Gayle Caldwell

            On Friday morning I searched for the chords for "De velours et de soie" (The Silk and the Velvet) by Boris Vian and so far I've found one set on "Boite a Chanson" (Song Box). I transcribed the chords for the first two verses. I'll finish that tomorrow and keep looking. 

            I memorized the first two verses of "Harley David son of a bitch" by Serge Gainsbourg. There are four more verses to learn. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast. I worked on my essay and as usual in the morning dozed off a few times. But I did manage to push it one line further into the tenth page by adding more to page 8: 

            Victor can be deconstructed because, as has been established from his self-introduction, he is society. Society is a construct, and therefore so is Victor. He has been fabricated on the one side by his counsellor and syndic ancestors, as well as by his father's public life and power, into a belief that he has a relationship with the law, weaving his consciousness with the workings of government and giving him the privilege of judgement. Victor has also been fashioned on the other side by his mother's iconic mourning for a father who died from grief over the loss of his status as a wealthy merchant.

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I've been at that time in four weeks. I had mashed avocadoes and kettle chips. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst. My winter gloves were too warm so I switched to my spring gloves at the halfway point. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:00. 

            I worked almost two hours on my essay and managed to get it up to ten pages. Now it's more a matter of getting everything I've written to make sense as a support for my argument:

            Caroline's grief is an inheritance of her father's sense of loss just as the Frankenstein sense of law is a legacy. She weeps bitterly also for being reduced to poverty that threatens to render her a beggar. This overcomes her more than the loss of her father, but she is saved by Alphonse Frankenstein because she is beautiful. "There was a sense of justice" in Victor's father's "upright mind, which rendered it necessary that he should approve highly to love strongly" (Shelley 34). He wanted to recompense Caroline for the sorrows she had endured as a result of loss of wealth (35). To be poor from birth is justice but to be poor from having lost wealth is an injustice. This marriage of the rightness of wealth and the injustice of the loss of financial power allow Alphonse Frankenstein to replace Caroline's father as her benefactor and then become her husband. This equating of grief over loss of wealth as an enhancement of beauty is immortalized in the Frankenstein home. Only the beautiful deserve to be wealthy and grief of the beautiful renders them more beautiful. This is shown in the painting that Alphonse commissioned to portray Caroline showing her exquisite grief over the loss of money. The poor are meant to be poor but for the rich to fall is tragedy (79). We see this also with Justine when she is awaiting trial for murder. Justine of the Swiss servant class but beautiful and also deserving of the love of the wealthy. Her sorrow is also an enhancement to her beauty. "Her countenance... was rendered, by the solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful" (83). This sense of the beauty of women enhanced by grief weds itself with the Frankenstein male command of justice to construct Victor. Wealth brings a command over beauty which sadness only enhances. Sadness personified is the symbol of the Frankenstein matriarch mourning over a coffin full of dead money. This melancholy is a cherished member of the Frankenstein family. "Misery has come home" says Elizabeth who is also part of the design of Victor's construction (95).  

            I made home fries with two potatoes and had them with the rest of the curried ketchup and some chili sauce. I ate while watching season 6, episode 22 of the Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Granny gets into a fight with Margaret Drysdale and beats her up. Jed says he's ashamed of her because city women don't rassle their neighbours. Jethro says they do on TV and tells them that tonight the Boston Strong Girl is fighting Rebecca of Donnybrook Farm. The Boston Strong Girl plays the role of the Heel that every body hates. She's mean and she fights dirty. Rebecca is the Face, playing the good girl who everybody wants to win. Rebecca claims to be from the Smoky Mountains, which is where Granny is from, so obviously Granny is on her side. But the Boston Strong Girl wipes the floor with Rebecca, steps on her mother's picture, steals the money she's been saving to pay off the mortgage on her papa's farm, then throws Rebecca out of the ring. Granny has Jethro drive her to the arena. She jumps into the ring and starts throwing the Boston Strong Girl all over the place until she tosses her out of the ring. 

            Rebecca was played by Gayle Caldwell, who was writing piano compositions by the age of 6. She was singing in an off Broadway review when she was approached and invited to join the rising group The New Christy Minstrels. She joined although she'd never heard of them. She was often paired with Jackie Miller and their voices blended well. The group became stars while she was with them but they had a squeaky clean image and she was told she would be fired if she revealed that she had a child at her age. She quit and so did Jackie. They formed a duo and co-starred in Wild On the Beach. She wrote the song "Cycles" for Frank Sinatra. She put out two albums, became a music teacher and directed church choirs and opera companies. 

            

            The Boston Strong Girl was played by Jerry Randall, who was male. He appeared in supporting roles in a few movies and died at the age of 32 in a hang gliding accident. 

            For the thirty-fifth night in a row I found no bedbugs.