"fault-finding light"

Glaring sunlight or even less glaring light is experienced as fault-finding often by women and by those constantly appraising women's looks (and a load of pink and mauve powder always is judged and is experienced as uncanny, and is seen as a mask or masquerade, and is pondered both consciously and unconsciously (no matter what VN correctly or incorrectly thought or knew of Freud at the time), and VN is directly addressing the appearance and self-consciousness and also other people's judgments about how they look, regarding the two women in the passage, and someone else's impression of how they look. Given the costuming of women, make-up and adornment, and people's visual and philosophical fascination with this aspect of the appearance of women, and of always looking at women or "the feminine" (and supposedly excluding men and "the masculine" from this scrutiny) and always commenting on women's looks, "fault-finding light" finds itself in this context, but why it is in this story remains mysterious. Although if you consider it with other things about the mother that I have mentioned in earlier posts, it becomes less mysterious. VN wants readers to think about, among other things, so-called "sexual difference" and seems to have some feeling for some of the predicaments of "women".

Barrie Karp

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

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