why “good morning midnight”?
Q: Why did you choose “Good Morning Midnight” as a blog title?
A: The hat scene.
• symbolism of clothing: “trying on hats” as a metaphor; Sasha’s social, emotional, economic, etc liminality/alterity as linked to her discomfort with all available options; this in turn as a modernist metaphor for our prepackaged options for life paths and social roles in an industrial world, particularly for women (“all the hats now are very difficult”)
• clothing and shopping as distinctly coded feminine and socially what this mandates for women; the shop as a “woman’s space” and Sasha’s interactions there - camaraderie, competition, sisterhood, possible sexual tensions, etc. Shopgirl as both manipulative and benevolent.
• the transformative power (or lack thereof?) of fashion: Sasha will be what she wears. This as a common theme for women in both literature and film (the “makeover” story, My Fair Lady, Cinderella, etc) - what happens when this does not work out as we planned? what happens when the options are to get it right or to get it wrong?
• the strong link between clothing and memory: Sasha’s images of Paris as black overcoats, bowler hats, skirts, gloves, etc, identifying + remembering people by their clothes, etc. Consumerism both as an attempt to escape from memory but to create new ones; spending and body politics. Importance of clothing (the white or the blue?) in ending scene.
• metaphors of thread and fabric as ways to trace motifs through the text
