{"id":32,"date":"2007-04-16T13:59:58","date_gmt":"2007-04-16T20:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/robyn\/2007\/04\/16\/whowhat-does-eben-love-exactly\/"},"modified":"2007-04-16T22:52:26","modified_gmt":"2007-04-17T05:52:26","slug":"whowhat-does-eben-love-exactly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/robyn\/2007\/04\/16\/whowhat-does-eben-love-exactly\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\/What does Eben love, exactly?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before I get into the title of this blog, I want to just say that I do own one Thomas Kinkade painting that I received for my conformation, and I thought it was rather uncanny that Dr. Campbell mentioned that even Kinkade’s paintings express a certain “yearning;” because the quote below the painting that I have in my room at home says;<\/p>\n

“As the deer yearns for the river, so yearns my soul for thee, oh Lord.”<\/p>\n

Anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 What we talked about in class today about Jennie being one and the same as the portrait\u00c2\u00a0of her and the fuzzy line between the representation of Jennie and the actual Jennie reminded me distinctly of The Oval Portrait<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0by Poe.\u00c2\u00a0 As an artist paints a young woman in this story, the clearer the painting gets, the less alive the girl appears, until\u00c2\u00a0when the artist finally produces\u00c2\u00a0the perfect painting representation of the girl–she is dead.\u00c2\u00a0 Jennie is certainly hazy enough to begin with–and after the painting of her is complete she basically vanishes from Eben’s life.\u00c2\u00a0 Her existence as a painting is more important to Eben then her existence as a person.<\/p>\n

Does Eben love Jennie as a person, or as a subject for his painting?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0At first glace,\u00c2\u00a0one might think that Eben\u00c2\u00a0loves Jennie herself.\u00c2\u00a0 However, all\u00c2\u00a0Eben ever thinks about is Jennie in relation\u00c2\u00a0 to\u00c2\u00a0art.\u00c2\u00a0 The first thing Eben does after meeting Jennie\u00c2\u00a0is to sketch her.\u00c2\u00a0 Then he waits around for her to come back so he can do a portrait of her.\u00c2\u00a0 When she arrives in his apartment, he cuts the small talk to an absolute minimum, saying,\u00c2\u00a0“well–I’ve been waiting for you.\u00c2\u00a0 We’d better begin” (61).\u00c2\u00a0 Jennie is excited and bouncing around and having a grand old time and Eben doesn’t care at all.\u00c2\u00a0 When she is trying to talk to him during their lunch break, he gets grumpy at her and says, “But we’ve got work to do, and if you’ve finished with that last bit of milk, we might begin” (64).\u00c2\u00a0 He hurts her feelings and cuts her down to the point where she just concludes, “I won’t talk any more” (65). \u00c2\u00a0Eben was “too busy to try to explain; and besides, it did the picture good” (65).<\/p>\n

When Eben is finished with the painting, Jennie does not respond to him and seems to be asleep.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of being concerned, Eben goes down the hall to “freshen up.”\u00c2\u00a0 When he returns, of course Jennie is gone.<\/p>\n

And who can blame her?\u00c2\u00a0 Is that the treatment one is supposed to expect from a “soul mate” that everyone seems so convinced that they are?\u00c2\u00a0 It sounds horrible to me.\u00c2\u00a0 Eben cares about his art–not Jennie.\u00c2\u00a0 Jennie is a tool, an inspiration for his own artwork.\u00c2\u00a0 He uses her and then he’s finished with her.\u00c2\u00a0 He is left to worship a painting, a mere representation of Jennie.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe the painting is <\/em>Jennie, maybe that’s all Jennie ever was.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00c2\u00a0hope for Jennie’s sake that she is a mere creation of Eben’s imagination, because if she’s really his soul mate, it would really suck to have such a self-absorbed cold indifferent soul mate like Eben.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I get into the title of this blog, I want to just say that I do own one Thomas Kinkade painting that I received for my conformation, and I thought it was rather uncanny that Dr. Campbell mentioned that even Kinkade’s paintings express a certain “yearning;” because the quote below the painting that I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/robyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/robyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/robyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/robyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/robyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/robyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/robyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/robyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/robyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}