Author Topic: Flash: The Little Match Girl  (Read 13468 times)

Russell Nash

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on: March 15, 2008, 09:42:24 AM
Flash: The Little Match Girl

By Angela Slatter
Read by Dani Cutler

The walls are a hard patchwork of rough stones. In some places, there’s the dark green of moss, birthed by moisture and the breath of fear. In others there’s nothing but black. Soot from torches has gathered so thickly that I could scratch my name into it, if I knew how to write. The floor wears scattered straw for a coat, stinking and old. No natural light comes into this place, there’s not even a window, the aperture bricked up long ago so no one could flee. And it stinks; the waste bucket sits festering in the corner.


I haven’t seen a mirror in weeks, so I conjure my face in my mind: pale skin, green eyes, black hair. Almost against my will, I superimpose the marks of my stay: dirty smudges on the skin, the eyes red-rimmed, the hair a storm cloud of filth. I try to smooth the ghostly suffering away, try to see my eighteen year old face as it was, but it’s no use. I’m forever marked. I close my eyes, tightly. In my hand, a weight. A matchbox, silver and hard. Inside are four matches with the power to show me the moments when my life turned, when doors opened and closed, and my path changed forever. I open the matchbox and strike the first match.




Listen to this week's Pseudopod.



Thaurismunths

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Reply #1 on: March 16, 2008, 03:44:47 PM
Man, this story Just Fucking Rocked!
Well written, well read. Plenty creepy. Nice blend of reality and fiction.
I'm still not sure if there's any actual "magic" in the story. On one hand there was all the fold medicine, the power of the matches, etc, but in reality it could just be creative storytelling from someone who got the short end of the stick.
This is right up there with Counting From Ten for me.

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eytanz

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Reply #2 on: March 16, 2008, 04:53:09 PM
Man, this story Just Fucking Rocked!
Well written, well read. Plenty creepy. Nice blend of reality and fiction.
I'm still not sure if there's any actual "magic" in the story. On one hand there was all the fold medicine, the power of the matches, etc, but in reality it could just be creative storytelling from someone who got the short end of the stick.
This is right up there with Counting From Ten for me.

I entirely agree. This one was a winner.



Russell Nash

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Reply #3 on: March 17, 2008, 04:37:55 PM
Loved it.  I was doing other things and didn't notice there was no opening. I was really disappointed when I realized it was only a flash piece.



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Reply #4 on: March 17, 2008, 05:15:02 PM
Nothing but praise from me on this one.  Excellent story, excellent reading.  Terribly, terribly creepy.


gelee

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Reply #5 on: March 17, 2008, 06:47:10 PM
OK, I guess it's my turn to be the odd man out.  I didn't care for this at all.  It felt a bit cliche and worn.  I just couldn't get behind it. 
Wise, empowered woman is victimized and exploited by The Man.  Her wild spirit can not be broken, so The Man kills her.  And of course, by "The Man", we mean "men in general."  meh.



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Reply #6 on: March 20, 2008, 03:22:59 AM
I'm with you GElee



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Reply #7 on: March 20, 2008, 08:43:00 PM
I think you guys are over generalizing.  I didn't see it that way at all.  Most women know that one evil male character does not always personify all men.  (Unless they just got dumped...) Usually if that's the point the author was trying to make they rub it your face in it a little more.  If the gender roles had been switched would you have thought it woman-hating?

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goatkeeper

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Reply #8 on: March 21, 2008, 05:46:50 AM
I'm not sure that was the point the author was trying to make, it might have just happened incidently.  I don't think it was a blatent sexist piece- I'm just with GElee that I didn't really care for the story in general.
However, I don't think you can just switch gender roles fairly in many cases to see things differently.



gelee

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Reply #9 on: March 21, 2008, 12:07:14 PM
Right.  I don't think it was meant to be overtly sexist, but if I wrote a similiar story where every female character was weak, cowardly, or cruel, the 'misogynist' label would probably come out pretty quickly.  Cormac Mcarthy's "The Road" struck me as such, and Spider Robinson reached the same conclusion in his review.  Also, reference anything by Ernest Hemingway, with the possible exception of "A Farewell to Arms."

My main beef with the story was that I've read/heard it before by a few other authors.  Check out "Paid in Full" over at Variant Frequencies for an example.



wakela

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Reply #10 on: March 27, 2008, 12:03:40 AM
I'm with Gelee on this one.  It was well written and well read.  I didn't see it as sexist, I saw it as "the lower members of society are more noble than the respected ones," and this has been beaten to death for me.   It can be part of the story like in Sweeny Todd, but it's no longer novel enough to be the whole story.

"You can't kill me.  I'm killing myself!"  The judge didn't lose any sleep over this.   

But now that I think of it, the father runs out when his wife is no longer pretty, the favorite john who says he loves her stabs her in the back, and of course the judge rapes her.  And the homeless prostitute is improbably only guilty of being a little too easy -- which is, in this world, something a man cannot be guilty of.  So yeah, you could make a good case for this being anti-male. 



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Reply #11 on: April 05, 2008, 07:45:54 PM
While the witch/transgressive woman narrative is fairly common in literature, I thought this piece was well-written and well read.




eroomtam

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Reply #12 on: April 13, 2008, 09:27:40 PM
This kind of story is getting so old.  Another story of men who only want sex, and wise women in their midst who are seen as threats.  If there had been one redeemable male in this piece, I would feel differently, but this strikes me as a story written by a woman with an axe to grind who is going to vent her frustrations in a story.  That is all well and good and can lead to some good stories if it is written from the heart, but give us something new, or suspenseful, or a twist at the end.  But suicide?  Come on.  Self-empowerment by immolation?

How about she burns herself on the pyre, the cell burns down, the jail burns down, the judge and other guilty parties are killed...and the main character then walks away without a scratch or a singe.  She had nothing (not even clothes) except herself, but that is a challenge she can handle.



wakela

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Reply #13 on: April 13, 2008, 11:42:34 PM
This kind of story is getting so old.  Another story of men who only want sex, and wise women in their midst who are seen as threats.  If there had been one redeemable male in this piece, I would feel differently, but this strikes me as a story written by a woman with an axe to grind who is going to vent her frustrations in a story.  That is all well and good and can lead to some good stories if it is written from the heart, but give us something new, or suspenseful, or a twist at the end.  But suicide?  Come on.  Self-empowerment by immolation?

How about she burns herself on the pyre, the cell burns down, the jail burns down, the judge and other guilty parties are killed...and the main character then walks away without a scratch or a singe.  She had nothing (not even clothes) except herself, but that is a challenge she can handle.

I'm wondering if this is a symptom of English Majoritis.  I was an English major, and it seemed most of what we did was "deconstruct" stories to get at the real meaning that the author intended.  Invariably the meaning was that we live in a brutal, racist world dominated by white males.  I think this leads young writers to believe that good writing must have a hidden agenda, and that hidden agenda must be that we live in a brutal, racist world dominated by white males.



Thaurismunths

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Reply #14 on: April 14, 2008, 01:02:00 AM
This kind of story is getting so old.  Another story of men who only want sex, and wise women in their midst who are seen as threats.  If there had been one redeemable male in this piece, I would feel differently, but this strikes me as a story written by a woman with an axe to grind who is going to vent her frustrations in a story.  That is all well and good and can lead to some good stories if it is written from the heart, but give us something new, or suspenseful, or a twist at the end.  But suicide?  Come on.  Self-empowerment by immolation?

How about she burns herself on the pyre, the cell burns down, the jail burns down, the judge and other guilty parties are killed...and the main character then walks away without a scratch or a singe.  She had nothing (not even clothes) except herself, but that is a challenge she can handle.

I'm wondering if this is a symptom of English Majoritis.  I was an English major, and it seemed most of what we did was "deconstruct" stories to get at the real meaning that the author intended.  Invariably the meaning was that we live in a brutal, racist world dominated by white males.  I think this leads young writers to believe that good writing must have a hidden agenda, and that hidden agenda must be that we live in a brutal, racist world dominated by white males.
Oooh, good point.
I'd never considered that none of my Lit professors have ever held up a story/poem/novel/magazine and said "This is a superb example of plane old good fiction." There has always been a message, a meaning, a story, or a truth eloquently buried within and that we were expected to emulate it. I'm not saying that good writing couldn't or shouldn't have a purpose, but not everything has to, and perhaps some lit majors/writers might try too hard to put a meaning in to a story or put a story to a meaning rather than letting a piece be what it is meant to be. A nother example of this might be this weeks Pseudopod.

How do you fight a bully that can un-make history?


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Reply #15 on: September 03, 2009, 04:21:17 PM
I'm wondering if this is a symptom of English Majoritis.  I was an English major, and it seemed most of what we did was "deconstruct" stories to get at the real meaning that the author intended.  Invariably the meaning was that we live in a brutal, racist world dominated by white males.  I think this leads young writers to believe that good writing must have a hidden agenda, and that hidden agenda must be that we live in a brutal, racist world dominated by white males.

Good point!  To me, I don't mind a message in a story, but the story must always come first.  It must stand alone as a story and be compelling as a story.  If there's deeper meaning, great!  But that can't be the only thing it has.

This one seemed a little heavy on the message, light on the story.



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Reply #16 on: July 22, 2010, 11:46:38 PM
Not really sure how to feel about this one.  Without editorializing, I would say that it was a decent enough story, although lacking in a strong, coherent plot or anything which amounted to tension.  Stuff just happened, she suffered, then she died.  The language was okay, but not special.  The setting was too indistinct - as was the time period.  The man accuses her of being a witch, yet she is tried by a judge - not an inquisitor or magistrate.  That seemed odd.  More specific detail would have helped quite a bit.

As for the subject matter, I just found it hard to sympathize with the character.  She was a perennial sufferer and, at some point, that becomes a product of one's own making.  I am reminded by a (paraphrased) statement I read in an apocryphal book a long time ago - I wish I could remember it better - but it was something about how there is nothing wrong with looking down upon wretches who live amongst plenty, clearly they simply lack the strength, intelligence, will or desire to aquire their portion of the bounty all around them.  There is no lack of resources, only a lack of will.

In the same manner, her suicide felt more like a defeat than a victory.  It didn't prove anything to anybody, and if she wanted to prove to herself that she "would not submit to them" she could have confessed, but not meant any of it.  If you lie in order to get what you want (in this case freedom) I would not call that defeat or submission.  I would, however, call burning yourself to death out of spite a defeat.  So far as I could tell from the story, she could simply say "I'm sorry" and get set free - all the while, laughing her ass off about what fools they were for believing her.

There is a romance some people associate with suicide, but try as I might, I could not see anything romantic (or even horrific) about the ending.  Someone who never cared about themself, kills themself.  Ho hum.

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