Have to admit, as a woman, I certainly don't like feminism in my fiction- I know the dictionary definition but in my experience in actual practice the ideology doesn't hew close to it at all - and don't expect, or want, what i consider a "feminist" ending or stories to adhere to that ideology at all. To me that would mean a whole lot of theories and generalizations about my life and the lives of the men I know that don't really work or apply to reality, and are quite alienating, and bringing real life ideology into a story just dilutes the interpretation of the story imo, makes it 2-dimensional, how "good" it is when it's not propaganda in the first place. And a personal pet peeve of mine is immediately dismissing something based on political correctness as opposed to mining it deeper for a radical interpretation, though I don't mean to say you're doing that.
I think it's important to look at stories on their own terms, and in this case, in my opinion, Lucinda as a character, in both the book and the movie, ultimately wanted a laughing home and to be happy and at peace and finally feel like she belonged, and I can't think of anything more independent or more inspirational than a person, who just happens to be a woman, making that life for herself, raising a child that isn't their own, a potentially scandalous thing to do in that society, and doing it anyway, because it's what she wanted, because it was right according to her own morals, because it belonged to her friend. Her friend, not even a lover. Her future without Oscar isn't defined as anything; it just is, it's played out on screen, and it's only our individual interpretations that define it in our own minds. Her identity isn't shaped by that one scene; it was shaped by her passion, by her morals, by her belief building your own life and eschewing society, and she held steadfast to that. She didn't do what her stupid lawyer wanted her to, or what her mother wanted. She did what she wanted. I think it's far less meaningful to get a couple scant lines that she kind of had some impact on the Australian labor movement, something throughout the book she showed very little interest in imo. I always thought it was her inability to match up to her mother's ideology that partly led to her loneliness; she just wanted the warmth of a farm and people and friends, to experience life, not be tied to ideology. I don't like the idea of peoples worths being defined by how political they are. Good can come in many forms; she did a wonderful, compassionate thing, and a very independent thing.
Also want to point out, Oscar didn't have sex with Miriam. She raped him. He wasn't seduced either. According the dictionary definition of feminism, as opposed to the ideology in practice today, to me describing it any other way is unfeminist. Lucinda couldn't have known that of course, but I doubt she felt betrayed because they never really went that far; the whole point of the book and movie was that they were a love that never got to be. Although there was some scant line I remember in the book which I thought meant that they did have sex, but in the end it was described as a love that wasn't consummated or something.
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