From: julie@pascal.org   
      
   On Saturday, June 21, 2014 12:41:05 PM UTC-6, Brian M. Scott wrote:   
   > On Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:11:34 -0700 (PDT), William Vetter   
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   >  wrote in   
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   >    
   > in rec.arts.sf.composition:   
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   > [...]   
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   > > The following passage is from a literary fiction novel   
   >    
   > > _Tending to Virginia_, by Jill McCorkle.  Virginia is the   
   >    
   > > POV character.  She is pregnant.   
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   >    
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   > > And she hates yellow.  She wishes there was absolutely   
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   > > nothing yellow in the entire world.  "Yellow is perfect   
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   > > for a nursery because it can go either way--boy or girl,   
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   > > yellow," the tennis guy's wife had said.  Screw her,   
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   > > impregnate her, paint her life yellow.   
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   > > Did you understand that?   
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   > Yes.  She's very unhappy, and she's heaping maledictions on   
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   > the tennis guy's wife, who suggested painting the nursery   
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   > yellow, since that would be suitable for a boy or a girl.   
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   > Since she hates yellow, at least at the moment, 'paint her   
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   > life yellow' is a pretty strong malediction.   
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   I think it's possible that she really really hates being pregnant, too.  She   
   feels it's an imposition and she hates yellow because it's convenient and at   
   the moment represents what's happening that she's not in control of.   
      
   But maybe not, too.  It's sort of squishy and could mean anything that someone   
   wanted to impose on it.  Yellow is cheerful and she doesn't want to be   
   cheerful, etc.,   
      
   I've been thinking of the Art Major assignment question and pretty much   
   thinking that (with my crabby preconceptions, anyway, and recent exposure to   
   college... well, the only Art class I took was small metals (jewelry) taught   
   by a guy who's a gunsmith so    
   we didn't do modern theory anything, we welded silver stuff into three inch   
   tall sculptures...) Ahem... but this reminds me of that question... what is   
   missing from a photograph is whatever the professor has as his or her current   
   "theory of the meaning    
   of oppression" and I can easily (with my crabby preconceptions) see this given   
   as a senior level assignment bringing in whatever social justice thing the   
   professor is currently on about... a pastoral scene is deceptively lying about   
   the destruction    
   humans cause, etc., or a particular demographic is missing from a picture of   
   people... or "yellow" has a meaning.   
      
   -Julie   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)