remembering the plot so vividly was my fascination was the precocious "yellow girl" left orphaned in a foreign land & shipped across the world to live on the moors of Yorkshire. That experience of vast stretches of purple grasses was well within my ken as I spent part of my childhood roaming about on the North York Moors. Add to that, the Gothic element (which this production captured so neatly) of waste & disrepair in both building & inhabitants; winding forbidden passages leading to two sour-faced precocious children coming face-to-face with each other; the intrigue of a hidden door into a different world. Ach, no wonder it took hold so well.

One aspect which Marsha Norman's musical adaptation does not entirely realise is the pivotal role of Ben Weatherstaff, the surly gardener who discovers the children amongst the partially neglected garden and the changes within his character. Initially Ben is angry at finding them there, having quietly continued to nurture the roses but he ends up conspiring in their secret, paving a way back to health & vigour. I remember the moment he introduces them to the Doxology, sung at first by Dickon:

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;

Praise Him, all creatures here below;

Praise Him above, ye Heavenly Host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

I think I can recount the moment of the song because of how it initally appears incongruous with the outdoor experience & its curious huddle of people; the garden presenting no established setting of a Sunday. Yet that moment is actually a key one in my mind in terms of creation & new life: the very themes which the novel so readily explores & engages with to bring those broken aspects back to new life through the resolution of the ending.

life has its ‘wuthering’, the painful struggle to get through, but being alive – being ‘wick’ – means that along with the pain you can experience joy, growth and connection.

- Edinburgh Spotlight

Having remembered so vividly, I am now compelled to go back & re-read. Thankfully TSG had already foreseen & embraced that desire of their audience within their marketing strategy of re-printed Penguin classic alongside the programme :)