A GOTHIC ROMANCE

EXT. BRANDYTHISTLE MANOR: NIGHT:

REBECCA (VO): "I have to look good for D'Arcy."

INT. BEDROOM: 

REBECCA: "The next time we meet will be the clincher." 

REBECCA: "Oh, he was stand-offish at first..."

REBECCA (VO): "...but when he gets to know me a bit better his feelings will blossom into love."

REBECCA (VO): "Nobody will ever replace me in his heart.  He'll take me into his strong, sinewy arms and hold me tightly. I'll feel his strength, the pure animal grace of his movements. There will  never be anybody else. "

REBECCA: "Yum yum!"

REBECCA: "The problem is, every girl in the shire wants D'Arcy. Especially that stupid Gertrude Kratz."

REBECCA: "Maybe I'll become a nun. Yeah, that's it. No more men. I'll devote myself to the higher things in life."

REBECCA (VO): "But then Gertrude (above) gets D'Arcy. That can't be right."

REBECCA: "What's a girl to do?"

REBECCA: "I know...I'll take a walk...on the moors!"

OUTSIDE: NIGHT: Rebecca runs in a wild zig-zag across the windswept moor, stumbling and sobbing as she goes.

REBECCA: "It looks like a storm's coming! D'Arcy's a rugged outdoorsman. I wonder if he's out in this."

REBECCA: "If he is...and we meet in the driving rain...Oh, it would be so romantic! Wet outside but my mouth dry, my throat aching as I touch him. He'd stare at me with hungry intensity, his eyes soft and luminous, my lips slightly parted, inviting a...."

ON REBECCA'S STARTLED EYES:

GERTRUDE KRATZ (VO) (IN A MOCKING, ELMER FUDD VOICE):

"Oh...It would be thooo womatic! He'd stare at me with hungwy intenthity."

ON GERTRUDE as she steps out from behind a bush.

GERTRUDE: (MOCKING): "My widdle, stupid mouth would know twoo wove at wast!"

Gertrude leaps out, attacks. A fight ensues. 

LATER: BACK AT BRANDYTHISTLE MANOR: ON REBECCA:

She turns to address cam:

REBECCA: "You should see what Gertrude looks like!"

HOMEWRECKER

This post is all about...THE HOMEWRECKER!

Obviously men can be homewreckers too, but melodramatic convention requires that we see it from the female victim's point of view, which requires a female villain. 

From that point of view a sweet, June Allyson-type housewife is targeted by a ruthless wicked city woman and a morality play of epoch scale ensues. My knowledge about this sort of thing comes from movies and novels, which I'll assume are unassailable. 

Maybe that view of the predator was best articulated by H. G. Wells in the opening of his sci-fi novel, "War of the Worlds."

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own..."

"...that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the creatures in a drop of water."

 

"With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter."

"No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. "

"Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us."

Wow! Wells nailed it!

I know what you're thinking. Surely all men value the rock-steady qualities possessed by a wholesome, loving woman. 

Surely, you're thinking, men have disdain for the ultra-worldly woman who wears fox furs with paws on them and who sucks on cigarette stubs all day. 

But you'd be wrong. Men are, well... easily confused.

We men are vulnerable to the obvious temptation... 

...and we're especially vulnerable to women who laugh at our jokes. It's not only fun to talk to someone who thinks you're funny, you feel you're in the presence of female greatness because she has the amazing intellect necessary to perceive your own wonderfulness when the rest of the world ignores you.

No doubt there's a wonderful honeymoon when the offending innocent wife or girlfriend is removed and the vamp moves in.

But...(Gulp!)...the day surely arrives when, out of the corner of your eye...you notice...that you're being observed with all your flaws and imperfections visible. All the books are agreed on what happens next. The first glance only lasts for a moment but you feel the chill of being regarded with what Wells called, "cool and unsympathetic" eyes. 

Yikes and Double Yikes!

THE HISTORY OF GIRDLES

I don't remember my parents ever telling me the facts of life. I got it from my kid friends, and from whatever I could glean from newspapers and magazines.  What I most wanted to know was what women were like. They were all so mysterious.

From newspaper ads I learned that women wore girdles...whatever they were...and froliced around the house in them all day long. That seemed like an odd thing to do, but I approached the problem like a scientist, making no judgments.

 I learned that girls run around in their underwear all day blowing bubbles, sniffing roses and petting kittens. Wow! Who'da thunk?

Boy, whatever girdles were, they were like catnip to women.

Etiquette required the wearing of a gauze curtain with your girdle.

Once the curtain was donned there were books to be read.

I read books in my underwear too, but I didn't get the same thrill from it that women did. Was I doing something wrong?

Eventually women changed. Ads confirmed that they still liked to wear girdles but they preferred to wear them in public where people could see them, in opera houses and buses and parks.

Here (above) a bunch of girdle people meet on a woodland path and they hang out together. Gone are the gauze curtains.

In the ads women traveled all over the world in glowing underwear. They had special clothes to highlight it.

Years passed and at some point young women abandoned girdles and older women took them up.

In a revolutionary move that must have shocked their daughters, the older women in ads decided to wear their girdles underneath their clothes. According to the ads this created a lot of adjustment problems. I guess they rode up or something.

Hmmm...maybe a discussion of mens underwear is in order. Let me think about it.

DO-IT-YOURSELF HOMES

While looking at random houses in the town I'll be moving to I discovered a whole neighborhood of do-it-yourself houses. Boy, people are ambitious in that part of the country! When they feel the need for a house they just buy the materials and build it.

Here's (above) a home that's better than some. It has a driveway that leads to nowhere, a basketball net right outside the dining room window, bushes that strangle the mailbox, and a very tiny wishing well, but these are minor problems.

The closets in this home are interesting. Here's (above) a closet that's been converted to a guest room.

Here's (above) another closet that provides a decorative bench for putting shoes on. I imagine that you walk backwards and ease onto it, pushing aside the clothes on the hangers. When you take your hand away the clothes cover you up again... but I guess that's what flashlights are for.

 Here's the living room where you're always able to tell the time. The light fixture gets in the way of the clock so it looks like the owners will have to buy an even bigger clock...if one exists.

Here's another view of the tiny living room, showing the oddly proportioned, dollhouse-type stairs. I like the front door which can open unexpectedly on someone running down the steps.

This is a great kitchen. It's easy to find your way in from the living room but hard to find your way out. It's like a fish trap. I imagine that guests regularly get lost in here and have to call for help.

But there's no need to panic. If you get trapped you can always leave by the back door and walk around to the front. Watch out for the back steps, though...the yard's on a different level than the rest of the house.

This neighborhood abounds with do-it-yourselfers. How do you like the DIY house across the street (above), which is also for sale? I like the Venus Flytrap railings and the disguised door. As a matter of fact, I find myself wondering if the house has a door.  Well, doors are overrated, everybody knows that.

Believe it or not, this place (above) has lots of square footage.

Maybe it needs that because all the the many rooms are so long and narrow.

Farther down the street are homes (above) with minimalist yards.

The houses are giant white monoliths; austere blocks with no back doors and very few windows. Maybe this was a penal colony at one time. 

Yikes! The yards I can see are separated by a bleak fence with a single open door. You need that so the neighbor's vicious dog can detect you trying to use your yard. If he tries to run you down don't leap over the grey fence. There might be a freeway on the other side.