#i hate my dissertation and it hates me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bedofthistles · 5 months

Text

The Little White Horse: Robin Minette

In continuation with my analysis of the novel, the Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge, I want to cover the characters and the main themes of both the book and the movie.

Here's my thoughts and opinions one Robin De Noir, and Robin Minette, two wildly different characters

TL;DR

My enemy.

My beloathed.

The one I despise!

This boy is insane, he is the definition of toxic masculinity, he’s only a child and already he sucks, and I know for a fact he will never get better because he is never punished for his actions.

And what did he do wrong?

Well first I would like to remind you all of my beautiful, wonderful, fantastic, baby-eyed Robin De Noir. I have no idea how we got Robin De Noir out of Robin Minette, but I am forever grateful.

For starters, Robin De Noir takes the place of Mr. Cock in LWH. Where Mr. Cock has trapped the hare, Robin De Noir has, where Maria gets chased by Mr. Cock in the book, she gets chased by Robin De Noir in the movies (and yes, technically the Coeur De Noir and all of the De Noirs are chasing after her as well), where Maria and Mr. Cock run through the forest so she can show him the White Horse, she and Robin De Noir run through the forest in search of the pearls. Additionally, he is no longer Robin Minette, Loveday Minette’s son, but the son of the Coeur De Noir, and Loveday’s brother.

One, this change is already ten times more dynamic. Throughout the book, we are only told that the De Noirs are wicked, and it isn’t until Maria’s last minute change of heart about them that suddenly they aren’t. Those poor people are demonized in the book, and are not given any sympathy. Now I hear you saying, the movie was the same! They were evil until Maria decided she needed Robin’s help!

I need you to go back and give Augustus Prew his due, because that boy acted his ass off. I don’t think I’ll be able to go over all of his exemplary acting choices, and I may make a separate post for that, but that will require gifs and screengrabs. Anyway! There are several scenes that show us, the audience, that Robin De Noir is just a boy who is trying his damnedest to make his father proud of him. We see this when the Coeur De Noir calls him a ‘dolt’ after the rabbit trap, and you can see his face just fall, he is devastated, not that he lost the princess, but that he disappointed his father.

We also see this when Robin quickly decides to help Maria. The very first time I watched this, I didn’t really understand his reasoning, but once I started thinking about it (probably about the time I started writing fic and needed to get inside of his head) I realized that he is fundamentally good, just born on the wrong side of the valley. Robin chooses the Valley over his father, he chooses to help Maria despite not even fully trusting her, he is beside her until the very end because he knows she is doing the right thing, because he loves the Valley and wants to save it. So, despite what we are told about the De Noirs (as by sir Benjamin, who calls them bandits, poachers, and plunderers) we know from visual cues, Robin De Noir’s desperation to be a good son, and his choices at the end, that the De Noirs are not purely wicked.

Robin Minette on the other hand can die on a stick. Robin and Loveday Minette are actually a part of the Merryweather family (more on that later) and are not associated with the De Noirs at all.

So what are all of Robin M’s sins?

Well, if you’ve heard about the bird theory, it is the simple idea that when you call out “oh look, a bird!” the response of your partner/friend/companion should be “where!” Not because they are necessarily interested in the bird (though they should be) but because you are interested in the bird. The logic being that the person will listen to whatever random, boring, stupid thing you’re saying because they are interested in you, and are not looking at you as a source of entertainment. It’s a very simple, and beautiful concept, that shows a person who is interested in you, is interested in you!

Robin Minette is not interested in Maria.

I say this because in the book we are told multiple times that whenever Maria asks too many questions, Robin just walks away. He does not answer, or even asks her to stop, when he is astral projecting into Maria’s dreams, he just leaves the dream and wakes up. Again, this is in conjecture with one of Goudge’s morals: female curiosity is of the Devil.

“All my life, Robin, I'll always tell you all about everything." “And I'll tell you," said Robin. “If I didn't you'd ask me so many questions that life would not be worth living."

This is not an okay lesson to teach to children, any boy or girl should not be learning that her voice does not matter, that her questions should be squashed, and that curiosity is a bad thing. I genuinely have no idea where Goudge got this idea from, other than it is just a very old and misogynist viewpoint. It’s not even Christian, as scripture encourages followers to study, and yes that includes women.

I don’t think it is a harsh stance to take that a character who walks away from another while they are talking, is not interested, or in love with that character. Maybe possessive, but not in love, and it's certainly not the kind of love anyone should be idolizing.

Furthermore, like most entitled men, Robin Minette has anger issues. I don’t want to quote the entire section, but I can post it somewhere because it is absolutely insane.

After Robin and Maria defended Paradise Hill from the De Noirs, they go back to his house. Since it was raining, they had to change out of their wet clothes. For whatever reason, Loveday Minette decides to put her old wedding dress (that she never wore because she ran away) on Maria.

Maria loves it, and asks if it can be her wedding dress, and Loveday M says yes.

When Maria joins Robin in the kitchen so they can have tea, Robin asks what that is.

“It's my wedding dress. I'm trying it on to see if it fits." "Are you going to be married?" asked Robin sharply, his munching jaws suddenly still. “Of course," said Maria, reaching for the cream. “You didn't expect me to be an old maid, did you?" “Are you being married today?" demanded Robin. “Of course she isn't being married today, Robin. She isn't old enough to be married yet. But when she is married she will wear that dress." [Loveday] “When you do marry, whom will you marry?" Robin asked Maria. Maria swallowed the last of her bread and cream and honey, put her head on one side and stirred her tea thoughtfully. “I have not quite decided yet," she said demurely, “but I think I shall marry a boy I knew in London." “What?" yelled Robin. “Marry some mincing nincompoop of a Londoner with silk stockings and pomade in his hair and a face like a Cheshire cheese?" The parkin stuck in his gullet and he choked so violently that Loveday had to pat him on the back and pour him out a fresh cup of tea. When he spoke again his face was absolutely scarlet, not only with the choke but with rage and jealousy and exasperation. “You dare do such a thing!" he exploded. "You--Maria --you-- if you marry a London man I'll wring his neck!"

Now, you’ll notice three things here:

One, the fate of all Moon Princess’ is to get in a fight with her love, and if she doesn’t humble herself, she’ll be forced to leave Moonacre. This is something Maria knows at this point.

Two, Robin is a thirteen, fourteen year old boy displaying this much anger, possessiveness, and audacity. This is not something he is punished for, and he gets away with this behavior.

Three, his mother is right there???? And her chief concern is:

“Robin," said his mother, “that's not at all the way to propose. You should go down on one knee and do it in a very gentle voice."

Ma’am your son is a maniac and you’re giving him tips on how to propose properly?

Now, I want to swing back to my first point. To state it very plainly, this is one of the reasons as to why people stay in abusive relationships for so long. Maria knows that if she and Robin hadn’t made up right then and there, she would have to leave Moonacre. This language and ideology puts the blame on the victim’s shoulders, making the victim feel as if they have to be the one to make amends, to fix what is broken, and appease the abuser. This is the cycle of abuse that is seen time and time again, and while Goudge does not frame this as an ideal relationship we can gather that based on all that Maria has learned, it is her job to keep the peace.

Am I calling Robin Minette an abuser? Yes, yes I am.

Maria immediately forgives his behavior, Loveday is obviously okay with it, because she does nothing to stop him or scold him, and Goudge obviously sees this as okay male behavior.

It's preposterous and yet this book is only eighty years old, we can obviously see people who behave this way, and we all know people who are like this. However, I think we have finally pivoted to presenting this behavior as abusive in media and art. Too often we think of abuse as just physical, but so often it is emotional, financial, and sexual, and the consequence of that mentality is people suffering abuse thinking that they aren’t because they don’t get black eyes.

Here, I would also like the mention the BBC miniseries, Moonacre. The Miniseries is boring, it’s praised for being a more direct adaptation of the book, however they do make some major changes, especially to the plot. They add this thing about the ‘Blackheart’s’ having their water supply being cut off, all their wells are saturated with saltwater, and they blame Sir Wrolf for cutting off a pipe that would lead freshwater back into the valley. In this, we do get Loveday and Robin (still mother and son) as De Noirs. Loveday is the direct descendant of Black William, and despite teaching her son to hate the Blackhearts, he is also a De Noir. Robin Minette in this movie is boring, he doesn’t get mad at Maria for asking questions, but all he really does is show up at convenient times to save her from the Blackhearts. He’s fine, he’s not as problematic as Robin in LWH, but his character is not as compelling as Robin De Noir in TSOM.

Prev | Next

Full wedding dress excerpt

#IM NOT SORRY #ROBIN MINETTE SUCKS AND I HATE HIM #the secret of moonacre #the little white horse #moonacre #TLWH dissertation #robin m actually reminds me of my absuvie ex boyfriend #so thats not a positive

6 notes · View notes

polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 1 year

Note

hi!! you recommended vonnegut a while ago, and i just read slaughterhouse five and it was incredible and i was wondering which one of his books is your favorite/which one you would recommend next?? thank you!!

oh my GOD yes yes yes I am not a normal person about kurt vonnegut. I have three options for you with pitches as to why.

Mother Night is one of my favorites out of everything he ever wrote, and it’s definitely an excellent second book. He wrote in his foreword that it’s the only book he ever wrote that he knew what the meaning of it was. Whether that’s actually true and remained true, I don’t know, but the point he makes in it is one that’s pretty profound and I’ve heard shockingly little of in media.

The book follows a former high-ranking member of the Nazi party, who was a very successful propagandist for them, which distracted from the fact that he was also the most successful wartime spy for Allied forces. It’s also one of the less weird books he’s ever written? Kurt Vonnegut really leans into absurdism, and it’s more evident in some books than others. This sort of helps with the learning curve.

That being said, Cat’s Cradle is my favorite out of all of his books, and it’s also the second I ever read, after slaughterhouse five. It’s like, 20% more weird than slaughterhouse five? So if you vibed with some of the weirder aspects of it (think like, the alien zoo subplot) then I highly recommend Cat’s Cradle. I honestly can’t figure out how to give a synopsis of this one without revealing information best revealed in the book, but it’s a commentary on the post-WWII arms race and religion. It’s insanely good.

The thing about Kurt Vonnegut is that he has a lot of different recurring themes, and I feel like everyone takes away some kind of core message from his works. That being said, I feel like The Sirens of Titan most clearly and compellingly states Vonnegut’s core message in his works, and it’s definitely a must-read out of his books. It’s not my favorite but it’s definitely fighting it out for a place at the very top of the list. It follows the richest man in the world, who has the least purpose in it, at the center of an interplanetary war between Mars and Earth.

I will say that there’s only one book that I would say you probably shouldn’t read as your second book and that’s Breakfast of Champions. There’s two reasons for this.

First, Kurt Vonnegut’s books exist in a loosely interconnected universe. He’s somewhere between Marvel and Shakespeare in how he does it. It’s not like Marvel where it’s feeding into an overarching narrative, and you don’t need to read them in some kind of particular order to understand, but he’s not like Shakespeare just alluding to his own works in different plays in the sense that these books are explicitly existing within the same universe. You have specific places (Ilium, which you saw in Slaughterhouse Five, shows up a lot) and characters that recur throughout. The protagonist of Mother Night, for example, is briefly referenced in Slaughterhouse Five, etc. They’re used primarily as a vehicle for meta commentary and it’s honestly so well executed.

Kilgore Trout makes the most appearances across the disparate novels. He’s widely regarded as a character meant to be a stand-in for Vonnegut himself, and he plays his largest role in Breakfast of Champions. You also have characters in Breakfast of Champions that are taken directly from his other books, like with the minor role the protagonist of Bluebeard plays in BoC (Bluebeard is also a banger of a book worth reading but personally my least favorite of all his books). Again, you don’t need to read Vonnegut’s books in any official order to understand them, but Breakfast of Champions has the most cameos and greatest use of meta fiction in it, so the reading experience is just overall enhanced by having a little more grounding in his other works.

The second reason is it’s really fucking weird.

In a brilliant kind of way. It’s regarded to be one of his best works, and it deserves the reputation. But the techniques he uses in this are by far the most experimental, and while those experiments absolutely pay off, I usually recommend that people get used to his particular approach to absurdism before tackling Breakfast of Champions. I highly recommend this book if you like Vonnegut, but really spend time with him as an author before reading it and you’ll get so much more out of it.

#fun fact mother night directly influenced Matt’s arc in acts of contrition and why he hasn’t returned to Jack yet #Vonnegut is also just probably the biggest influence on me as a writer overall #non-linear narratives broke my brain #I can’t go back to the normal passage of time #Bluebeard legit is a good book because everything he writes is good #probably 76% of my hate comes from his use of exclamation points in it #but out of all of his books I liked it the least #there’s a lot of books of his that are literary masterpieces but just aren’t SHOWSTOPPERS #like player piano Galapagos jailbird are all works of art but they just are up against some real heavyweights #also his short stories are really cool and creative if you get a chance to check them out #I’d do a doctoral study of vonnegut given HALF a chance #like I never did a formal study of literature for any university path #but i feel like if the multiverse theory is true in another life I did go with that career path #and funneled it right into a dissertation on vonnegut #the postmodernism movement in general is one of my favorite literary movements #and for me at least vonnegut is the best of that movement #I really like experimentalism in writing and vonnegut really pushed the bounds of the medium #also if you sent me an ask and I haven’t replied to it yet you’re not being ignored #some of the responses are on the longer end and it’s been busy #everyone is getting a reply tho

13 notes · View notes