Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 10, 2022 8:54:31 GMT -5
"Did Beatrice Baudelaire survive the Baudelaire mansion fire?" This question fascinated me for a long time. I had just learned about unreliable narrators in my literature classes when I came across ASOUE. When I finished reading TE, my head exploded with the revelation of Beatrice's identity. And then this question crossed my mind: is she really dead? I think two main factors led me to think about this: firstly in TPP, there is the mention of a woman in the trunk of a taxi. I remember as soon as I read that thinking, "that woman must actually be Beatrice and the taxi driver must be Lemony". Oh, before that I remember not having accepted the story that Quigley was the survivor quoted on the last page of the Snicket File. I still hadn't rationalized because I didn't believe that, (nowadays I have rationalized and I can say that in fact Quigley is not the person mentioned on the last page of the Snicket File, although the survivor may not be Beatrice) and in TGG I remember I feel like I've seen something about which the Baudelaires would never have seen their father again. I didn't know yet that Beatrice was their mother, but I believed their mother hadn't died. And the second factor, (which actually should be the fourth or fifth), in The End there was that remark in chapter 14 about reports of people being dead not always being true.
When I first reread excerpts from ASOUE, I saw on TEE Lemony's remarks about the secret tunnel and about neighbors seeing ghosts in the lot where the Baudelaire mansion once stood. I got hooked on it. Was there a story that only I was seeing? I had no one to discuss the matter with. The story got more and more interesting. And that's when I read an amateur translation of TBL into Portuguese. I had no more concert. I saw Beatrice alive everywhere I read anything by asoue. And any Asoue mystery had to be solved somehow through the fake dead Beatrice. Who was JS? Beatrice who assumed the identity of Jacques Snicket. Who was the secret letter in TSS for? It was actually for the fake dead Beatrice, and Lemony was helping to cover up her fake death, and evidence of that was the birthday date that the recipient of the letter wouldn't forget, and the salad whose recipe was originally made by Beatrice. It all made sense. When I reread LSTUA, I had the proof I was missing: Beatrice was alive at the Masked Ball that took place years after TBB was published. (I'm talking as if all this had occurred to me at once, but of course it didn't... it was years of rumination in moments of boredom or insomnia). So how did Lemony get the TBL letters addressed to Beartice Sr? Beatrice Sr herself delivered it to him! And of course, the biggest mystery of all was missing...
What was SB? In my mind it didn't matter what the SB was, but the fact that the SB was connected to Betrice so her false death had to have something to do with the SB. And my mind found the more than perfect solution: connecting the SB mystery to the TGU mystery and the survival of Beatrice and JS into a single big explanation (this was after I read ATWQ): "inside the SB there was a whistle capable of controlling the TGU. Beatrice Sr used this whistle to control the TGU and save the Quagmires, using the gigantic beast as a means of transport. (there was a connection somewhere with the fact that she was in the beast's belly, but She had regained her SB as she was the woman in the taxi, and she was impersonating JS at the time of the main events of asoue and was impersonating Kit Snicket at the time of the publication of ASOUE (in my theory Beatrice had a habit of assuming the identity of Lemony's dead siblings), and anyway, when Quigley or Ducan saw Beatrice in the beast's mouth before being swallowed (and consequently saved) by the sea beast he saw a woman resembling Violet, and so he shouted, "Violet?"
Today I find this theory still very beautiful. It is true that it has some holes, but today I see that it would make an amazing fanfic. Of course, thanks to Dark Avenue (and especially thanks to Dante), I can see where the holes are. But I can also see where there are no holes. Trying to make a gigantic theory that answers all of asoue's mysteries in a totally coherent way is simply impossible, simply because the author didn't create all these mysteries on purpose even from the very beginning he started writing. Any attempt to make a gigantic theory that answers all the mysteries at once would simply rely on too wide a range of script supports that would rely on assumptions, and that would misconfigure the very nature of the theory.
But honestly... So what? If the problem is naming "theory" we can change the nature of some of my ways of thinking to "hypotheses". But if we are going to work with hypotheses, the most correct thing would be to try to consider what are the possible hypotheses for a given scenario and what are the consequences for the way we see the backstory of asoue taking each of the hypotheses as true, so that we can- if ultimately to determine which hypotheses do not fit in at all with the canonical text. In other words, when working with hypotheses we are not looking for positive evidence for what has been suggested, but for things that could deny the hypothesis. "Ah, but isn't any headcanon like that?" Yes sure. But one thing is a headcanon that just doesn't have consequences for the way a considerable part of the story is understood, another thing is headcanons that do affect the way we see structural parts of the story. It is these "structural headcanons" that I would like to focus on. For example, the headcanon where Violet is Lemony's daughter affects how we view Lemony as a narrator. That was just an example, of course. I think there are more interesting things to discuss, like "How does Lemony know so much about what the Baudelaires thought or talked about in private?" Or, "Was Beatrice really at the Masked Ball?" or "What did Lemony say to the supposed Beatrice that night?" or "when did the Masked Ball actually happen?" When I say "more interesting", I of course mean more interesting to me. And maybe you'll see the result of my ramblings on some subjects soon.
