{"id":2272,"date":"2023-09-18T08:17:07","date_gmt":"2023-09-18T12:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2272"},"modified":"2023-09-18T17:26:21","modified_gmt":"2023-09-18T21:26:21","slug":"my-lady-of-the-verdigris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2023\/09\/18\/my-lady-of-the-verdigris\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cMy Lady of the Verdigris\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Louise is one of the few people who make the narrator feel free but also in control, which is something that they seem to value. Toward the end of the book, when the narrator is reminiscing about the good times they had with Louise, they describe her as \u201cMy Lady of the Verdigris. Louise is one of the few women who might still be beautiful if she went mouldy\u201d (161). When I first read this, I assumed the \u201cLady of the Verdigris\u201d was some painting, but upon minimal further research, it seems like the narrator just means Louise is their teal woman. This is an interesting way to describe her, because having grown up in the US, the most famous \u201cLady of the Verdigris\u201d is the Statue of Liberty. I don\u2019t know if it symbolizes the same things in the UK or if they even think about it at all, but the going \u201cmouldy\u201d (161) and the \u201ccopper\u201d hair (161) definitely seem to point to a copper statue that\u2019s oxidized. I feel like the Statue of Liberty can signify two things, especially for people who don\u2019t live in the US. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first is, of course, freedom or liberty. The narrator leads a life that seems free of commitment. They describe settling down with Jacqueline as \u201cwallow[ing] in contentment,\u201d and explain that \u201c[c]ontentment is the positive side of resignation\u201d (76). <\/span>I think that the narrator telling us about all the people they\u2019ve dated in the past characterizes them as a free person who doesn\u2019t get hung up break ups and moves on (fairly) easily. I think this is also demonstrated through the fact that almost all the women the narrator dates are married, while the narrator isn\u2019t; they aren\u2019t legally tied to another person, which gives them the ability to easily date around. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The second idea the Statue of Liberty could signify, looking at the US in the 1990s from a queer perspective, could be control. There was the \u201cDon\u2019t Ask, Don\u2019t Tell\u201d policy (1993) and the Defense of Marriage Act (1996), for example, and while both of these were implemented\/passed after <\/span>Written on the Body <\/span><\/i>was published (1992), I\u2019d imagine that the suppression of queer identity was present throughout the earlier \u201890s as well.\u00a0After the narrator hits Jacqueline, they say that they always prided themselves on being the \u201csuperior partner\u201d who didn\u2019t overreact and was able to control themselves (86). They had control in their relationship with Louise until she got cancer, and then they attempted to maintain their control by running away to the run-down house in the country. I think it\u2019s in the country where the narrator starts to develop as a character and starts to loosen their control over both the narrative and their relationship with Louise. They start to tell us more about themselves. And in the very end, they embrace the cliches (180) and possible lose control of their sanity (188).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(source: https:\/\/library.law.howard.edu\/civilrightshistory\/lgbtq\/90s)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Louise is one of the few people who make the narrator feel free but also in control, which is something that they seem to value. Toward the end of the book, when the narrator is reminiscing about the good times they had with Louise, they describe her as \u201cMy Lady of the Verdigris. Louise is … Continue reading \u201cMy Lady of the Verdigris\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346798],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}