The first time I read the opening nightmare-sequence, I admit, I was totally expecting to see some version of this later in the story (and let me just say how glad I am that you didn't sic some horrid baddie on Mamoreal and kill everybody)! Looking back (rereading) now, though, I can see some interestingly straightforward foreshadowing, which is unexpected in dream sequences. Which is perhaps why I love it so much!! (More comments will come on this point later... when I won't be "giving anything away" to other first-time readers.) (^__~)
And there's such an interesting dichotomy (is this the right word? Perhaps not...) going on here: Helen starts out in the movie as being quite proper but ends up rather child-like what with her "flights of fancy"... and then Margaret and Lowell become the typical Victorian married couple: Margaret is more unimaginative and even stricter than ever. It's an interesting cycle you hint at: fanciful childhood (like Alice's), then stuffy adulthood, and finally there's like a revenge of imagination - it just can't be kept in check any longer. (Yeah, I know you suggest that Absolem was actually there but I like the ambiguity of this a lot. I like the thought of Helen imagining him or her guilty conscience manifesting as a vision of him.) That's just really... Interesting!
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-09-06 01:59 am (UTC)And there's such an interesting dichotomy (is this the right word? Perhaps not...) going on here: Helen starts out in the movie as being quite proper but ends up rather child-like what with her "flights of fancy"... and then Margaret and Lowell become the typical Victorian married couple: Margaret is more unimaginative and even stricter than ever. It's an interesting cycle you hint at: fanciful childhood (like Alice's), then stuffy adulthood, and finally there's like a revenge of imagination - it just can't be kept in check any longer. (Yeah, I know you suggest that Absolem was actually there but I like the ambiguity of this a lot. I like the thought of Helen imagining him or her guilty conscience manifesting as a vision of him.) That's just really... Interesting!