The “N” Word
What a strange conversation Anne Nichols and Elly Patterson have in today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse. In my experience, when parents refer to words by their first initial, these are bad words you don’t want your child to start using. In my house, the “N” word is a whole different word than “No” and is, in fact, a word I never want my children to use. Since when is “No” a word you don’t want your child to pick up? Imagine this scenario:
Lizzie falls down
Elly: Lizzie, does it hurt?
Lizzie: Oh, mother. The word I want to use is the opposite of “Yes” but I don’t know a word for that.
Elly: Yes! My motherhood is a success! Lizzie doesn’t know the “N” word.
Lizzie: “N” word? You mean “ne'er-do-well”? I already know that word, mother.
Naturally I would question Elly’s statement about discovering the “N” word’s true potential with the example she gives today. Is it a true potential if Lizzie says “No!” to a boy trying to take one of her toys? I would think Lizzie’s “No!!” from Monday’s strip would be more like the “No!” a parent would fear, i.e. directed at the parent. However, I must put myself in Elly’s shoes. Is it more important that Lizzie doesn’t say “No!” to boys her age or doesn’t say “No!” to her mother? You would think with Elly, the answer would be “to her mother.” However, history grants a different perspective on this. Elly was shopping her daughter around to Constable Paul Wright, and encouraged Elizabeth to break up a man’s marriage so she could be with the man instead. It could well be that Elly considered Lizzie’s power to say “No!” instead of “Yes!” to a potential mate, like Anne’s son, might not be in Elly’s interest for Lizzie.
The best part of the strip however, is the way Lynn Johnston let us know that Elly is exaggerating Elizabeth’s speaking ability to Anne Nichols. Elly told Anne, “She knows the parts of the face.” Did we see Elly going through the parts of the face with Elizabeth to see if she could say them? We did not. We saw Elizabeth saying when she wanted to go pottie. We know that Elizabeth has more than a few words in her vocabulary. The other parts of Elizabeth's speaking ability, which Elly claimed, we saw. With "parts of the face" either we have a case of "Tell and not show" which is common for Lynn Johnston's strip; or we have a case of good, old-fashioned, parental lying to impress another parent. I like that perspective. It makes Elly seem more human.
Lizzie falls down
Elly: Lizzie, does it hurt?
Lizzie: Oh, mother. The word I want to use is the opposite of “Yes” but I don’t know a word for that.
Elly: Yes! My motherhood is a success! Lizzie doesn’t know the “N” word.
Lizzie: “N” word? You mean “ne'er-do-well”? I already know that word, mother.
Naturally I would question Elly’s statement about discovering the “N” word’s true potential with the example she gives today. Is it a true potential if Lizzie says “No!” to a boy trying to take one of her toys? I would think Lizzie’s “No!!” from Monday’s strip would be more like the “No!” a parent would fear, i.e. directed at the parent. However, I must put myself in Elly’s shoes. Is it more important that Lizzie doesn’t say “No!” to boys her age or doesn’t say “No!” to her mother? You would think with Elly, the answer would be “to her mother.” However, history grants a different perspective on this. Elly was shopping her daughter around to Constable Paul Wright, and encouraged Elizabeth to break up a man’s marriage so she could be with the man instead. It could well be that Elly considered Lizzie’s power to say “No!” instead of “Yes!” to a potential mate, like Anne’s son, might not be in Elly’s interest for Lizzie.
The best part of the strip however, is the way Lynn Johnston let us know that Elly is exaggerating Elizabeth’s speaking ability to Anne Nichols. Elly told Anne, “She knows the parts of the face.” Did we see Elly going through the parts of the face with Elizabeth to see if she could say them? We did not. We saw Elizabeth saying when she wanted to go pottie. We know that Elizabeth has more than a few words in her vocabulary. The other parts of Elizabeth's speaking ability, which Elly claimed, we saw. With "parts of the face" either we have a case of "Tell and not show" which is common for Lynn Johnston's strip; or we have a case of good, old-fashioned, parental lying to impress another parent. I like that perspective. It makes Elly seem more human.
posted by howard at 11:58 PM
3 Comments:
It could well be that Elly considered Lizzie’s power to say “No!” instead of “Yes!” to a potential mate, like Anne’s son, might not be in Elly’s interest for Lizzie.This reminds us that Elly regards Liz as a means to end rather than an end in herself; then again, we should have known that from the start. Elly is a narcissist, after all; other people exist to serve her needs, not to fulfill their own destinies.
On an unrelated note, Lynn answered your question about who Chrissie Boehm and Patty Weise are; sadly, she has no idea that the publishers hired them to clean up artwork. When she finds out that they wanted it to actually look good and she didn't make the grade on her own, we can expect to see every phone book in the North Bay area to have a bite taken out of it.
Elly is a narcissist, after all; other people exist to serve her needs, not to fulfill their own destinies.Maybe so, but this does not fit with the idea of not saying "No!" to Elly to be less important than not saying "No!" to the Nichols boy. A desired destiny for a child is more about control than narcissism.
The Chrissie Boehm and Patty Weise comment is startling.
I don't know these people! The art for this book was done by myself and the story by Beth Cruikshank. Amazon has made an error somewhere...and thanks for noticing! We'll check it out. Lynn J.I had sent a comment to Coffee Talk and Q&Eh when I first noticed this on Amazon.com when Farley Follows His Nose came up for pre-order. This is not the only place these other names showed up. Barnes & Noble and Borders pre-order also had the same set of names, which told me the list came from the publisher.
I’ve looked at the art and clearly other hands have been at it. Lynn does not even colour or grayscale her regular strip because Kevin Strang does it, so I don’t know where she thinks all those water colours on her book came from. My guess is that Lynn expected that the persons ghosting her art would not be credited on the book, because they are not on the book cover. It’s not like those on-line booksellers are just going to make up names out of nowhere. Most likely the publisher sent a full list of credits without knowing that Lynn did not want their names pulled off the book, and then forgot they had already sent the names out for the pre-order.
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