#god yes yeah
I wish three things came up more often when discussing Fire and Hemlock, and they are:
1. The uncomfortableness of the age difference is intentional, it’s a theme of the novel! DWJ knew it was uncomfortable, she did it on purpose, and we know this because we see terrible age-difference relationships deliberately echoed and mirrored throughout the story. It’s thematic!
The primary one is Laurel, of course. God, Laurel gets her suitors very young (Tom was orphaned and essentially adopted by Laurel at age 13, enslaved to her via the Obah Cypt by age 17, and presumably married not long after. And Laurel puts her eye on Leslie when he’s thirteen as well and then starts dating him when he’s 15.) But Seb is also an example, and not just because he pursues Polly even after she yells at him that she’s “too young!” but also because we learn he manipulated and dated Mary Fields in addition to Polly — Tom’s ex-girlfriend, who we can presume is ten years older than Seb. And of course we get little details like David Bragge, who Polly realizes was flirting uncomfortably with her when she was far too young to understand it. Or how Mary Fields treats eleven-year-old Polly like a catty romantic rival to Tom. Like… it just keeps coming up. I do think that some of the horror of Tom’s situation is not just realizing what he’s having to do with Polly to stay alive. It’s also hating how his situation (forced on him by Laurel) is forcing him in turn to be a sort-of Laurel to Polly.
2. I’ve said there are mirrors to the age-difference in the novel — there are also a lot of mirrors to Laurel herself, and to her possessive type of “love”. Those mirrors feel important to me. Ivy is a major one (I seem to recall DWJ herself describing Ivy as a “failed Laurel” though I may be misremembering). Seb is another major one, and far more deliberate than I noticed at first. The thing is, he doesn’t just try to pull Polly away from Tom by playing the role of her beau (which he admits is an intentional ploy, in that shouting match with Mr. Leroy at the fair). It’s also that he mimics Laurel’s approach to possessive love, and not just by being visibly manipulative. Remember that he takes Polly’s photograph and hangs it up — just like Laurel does with all her victims. I think we are meant to notice this. Photographs are powerful in this book, and it is typical of DWJ to seed this subtly and leave it up to us to see the pattern. Oh, and there are other smaller mirrors to Laurel, of course, such as Joanna exerting possessive control over Reg (to the extent of her priorities totally overriding Reg’s, to the exclusion of his own daughter). Oh, and of course: Polly herself.
When Polly does her bit of black magic and invades Tom’s space, to try to force him to speak, it is the closest she ever comes to behaving exactly like Laurel over Tom — as if she owns Tom, and can command him and force him.
I think it’s one of the more interesting parts of the novel, how Tom almost becomes like Laurel in how he takes over Polly’s life when she’s young, and Polly almost becomes like Laurel in how possessive she grows over him. I love the way DWJ does this. And it’s why that ending is so satisfying to me. As DWJ says herself: “…it was precisely by hanging on to Tom and being overcurious that Polly had lost him…. It was clear to me that the only redress she could make was the reverse of possessiveness — complete generosity… She has to love Tom enough to let him go…”
The Janet approach to beating Laurel by hanging on to Tom is too similar to how Laurel operates herself. This is one reason DWJ keeps having the words “dead end” appear at the ending, when Polly is trying to figure out what the hell to do — she realizes that defeating Laurel is a losing game if it ends with both Polly and Tom replicating different parts of Laurel’s dynamic. They need to find another way forward. Hence Polly’s challenge, and the strange battle between Tom and Mr. Leroy… Both Polly and Tom create a new type of ending to the Tam Lin myth.
And, at this end, they’re finally free to talk openly about how they’ve both hurt one another. But also how they’ve saved one another. They don’t know if they’ll work as a couple. But they’re able to meet each other as equals for the first time.
3.And now, the big one.
(Also, let me put a break here because this got long.)
