Silver Springs🐝

In my previous Maydove analysis, I talked about how Maysilee represents one of the ways that implicit submission works. Maysilee’s implicit submission to the Capitol pre-reaping is because the Donners exist in a place of privilege. They’re a part of the merchant class, which means that they’re richer than the Seam folks of Twelve, and on top of this, the Donners are set to become the next in line for the mayor position in Twelve.

The crowd’s reacting again, but more in surprise than anger, because Maysilee is a purebred town girl and about as highfalutin as they come, what with the Donners being merchants and the general consensus being that her pa will be tapped to succeed Mayor Allister.

And remember the reason that Mayor Allister is said to be on the way out of the Mayor position;

The mayor tries for a neutral tone, but her voice leaks disapproval in a way that guarantees she’ll be replaced soon. The decent mayors always are.

The Town people need to stay within the peacekeeper’s good graces in order to maintain their position of privilege, and the Donners especially have to if they’re going to be the next mayoral family of Twelve. We know that Maysilee hates this; remember the interview with Suzanne Collins where she talked about how Maysilee was angry at the injustice in the world, but couldn’t express it. As such, she became the “mean girl” of Twelve. It wasn’t until she was reaped that she was able to finally express her anger at the Capitol; the tragedy of her reaping allowed her to finally turn her fury towards the real enemy. Again, this is why we don’t see any rebellious actions from her until after her reaping. Before then, the Donners likely encouraged her to keep her true feelings about the Capitol repressed, lest they lose their chance to rise into a position of power in Twelve.

So, with that in mind, let’s remember Haymitch’s quote about why Clerk Carmine keeps his boyfriend a secret.

I once told Lenore Dove I thought he just hated love. That’s when she revealed that he’d been together some thirty years with the fellow in town who replaces busted windows. They have to keep it quiet because loving differently can get you harassed by the Peacekeepers, fired from jobs, arrested even.

Haymitch makes specific mention of Peacekeepers. They are the main ones who seem to be enforcing these punishments of queer people in Twelve. That isn’t to say that there are no homophobic people outside of the Peacekeepers, but all of those challenges that Clerk Carmine is scared of facing? Those are primarily carried out by Peacekeepers. The people that the Donners have to suck up to in order to maintain their privilege.

Maysilee identifying as lesbian or falling in love with a woman would taint their image in the eyes of the Peacekeepers, and make them lose everything. This almost certainly means that along with her anger towards the Capitol, the Donners would likely want to suppress any non-hetero identity in themselves or their kids. So there, we get the blossoming of repressed-lesbian Maysilee.

This is further delved into in a few details of Maysilee’s character. First and foremost, we know that Maysilee actually doesn’t dress herself; her mother does.

“Do we have to go around dressed like triplets?” asks Maysilee. “It was bad enough being a twin.” The Donner girls have a wide selection of matching outfits. “Thought you liked that,” I say. “My mother likes that,” she corrects me. Huh. Maybe she loads up on the jewelry because it’s the only way she can be herself.

Even though she loves fashion, Maysilee was denied self-expression through her clothing by her mother, with her only avenue of self-expression being her jewelry. Note that her mother dresses her and Merrilee up in hyper-feminine clothing.

Merrilee Donner, who’s in my class, waits on me in a crisp pink dress and matching ribbons in her sandy hair.

Maysilee carefully disengages herself and smooths her dress, which is identical to her twin’s pink one, only a shade of lavender.

Whether her mother intended this or not, there is a lot at play here in the choice to dress Maysilee as hyper-feminine. To start, it deliberately softens Maysilee’s edge. It makes her look less threatening, masking her tougher nature and forcing her to look the part of an ideal “submissive woman.”

All in black, with her hair pulled from her face and her riding-crop marks, there’s something tough about her. Or maybe she’s always been tough, but the ruffles and bows just made her seem snooty. She’d look out of place behind the candy counter, which she clearly loathed.

The societal idea of the hyper-feminine woman is one heavily rooted in heteronormativity. There’s a reason why a lot of lesbians have opened up about struggling with their gender identity; the societal idea of a “woman” is so heavily tied to an attraction to men that sometimes lesbians can feel “less like a woman” because they don’t have that attraction. The connection between womanhood and an attraction to men is so strong that it’s led to the phenomenon of compulsory heterosexuality. There are a lot of really interesting essays of trans women opening up about how dating a man can feel like they’ve “accomplished” becoming a woman, and a lot of lesbian trans women have opened up about how they struggle with what it means to “be a woman” without an attraction to men. AFAB lesbians also can struggle with their gender identity and feelings of gender dysphoria while dating a woman, and there are also a lot of really interesting discussions online of “lesbian” being a gender identity in and of itself.

To be clear, you can 100% be a woman and a lesbian. But the social construct of womanhood is tied to an attraction to men. Women are seen as supporters of men, as “secondary characters” to support the growth and success of men, and while we as a society are continually growing past this, it’s still very much present. And because of this, the image of the hyper-feminized woman still carries with it a lot of heteronormative ideals. Ones that Mrs. Donner is unintentionally playing into when she dresses Maysilee and Merrilee up to match that image.

Obviously, the color lavender holds a lot of queer undertones. But it’s also worth noting that post-reaping, Maysilee never wears pastel colors ever again. She keeps her necklaces, confirming that they’re representative of who she is, but now that she’s free from her mother’s influence, she doesn’t wear those soft pastel colors anymore. Throughout her time in the Capitol, she breaks free from the heteronormative ideal of a submissive woman, both through her clothing and through her actions. Which is a VERY queer-coded narrative!!!

Of course, it's be a crime not to mention how Maysilee feels trapped in her life. Again, with the Town being so closely tied to Peacekeepers and held under such strict rules by Peacekeepers (as shown with Asterid saying the propaganda posters were forced on them by Peacekeepers) this means that Maysilee's world is very heteronormative as well. So you could interpret this as her feeling trapped in heteronormativity as well as just her life in general

"Boy, that was mean, even by my standards,” Maysilee says to me. “You can’t choose your parents.” “You could reject their business,” I point out. “I couldn’t,” says Maysilee. “I was going to spend the rest of my life behind that candy counter, no matter how much I hated it. And I’m guessing you’d have been wearing miner’s overalls to your grave. We never, none of us, had any choices.”

And her first act of rebellion? It happens before the Games. It happened when she chose to keep Lenore Dove’s graffiti a secret. It’s a small act of rebellion, but it could be interpreted as the starting point of her turning her rage towards the Capitol. It confirms that she hated them from the beginning, and more than that, it’s a relationship with another woman that sets her down the path to embracing her fully rebellious nature. Which is gay as fuck, tbh.