Edith Wharton's Figurines

Edith Wharton's novels include The House of Mirth, Ethan Fromme, and the Pulitzer-winning The Age of Innocence. Her main topics, like Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters before her, were of women's status and the Catch-22 they faced: Since men controlled society, the only way to advance was to be (or at least act) dependent on men. For women who insisted on independence of thought and action, life was difficult and lonely.

(First, we should say that this is one of the prettiest melodies and arrangements Vega has ever composed. Perhaps it is meant to echo the music of Wharton's day.)

Like Vega's previous song on this album, "Pornographer's Dream," this song is about beauty and how it fades. This time, the price for the fading of beauty is examined, and what expenses, sacrifices, and costs people will endure to keep from paying that price.

The speaker examines some figurines that either once belonged to Wharton or which depict characters in her novels. They "still speak" to her with the stories they represent, and they both "play"... and "wrestle."

Another dichotomy appears in the next line: The characters had to weigh their "passions" and "prudences," in other words, being carefree or being practical. They also had to consider how much money they had, and how it could help them face (or not) their "fears."

"Her face and what it's worth to her/ In the passing of the years." So, like the woman in the nursery rhyme who admitted "my face is my fortune," she has to decide how much of her "finances" she is going to invest in her "face," since that is the asset that is worth the most (as opposed to, say, investments, real estate, etc., which women may not have been able to own).

The speaker likens a painted, made-up face to a "portrait come to life," but points out that instead of a canvas, this picture is supported by "vanity." But is that fair? Is it mere vanity that makes people slather on make-up and get facials and chemical peels?

No, the speaker admits: "In the struggle for survival/ Love is never blind." In the world of Wharton, men could not leave women; divorce was almost unheard of in the upper classes. But men could still cheat, giving time, offspring, and even their inheritance to younger, prettier mistresses. So staying pretty was vital for the social and economic "survival" of women. Did their husbands "love" them? Yes, but they also were not "blind." (Were the men themselves attractive? Well, with money, land, status, and power, "attractive" for men became a broader term.)

Anyway, that was 100 years ago! Women, as the cigarette ad assured us, have "come a long way, baby!"

Or have they? Well, let's ask Olivia. Who is she? She's the one "under anesthesia." She feels "her own beauty [is] not enough" and is looking to get it augmented with a "routine operation." Which will leave her "wit and wonder snuffed" under a chemical fog... and also under social pressure.

The next verses and choruses are exactly the same. Women still have to balance being passionate and prudent, while men get to just be passionate (prudent? Pff-- "boys will be boys"). Men still control the "finances"... and a woman still gets to face the "fear" of what losing her "face," her looks, will mean to her over time.

With Photoshopped images of physically impossible beauty to be compared to, women today are even more loudly told that "love is never blind."

The speaker concludes that we have not come that long a way, baby. Women still, she says, have their "wit and wonder snuffed." Women comedians, women scientists, women entrepreneurs, women creators of all kinds are still outnumbered and out-salaried by men.

"In our routine operations"-- simply going about the business and busy-ness of life-- "our own beauty [is] not enough." Still.


Next Song: Bound

Book and a Cover

This song appears as a bonus track on Vega's "Best Of" compilation, an import (from the US perspective, anyway) titled Tried and True. One source says the song was released in 1987, but the compilation was not released until 1999. In any case, the song...

Yes, the title refers to the old saw "don't judge a book by its cover."

The rest of the song merely elaborates on that theme. The speaker even says, "Don't judge so quickly," in case it was unclear (which it wasn't).

"Pictures lie," she continues, a lesson driven home by the Photoshopped ads of models found everywhere today: "What's that they taught you?/ To revere a kind of beauty?" as if other kinds of beauty were not worth reverence... or that the physical kind even is.

We were taught not to judge by appearances... but then also taught "to paint on that pretty veneer/

And try to hide whatever's dirty."

Because... what else lies? "Faces," and real ones not ones in photos, this time. "They'll tell you one thing and then another." But if beauty is skin deep, then it's important to "see what lies... Under the skin."

But there is some comfort, if the eye can be fooled, in what the ear can tell. "Come here and I will whisper true," the speaker beckons.

What will we hear? "The things I know of you/ And you will recognize them / As near to you as breath and bone." This last line is the best in the song, for its originality, a quality sadly lacking in the rest of the lyrics.

These "things I know," she says, are "So dear to me, and yours alone/ And I will love you for them." The power of knowing someone intimately and personally is far greater, and forms a more adhesive bond, than mere superficiality and surface-knowledge.

Overall, the song is rather thin. It's really unnecessary as a sermon; the axiom it's titled for already says the same thing... in only seven words. 

It would have been stronger, perhaps, if the imagery of a "book" had more thoroughly explored. Books are written, read, shared, borrowed, lost, discovered, damaged, repaired, sidled side-by-side with others, marked and marked up... in how many ways is a book like a person? If we look past the "cover" of a face, open and read the "book" of a person's soul... etc. Both people and books have "spines"...

There is a rich mine, here, that went un-dug. 

And the paradox of being taught that surfaces don't matter, but also being taught how to construct a pretty surface-- this theme, worthy of a whole song itself, is brought up, only to go unexplored.

The idea behind the cliche is that a cover can under-promise what a book holds. Well, it can over-promise, too. Like this song, unfortunately.

Next Song: Rosemary