At the moment Greville made his horrifying confessions to Mary my phone rang! By the time I came back she was rejecting him! Can someone please fill me in on what he told her, I spent the rest of the drama a little puzzled (though enjoyed it hugely)
sharesame!!! i missed the confession!! and its ruined the rest for me because i just cannot understand how he had such a hold on her. would really appreciate someone tellin me what happened!
shareHe said lots of horrible things about the top people of the time, e.g. bishops molestering children, politicians saying the jews get what they deserved. She ran away, and then realised she shouldnt have done that. After telling all her all that stuff he wouldnt let her go that easily.
shareBut why did he tell her in the first place?
Call me Ishmael...
He destroyed her youth, her innocence and her imagination by telling her of those terrible things that were done by the great and the good, the people in charge of the world. By telling her of the horrors that were done by such people, he marred her bright-eyed, innocent view of the world and thus eventually neutralised the threat that she posed through her journalistic pieces.
shareWho knows...she may one day have developed the courage to write about such things, however after she rejected Greville and his key, he arranged for her to be sacked from her job, and made it impossible for her to get a job with any other newspaper.
shareBut what meaningful threat to the great and the good was posed by a girl with such a "bright-eyed innocent view of the world"?
(Of course, as most of the "meaning" was conveyed not by dramatisation but by narration, it's possible that her supposed threat was made clear from the voice-over and I simply missed it. But it certainly didn't register dramatically with me. Nor did any of it strike me as plausible psychologically.)
Call me Ishmael...
I think threat is in the eye of the beholder. In Greville's case, I think he was threatened by a young woman he couldn't control. Clearly, he liked those of the "Lisa" ilk, young, pretty, not terribly bright, and malleable. Mary didn't succomb and so Greville used his influence to nullify her potential to damage him by getting at her indirectly. Imagine if Mary had decided to write in her column about his attempts to bring her into his sphere of influence.
share
It just doesn't gel for me. I can't explain it. I still can't see how she was such a threat to him personally or to the establishment in general. Mary didn't succumb when he offered her his key, but this was after he had already told her all that nasty stuff evidently meant to destroy her innocence while at the same time, paradoxically, giving her ammunition she didn't have earlier.
And what about that dramatically redundant scene where Greville tells Mary about the men eating their gooey dessert and saying - dare one believe it possible of the ruling classes! - racist things? We are at the same time shown this as if it's going to be an emotionally powerful signficant scene when it's just a clumsy metaphor blown out of all dramatic proportion. Ugh!
I dunno. I think I should just give up trying to get a grip on this because, however plausible some of the individual explanations offered on this thread are, they somehow never add up and so don't make the piece any more meaningful or valuable for me.
Call me Ishmael...
One of Poliakoff's recurring themes is the past and its effects on people in the present. So I think understanding the particular period (1958 and just after)in this piece is pivotal.
I think he's picked this period because it represents a dramatic change in class structure in British Society, particularly for women (sexual revolution,etc). Mary represents the coming shift. Unfortunately, she's slightly ahead of her time so men like Greville still have influence. It's not that he's destroyed her innocence so much as he's undercut the sophistication she believes she's developed. As we say in the States, Greville gives her a taste of what it's like to play hardball. She's not so secure that she's really ready for him. She has no allies in her industry; she's too new, even though she's successful.
The white guys around the table with their racist attitudes is certainly nothing new from the view point of today's sensibilities. But in 1958 its blatant superiority would have been nauseous to an up and coming would-be career woman who believes she'll change the world order.
Don't mean to belabor the point, austendw. Poliakoff isn't everyone's cup of tea. I think he's speaking more to his own generation than to those younger, for what that's worth.
Get where your coming from Timbertue, especially about the Hardball.
What isn't clear is what influence Greville has over anyone, the secrets yes, but let's face it men with influence could soon fix it, that he couldn't announce them.
The fact the great and good did bad things, was probably little more shocking in the 50#s than today, in fact then, these influential people could surely have dealt very eaisly with greville.
So how powerful was he really?
Or is he a kind of excure for Mary to use for the mess or lack of fulfillment that was to become her.
She admits she still had quite a successful career later on, but not hitting the heights her early Oxford promise suggested.
That is often true of very many people.
ah yes, what might have been. I do think that's part of the subtext underlying Poliakoff's constant return to the past - an intellectual nostalgia. And too, there's the question of how we play the cards that are dealt to us. Someone with a different background/personality than Mary's might have found a way to exact retribution rather than beating up on her self, a cautionary tale in itself.
share