Here’s a question for those who are reading Un amor.
Why does Nat fall in love with Andreas? What makes her so attached to him?
13 responses to “The Why of amor in Un Amor”
-
On one hand, he’s safe. Not as emotionally unavailable as she is, but close, of a (perceived) lower social class, a bit of a pariah in the community so not someone that she feels will impose any extra ties.
On the other hand, *because* she perceives him as so different from her, she feels at a certain level that he’ll bring her out of her own subjectivity. A transcendental experience in an inherently immanent word.
On the third hand, she’s really looking to be desired, and Andreas gave her as raw a message as anybody did.
Note that what she decides to remember as meaningful out of the whole thing is that caress that ends where her t-shirt does, the first time they have sex.
LikeLike
-
A little over halfway in, so perhaps haven’t got the full line yet. But that is effed up. I expect she falls for him for completely biological reasons that she’s not consciously aware of. He smells nice 😉 She notices that. But outside that: he’s got boundaries. He doesn’t share. Total blank slate. And he’s super careful about treating her like she has boundaries, even though she doesn’t.
It upsets her when he turnes out to have an education, and job plans that she wasn’t aware of. She liked him because she felt he was safely inferior (she has to figure out how she’s superior to everybody she meets. It’s super annoying). Things start to go south when he turns out to have an intellect and a life that she had not mentally budgeted for. Would’ve gone better if they’d just continued not-talking to each other I guess?
LikeLike
-
-
Yeah, that’s so weird. She wants to be desirable, but she also wants to feel superior to everybody, so then when anybody shows any sign of actually desiring her, it’s icky because they’re inferior.
LikeLike
-
–this happened at the neighbors’ party, too. She thinks the husband has the hots for her, but she’s grossed out by this because… he’s balding? Because they pretend to have a genteel country house when it’s really just a stupid house. Not because he’s married.
LikeLike
-
-
-
-
-
Btw Clarissa, you gave us homework so you get homework as well 😀
There’s been a movie made out of the damn thing, and looking at this interview with the director and main actress, it seems like it’d be worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rM8triXxUU
To people who haven’t read the book and watch this: the movie seems to be the book if the main character’s worldview was the divine truth. The casting, and everything.
LikeLike
-
Oh, gosh, watching the director talk about it… WTAF? Microaggressions, my arse. It’s called testing boundaries. You can maintain and police your boundaries, or you can miserably not have any. They don’t magically maintain themselves. But sure, if you just call it microaggression and insist that *you* should never have to change your behavior, and everybody else needs to change theirs, then you are too delicate a flower for this world, chica. That’s like insisting that the sun needs to dart behind a cloud, because you feel uncomfortably hot.
LikeLike
-
I would very much appreciate it if the sun chose to dart behind a cloud sometimes, tbh. But it’s me that chose to climb a fucking south-facing route, isn’t it :))
Also, the dynamics between the director and the main actress are phenomenal. My image of Nat btw was …. not the gorgeous Laia
LikeLike
-
Really? She struck me as someone who has the internal assumptions of someone who’s always been pretty. She’s over 30 and anxious about that starting to wane.
LikeLike
-
Nah this is a woman entirely not in control of her own sex appeal… note that the only way in which she knows how to flirt is by being all like victimize-me. Sort of woman that looks plain even if she isn’t. Whereas her actress has the sort of presence that she can’t or doesn’t manage to conceal even when in character. Nat’s traumatized, notice-me-but-don-t-notice-me affect doesn’t come out on screen at all.
-
I’m gonna take your word for that. It sounds like one of those NT things that just… doesn’t compute for me. She still reads exactly like BPD– no boundaries, no self-awareness, completely external locus of self, zero tolerance for criticism. The one BPD case that I am unfortunately obliged to maintain contact with… glommed onto *all* the woke garbage. Can’t blame her: justified the heck out of all her internal dysfunction, lack of self-control, and poor life choices. That shite is deep into blaming others for everything wrong in your life, instead of trying to fix it.
LikeLike
-
-
-
-
-
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment