That's good, about the mothers! Although a more unlikely pair of equivalents would be hard to imagine: plump, domestic indubitably middle-aged Susan Sowerby and slim young ex-gang member Kyoko.
I think the Mary situation going to have to get a little more exotic than that - Mary's going to have to represent several of the younger Sohma cousins. And perhaps Martha and Ben Weatherstaff together, as insiders formerly cooperating with the young tyrant, but now redirected at improving the situation, might fill the role of the older Sohma cousins ... although we are lacking a role for Shigure as the meddler and stirrer-up. Although I guess Martha did bring Dickon into the picture, and give Mary the skipping rope and show her how to use it, as well as being her sounding board - tenuously akin to Shigure's provision of a physical and mental refuge for his young cousins, into which he introduced Tohru ... .
I'm stretching it a bit at this point! There just aren't going to be direct equivalents for some of the situations ... where, for example, would Mr. Craven's gifts to Mary - the garden books and the permission to do as she likes on the grounds - fit in? And some of it's going to have to be symbolic, too, I think. Is the garden perhaps the concept of unselfish love at all levels: fraternal, filial, parental, romantic?
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branchandroot
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Date: 2007-06-29 12:13 am (UTC)That's good, about the mothers! Although a more unlikely pair of equivalents would be hard to imagine: plump, domestic indubitably middle-aged Susan Sowerby and slim young ex-gang member Kyoko.
I think the Mary situation going to have to get a little more exotic than that - Mary's going to have to represent several of the younger Sohma cousins. And perhaps Martha and Ben Weatherstaff together, as insiders formerly cooperating with the young tyrant, but now redirected at improving the situation, might fill the role of the older Sohma cousins ... although we are lacking a role for Shigure as the meddler and stirrer-up. Although I guess Martha did bring Dickon into the picture, and give Mary the skipping rope and show her how to use it, as well as being her sounding board - tenuously akin to Shigure's provision of a physical and mental refuge for his young cousins, into which he introduced Tohru ... .
I'm stretching it a bit at this point! There just aren't going to be direct equivalents for some of the situations ... where, for example, would Mr. Craven's gifts to Mary - the garden books and the permission to do as she likes on the grounds - fit in? And some of it's going to have to be symbolic, too, I think. Is the garden perhaps the concept of unselfish love at all levels: fraternal, filial, parental, romantic?