#but she intentionally never lived there. she kept her own flat. that was her workplace first and foremost

[novelconcepts]

Why Jamie didn't stay at Bly after Dani's death? She could have seen her... Maybe Dani wouldn't appear to her like Viola or Peter. I don't understand

Jamie is, at heart, the pragmatic center of the show--and, along with Owen, the least directly touched by ghosts. If Jamie had been the one to carry the Lady back to the lake, if Dani had swum down to find her body, maybe it would go differently. Maybe Dani would have posted up at that house for the rest of her life, getting up each night to wait on the stairs for her wife to come home. But that isn't Jamie's world. Jamie doesn't see ghosts. Jamie lives the day-to-day of a mortal woman who understands the importance of life is in its eventual ending.

So, Jamie goes back to Bly. And she knows what she'll see in that lake--it's obvious in how she squares her shoulders, bunches her fists, prepares herself for the dive. It's obvious that she knows what she'll find; all that's left is to look down. To make it real. And she tries to believe in the curse of the Lady more than she believes in her wife having broken it. She tries to scream for the Lady to take her, to drag her down, too. But Jamie is pragmatic. Jamie is grounded in the day-to-day physicality of the world, in the organic nature of plant-grow-die. Jamie breaks the surface. Jamie swims to shore. Jamie keeps going, because that's who Jamie is. She has never (knowingly) seen a ghost. She has only seen the bodies of her loved ones. She knows the tactile nature of seeing a person you've laughed with, hugged, lived alongside laying cold at the bottom of something you're too small to reach.

Dani might have stayed at Bly, if the positions were reversed, because Dani was haunted from the start. But haunting, for Jamie, is new. Jamie has built a solid life for herself, a home, a marriage, in America. Bly is a memory by the time she gets back to it and finds Dani there. The reality, the solidness of the world, is in their apartment. Their shop. Moving around a world littered with bits and pieces of Dani Clayton. If Jamie--solid, pragmatic, one-day-at-a-time Jamie--is ever going to find her wife again, it won't be waiting around in that big empty house. It'll be in the world they built together. It'll be continuing to honor Dani's love and her wish for Jamie to be free and safe by living. And it'll be by asking. Not standing staunchly in that manor, making demands. That's not Jamie. That's never been Jamie. Jamie respected Dani's agency in life; in death, she's doing the same as best she can. She's going back to the home they shared. She's allowing Dani's sacrifice to push her forward. And she's hoping--wishing--asking with everything she has--that Dani will find her again. Not in the lake. Not where the Lady held dominion. But in the world they lived in together. Jamie's understanding of a haunting is different from everyone else's, because it's never forced upon her. She welcomes it. She aches for it. She leaves that door open. She understands that the cycle of Bly--meeting the love of her life there, watching the Lady take hold there, finding her wife under those waves there--is complete. This? Looking into mirrors, running baths, waiting every night for Dani to appear? This is the hope that their cycle will continue. Not the closed circuit of that house, but the open promise of marriage going beyond the grave.

#ask #the haunting of bly manor spoilers #the haunting of meta #dani x jamie #my take on it anyway #at least as far as the nature of the story suggests #there are human solid reasons too--like going into shock. like being consumed by grief. like not having the strength to stay #where your wife died #but in terms of the story and jamie's place in it? we have to remember how solid she is #and more than that we have to remember jamie never called that place home #not really. it's where she found a family and it's where she met the love of her life #but she intentionally never lived there. she kept her own flat. that was her workplace first and foremost #ironically for jamie taylor--for whom PEOPLE are exhausting--the best and frankly only thing that house granted was people. #her people. and people are not constrained to a place #jamie--who has been on her own and traveling much of her life--would absolutely know that #the house took dani from her. i don't know that she'd ever want to be there again #(except. maybe. for the very end of her own story. i still think she'd go back one final time. i think then it would be permissible.)