What the FUCK was Edith's problem?

>>8595625
stoner is a fucking bitch boy

>>8595625
stuck in an already lost marriage, and she knows that this is the rest of her life, gets icreadibly jealous of stoner when he gets attached to his daugther, when it's "her domain".

She was a stone-cold bitch.

what the fuck was everyones problem

>>8595693
I really hated that one student who didn't do jack shit in his classes and was Lomax's little bitch boi

She was raised by oppressive parents who basically told her to never exert her will or develop any meaningful critical thinking skills, so she entered a marriage with someone she didn't love and then rebelled by acting like a child because she didn't have the mental capacity to treat the situation any other way.

>>8595625
Are his hands in his pants pockets or jacket pockets?

>>8595718
looks like pants with the jacket behind his arms

>>8595658
Except she was a stuck up crazy bitch from the very beginning.

They didn't have sex the night they got married because she pretended she was ill

>>8595754
>pretended

>>8595718
those are his forward front pockets, he's a centaur

>>8595761
Was Edith a horse girl?

>>8595658
This
People seem to think she was some sort of villain where I think Williams was portraying a relationship that was dead from the start and how living in bad faith is a damper on everyone

>>8595757
They had literally just got married

why would she be in physical revulsion of Stoner and refuse to do the thing she's been taught is her duty as female on the very first night?

>>8595754
bruh she wasn't born crazy. consider the environment she grew up in.

>>8595782
refuse? she let him rape her lol

sex itself seemed to revulsed her. that was one one of the few times she liked stoner, so she had no reason to fake sickness

>>8595763
Naturlich.

>>8595625
she had no personality of her own, she had shitty upbringing and so she turned out to be a replica of her parents

you really feel sorry for her even though she's awful

Holy shit, /lit/ is full of bad readers. Or maybe just people with zero empathy.

Hmm, why did Edith show an intense aversion to sex and father figures??? What could this combination of traits suggest about her early life??!?!?!??!?

>>8596450
didn't she throw away all her possessions and shit. why didn't they go in depth about her aversion to sex and her father?

>>8596450
This. Obviously Holden raped her.

>>8596450
le rape is everywhere

>>8595625
she was female

what i dont fucking understand is what was up with the professor whose name i forgot. the one that told stoner he would become a teacher
please someone explain to me why the war ending basically ruined him. i dont get it

>>8596664
>>8596760

No, obviously she was such a wreck because her parents "didn't teach her critical thinking skills".

This is what happens when autistic millennial neet virgins try and read literary fiction with female characters.

>>8596829
>it's impossible to be a cunt without being raped

>>8597123
>>8596829
also she shows 0 malevolence toward men in general

your shite theory doesnt hold water

This is what happens when autistic millennial feminist virgins try and read literary fiction with female characters.

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>It was just a kiss on the lips.
>Nah, its cool.
>It was totally natural the way they did it.
>People do it all the time, right?
>Why doesn't she ever kiss me like that?

>>8597160
lol were you the guy who made a similar post yesterday?

>read book two years ago
>just realize Edith was molested or something as a child
Was I supposed to infer that? Is it in the text or the subtext or are we just assuming the only way she could be such a cunt is if she was sexually assaulted as a child

>>8597220
she sold all her gifts/toys from her dad, dude. lol

>>8595754
They did have sex I'm pretty sure, she was ill afterwards

>>8595625
she (rightly) resented the world and life around her and (wrongly) lashed out at stoner.

>>8597135
that part after Edith's father's death was the only part in the book that didn't include Stoner in any way. I always thought those scenes after the funeral implied that her father was the main reason of Edith's personality. It implies some sort of trauma caused by her father if not rape

>>8595707
nice analysis!

>>8595625
I mean I think the first thing you have to understand is that Edith was very clearly mentally ill full stop. I'm not defending her choices, no, she's a shit person but she's the kind of shit person that could qualify as an actual medical diagnosis. She has the emotional development of a toddler, which ties into her upbringing which we'll get to right now.

Ok, so, basically she was raised like a woman in that era's aristocracy. That is to say pretty much for ornamental value. Stoner's relationship and its failings are a critique of the gender norms of that era. She blamed Stoner for her lack of agency (ie not seeing Europe), depends on him, her dad, and the clear lack of real attachment to either of them. Abusing her child was her way of feeling in control. Abusing Stoner, who she blamed, was her way of feeling in control. A lot of Stoner, as in the book Stoner, was about agency and how people cope with it.

They got married because he was a professor and she was living furniture and that's just what you're supposed to do. They have a kid because that's just what you're supposed to do. Shit like that.

Also yeah as the other anon pointed out there's some damning subtext relating to Edith being a CSA survivor.

I'm sure this post is missing a lot but those are the major points off the top of my head. I really liked Stoner.

a woman is only crazy because she is not fucked properly, at whatever age.

>>8595625
She didn't get to go to Europe.

>>8596776
bumping this

>>8597160
hahahaha, atleast he got a slice of Driscoll

>>8597135
she was craving a bit of Lomax when they got smashed in stoners own house, maybe she just FUCKIGN hated Stoner because she was shallow. Which isn't that insane considering she took Stoners kid from him essentially

>>8596776
He was stoners English professor. He was old and crotchety and taught a subject stoner thought he was disinterested in. He turned out to be a mentor figure who identified in stoner something even he himself wasn't aware of.

He was old and sad after the end of the war and died. The end of an era.

>>8599264
/thread/

>>8595625
He never grabbed her pussy.

>>8595625
reposting something i wrote awhile ago

imagine the book from edith's POV. you are sheltered all your life by your parents. this is beyond helicopter parenting, they home school you. except its not even schooling really, your parents see you as nothing more than a product to be sold for a good bid, so the skills you learn are on how you can best be a decoration at parties, which is where you are put to market. so you finally meet someone at a party, and because you've been sheltered all your life and don't know how to really socially interact, you blurt out your entire life story, then horrified at what you've done, try to keep your mouth shut the rest of your time together.

you think its over and are looking forward to seeing an old relative, someone who might actually care about you and teach you about how to live in the world. even better, you can escape this dry life that has no promise for you. just then that awkward guy knocks at the door and you have to interact again. then he wants to talk to your parents. oh shit, you might to have to marry this guy. worse: he wants it now, not after your trip to europe. its not really up to you, it's up to this man you met once and your father. they are in the other room negotiating right now. then on your honeymoon you give into sex even though it hurts and you didn't want it because that's what's expected of you by society and your husband. then he spends all his time at work. when you have a child, he cheats on you in a brazenly obvious fashion, everyone in the community knows about it. what do you do? oh thats right, you are supposed to be a saint and here, take the child too, because this guy deserves to have everything he wants whenever he wants it without consequences, even if it hurts and humiliates you.

stoner committed marital rape, spent all his time at work neglecting his duties as a father and husband, shirks his call to duty for world war one, and when he wasn't nose-deep in books he was nose-deep into his paramour. edith was raised by parents that saw her as nothing more than a financial investment, and turned out developmentally delayed, emotionally stunted. when she finally discovers these things called will and power, she externalizes all her turmoil onto their daughter, the one thing she had power over that could actually hurt stoner.

however, even in the book on his deathbed stoner realizes he deeply wronged edith, and forgives and accepts her, finds her beautiful and excellent. anyone who says "edith was a bitch" apparently didn't accompany stoner and the author on their journey to emotional maturity.

i think it takes a relatively sophisticated author to not only construct a character like this, but interpret them from another character's point of view. unfortunately, many reader's aren't as sophisticated, can't distance themselves from the narrator, and end up making totally plebeian remarks like "edith was a bitch" or "holden was a whiny teenager hypocrite"

>>8597220
>>8597225

I'm assuming you're both virgins.

This is the only possible way you could think that Edith's sexuality was at all normal, or explained by her father being really strict about her piano lessons.

Women are programmed to enjoy sex. Simple shyness is not enough to completely block off this urge over an entire lifetime.

>>8600487

In many cases that's true, but there's no uniform response.

The only thing that can be said definitively is that Edith is not the product of a strict patriarchal upbringing and nothing more. Full-fledged personality disorders- disorders strong enough to disrupt something as primordial as sexual instincts- are never caused by just being yelled at a few times by your parents.

I literally pumped my fists in the air when it was Stoner's turn to question Lomax's pet student. That guy went to extreme lengths against Stoner's just because of a similar disability in that lazy student.

>>8600533
I fucking hated the cripple.

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>tfw Walker shuts down that roastie Katherine in front of the entire class
He was easily the most alpha character in the whole book

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>>8601031
>fucked in the ass by Walker daily
>alpha

>>8601039
fucked by Lomax*
Shiiiiieeeeeet

>>8600508
Yeah this is intellectually dishonest. Maybe she was raped but you can certainly explain her character in other ways

Okay so I understand why Edith acted the way she did later on. >>8599463 and others pointed it out and the book spells it out when she has this massive breakdown and talks about how she never got to go to Europe. She's discontent with life and blames Stoner for these things, and the EU trip especially was something she was always going to cling to and hate Stoner for

My problem isn't in the way she acted in later on, it's the beginning. Mostly two things. First - she never gave the thing a chance. I said in a earlier post how she refused to even have sex with him on their wedding night. They have sex a couple nights later, she lays like a dead fish and goes and loudly throws up in the bathroom after. I don't really wanna get into the ol she was raped as a child thing, but years later shes literally walking the street like a cat in heat, waiting for stoner to get home. They have wild passionate sex for months when theyre trying to conceive, so I kinda find it hard to believe she has this huge revulsion to sex..she just doesn't wanna have sex with Stoner, because she dislikes him. Thing is, she is the one that rushes the wedding. Her parents wanted it late, shes forces them to instead rush it ASAP. Why rush into it with a guy you don't like (evidenced by her revulsion at sex with him on their honeymoon)? It makes no sense, she couldve probably worked in their EU trip if the wedding was later

Next, I don't get why she even married him in the first place. She was still very young, good-looking, came from a good fairly wealthy family - she wasn't a poor girl with no prospects. I don't see how it'd be a scandal to say no to courtship with a poor teacher like Stoner. Even if it wasn't ladylike to say no herself, she could've easily just had her parents say no for her, based on her father finding his prospects very lacking (which he did in their interview). In relation to the first point she obviously didn't really like him from the beginning, so why the hell marry him?

>>8600449
you are making edith sound much better than she really was

stoner didn't rape her and she hated him irrationally from the start, she didn't put her nails in their daughter as some sort of just retribution she did it to throw her into the same life course she was programmed for, it isn't by chance that the cute daughter turned out horrible it was a result of her intervention. stoner at his deathbed realizes all the lost opportunities he had at life his daughter being one of them

edith is a victim of her parents, not stoner's

>>8601855
>why did she marry him
Maybe to get away from her family?