Carter's "The Loves of Lady Purple"
Opener:
For a start, let's think through the complex and intriguing details of Carter's
"The Loves of Lady Purple": what's going on here? How do language, image and
motif, narrative structure, and theme work together, and to what end? You
might start by commenting on what you take to be the key paradigmatic scene in
the story: why is this one so important??
Jason Tice:
which scene is so paradigmatic?
Jenn Lindberg:
For a start, has anyone else heard the china doll ghost story before? As I was
reading, The Purple Lady really reminded me of the doll brought back from China
that proceeded to eat the family.=-)
Len Hatfield:
Jason: you pick!
Marc C. Hutcheson:
I hate to say something about the old cliche of the notion of all of us
being controlled by some master puppetteer who moves our strings, but I just
can't help it. 'Lady Purple' just provides opportunities for this to occur.
Enough of that, unless anyone wants to comment on it. One question I have
is: why does Lady Purple 'abrogate' her humanity as it says in the story?" At
the end, as we all know she comes to life. What does this mean after she has
already denounces her humanity. This is also like a distorted Pinocchio story
(but who is Jiminy Cricket?). Sorry I don't have any answers right now, but I
am thinking as I am asking.
Madeline:
Jenn: there's also a native american rendering of that kind of fable-plot,
which I ran across in Le Guin's Always Coming Home; but this story differs from
that one in that here the monster-eater doesn't exactly come back into a
domestic situation....how else does the Chinese doll story parallel this one?
Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
Was there a specific reason why Lady Purple suddenly became a living being? I
mean, did something happen that triggered the event?
I wonder of Lady Purple really became a living being, or if this event is
simply the dying dream of the professor.
Jason Booth:
How's about the description of the puppet, "There were glass rubies in her
head for eyes and her ferocious teeth, carved out of mother-of-pearl . . . Her
beautiful hands seemed more like weapons because her nails were so long, five
inches of pointed tin enameled scarlet" (27). Did this remind anyone of Jael?
The title of the show was "The Notorious Amours of Lady Purple, the Shameless
Oriental Venus," but the dolls description seems to resonate in the way the
show is played out. Rather than something desirable, the doll is something
dangerous, and perhaps this ties into the way that the Lady Purple is made into
an object.
Joyce Smaragdis:
Hmmm...key paradigmatic scene...
The scene toward the closing of this story in which the marionette sinks her
mother of pearl teeth into the professors neck is one that exemplifies the
violence that the Lady in Purple is said to enact on all those that she comes
into contact with. Later in this scene of rebirth, the Lady in Purple sets
fire to the puppet show and the entire cycle of life starts again. I see this
closing scene as paradigmatic for these reasons.
Madeline:
Marc,
yeah, I was thinking of Pinoch myself when reading about the Lady and
Oriental Professor; but the puppetmaker in Pinoch seems really different from
this one, no? but, when did LP "denounce" her humanity? and what does
"abrogate" mean?
Marc C. Hutcheson:
Amanda,
You make an interesting observation about the event being the dying dream
of the professor, but if it is, how do you explain her killing him? Did he
want to die?
Madeline:
Amanda: so why think it's a dream?
Lauren Moore:
If Lady Purple stands for the wood doll here, and not the renowned prostitute,
and in many ways the name already does, there are certain lines that foretell,
which tales do foretell, how the Lady Purple will break out: "Lady Purple
stood for passion and all her movements were calculations in an angular
geometry of sexuality (29)"--well, passion isn't geometry nor calculated; the
contradiction works itself out later. The line that she "had once been a woman
in whom too much life had negated life itself (30)" questions which is her
life. In the wood doll she had too much life?, then the puppeteer that makes
her move gives her more life than she would walking. Yet she disproves the
narrator's story which is mostly from point of view of puppeteer by taking his.
There's a lot going on in terms of man/woman (Wood woman), and the
domineering/domineered.
Stacey Dittmar:
I think the scene where Lady Purple "stabs her first lover and his wife, her
foster mother, in their bellies with a knife used in the kitchen to slice fish"
is paradigmatic. This scene shows how truly evil and also erotic she can be.
"Her every motion was instinct with a wonderful, reptilian liquidity."
Jenn Lindberg:
There are few stories I am reluctant to pull apart, and yet, I find myself
exactly that about this short story. I would offer to the class the scene in
which Lady Purple comes alive as one of the Key paradigmatic scenes; a scene in
which reality (the puppet master) and the unreal (Lady Purple) coalesce in a
terrifying dance that ends with the puppet master's death as the most
paradigmatic. Here we see the same roles being enached out of puppet master and
servant, but the servant shakes free her bonds and slays her oppressor?
Jason Booth:
Amanda-It seems that final scene between the professor and the doll might
suggest the notion of a purely "masculine" creation. He kisses her and "Her
kiss emanated from the dark country where desire is objectified and lives"
(38). I think that in the way the doll (woman) was defined, she could never
achieve anything approaching "life".
Emile:
So, Stace! You think of erotic motion as having a 'reptilian liquidity'? I
had a hard time seeing that as erotic, exactly. . . and I'm still tryin' to
figure out how the evil goes with the sexuality in the story. . . whose desire
is whose?
Drew Zwicke:
The scene where Lady Purple regains her flesh and the Asiatic Professor loses
his life sticks in my mind. After manipulating her strings for so long it
seems appropriate that this metaphysical manbreaker should return to her
seductions/lashings/thumbscrewings/etc. The role reversal of LP becoming "the
object on which men prostituted themselves" parallels the control which she
exerts on the Prof. But, why does Carter include the handicapped children in
this happy little family? What is Carter saying about communication, or lack
thereof?
Marc C. Hutcheson:
Madeline,
Look on page 34: "...shr repeated her former actions though she herself
was utterly other. She abrogated her humanity. She became nothing but wood
and hair". I looked up "abrogate" and it means to annul or revoke. I used
"denounce" as a synonym but now that I think about it, that probably isn't
correct. She turns into a puppet after she does this and I was just wondering
if the opposite happened when she came to life at the end.
Lauren Moore:
Amanda-thats pretty interesting if it was the dying dream of the professor;
before, he MADE her, carved, moved her into this sexual being, but if it was
his dream, it suggests 1) he doesn't want to own her, he wants her to become
her own and 2) he wants her to be a human sexual object, which together makes
for some nice speculations and irony.
Emile:
Lauren: I share your wish to separate, and keep separate, doll and woman; but
the story seems bent on refusing us that luxury, no? why so?? And what do you
mean when you say that she "disproves the narrator's story"? Also, why does it
seem to you that the tale is mostly from the puppeteer's point of view?
Jason Tice:
This story reminded me of "The Circular Ruins". The Professor is like the
Magician in that he basically wills Lady Purple to life just as the Magician
thought up his "son". One difference is that Lady Purple had a Phsysical body
to enter and the Magician's son was created out of thoughts. The creation of a
being through labor of love, or obsession, or seemingly randon chance has
poppped up in Pavic, Borges and now Carter. Ah the doll comes to life! Just
like Pinochio. Well to me the paradigmatic scene comes when the Professor
PREPARES to kiss his creation. It was his weariness and dejection which caught
my attention.
"All these kisses are of the same kind; ...for they are too humble and too
despairing to wish or seek for any response." It was this despair that brought
Lady Purple to life and it was the same lack of hope that made her kill him.
Joyce Smaragdis:
I want to jump in here and discuss the idea of dreaming someone into existence.
It seems to me that the Professor dreams this wanton whore into existence
everytime he performs this puppet show. Moreover, his audience seems to engage
in the dreaming process with him--collectively, the audience and the professor
give birth to this archtype of the prototypical whore. I use the word whore
purposefully. Do any of you think that Carter is suggesting that because we
(as a nation, people, culture) create myths of women of inexpressible evil,
that women of similar ilk will inevitably materialize?
Emile:
Marc...that's a good answer to Madeline's question. . . but then how does the
ending show an inversion of LP's abrogation, exactly? What does she or the
Oriental Prof do to enact this kind of reversal?
Jenn Lindberg:
Madeleine : The China doll story is an old ghost story told around campfires
mainly (well, that's when I've seen it the most.) It is about a father who
brings back a beautiful china doll for his daughter, but warns her the doll
must remain in the box at night. Of course, the little girl falls in love with
the doll, and wants to take the doll to bed. After a few nights, she does. The
girl girls up with the china doll much as the puppet master curled up with Lady
Purple. Well, the curse takes hold, the doll eats the child, and the family
(there are several embelished ways to tell this part, like all good Urban
Legends) but it ends up in the hands of another young girl, and leaves you
wondering. As I read the story, Lady Purple seemed like the china doll,
beautiful, but somehow horrific in her beauty - even before I read the history
given to her. I *expected* her to come to life, and waited with bated breath
until she, like the mythical china doll, would come to life and eat her
possessor.
Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
Marc and Madeline,
I was thinking that, since the professor seems to focus all of his efforts on
his craft, and the story of Lady Purple, he tends to worship her, in a way. He
can't sleep without her next to him, he kisses her goodnight, he talks to her
when they are alone...
When I read that Lady Purple had killed the professor and had come alive
herself, I guess I didn't take it face value. I thought that the professor was
dying (there are many hints of his old age throughout the story), and during
his death, he dreamt that his puppet companion had taken him in the way that
she had taken other male characters in her puppet story. I thought that this
is what the professor wanted from her, and that the realization of this dream
of his was his dying halucination.
Lauren Moore:
Emile: I had a poetry teacher once who equated reptiles with women who he
desired; he also wanted torturous relationships. THey were where the most
passion was for him. And the puppeteer? It's fairly torturous to be sexing up
a wood doll.
Emile:
Jason: interesting focus! but why, if it's the despair and humility that cause
this, does the narrator say that it's in spite of the Prof's sad humility, his
leedle smooch hits hot warm flesh?
Jason Booth:
Joyce-"I think therefore you are?" I like your idea. It seems like the
process of character creation on the stage is transformed into an actuallized
self (Lady Purple comes to life). But this would seem to open up a gapping
hole in the barrier between "fiction" and "reality".
Emile:
Ewe, Joyce!!
So in that case, why aren't the deaf boy and the dumb girl also incinerated or
murdered by the killer whore, nightmared into existence?
Lauren Moore:
Emile: the puppeteer's view because we only have actions that the doll does as
described by puppeteer in pamphlet and movements. I just felt this way.
Purple disproves the narrator's story by taking life of her own in two ways.
She as fiction and wood becomes alive and eats the manipulator. Stories eat us
the readers. They have power as soon as we start reading, unless of course we
try to be very rational about it which then would not allow us for relationship
with them.
Jenn Lindberg:
Jason : In some terrifying, terrible way, I also see the links between Jael and
Lady Purple. Both end up opposing their 'oppressors,and yet they remain
entrenched in the role of the feme fatale. Lady Purple frees herself from the
puppet master, but not from her role.
Lauren Moore:
Joyce: maybe Carter isn't suggesting, but theres the old looking-glass theory,
which too many fall under, about looking at ourselves the way others do. And
leads to why feminism as a movement still cant finalize and integrate itself.
Jason Tice:
Joyce: Do you mean that if we () tell women they are evil long enough, they
will become evil?
Stacey Dittmar:
"Lady Purple became entirely the image of irresistible evil .... she visited
men like a plague, both bane and terrible enlightenment, and she was as
contagious as the plague" (33). Throughout the story, Lady Purple is referred
to as evil and inhumane, but she is also an emblem of eroticism. The Professor
appears to want Lady Purple to use him in some sick, erotic game - he prepares
her for it - in a sort of ritual.
Joyce Smaragdis:
Drew,
I was also left wondering about the status of the deaf nephew and the "dumb
girl no more than seven or eight." My guess is that they were also burned in
the pyre. I too am having trouble trying to fit them into the larger picture
of this story. A question: in the beginning of the story, the narrator states
that the "professor knew only his native tongue." Does this mean that there
was no verbal communication between him and his audience? Does anyone know why
this lack of communication is significant?
Jason Tice:
did the professor become wood as she became flesh (reverse Sexism?)
Jason Booth:
Emile-Shouldn't you be out in the woods somewhere? The "sad humility" of the
prof may be a sign of control. Just as the puppet strings cannot restrain the
creation, so the prof's facade of decency restrain more carnal, violent, etc.
desires. The flesh is warm when he kisses her because at the precise moment of
physical manifestation, what was "fake" is made "real".
Emile:
Lauren: kewl--but I still don't see how the narrator and the puppeteer share
the point of view; the narrator tells us of the pamphlet, the puppeteer, and
the puppet, and provides information that the puppeteer is unlikely to have
(esp. for instance, after he's dead). I also don't see what's being
disproved--what claim is the narrator making that the LP denies? Still, I like
the parallel you're drawing between reading and consumption; but wouldn't that
fit the audiences of the puppet shows (and the puppeteers) better?
Marc C. Hutcheson:
Emile,
I think that what LP becomes in the end is not human. When she bit the
professor on the neck I immediately thought 'vampire' but I can't think of how
that connects with the story. Anyway, since she abrogated her humanity, then
what she turned into at the end was not human, but a different life form. She
became what she wanted to be, which was an inversion of the human form. Maybe
she hates humans in general because they create "myths of women of
inexpressible evil" as Joyce said, so she is playing on their notion of
creating such things. Hence the vampire. She sucked the life out of the
professor because she hates all life, most notably the one who "controlled" her
while she was a puppet. By taking his life, she now controls him, although he
is dead.
Emile:
Marc: the story sets up the vampire thread by the setting, no? This is
happening in happy Transylvania, where the undead holiday...
Emile:
All: what does the story's early insistence on the events happening in a
carnival suggest about the end?
Lauren Moore:
Stacy: the femme fatale??? it's traditionally men's dreams. (Im gonna get in
trouble)--look at movies, books. evil and sexy women, the power monger, the
erotic. not MY idea of eroticism but perhaps its forcing the two together and
by this furthering the OK of how men would like to view themselves.
traditional men.
Jenn Lindberg:
Did anyone else see an vampiric thembie in here? What do people think of
possibly a thought of reincarnation in a sense, for "during her kiss, she
sucked his breath from his lungs so that her own bosom heaved with it." Can we
look at this in another light as the puppet master truly BECOMING what he most
adores? Sick, twisted and perverse -- but just another thing to throw out
there.
Emile:
Joyce: there are some fascinating connetions between the languages the prof and
henchfolk use and your notion of dreaming the evil female other into existence.
. . wanna 'splore 'em?
Jason Booth:
Isn't the carnival setting of the story like the "frame" incasing the puppet
show? A frame within a frame, if you will. The "people" of the text are
playing upon the stage of the carnival, which is reflected by the puppets
playing upon the stage of the theatre.
Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
Jason B,
So it would seem that the doll must live her life through her puppeteer, or
that the puppeteer must live his life through her actions? I think I'm having
trouble understanding what you mean by "life."
Lauren Moore:
Emile: Reading and consumption or reading and relationing. different things,
the audience is the first, the reading students are the second. I suppose I
suggested the puppeteer and narrator because of other similar qualities: the
director, the teller, the manipulator. Lady disproves the narrator in a
different sense than how I said it or how it was taken.
Drew Zwicke:
Joyce: The comparison of a carnival and a brothel lies in the audience,
thrillseekers. People are drawn to the unusual, the taboo(for lack of a better
word). I suppose these people don't place a very high value on communication,
the brothel specifically. Maybe the lack of communication between the sexes is
personified by the children since the girl is deaf and the boy is dumb, and the
audience is mostly attracted to the Prof's inflection when he "speaks" as the
Lady Purple.
Jason Tice:
Jael was militant, to say the least, her killing born out of frustration and
hatred, Lady purple seems to move as if remote controlled, detatched and
indifferent towards her victim. Did anyone ever notive that couples engaged in
sexual activity in Friday the 13th movies always get killed,and the couple left
over at the end has not been "Bad!"
Joyce Smaragdis:
Jason T.
I was syggesting that we (regardless of gender, race, class etc.) eventually
become that which we are expected to become. Well, maybe this is not always
the case. I guess what I am trying to say is that if you tell somebody that
they are evil, wanton, a whore, cursed at birth, dirty, etc. for long enough,
you eventually create the person that you curse.
Lauren Moore:
Jenn: yeah I think maybe, and also that this attraction will inevitably lead
to being within the danger, possibly, by wanting (in attracted sense) the
danger, and then "wanting" takes on different connotation.
Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
Emile, I think that the story's early insistence on the events hapenning at a
carnival (ie. the two-headed animals and deformed human forms... ) are meant to
demonstrate a human curiosity with the terrifying, evil and abnormal. The more
evil the Lady Purple, the better.
Jenn Lindberg:
Marc : I guess someone else DID think Vampire=-) The curious thing about
Japanese vampires is that they, unlike more Eastern European and Western
European vampires, drink the soul out of a person. Gaki (Asian vampires) are
known for their ability to steal qualities - such as singing, or beauty. They
were not associated with drinking blood, per say, but again, the soul. Can this
be Carter's Asian travel influence coming out?
Lauren Moore:
nice analyisis, Drew. some amazing connections.
Jason Booth:
Amanda-I think the story is forming a connection between the "imagined" other
and the perceived "self". As Joyce has suggested, the audience helps to create
a character, and, as readers living in the frame framing the text, we, to, help
in that creation. But, in fact, such a creation is already present in the
audience. The doll coming to life, in a sense, is a moment of reflection, an
opportunity for the audience to perceive something hidden about themselves.
Jason Tice:
Maybe the Professor just went to sleep. He did not die, he just dreams this
dream every night. This is a serious comment, these stories are kind of
slippery, so we can't take everything at face value. It is like studying for
exams and dreaming about your notes.
Joyce Smaragdis:
Jason B.
I was not thinking in Descartian terms, but I think that your analogy is
appropriate. When I started to read this story, I started to think about my
own life and my own mother. More specifically, I know that I owe my mother a
lot for making me believe that I was an individual that could contribute
something this world. I don't know that I would be the person that I would be
had it not been for my mother thinking that I was capable of ....gotta go to
next conference.
Jason Tice:
Joyce: This occurs only through individual weakness.