I'd Prefer to Fall

"O cousin, beware of the delusions of fancy! Reason must be our guide, if we would expect durable happiness." (51)

Bachelorette, Tori Amos

Bachelorette
You climb on rooftops and you
Bachelorette
You can turn dust into champagne
You even remembered his name

Bachelorette
The graves you painted pink for
Bachelorettes
You tried to show him that he can
But you can never rush a man

You must remember
You're a car girl you're a star girl
You are at the door
The tide will turn
There's a window
There's a window

Hey, bachelorettes

The things we do girls to our bachelorettes
When she said "Mmmm" inside my "Hmmm"
And then she "Mmmm'd"
And then I "Mmmm'd" her, yeah

My bachelorettes
Why do we do this to our bachelorettes?
She tried to show me that I can
But you can never rush a man

You must remember
You're a car girl, you're a star girl
You are at the door
the tide will turn
There's a window
There's a window

Bachelorette
You fly alone now and you cry sometimes
There's nothing like it in the world
You'll go to Paris on your own
And there you'll
Bachelorette
You climb on rooftops and you
Bachelorette
You can turn dust into champagne
You even yai dai dai dai dai
And then you'll die, die, die, die
Die.

A coquette is something that I have always been a little fascinated by. I discovered the word in the dictionary when I was relatively young and thought it positive, because the dictionary definition implies that the woman is cleverer than the man, and therefore has the will and the brains to play with his man pride.

But of course, in man-world, this is enormously negative.

I would argue that the coquette in this novel is not Eliza. It’s Sanford. Sanford is the one that plays with her emotions, baits her, traps her. Eliza writes, “My heart did not approve of his sentiments, but my ear was charmed with his rhetoric, and my fancy captivated with his address,” (36). But of course, coquette is a female noun. Like bachelorette. What is the female form of courtier in our language? Courtesan. Yeah. Men get to be rich politicians, women are whores. Even today. But I digress.

Eliza may mess a little with Boyer, but I imagine coquettishness to be something more deliberate. It seems her reaction is the reaction of any woman of the time period to a marriage proposal that is not to her liking. She knows it would be beneficial, but she cannot throw her heart into it. Where is the wrong in that? Where is the crime?

If changing your mind about a man is wrong, then I’m going straight to Hell. There is no way I could marry any of the men I’ve met and be happy, let alone any of the men I’ve dated. I would survive it, I guess. But what parts of me would I lose in the process?

I was one of the not so many, fewer and less proud who chose Sanford. Now after the above Sanford bashing, I would like to say that in my defense, I would honestly rather die than marry either, which Eliza did. But Sanford has something in him that I cannot deny myself, and that is passion.

I felt like the facilitation defined passion differently than I do. Of course, sexual passion is a necessary thing in a truly good marriage, but who had that in those days? A lucky handful, I imagine.

But no, the passion I am thinking about is one for life. One that will say, “To Hell with the rules!” and has a passionate, breathtaking sense of the brilliance and vivacity of life. Boyer didn’t have that. Sanford did. And he caught Eliza in it. Who can blame her?

The term for Eliza is “the fallen woman.” Well, if that’s what it means to fall, then I’m with her. Suzanne mentioned in class that Eliza almost orchestrated her own fall. She chose it. Well good for her. Those falsely lofty heights only hold misery and lies. I for one would rather not be a part of that.

But the reason why I’d refuse Boyer is passion. To me passion what Suzanne calls “the juice.” It’s the stuff that makes us sit up out of our doldrums and take notice, to think, to love, to vow, to die. Passion is what drives us forward and ignites a fire in our veins that we just cannot deny. It sounds a little like desire, doesn’t it?

.

It is a little like desire, I suppose. But it is a consummative, metamorphic desire. It is the kind of desire that Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Susan B. Anthony answered to. I like to think of this kind of passion as the kind that rules my life, the kind that gets things done, and changes things.

.

I think it is this kind of desire men feared in Eliza, and feared in women at the time. Even the women feared it. We discussed in class how even her friends abandoned her, denounced her, saying, “Wretched, deluded girl! Is this a return for your parents’ love and assiduous care?” (142). This was the line that struck me to include the above song by Tori Amos. I know I already included on of her songs, but they speak to me at a level that makes them pop out at me all the time. Tori says, “My bachelorettes / Why do we do this to our bachelorettes?/ She tried to show me that I can/ But you can never rush a man.” The male mentality invades the women that even they pick on Eliza, who actually is doing what they all should be doing. Pulling the structure of lies and abuse down at its foundation: marriage.

.

She tried to show them that they can, but you can never rush a man.

.

Marriage to a man like Boyer would have killed a spirit like Eliza, and to her, that was a fate worse than death. I take pity on her. I’d rather die too. Why would you ever let someone steal your passion? Why, that’s like stealing the very breath from the body!

.

So about reason, then, from the opening quote. When I read this quote, it seemed to me that Eliza was parceling out what her aims were. Will I enslave myself to a safe, innocuous man that I don’t love? Or will I risk my life with a man who sets me on fire and ruins my reputation? In my mind and on reflection of Eliza’s death, there is no way to survive this choice. You either die of Dolor, such as described in the poem by Theodore Roethke, or you die in a blaze. A bang or a whimper. I choose the bang.

.

“I am pleased with nobody; still less with myself. I look around for happiness, and find it not! The world to me is a desert! If I indulge myself in temporary enjoyment, the consciousness or apprehension of doing amiss, destroys my peace of mind,” (135).