Saturday 27 June 2020

MY DARK VANESSA by Kate Elizabeth Russell (2020)



“‘I just need it to be a love story, you know? I really, really need it to be that.’”


In the wake of the #MeToo movement, My Dark Vanessa takes on a prescience heretofore unseen in feminist fiction. Set against the backdrop of such scandals as the Harvey Weinstein bombshell in 2017, this scorching debut follows a troubled young woman named Vanessa Wye who, at age 15, entered a sexual relationship with her English teacher, Jacob Strane, who is 36 years older than her. Seventeen years later, another former student has made allegations of sexual abuse against Strane, and Vanessa is forced to redefine “the great love story of her life — her great sexual awakening — as rape” (Russell, 2020). 


When the pair first meet, the reader can instantly identify Strane as a predator. Vanessa feels unremarkable and unexceptional. She carries a moroseness that rejects companionship even as she silently longs for a friend, and Strane detects this insecurity immediately. Vanessa feels invisible, so he makes her feel noticed: “‘no one ever notices anything I do’”, she laments, to which he replies, “‘That isn’t true. I notice you all the time’” (Russell, 2020). She is lonely and friendless, so he manipulates her loneliness “into a sense of uniqueness”, telling her that he prefers to be alone, too — although Vanessa’s first impulse is “to say no, I don’t like being by myself at all”, she wonders if “maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m actually a loner by choice, preferring my own company” (Gilbert, 2020; Russell, 2020). He compares her red hair to an autumn maple leaf, compliments her clothing and her sense of style, presents her with poetry he hasn’t assigned the rest of the class because he “can tell” that she, like him, is a “dark romantic” who likes “dark things”,  and over time, the dedicated personal attention has the desired effect: not only does Vanessa feel special, she feels that the only person who sees her specialness is Strane (ibid). He grooms her expertly for someone who claims to have never been in a relationship with a student, and even this, he twists to his advantage: Vanessa feels even more special when Strane tells her that she is the first student he has been with, who is worth the risks of engaging in an affair so illicit. 


Strane holds these considerable risks over Vanessa’s head throughout their relationship. He openly acknowledges that if they get caught, he would be arrested and convicted of sexual assault of a minor, yet his main concern isn’t that he will be caught doing something illegal; instead, he emphasises that if he is arrested, they will no longer be able to be together — he knows that Vanessa feels misunderstood by everyone except him, and that the looming threat of losing this refuge will keep her complacent. He also emphasises how much he stands to lose: he could lose his job, his reputation, his freedom, but what will Vanessa lose? Nothing. Wrought with anxiety, Vanessa begins to see things from Strane’s point of view: “I’ve been wrapped up in my own frustration and impatience, never considering all that was on the line for him or how much he’s already risked [...] Maybe all along he’s been the brave one and I’ve been selfish. Because really, what risk is there for me?” (Russell, 2020). It’s genius, really, to emphasise how much Strane stands to lose, because knowing how much is on the line makes Vanessa feel even more special — he could literally be sent to prison for being with her, yet he continues their relationship because she is worth the risk of losing everything. 


The most significant gift Strane gives Vanessa is a copy of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, which becomes Vanessa’s key reference for understanding her relationship with Strane. When he gives her Lolita, Strane knows that Vanessa will view it as a model of the relationship developing between them. Here is where fiction and reality begin to merge; Vanessa’s idolisation of Lolita draws from Russell’s own girlhood relationship with the novel. Since its publication in 1955, Lolita has divided readers over whether or not the relationship between Humbert Humbert and Dolores Haze is love or rape, and as a young girl, Russell fell into the former category. The idea of the sexual power that underage women hold over older men is disturbingly omnipresent in popular culture, and seeing this glamorization of relationships between young girls and powerful men directly influenced Russell’s interpretation of Lolita:


Looking back on that era, [Russell] recalled the Rolling Stone cover with “teen dream” Britney Spears in her childhood bedroom, a Teletubby snuggled under her arm, her cardigan parted to reveal a silky black bra. On TV, politicians were castigating the president for lying about an affair with a 22-year-old intern, but no one seemed to think of him as an abuser — not even the intern, who maintained for years afterward that she’d been in love and who has only recently said she’s “beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot.” Watching it all play out, Russell was riveted. “If you swept away the politics,” she said, “what was left was what I perceived then to be an intense, romantic affair” (Shapiro, 2020).


It’s this naivete that Russell wanted to portray in My Dark Vanessa. In Lolita, Humbert Humbert claims that he was seduced by Dolores and her impossible charm, and Vanessa entertains this same fantasy: she is seducing Strane, not the other way around. She identifies strongly with one particular line from Lolita: “she stands unrecognised by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power”, a quote that gives her an epiphany: “I have power [...] Power over him. I was an idiot for not realising this sooner” (Nabokov, 1955; Russell, 2020). Once again, Strane has successfully manipulated Vanessa into thinking that she is the one in command; there can’t possibly be anything wrong with their relationship if Vanessa is the one responsible for it. 


Seventeen years on, Vanessa remains shallowly convinced of her consensual participation, but her conviction is shaken when an article appears online, accusing Strane of sexually harassing its author, Taylor Birch, while she was his student. Taylor reaches out to Vanessa, hoping to speak with her about Vanessa’s alleged affair with Strane, but Vanessa refuses, disgusted that someone would accuse Strane of something so vile when she ‘knows’ that he would never do anything without asking for consent. Yet Taylor’s article triggers an instinct in the back of Vanessa’s mind that she has been repressing for nearly two decades: that in such a circumstance as her relationship with Strane, consent “might well be rendered moot” (Lewinsky, 2018). Yet how can Vanessa let go of her responsibility for their relationship after clinging to it for seventeen years?  In order to live with herself, she must have been complicit, because without this, she is left with nothing but a victimhood she does not wish to claim; being an accomplice to their crime is “the only source of power she has left” (Gilbert, 2020). My favourite quote from the novel comes from one of Vanessa’s therapy session in the final act: 


‘I can’t lose the thing I’ve held onto for so long, you know?’ My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. ‘I just really need it to be a love story, you know? I really, really need it to be that [...] Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?’ I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide open empathy. ‘It’s my life,’ I say. ‘This has been my whole life’ (Russell, 2020).  


She has known it all along: Strane was abusing her, and she let herself be convinced of their relationship’s romanticism because the only other option was to be just another victim of a man in power. Girls in stories like Taylor’s are always victims, and Vanessa never saw herself as one because she did not want to be one: “I’m not a victim because I never wanted to be, and if I didn’t want to be, then I’m not. That’s how it works. The difference between rape and sex is state of mind. You can’t rape the willing, right?” (ibid). To be a victim is to relinquish your power, and telling herself that she was consenting in their relationship, that she was the one in control, that she decided what they did, is the only power she has left. 


A blistering analysis of the responsibility that women take on for their own assault, My Dark Vanessa is essential reading from which one will emerge with greater empathy for survivors of sexual abuse. Vanessa is an infuriating, but ultimately empathetic woman whose story has never been more critical, and as we travel deeper into the systematic unravelling of the patriarchal power that enables men to manipulate young girls in the way Strane manipulated Vanessa, I hope that Vanessa’s struggle to own her victimhood will make women in similar situations feel less isolated and alone. 


WORKS CITED


ADDITIONAL RESEARCH

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