Postby sarobah » Mon Mar 08, 2010 12:49 am
Don’t worry, I have no problem answering questions. I will take any chance offered to pontificate on my views and opinions and lifestyle.
Now, you are very perceptive – The Office was indeed meant to be an anomaly. In the apparently never-ending cycle that the heroine (Ishara, Saraya, Ms Sharrett = Sarah, of course) is experiencing, in which the same motif of enslavement and bondage recurs time after time, all of a sudden there is this change of mood and circumstance. It makes her (and the reader?) begin to question exactly what is going on – how immutable is the cycle, how long has it lasted, will it ever end, and how? It’s all to do with the butterfly theme – what is real and what is fantasy? How do the events in the office fit into everything else that is happening, in the Fasthold, in the Boudoir, etc.? Is there a connection or are these just random episodes?
In The Office, the heroine is the owner of the company, and yet she lives in a world where women are routinely bound and gagged, where the right to tie up the boss lady (and do all sorts of other things to her, apparently :o) is written into the contract of employment. It’s a world in which women are both empowered and enslaved.
And yes, there is definitely a metaphor, in fact several. I don’t want to spoil the story by overanalysing, but one of the metaphorical themes is fashion, something very close to my feminist heart. Women’s clothing – is it empowering or objectifying? The other major metaphor is not so much sexual prejudice as sexual dimorphism – women, especially those in positions of influence and authority – must walk in two worlds.
Finally, without giving too much else away, I’ve read some analyses of men’s and women’s sexual fantasies. The consensus seems to be that whereas strong, dominant men tend to have fantasies which affirm their dominance, strong, dominant women tend to have fantasies of submission and, yes, enslavement.
Hopefully that offers some clues about the story without me boring the life out of people.
~ Sarah
Words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.