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Fish Out Of Water: Chapter 13C (Why Polly?)
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20 responses to “Fish Out Of Water: Chapter 13C (Why Polly?)”
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[…] to Chapter 13C GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); […]
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Hum remind me to never try to compete for a Rajah’s attention. (What ? Okay, there are no Rajah here, but there’s still a few princes^^) I think I would feel as uncomfortable as Polly felt. I don’t know what I think about Janeira yet. I’d watch out when a woman you don’t know is too nice to you. Sad, but true !
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Unfortunately, that can be too true – though I try to think the best of people when I first meet them! I think I would hate being in this situation myself too.
No Rajahs in Canada either, and no princes until you count the British ones (which I guess technically are our princes, but they’re so far removed from regular Canadian life…)LikeLike
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It’s especially the case with women, I think – I mean, women can be soo mean to each other.
The other day, I heard on the radio that the term “Miss” (as opposed to “Mrs”) was considered rude in Canada. Yes, you’re my canadian expert, so first though that came to mind was to ask you if that’s true.
Ah, that’s true. The closest thing we have to a prince would be a banker in Venezuela, who could become Louis XX, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon. I guess Jean Sarkozy is the next best thing, but he’s sort of… ah yes, married, But honestly I don’t know if I’d be into a man like the Rajah, no matter how gorgeous he is. I mean, someone who feels the need to watch dozens of women competing for his attention day after day clearly has an oversized ego issue that’s just not attractive.
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🙂
I think “Miss” must be considered rude, or at least politically incorrect, because whenever I have to fill out a form and check off “Mrs.” “Mr.” or “Ms.” there is never an option for “Miss.” That annoys me, because I am a “Miss”!!! It is technically correct and safe to call all women “Ms.” because “Ms.” doesn’t tell you if the woman is married or not. I don’t care if everyone knows I’m not married (I don’t know why anyone would care?), so to me “Miss” makes sense. “Ms.” just sounds old. Sorry, a pet peeve of mine!
I don’t think Miss is really an insult, it’s just never used. Most of the time, if someone is young and single, everyone just calls you by your first name.LikeLike
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I’m asking because two feminists associations are currently trying to ban “Mademoiselle” cause they consider it rude. To them, it either means you’re an old maid or that you’re looking for a husband, which apparently is degrading. I think that’s just the definition of a waste of time. Who cares about that stuff ? I don’t want to be called “Madame” I’d feel awfully old ! Plus, I don’t see myself calling an eighteen-year-old “Madame”. It would just be weird. I also think that it’s really stupid for feminists to focus on something like that when there’s still women who are forced into (and I’m quoting Wikipedia cause I never heard the english term before) female genital mutilation. They should get their priorities straight…
“Mademoiselle” is oftenly used here, but I don’t know, I think it’s pretty nice. It doesn’t sound like an insult. I will never get along with some of those feminists, because they always make me feel like if I don’t agree with them, I’m a bad feminist, or worse a bad woman.LikeLike
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I think people in Canada who want us all to use “Ms.” must have the same reasons… but I don’t see why “Miss” means you’re looking for a husband. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking for a husband, but I don’t see how “Miss” implies that either. I find most of these debates over word choice somewhat pointless (certain words shouldn’t be used, but after a while you start to argue about nothing).
I like the sound of the word “Mademoiselle”. I like the sound of “Miss” too, but it’s never used here. It sounds nice and young 🙂
Yes, I think feminism brings up some good points to think about, but I will never feel I have to agree with everything feminism tells me to agree with, or feel like I’m a sheep or under the control of men because I don’t agree with everything 😉LikeLike
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Well, I guess it’s because at some point in history women were divided into two categories, the ones that were married and the ones that were looking for a husband. Cause for a woman getting married was pretty much the only option.
If you want the masculine version of “Mademoiselle” there’s one, it’s “damoiseau” but it’s never used. It’s what we call old french, it’s a word that got lost with time..Also, here, an actress or a comedian stays a “Miss” forever, they’re always called “Mademoiselle” even when they’re married =)LikeLike
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Huh, I like the idea that there was once a masculine version of “Mademoiselle”! Actresses here are pretty much never “Mrs.” or “Miss” anything.
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I think it’s a theater tradition.
(it has absolutely nothing to do with that, but can I just say our medias are driving me crazy with their speculations about which day Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is going to give birth ?)
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By the way… question for you now. Is Jules Verne much of a popular author in France? He’s probably one of the few French authors whose books I’ve actually finished.
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Well, she said she wanted to be discrete… So naturally it’s all over the news. Lately it’s been like this : the socialists’ primary elections, Sarkozy baby, Françafrique scandal. At this point I’m actually glad to hear Michael Jackson’s fans are making a fuss, at least it’s distracting.
Yes, he’s very popular. Even if some of his work is contested because of his remarks about the Jews. He’s a product of his time, it was considered normal at the time, I guess. Except for Victor Hugo which authors couldn’t you finish ? I’m curious =)
It reminds me : I’m sure you’d like The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I know it’s translated, and it’s a beautiful tale, very short but really great.
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You know what – I actually read The Little Prince in French! Except it’s one of the books I never finished, because we read it in French class and the school year ended when we were on the last chapter. I tried to figure out what happened in the end, but my French wasn’t quite good enough… I should find an English translation.
Actually, I was thinking of Alexandre Dumas, but I DID finish “The Three Musketeers.” It was just so long ago I don’t really remember it. And I did finish “The Count of Monte Cristo” too.
I guess I haven’t read enough of Jules Verne, because I didn’t know he talked about Jews at all. I liked “Around the World in Eighty Days.” Though I hear not all the English translations of Jules Verne we have are complete, so they may have cut politically incorrect bits out.LikeLike
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I’m not surprised they made you read it in your French class – it’s just such a classic, and still quite simple (well, short anyways).
Well, it’s not in every novel, actually it’s not in the most well-known, it’s mostly in “Hector Servadac” and “Claudius Bombarnac”. I’m not even sure those books are still published here. I know of them because of my dad, but most people don’t know this side of Jules Verne. I’m not sure it would matter though – after all, Céline (Louis-Ferdinand Céline, but mostly just refered to as Céline) was an anti-Semite too, and he oppenly supported the Nazis during the War, but he’s still considered a genius author…
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Yes, if you dig enough into many of the “classic authors” backgrounds, you’ll find enough of them had opinions that probably wouldn’t be acceptable today. Shakespeare might’ve been rather sexist or racist too (depending on how you interpret certain parts of his plays – ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and ‘The Merchant of Venice’ etc). It’s hard to know how much we can excuse in them – after all, if we lived back then, would we really have thought any better? Yet their opinions still aren’t exactly good…
I think ‘Hector Servadac’ and ‘Claudius Bombarnac’ are probably really hard to find in English.LikeLike
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I don’t know… I think most of those opinions came from the fact that everyone thought like that at the time – that’s partly why so many people didn’t care that Jews were deported during the 2nd World War. A lot of people just turned them in to be rewarded with their apartments or their belongings… Had they known what we know today, would they still have done it ? I’m taking this exemple, cause it’s the most obvious but he could work for other periods. In Shakespeare’s time sexism wasn’t even a thing, it was established that women were inferior to men. And why not ? Everybody accepted it and thought this was the only way to go…
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I have to think about this kind of thing because I’m a history major, so we get to talk about this kind of thing endlessly. Historians are quite tempted to judge the past, and some things (like the Holocaust) are wrong. But it gets kind of tricky at the same time, because we can’t get into the heads of the people who lived in that time period, or understand all of the complex factors that created a situation. Sometimes as “modern” people we feel superior to our ancestors, but are we really? Should we compare the past to the present, or accept the past on its own terms? Etc., etc. I don’t know, I have to talk about this all the time in school…
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I had a teacher in high school who always reminded us to pretend we didn’t know how things ended. Cause it’s too easy to judge the past from our point of view, when you already know how it turned out. The Holocaust is obviously wrong, but I don’t think most people knew about the camps at the time. I remember asking my grand-mother and she just said they didn’t find out until after the war was over. I don’t think it excuses what those in the collaboration did to the Jews, but I guess we never know what we’d do to protect ourselves or just what a War does to a person. The Japanese ate their Chinese prisonners, and the German studied their Jewish prisoners like they were lab rats. Just cause they thought they were superior. What does that tell you about humanity ?
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Hmm... 
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