John to the Rescue, Sort of
In today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse, John Patterson gets some love from Elly Patterson for finding her a job. When Lynn Johnston last reprinted this sequence of strips, this one did not make the cut. As you can tell, this strip actually makes John look good. He has acquiesced to Elly’s request for a job, and prevented her from having to go through the grueling processing of finding the job.
The final panel thought balloon from John shows that he already regrets making this offer to Elly. Ultimately it will turn out that he and Elly do not get along at work. Even though John says Elly will be working at the front desk, he has her doing all kinds of things for which she has not been properly trained and he has little patience for what I would think is her expected performance given the circumstances. On the other hand, Elly nags John about his house cleaning even there in the office. All those strips make John look really bad, and naturally they were reprinted during the hybrid year.
The thing I notice this time around, that I did not before, is that John has intentionally removed Elly from 3 important things:
1. John removes Elly from job-hunting. These are important skills to have, and Elly has probably never done them. Without this experience, it would be difficult for Elly to find a different job than the one John suggested.
2. Elly does not have to go through a salary discussion on getting a job. In fact, it’s difficult to tell if Elly got any money for herself personally through the work.
3. John’s job for Elly is temporary, so the part-time does not develop a continuous situation. Possibly John hopes that after working for him for a week, Elly will get this desire out of her system.
Even though John looks good in this strip, in reality he is still maintaining complete control over Elly. I would consider this to be very sneaky on John’s part, except I am pretty sure that Lynn Johnston was not thinking of it this way, given the happy look on Elly’s face and the hug she gives John.
The final panel thought balloon from John shows that he already regrets making this offer to Elly. Ultimately it will turn out that he and Elly do not get along at work. Even though John says Elly will be working at the front desk, he has her doing all kinds of things for which she has not been properly trained and he has little patience for what I would think is her expected performance given the circumstances. On the other hand, Elly nags John about his house cleaning even there in the office. All those strips make John look really bad, and naturally they were reprinted during the hybrid year.
The thing I notice this time around, that I did not before, is that John has intentionally removed Elly from 3 important things:
1. John removes Elly from job-hunting. These are important skills to have, and Elly has probably never done them. Without this experience, it would be difficult for Elly to find a different job than the one John suggested.
2. Elly does not have to go through a salary discussion on getting a job. In fact, it’s difficult to tell if Elly got any money for herself personally through the work.
3. John’s job for Elly is temporary, so the part-time does not develop a continuous situation. Possibly John hopes that after working for him for a week, Elly will get this desire out of her system.
Even though John looks good in this strip, in reality he is still maintaining complete control over Elly. I would consider this to be very sneaky on John’s part, except I am pretty sure that Lynn Johnston was not thinking of it this way, given the happy look on Elly’s face and the hug she gives John.
posted by howard at 10:39 AM
9 Comments:
1. John removes Elly from job-hunting. These are important skills to have, and Elly has probably never done them. Without this experience, it would be difficult for Elly to find a different job than the one John suggested.
2. Elly does not have to go through a salary discussion on getting a job. In fact, it’s difficult to tell if Elly got any money for herself personally through the work.
3. John’s job for Elly is temporary, so the part-time does not develop a continuous situation. Possibly John hopes that after working for him for a week, Elly will get this desire out of her system.
Even though John looks good in this strip, in reality he is still maintaining complete control over Elly. I would consider this to be very sneaky on John’s part, except I am pretty sure that Lynn Johnston was not thinking of it this way, given the happy look on Elly’s face and the hug she gives John.
Those are all very good points; John was always pulling self-serving stunts like this in the Early Years. Remember when Elly complained about his blowing their dough on that damned stereo and he bought her appliances to keep her quiet? Same deal for the same disrespectful reason: to avoid admitting that he was in the wrong. It still bothers me that he thought HE was the one being persecuted in all this.
Possibly John hopes that after working for him for a week, Elly will get this desire out of her system.
And she does--at least for a while. Soon after this arc appeared, there was the strip where Elly tells Connie she's decided to go to nightschool instead of getting a job--and possibly finish her degree. Of course, we know she will never finish her degree. She'll take two night-school classes and tell Lizzie she has her first-year English completed. Odd that she didn't manage to complete first-year English during her actual first year of university.
DreadedCandiru2,
Those are all very good points; John was always pulling self-serving stunts like this in the Early Years. Remember when Elly complained about his blowing their dough on that damned stereo and he bought her appliances to keep her quiet?
Not just the early years. He did something very similar to calm down Elly about moving to George Stibbs’ house, by promising all new furnishings.
aprilp_katje,
She'll take two night-school classes and tell Lizzie she has her first-year English completed. Odd that she didn't manage to complete first-year English during her actual first year of university.
The official line is:
After a year of serious dating, he proposed and they were married the next February and settled happily into a small basement bachelor apartment. Elly's interest in her degree was fading by this time and she wanted to get out and WRITE! She left university early to work in a bookstore and do some freelance writing while John finished up his dentistry training.
It doesn’t exactly work with that. One possibility is that Elly’s interest in an English degree may have not occurred until this moment in the strip. Before then, she may have been thinking of majoring in something else. The other possibility is that Elly took the classes in university, but was too poor a student to pass them. If she was really after an MRS degree, or as Grandpa Jim put it a degree in parenting, then she may no longer have been motivated to do well in school after she landed John.
April_Patterson,
Odd that she didn't manage to complete first-year English during her actual first year of university.
That sort of puts her need to latch onto Doctor Rightnow into perspective; if John hadn't come along and convinced Elly to quit, she wouldn't have an excuse ready-made to hand her parents as to why her academic career went zippa-dee-doo-dah. If they got the otherwise-inevitable letter explaining that she was persona non grata because she didn't take her studies seriously, they might ask her why they pissed away all that money on an ungrateful idiot.
dreadedcandiru2,
If they got the otherwise-inevitable letter explaining that she was persona non grata because she didn't take her studies seriously, they might ask her why they pissed away all that money on an ungrateful idiot.
Actually, Grandma Marian did say something like that to Elly. There is a clear implication that she would have preferred it if Elly waited to get married. The description of Elly’s education in this strip matches the old strip much better. It says that Elly quit school in her first year after a few months, which makes the “not finishing first year English” statement make more sense. However, for that to be true, then it means either that Elly quit school before she got married or that Elly and John got married faster than they have previously admitted.
It doesn’t exactly work with that. One possibility is that Elly’s interest in an English degree may have not occurred until this moment in the strip. Before then, she may have been thinking of majoring in something else.
I'm accustomed to universities where all undergrads are required to take first-year English, regardless of their major (you can imagine the grumbles I got from engineering students when I taught first-year English). But admittedly, that's not universal, particularly outside of the U.S. When I was in my Ph.D. program, a classmate from the UK found the concept of first-year English quite strange.
It's interesting how the strip you linked parallels the old arc we are seeing now, howtheduck. In both cases, Elly starts out by looking in the help-wanted ads and finding she's not a match for anything she might be interested in. In both cases, she considers going back to school (though in 2000 she doesn't follow through on that beyond perusing a brochure). In 1980, John suggests that Elly work in his clinic for a week--removing the need to get a job through the classifieds. In 2000, John buys the bookstore for Elly so she can be a businesswoman without having to go through the usual channels to get there.
That sort of puts her need to latch onto Doctor Rightnow into perspective; if John hadn't come along and convinced Elly to quit, she wouldn't have an excuse ready-made to hand her parents as to why her academic career went zippa-dee-doo-dah.
If that even came from him. Surely, his college-financing plan wasn't "seduce a first-year student, get her to marry you in a year, and get her to drop out and support you while you finish your dentistry program."
aprilp_katje,
In 1980, John suggests that Elly work in his clinic for a week--removing the need to get a job through the classifieds. In 2000, John buys the bookstore for Elly so she can be a businesswoman without having to go through the usual channels to get there.
So the moral of the story is that it is better to buy your wife a bookstore than to let her work for you directly. Of course, knowing the way Lynn thinks about such things, she may have considered the story parallels to be an indication that the circle is being completed.
If that even came from him. Surely, his college-financing plan wasn't "seduce a first-year student, get her to marry you in a year, and get her to drop out and support you while you finish your dentistry program."
Exactly. That part of the storyline never made sense. Instead of Elly looking for her MRS degree, it would be John looking for a woman to marry in order to finance his university education or rather his MR degree.
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