An Argument Against Stede Dissociating In Episode 9
personally i dislike the idea that Stede returned to Barbados and the Bonnet estate in a dissociative haze because i think it subtracts from the narrative in a way that allowing instead for 'stede made his decision consciously, while seriously impacted by being retraumatized' does not. i say that for two reasons:
stede's narrative arc gets wonky, lacking proper parallel to let him confront his decisions and their impact
if we take episode 9 from a place of, stede, having been retraumatized not only in the form of witnessing a man die (this time, truly independent of stede's actions because i would argue that stede did in fact murder nigel, even if in a second degree sense, but chauncey being drunk and tripping into shooting himself is genuinely stede *actually* just being nearby when he died which - these writers! this writing! aaaargh!!!) but also in having all of his worst fears and insecurities struck with pinpoint accuracy RIGHT before, chooses to return home and leave ed behind because he thinks it will be better for him -
what we get from that is stede *making his great mistake again*. stede leaving ed becomes true and proper parallels to stede leaving mary and the children, becomes stede running from his family to run towards a family, all over again, it becomes an actual cycle that stede has to break, rather than a one and done event.
if stede is in a full dissociative episode when he goes back to the Bonnet Estate, then he doesn't make a conscious choice, he doesn't choose to go back to his old place and his old life and consign himself (and his family) to the misery of an angry man in your house, he's just a victim of chauncey badminton and all the people like him who hurt stede.
and that makes the narrative bad.
because what the narrative does with stede by having him make this choice is it forces him to confront possibly his greatest flaw - the selfishness inherent to that kind of deep self-loathing, where you completely dismiss the feelings and thoughts of other people because you are so convinced that you and you alone properly know what those other people need and want and that you can make decisions on their behalf because you are so uniquely specially different that no one else can understand you and if they think otherwise they are wrong and lying and foolish - by making him repeat his abandonment.
by making us sit in ed's anguish at being abandoned, we are forced to imagine *mary and the children's* anguish at being abandoned. at having stede uproot their lives without so much as a word of warning. it invites us to see that what stede did might have been good for him and necessary for him to achieve happiness, but the hows of what he did made it cowardly and corrosive.
when stede is actively making a choice, even one influenced heavily by trauma and self-loathing, the narrative is telling us - through the action and the fallout - that ghosting people fucking sucks. that running away from your problems will only bring them right back to you, worse than they were originally.
that the only way out is through.
that wherever you go, there you are, still stuck with yourself.
and i like that narrative, actually.
2. it makes stede a passive participant in this break up with ed, which makes the whole thing unbalanced
the other reason i dislike the whole, stede just dissociated all the way home thing is that, it makes the whole thing unbalanced. like i mentioned earlier, it means that stede is essentially just a victim in this situation, without agency as a character. it means him going home is just one more thing chauncey badminton did to stede, and it makes it so that him thrusting himself back into his family's lives is as much something violent that's happened to HIM as it is something violent that's happened to THEM.
and i really don't think that's what the narrative is going for.
stede going home forces his family, who have already dealt with the harm of his abandonment, the emotional violence of his careless disregard for their feelings and his place in their lives (do you ever think about how stede wrote to mary, but not his children. how mary felt about having to deliver all of the news to her two small children, that their father had abandoned them to pursue his own happiness, because he could not be happy as a part of their lives?), the social violence of being associated with a known criminal, to live through it again.
to have the wound torn open. to have him once again disregard their wants and feelings in favor of once again pursuing emotional satisfaction - this time, the emotional satisfaction of hurt, because make no mistake, stede is not trying to be happy when he returns home. he is not trying to find peace. he is hurting himself, and he graduates to hurting mary, being passive aggressive and pointed in and snide, because he is miserable with his choice and wants her to be miserable.
(i will never stop thinking about how he says if he can give up the sea, surely she can give up 'dishonest' title - surely if he can give up his beloved life, she should have to give up hers.)
the narrative is making a point that stede makes these unilateral decisions and they have direct impacts on other people's lives and it uses the hurt that stede's abandonment causes ed - the grief, the misery, the drowning - to once again show that stede's actions have consequences. his choices have consequences.
if the narrative were instead writing that stede *didn't* make a choice, he *didn't* leave ed, he was a victim of circumstance and trauma and never ever wanted or intended to leave ed -
then he's really just set dressing, and it will put ed in a position where, unlike mary, he can't even have the full emotional satisfaction of confronting stede, because stede's response will be, i was a victim, i didn't mean to, i hurt you but it was an accident -
and that fucking sucks. that would fucking suck. it happens in real life, it's true, but i think it would weaken the narrative substantially if we see that ed is held to account for the people he hurt, which he should be, but stede is off the hook for it, really, because he just had no choice, he was a passive participant in his own life. stede actively making these choices means that when stede actively undos them, when he completes the fuckery and goes back to sea,
if stede made his choice, even under partial duress of trauma, then the narrative is taking strong, decisive turns, and showing a coherent narrative - that stede's life has had this pattern, his behavior has had this pattern, and he is finally breaking the pattern. he succumbed to his worst self and worst habits, but overcame.
his dissociating adds nothing to the narrative beyond making stede a victim who didn't get to actively participate in the decision that blew up his life.
