But then, okay, the comment about "if you were a woman and if we were married!"
Ahh, yes. That's the topic I kept intending to go back to for Fer-de-Lance. But here will do just as well!
I admit I adore, as well as find very telling, that recurring idea from Wolfe about *if you were a woman and we were married* and *good thing you're not a woman and we're not married!* and so forth. To my mind, it meshes perfectly with Archie's tendency (which only grows more marked) to pretend-threaten to get married in order to put a scare into Wolfe.
By which I mean (as I think you had discussed in your LJ, liviapenn?) that each of them automatically (if perhaps tacitly, though just barely) sees the other as filling that spouse-role. So if Archie were a woman of course they would be married; if Archie got married to a woman of course that would mean he'd be abandoning Wolfe (the intensity of Wolfe's emotional reaction to that is brought most explicitly to the fore, perhaps, in "Christmas Party"...sigh! ♥).
The structure of the dynamic doesn't even need to be originally built by fannish readings in order to play with it--the characters themselves keep bringing it up, poking at it, and reinforcing it. In short: WHO CAN BLAME ME. :D
no subject
Ahh, yes. That's the topic I kept intending to go back to for Fer-de-Lance. But here will do just as well!
I admit I adore, as well as find very telling, that recurring idea from Wolfe about *if you were a woman and we were married* and *good thing you're not a woman and we're not married!* and so forth. To my mind, it meshes perfectly with Archie's tendency (which only grows more marked) to pretend-threaten to get married in order to put a scare into Wolfe.
By which I mean (as I think you had discussed in your LJ,
The structure of the dynamic doesn't even need to be originally built by fannish readings in order to play with it--the characters themselves keep bringing it up, poking at it, and reinforcing it. In short: WHO CAN BLAME ME. :D