claudine...!* thoughts...I wish it was longer, I wish it was just a little longer. I know nothing about France at this time, but there's some interesting undercurrents about scientific progress - obviously the psychologist is using, well, psychology, but there's heredity | physiognomy involved in comparing Claude** to his father's lineage, and it opens with two art pieces - a portrait, that's then zoomed in on (more like a photograph), and a car, though everyone rides only horses. this gets thrown aside, but accepting modern growth and change seems to agree with the treatment of Claude - that he IS a man, a traditional one in manners and everything except society's conceptions. of course, the narration in the translation I found used eternal she/her - but this actually makes me wonder how it is in the Japanese. even if female pronouns are still found there, that's in line with ambiguity - the pages here are constructed not just with stark black & white backgrounds, but with swirls of hatches, and there are many panels inside bigger ones, getting more and more suffocating. it's beautiful and subtle, but it is There. I'm feeling very sad now, but I'm glad I read it. I really do wish it was longer, even if it had no changes in plot. I just wanted more of that texture.
*I don't like this title, but the ...! makes it sound like the calling or last gasp of everyone else - sirene, maybe, reading the letter - so it's also not wrong? that's the general feeling I got from this work. every flaw, every weathered problem of terms & time, has a built in resonance just by existing. and what else would there be? Claud(in)e? that only makes it sound like he's a woman within - that would be the reverse, half-joking.
**he never calls himself anything, I'm sorry.
