I did write something related, before that scene happened; I’m certainly happy to revisit the idea with the conversation in mind. It was a post about the “Fitcher’s Bird” story and the season 2 finale (”Fitcher’s Bird” is a “Bluebeard”-type tale). Some of what I have to say about this is building off that, so I recommend reading it. (Also I wrote a follow-up post when it became clear that I hadn’t expressed myself properly.) Before going on I’ll link again to “Fitcher’s Bird” and for the first time to “Bluebeard,” the stories. I’d rather not stop to go into too much detail about the stories, so it’s best to read them if you’re not familiar.
With that in mind, then, let’s look at the conversation again:
Will: I look at my wife, and I see her dead. And I see Mrs. Leeds and Mrs. Jacoby lying where Molly should be.
Bedelia: Do you see yourself killing her?
Will: Yes. Over and over.
Bedelia: It’s hard to predict when brittle materials will break. Hannibal…gave you three years to build a family, confident that he would find a way to take them from you.
Will: And he has. [Pause.] What’s he going to take from you?
Bedelia: Is it important to you that he take something from me?
Will: Hannibal…has agency…in the world.
Bedelia: Hannibal has no intention of seeing me dead [small smile] by any other hand than his own. And only then if he can eat me. [Pause] He’s in no position to eat me now.
Will: [furious] If you play, you pay.
Bedelia: You have paid dearly. It excites him to know that you are–marked in this particular way.
Will: Why?
Bedelia: [archly] Why do you think?
Will: [bitter guffaw] Bluebeard’s wife. [Bedelia lets out a short laugh/sigh] Secrets you’re not to know, but sworn to keep?
Bedelia: If I am to be Bluebeard’s wife, I would’ve preferred to be the last.
[Bedelia’s face: WHAT NOW BITCH]
Will: Is Hannibal…in love with me?
Bedelia: Could he, daily, feel a stab of hunger for you, and find nourishment at the very sight of you? [Pause] Yes. But do you…ache for him?
First of all: this is like watching some kind of bizarro-world teen movie where Bedelia is the Queen Bee popular girl and Will is the oddball quirky girl that nobody noticed UNTIL NOW. They are confronting each other at the big pool party and Will got in a good line at Bedelia but then she poured her drink down his shirt. Literally this is the exchange they’re having. Incredible.
Second of all: You may be wondering why I included so much of the conversation. I never realized this before, but the imagining of Molly as the should-have-been, almost-was latest in a series of dead women is itself a foreshadowing of the “Bluebeard” reference. It colors the whole conversation and indeed leads rather directly to “Is Hannibal in love with me?” Understanding this changes the whole structure of the lines as written: looking at the conversation in terms of “Bluebeard” shows that the exchange starts itself over, recenters itself, no less than five times.
Step into my parlor.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JpW9kh