#being queer in 50s hollywood
I think I am the odd one out here, but does anybody else not really like Celia and/or her relationship with Evelyn? I understand that people are complicated and relationships have flaws, however, I can’t shake the feeling that she isn’t good for Evelyn and is only in love with the version of Evelyn she has created in her head… And by “I can’t shake the feeling” I mean “It’s pretty explicitly stated that that is what Celia does”.
she does admit she was wrong later but….idk??? I generally felt that evelyn deserved way better. While both were mean to each other at times, evelyn insofar my memory goes doesn’t really make personal/low digs at celia except (rightfully) calling out her privilege as a white kid and product of nepotism. Whereas celia CONTINUALLY invalidates Evelyn’s bisexuality and there was this running trend where she kept wanting to freeze frame her as the attractive blonde bombshell, and when she did apologize her apologies came off half-hearted and more like an attempt to further the wlw plot than genuine development. Idk. there was also a bit of a ‘bi people cheat and closeted people are cowards’ vibe from her which continued far too long for me to properly warm up to her in the last third of the novel.
Unrelated but; I kind of disliked that celia was always portrayed as the idealist in contrast to cynical evelyn and like the pristine romantic counterpart to her ambitious bitchy self. Celia was the more talented actress, evelyn had more sex appeal (initially), celia wanted to give up everything for evelyn, evelyn initially hesitates. most of the novel is her apologizing to celia and idk it made me super iffy that the Cuban bisexual woman had to suffer and self-doubt over and over and over for the white woman. Due to the lack of other mentioned female characters (positively lol) in Evelyn’s time, I have to settle for shipping her with celia but I definitely would prefer someone else for her, kind of like in Tipping the Velvet, where the protagonist realises she likes women by falling in love with one, but ends up at the end with someone much better suited for her.
Even if the relationship was portrayed as realistic, I still couldn’t bring myself to like Celia. When she’s mad at Evelyn, she’ll either cry, or just storm out of her supposed lover’s life. Don’t even get me started on the way she would drop insults on Evelyn. It just bothered me so much that Evelyn would just come find her again and again, apologizing, then planning some way they can be together, it got tiresome to the point where I just sat there and thought “Evelyn, why even bother at this point?”
You make a fair point. Tbh, I started out liking Celia, but with my experiences of rampant biphobia in the LGBTQ community, each reread I find myself sympathizing with her a little less.
