Harriet Monkhouse wrote:
Jenny wrote:
But think about it. "My woman." Not "Sarah," or "Becky," or "Jill"; not "someone I cared for" or "a woman who meant a lot to me." Very cavemannish really; it doesn't give her a name or a face or even suggest that there was anything at all between them.
No, the avoidance of her name suggests to me "too private and painful to mention".
Then why bring it up at all?
An analogy, happily not a painful example: I once had a colleague who, when we first met, always referred to his wife as "my wife". After I had met her (and observed that they were a particularly devoted couple), he began to use her name in conversation; I concluded that when we were merely acquaintances he preferred to preserve a field of privacy around her, which he relaxed once we became friends.
My wife is not the same as "my woman".
When Gan discusses the
issue with Jenna, they're acquaintances; maybe he might have opened up more later,
But he doesn't.
Just listening to some Billie Holiday, which reminds me that she often sings about "my man". BH's men invariably seem to be complete jerks, but I still feel that, when she sings about them, the term conveys intimacy and tenderness.
How many jazz singers sing about "my woman" though? It's got a different meaning. And in most of the songs about "my man," as you say, "my man" is an absolute bastard who goes around mistreating women-- not the sort of guy you'd want to feel intimacy and tenderness for, if you don't want to wind up badly hurt:
"Tell me he's lazy, tell me he's slow Tell me I'm crazy, well maybe I know, Can't help loving that man of mine..."
"That lowdown man of mine Mistreats me all the time He says he loves me only Then goes and leaves me sad and lonely... If he could see through my eyes He'd be the one to cry..."
And a rock and roll song, from the Beatles:
"I used to be cruel to *my woman* I'd beat her and keep her away from the things that she loved. Man I was mean but I'm changing my scene..."
Jenny
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