John Lawson, Little Miss Muffet, 1860s
(June 9, 2020) I loved The Toast so much that I bought this book to support the author (now Daniel M. Lavery), the Toastʼs co-founder with Nicole Cliffe. The Toast was restoringly feminist but I loved it most of all for Laveryʼs art history pieces, like “Orpheus Rescuing Eurydice From the Underworld, in Order of Rescuing” and “Western Art History: 500 Years of Women Ignoring Men” -- always so clever and cheerfully satirical, always so profoundly insightful about human psychology.I expected The Merry Spinster would be clever because, yes, it is odd that we like to entertain children with the grisliest stories, like about being eaten by wolves, poisoned by witches, kidnapped by beast/men, etc. I assumed Lavery would do much the same thing with these archetypes that he did with classic paintings, and with literature in Texts From Jane Eyre -- highlight the weirdness of human behaviour by anachronizing everything.
And he did do that a little bit, but this collection was not really about taking the piss out of old standards -- it was more about showing exactly what the horrors of everyday life are, and how the victims just endure them.
Like, there are people turning into swans for extended periods, or being made to eat, sleep and sit with a frog 24/7, or falling in love with nonhumans, but the real horrors are the ways in which people are manipulating one another, failing one another, refusing to face reality, taking advantage of othersʼ kindness, etc., etc.... all just really normal everyday nasty things that go on all the time in real life.
So itʼs like reading a bunch of short stories that have slightly surreal settings but which are more about the mundane betrayals, prejudices and bad faith we have all seen or suffered from, and therefore are a bit depressing.
I found it a bit of a chore to read the first few (longer) stories, actually.
But Lavery really has a talent for mimicking the style / the vibe / the tone of any given genre...really recreates the fairy-tale feeling here... and then that is undercut to humorous effect by the anachronisms, just as in the art-history pieces and Texts from Jane Eyre.
[lovesick son]: “She came back to ask me to return her comb, which I had under my pillow, and which I could not give her. For if she does not marry me, I will die, and I wish to be buried with it. Then she asked, if I would not return the comb, if I would not change my mind and live with her under the sea, and I told her I could not, but begged her to visit my grave when I perished from the wanting of her."lol
[grim, witchy mother]: “You two are never at a loss for conversation, at least."
