Strangeness, mundanity, and the comfort of simplicity - and misogyny
Throughout these readings what jumped out at me most was their almost formulaic nature. The vast majority, if not all, of these stories start with what we would consider a "normal" scenario and then subtly, or not so subtly, introduce elements of strangeness through narration or dialogue that creates a sense of unease for the reader. My initial interpretation of this type of story is that it is a reflection on what it means to be an individual in a system. In the cases of these stories that means leaning into the mundanity of daily life, the comfort of living simply or at the mercy of another and keeping their strangeness hidden/locked away from contact with the outside world. Interestingly enough I do think that in this case each story is exploring this idea through the lens of women stuck in a misogynistic society, cycle, or relationship. Whether this is through quite literally being handed from husband to husband or the presentation by a man of how to dissect misogyny using a tool suggested by a man and oversimplified to the extent that it is, to me, a mocking of influencers, and society as a whole which present misogyny as something that one can simply cut away and be done with. Finally, and perhaps the most consistent idea throughout all of these texts is the idea of connection/relationships and the, in my opinion, true idea that we cannot ever to a complete extent understand each other. Whilst we may be reflections of each other or live in accordance with a system we will never truly be able to understand another person down to their core simply because we aren't them. And that is ok.
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