Ern Malley forever

oh louisa my louisa. i could talk about her all day every day.

she’s something of an american higuchi to me which. as we all know. i am not normal about that blonde woman. i see louisa as an exploration of misogyny in the classic lit world very much in the same way i do with higuchi, albeit from a different angle — higuchi represents it on an interpersonal relationship level, whereas louisa leans more into societal attitudes at large.

louisa stuck out to me a lot at first because she was one of the few authors i was already intimately familiar with before i watched the show and i was like ??????? this character is not really like her at all. what’s that about. but then as i got into exploring higuchi, her style and her influences and how asagiri integrated that into her bsd character it made some things click into place for me re: louisa

louisa and higuchi are similar with respect to the way their irl relationships with men/misogyny bleed into their work — ichiyo, and her turbulent unrequited love for her boss that manifests as a series of love tragedies, while alcott with her feminism & spinsterhood is shown in her work as a reluctance to incorporate romance at all. however, in both cases they were forced to conform and change the stories they wanted to tell to reach success in the times they were living in.

like i said before, in higuchi’s case this is very much seen on an individual level — so much of her work is influenced by the whims of her boss, but in louisa’s case this comes in the form of appealing to her readers on a larger scale. and this is reflected in their bsd character relationships — akutagawa is (initially) a lone wolf, and higuchi’s purpose revolves around him as an individual, and by serving him she’s not really serving anyone else. whereas fitzgerald is the leader of the guild, a man who is the spokesperson for the ability users of north america, and for lack of better words he is a walking pile of money. so when louisa chooses to follow him, she is quite literally chasing the bag 💀 and serving the american people, which is quite a good representation of irl alcott’s struggle imo.

i also think louisa’s social anxiety is an interesting spin on this. she’s afraid of what people think of her. she’s unable to publicize her true self. she only uses her ability for fitzgerald’s goals and not her own. because it’s the only way she can be something:

i do understand why people might interpret her writing as misogynistic because on a surface level it could be taken that way, but i disagree. i think there’s a lot more to it than that, and frankly i trust asagiri to do better than that. generally speaking the venn diagram of people who call the bsd female characters misogynistic and the people who have read gaiden is two circles on opposite sides of the earth so i’m not listening. (-> side note. i do find it fascinating that tsujimura is widely considered the best-written bsd woman and her irl author is also the one who lives in an era where women can write much more freely. this is another reason why i think asagiri’s choices regarding the female cast are intentional, especially since tsujimura was written before some of the female characters the fanbase shuns for being poorly written i.e. teruko)

+++ as overlooked as this fact is louisa is one of the smartest bsd characters. she is the strategist of the guild who keeps it all running behind the scenes. her irl author was likely queer, and was a committed activist against racial and gender inequality and knowing all that (because this isn’t even. remotely obscure information) asagiri decided to make her the cornerstone of the organization that represents america. i just don’t think that means nothing

anyway. moving on. MONTCOTT TIME!!!

to me montcott are each other’s first loves but also each other first friends (if we discount fitzgerald and anne) because lucy was being picked on in the orphanage throughout her formative years and louisa is canonically too anxious to have been comfortable around anyone except fitzgerald. this leads to two girls navigating their first friendship at 18 & 19 which really just pulls on my heartstrings. and then we have their tragic divorce (lucy betraying the guild. louisa unable to part from it) which pulls on my heartstrings in the other direction. i think their feelings are unrealized or at least not acted upon, partially because it’s angsty and partially because being each other’s first friends they have no way of knowing that their friendship is different from anyone else’s