Delicious Decay: The Laugh of the Grandmother

Images of the Female Grotesque in Leonora

Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet and David and Al

Maysles' Grey Gardens

I.

Mary Russo's book The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and

Modernity. defines the grotesque as strongly connected to the

idea of the spectacle, and what women are doing when they

make 'spectacles of themselves'. Her examples of grotesque

females are more on the side of the extreme, freakish and

fantastical, e.g. the mutilated chicken women in Todd

Browning's 1932 film Freaks, or the aerialist 'Fevvers' from

Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus (who may or may not own a

pair of real wings). However, there is an everyday variety

of the female grotesque, which manifests itself in displays

of ageing and sexuality that society at large finds

abhorrent or ugly, and that have more to do with aspects of

an unravelling femininity than with freakish unreality.

The female grotesque is an inversion of beauty, in

antithetical relation to Western ideas of beauty and

femininity. It can give rise to a 'convulsive beauty', a

transformation of the grotesque into the sublime. Grotesque

images may have a 'convulsive' effect that does violence to

that which their presence opposes: archetypical sexist

images of women. As Theodor Adorno states: 'The impression

of ugliness stems from the principle of violence and

destruction'1. By evoking violent feelings, ugliness can

become a tool against discriminatory aesthetic judgements.

It is arguable that images of the female grotesque can

shatter and do violence to the false image of beautiful

femininity through which society valorises sanctity, purity,

youth, innocence and passivity.

The 'ugly' image can be posited as a desirable

alternative to the elitist, sexually repressive ideal put

forward by the canon of Western art and literature for

centuries. In this canon, women are shown as beautiful to-

be-looked-at objects, objectified and disavowed. The

characterisation of beauty seemingly justifies all. By

negating the 'beautiful', the 'ugly' allows the real to

emerge. Speaking of grotesques and caricatures in his essay

Of the Essence of Laughter, and generally the Comic in the Plastic Arts,

Charles Baudelaire expresses the attraction of images of the

grotesque: 'Truly the introduction of this intangible

element of beauty, even into works destined to show men

their own moral and physical ugliness, is a thing both1Theodore Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (Continuum Books, University ofMinnesota: 1997), p. 61.

curious and worthy of attention.'2. This points to the

grotesque's powerful fascination, which calls for analysis

and interpretation: what is it that is being defiled, and

what is being elevated in its place? Do images of the female

grotesque successfully subvert negative stereotypes of women

in art, film and literature, and can the antithesis of the

stereotype - the ugly image - become itself a sublime image

of 'convulsive beauty'?

Joan Rivière's theory of the female masquerade suggests

that older bodies exist in a realm of unravelled femininity.

In Western societies, femininity, beauty and youth are

inextricably linked, so that images of older women are

excluded from becoming beautiful objets d'art. Younger women,

who are closer to the ideal, are more likely to make the

masquerade of femininity stick. This means that for older

women, their constructions of femininity are more visible.

The assemblage of clothes, hairstyle and make-up involved in

constructing a femininity coded as youthful causes fissures

to appear in the image of the older woman. These fissures

draw attention to the 'masquerade' theorised by Rivière. For

an older women to carry on the masquerade of youthful

femininity is anachronistic and socially abhorrent; this is

what makes it both grotesque and potentially subversive.

2Charles Baudelaire, Selected writings on Art and Literature (Penguin Books,London: 1992), p. 141.

This type of female anachronism yokes the aged female

body with fertility and pleasure. The 'laugh of the

grandmother' is heard in the biblical tale of Sarah who,

when told by God she would bear a son although she was 90

years old, 'laughed within herself, saying. After I am waxed

old, shall I have pleasure...God hath made me laugh, so that

all that hear will laugh with me'3. It is seen in the famous

Kerch terracotta figurines of 'senile hags', aged pregnant

figures whose apparent laughter displays pleasure at their

own anomalousness. Their evident self-delight at

transgressing the body's limits points to a kind of renewal:

not only a 'rebirth' but also the subversive reinvention of

older women's pleasure and boundary-breaking potential.

As Baudelaire suggests, these examples also express the

joy provoked by the grotesque's anachronism: 'the laughter

excited by the grotesque has in itself something profound,

axiomatic and primitive, which comes much closer to the life

of innocence and to absolute joy.'4. The characters in this

chapter are united by the delight they and we take in their

social and physical defiance, seen first of all in their

physical appearances, from Marian Leatherby's grey goatee

beard in The Hearing Trumpet to Little Edie's bizarre and

3Genesis 18.12, 21.64Ibid, p.152

wonderful costumes in Grey Gardens. Tellingly, all the women

featured in this chapter are without husbands and are

detached from everyday society, thus free from the

constraints of patriarchal authority.

II.

The Hearing Trumpet, by the artist and writer Leonora

Carrington, is a joyously carnivalesque novel in which old

women, after being neglected and discarded by their

families, are sent away to live in a harsh Victorian-style

institution for the elderly. The book is about these women's

slyly mischievous resilience and intelligence, and the

pleasure they take in revolting against the oppressive

treatment they face. Eschewing a straight realistic

narrative, the novel breaks free of restrictive sense and

logic and favours the surreal and the imaginative. It

features anthropomorphisms, dreams, characters talking to

animals and seemingly human characters revealed to have been

animals all along. Nothing and no one is what they seem,

just as the old women themselves are not perceived to be all

they are by their families and the institution. Running

through the adventures of these women is a strong thread of

anti-patriarchal and anti-establishment attitudes, voiced by

the novel's narrator, ninety-two-year old Marian Leatherby.

Until she is enabled to hear via the gift of a hearing

trumpet, Marian is deaf and mostly mute. Unable to

communicate, she is treated by her family either as a

nuisance or as if she were invisible. Her daughter-in-law

Muriel comments, 'those old people do not have feelings like

you or I', while her grandson is even nastier, saying his

grandmother 'can hardly be classified as a human being. She

is a drooling sack of decomposing flesh'5. As Adorno argues,

'the aesthetic condemnation of the ugly is dependant on the

inclination, verified by social pathology, to equate,

justly, the ugly with the expression of suffering and by

projecting it, to despise it.'6. By viewing Marian as an

ugly grotesque, her family disavow her status as an equal

and an individual, which enables them to excuse themselves

from being held accountable for their inhumane treatment of

her. But as Susan Rubin Suleiman points out in her analysis

of the novel, our heroine's reality is made visible (to the

reader) by her illuminating narration: 'Marian's sharp wit

counteracts her “decomposing flesh”, and her dependant

status is belied by her narrative mastery.'7.

A fellow inmate and friend of Marian's, Georgina, is

5Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet (Penguin Classics Books, London:2005), p. 10.6Theodore Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (Continuum Books, University ofMinnesota: 1997), p. 64.7Susan Rubin Suleiman, Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics and the Avant-Garde(Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 70

capable of vocal articulation and uses her powers to fight

back during the inmates' revolt against the tyrannical

doctor and his wife who run the institution. Expressing the

way women are often subject to abuse and control for much of

their lives, and then after a certain age marginalised and

thrown into imposed obscurity, she says in her defiant rebel

yell:

We have absolutely no intention of letting ourselves be

intimidated by your beastly routine ever again. Although

freedom has come to us somewhat late in life, we have no

intention of throwing it away again. Many of us have passed

our lives with domineering and peevish husbands. When we

were finally delivered of these we were chivvied around by

our sons and daughters who no longer loved us, but

considered us a burden and objects of ridicule and shame. Do

you imagine in your wildest dreams that now we have tasted

freedom we are going to let ourselves be pushed around once

more by you and your leering mate?8

The Hearing Trumpet is full of bolshy, spirited old women

who are very much alive and kicking, and full of subversive

pleasure. The novel is full of gleefully defiant statements,

such as Carmella's hypothesis that 'I am sure it would be

very pleasant and healthy for human beings to have no

authority whatever, they would have to think for

8Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet (Penguin Classics Books, London:2005), p. 122.

themselves'9.

The figure of the older woman is associated with the

grandmother/mother and with creation, due to the fact that

with age comes life-experience and (one hopes) wisdom.

Rather than these things being natural to women, as the

“Mother Nature” stereotype dictates, plenty of women are not

in fact wise or nurturing. Suleiman rightly observes:

'Carrington's novel associates the subversive laughter of

carnival with the figure – and even more important, with the

voice – of the mother'10. By emphasising the importance of

hearing the voices and the experiences of older women who

have been mothers and grandmothers, the novel gives them

back some much-needed agency and integrity in a society that

values too highly the appearance of youth. Anca Cristofovici

comments: 'our cultural tradition understands age in terms

of a binary system. Old age is defined in relation to youth

and thus essentially by what it lacks'11. What The Hearing

Trumpet successfully does is to reverse these binary

oppositions to show that, due to lacking youth, the women of

the novel possess wit, character, fun, cunning and a

subversive pleasure that youths with their nascent

experiences in life cannot possible have had time to9Ibid, p. 12610Susan Rubin Suleiman, Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics and the Avant-Garde(Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 4511Anca Cristofovici, Touching Surfaces: Photographic Aesthetics, Temporality, Ageing

(Editions Rodopi B.V. Amsterdam, New York: 2008), p. 69.

cultivate.

Western society's definitive model of femininity is

precarious, subject to change and riddled with

contradictions. In her discussion in Fashioning Gothic Bodies of

the influence on female characters in Gothic fiction of the

then newly-published (instructive) women's magazines,

Catherine Spooner illustrates the problematic nature of

trying to conform to impossible standards: 'femininity,

therefore, becomes both a source of anxiety and a source of

pleasure because it can never be fully achieved'12. In Grey

Gardens, Little Edie takes great pleasure in fashioning

herself costumes of fantasy and functionality, but this

scandalises the conservative neighbourhood of East Hampton.

The dichotomy of pleasure and anxiety expresses the way

femininity and appearance are prescribed. Any possible self-

delight in fashioning an image of femininity that fits one,

is tolerated only on the condition it meets with the

idealised notion of femininity that is conventionally

beautiful.

The manipulation of women’s appearance is centuries

old. Andrea Dworkin writes passionately on the subject in

12Catherine Spooner, Fashioning Gothic Bodies (Manchester UniversityPress:2004), p. 130.

her essay 'Beauty Hurts'13. She calls the treatment of the

female body a 'learned fetish' that is socialised as

normative. This behaviour includes slimming, plastic surgery

and hair removal. The game of taking away then adding to the

body is one that girls are made to play from a young age, as

if it were a natural process of maturation; for adult women

it is called 'maintenance'. The removal of hair from the

female body is a ritual that denies the reality of women's

flesh, blood, and sweat. The erasure of anything 'abject'

from the images (and real bodies) of women justifies

inequality and the treatment of women as Other, the purer

and more delicate sex. As Bataille says, commenting on the

connotations of human hairiness: 'any suggestion of the

animal in the human is unquestionably repugnant'14. Surely

here Bataille means 'women' rather than human - men are

socially esteemed the hairier they appear, as male virility

is measured by its connection to animality. As John Berger

comments, on men: 'hair is associated with sexual power,

with passion'15. It is hairy women that are deemed socially

repugnant.

If women in western society walk tightropes of hair

etiquette, Marian Leatherby wonderfully defies conventions,

13Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (Dutton, New York: 1974), p. 116.14George Bataille, Eroticism (Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd; Feb 1987), p.143.15John Berger, Ways Of Seeing (Penguin Books, London: 1972), p. 55.

becoming a grotesque by not removing her facial hair:

'indeed I do have a short grey beard which conventional

people would find repulsive. Personally I find it rather

gallant'16. Alternatively, Little Edie is marked as

unfeminine as she has no hair on her head, due to alopecia

causing it to fall out. Too much hair or not enough, a life

spent conforming to notions of femininity is a life of

precarity. Hair is a coded commodity: long hair semotically

indicates youth, femininity and beauty, while older women

(no longer allowed to be viewed as feminine or beautiful)

have short hair. Older women are thus denied society's

symbols of sexuality: the meaning of long hair is no longer

allowed to apply. Obviously, many older women feel that

after years of conforming to idealised notions of beauty and

femininity they are glad to cut themselves free of long

hair's connotations. However what is of interest to this

project is what happens when older women refuse to give up

the signifier. Displaying the symbols of youth and

femininity, the womanliness presented by the older women

marks her as a grotesque. It is anachronistic for older

women to refuse to become invisible sexually, and along with

younger women keep up the pretence of what Joan Rivière has

termed 'Womanliness as Masquerade'.

16Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet (Penguin Classics Books, London:2005), p. 3.

Considering the question of how 'genuine womanliness'

differs from the 'mask' or 'masquerade' of femininity,

Rivière argues that they are indistinguishable: 'my

suggestion is not, however, that there is any such

difference; whether radical or superficial, they are the

same thing'17. The mask functions as a defence mechanism, a

tool of distraction and an aid to desirability, so that

rather than being threatened by the staunch forthright

woman, the male observer is reassured by the belittling

trappings of femininity – the masquerade of womanliness -

that she is 'only a woman after all'.

Yet, older women are assumed (wrongly) to no longer be

a threat or desirable, and it is for this reason that long

hair on older women is seen socially as abhorrent. Therefore

it makes perfect, albeit slightly paradoxical sense that

long hair, heavy make-up and costume is so interesting on

older women. It is their anachronism that is subversive,

because it is defiant. The refusal to conform and move off

into the asexual sphere allocated to older women forces the

construction of womanliness into direct visibility, poking

fun at what is considered natural and beautiful by

demonstrating that it is all just a show of surface

appearance.

17Joan Riviere, Athol Hughes Ed., The Inner World and Joan Riviere: Collected Papers,1920-58 (Karnac Books, London: 1991), p. 94.

Rivière's idea of forging a femininity by the

manipulation of appearance is expressed comically in Angela

Carter's carnivalesque bawdy Wise Children. The book's

protagonists are Nora and Dora Chance, seventy five year old

twins of a theatrical family. Born and bred on the stage,

the twins are masters of the construction of guises and

personae. Getting ready for a party, the twins dress

themselves and apply the make-up and hair styles of their

youth:

It took an age but we did it; we painted the faces that we

always used to have on to the faces we have now. From a

distance of thirty feet with the light behind us, we looked,

at first glance, just like the girl who danced with the

Prince of Wales when nightingales sung in Berkeley Square on

a foggy day in London Town. The deception of memory. That

girl was as smooth as an egg and the lipstick never ran down

little cracks and fissures round her mouth because, in those

days, there were none. 'It's every woman's tragedy,' said

Nora, as we contemplated our painted masterpieces, 'that,

after a certain age, she looks like a female

impersonator'.18

The real point here is that, to follow Riviere's theory

(subsequently developed by Judith Butler in her book Gender

Trouble), even young women conforming to standards of18Angela Carter, Wise Children (Chatto & Windus Ltd, London:1991), p. 192.

feminised appearance are already 'female impersonators'.

There is nothing 'in the genes' of women that causes them to

look better in lipstick and with longer hair than men: these

are entirely socially-constructed norms. As is made clear

Paris is Burning (1990), a film about New York drag queens

discussed by Judith Butler in her book Bodies That Matter, men

can be equally adept at the fashioning the costume of

femininity.

III.

Grey Gardens is a film about two women who have given up

trying to conform to society's expectations of being

obedient wives, selfless mothers, well-behaved daughters,

upright members of the community and modest society ladies.

The unconventional appearance and behaviour of the mother-

and-daughter stars of the film was so abhorrent to the

people of their East Hampton neighbourhood that the house

was raided by police and firemen and served with a court

order. If they did not clean up the state of the house, they

would be evicted and the building razed. The newspaper story

and resulting media interest was what introduced the film's

makers, David and Al Maysles, to these two old ladies that

just happened to be aunt and cousin to Jackie Kennedy

Onassis.

Grey Gardens is the East Hampton holiday home where

Edith Bouvier Beale and her family spent their summers.

Edith's health problems led to her moving into Grey Gardens

permanently, as the house afforded her space and privacy.

During the late 1950's Edith's daughter Edie ('Little Edie')

left New York City to come back to Grey Gardens and look

after her mother. Both women remained living together at

Grey Gardens for over twenty years, while the rest of the

family disassociated themselves from them. Edith and her

husband had long since been estranged: by the film's account

he was a tyrant both women were frightened of, who ran off

with another woman. Following their father's lead, both sons

disowned their mother and sister, leaving them such a small

allowance they were practically penniless, unable to heat or

repair the house.

Abandoned by their menfolk, Edith and Little Edie were

then free from their oppressive patriarchal presences in the

house. The subsequent dilapidation and squalor of Grey

Gardens are partly due to the women's poverty, but the

excessive mess, filth and chaos also suggest a defiant

pleasure at refusing to 'keep house'. The once beautifully-

maintained garden was left to become so overgrown that the

plants and bushes took over the whole property, obscuring

the mansion. It was Edith and Little Edie's lack of concern

for the upkeep of the property that horrified the wealthy

Hampton elite, since it threatened the status quo upheld by

the town's inhabitants. The women therefore became

grotesques and outcasts.

In their isolation the two women are free to wallow in

their own filth. The many cats adopted by Edith and Little

Edie defecate all over the house; the raccoons that Edie

feeds bread and cat food have made huge holes in the walls.

Having been brought up in the very wealthy Bouvier dynasty

means they were never expected or taught how to really look

after a home. (Obviously as a mother and wife, Edith would

have been expected to take care of the household, but this

would have amounted to overseeing the running of the house

by maids, cooks and nannies for the children). But there is

a real sense of the carnivalesque in their behaviour: it is

as if they are deliberately making a mess, as if the

dilapidation of the house represents the undoing or

degrading of the women themselves.

Left to their own devices the two women are like

children (an anachronism I will return to); having no set

routine, they are free to dream, sing, dance and eat ice

cream and paté on crackers in bed at whatever time they

like. This joyously anarchic behaviour is the reverse of the

feelings of dysphoria experienced by Helen, a psychoanalytic

patient discussed by Julia Kristeva who responds to feelings

of abandonment by becoming depressed and hurting herself to

get back at those who have let her down. Helen comments: 'I

am not killing my frustrators or my tyrants, I am killing

their baby, which they have dropped'19. In quite a real

sense Edith and Little Edie have also been 'dropped' (by

their family); but rather than destroying them, it liberates

them.

Living together, mother and daughter are allowed to be

themselves. Throughout the film Edith and Edie engage in

frequently funny dialogue, characterised by a mixture of

self-delight, argumentativeness and slightly blurred

recollections of what the events were that lead them to

spend decades together in Grey Gardens. The opinions and

observations of these two women are sometimes acutely wise

but always full of anarchic pleasure. Sitting on the porch

in the sun, half dressed, with barely concealed breasts and

wonky glasses, Edith tells the Maysles with evident relish:

Edith: “I've lived alone these thirty years, I don't mind.

You get very independent when you live alone. You get to

be a real individual.”

Little Edie: “You can't have your cake and eat it too.”

Edith: “Oh yes I did, I did, I had my cake, loved it,19Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (Columbia UniversityPress.:1989), p. 74.

masticated it, chewed it and had everything I wanted.

I've had a very happy satisfying life”

Little Edie: “You had a rich husband you should have stayed

with, you might as well face it.”

Mother and daughter often exchange roles, one

reprimanding the other over details of past events. If read

by what is known - that Edith's husband left her, she never

remarried and had chronic health problems - this exchange

seems very enigmatic. Yet Edith's repetition of her

consuming appetite for life, listing 'loved it, masticated

it, chewed it', suggests that being 'independent' and a

'real individual' beats the life she could have had if she

had stayed with her rich husband, keeping up the pretence of

a happy marriage.

It is not just their behaviour that makes Edith and

Little Edie grotesques, it is the unconventional way they

dress that shocks their neighbours. Their appearance is even

a shock to an audience that isn't bourgeois or ultra-

conservative, so rare is it so see women over fifty and

seventy dressing with such little regard for socially-

constructed notions of fashion or acceptability. Little Edie

constructs outfits out of incongruous items, often using

clothes to function against their original design; jumpers

as hats (to cover her lost hair), curtains as tops, ropes

and kitchen equipment as jewellery. Edie's costumes are like

Dadaist 'exquisite corpses' or surreal collages, yet her

ensembles works together surprisingly well, the overall

effect being intriguingly delightful: an example of

grotesque construction inverted to become sublime. At the

start of the film, Little Edie's sartorial penchants are

introduced (Figures: 1, 2); mocking Al Maysles for his

conservative way of dressing, she explains to him the way

she likes to dress, which she calls her 'revolutionary costume':

“This is the best thing to wear for the day, you understand.

Because I don't like women in skirts, and the best thing is

to wear pantihose or some pants under a short skirt. I

think, then you have the pants under the skirt, and then you

can pull the stockings up over the pants underneath the

skirt, and you can always take off the skirt and use it as a

cape. So I think this is the best costume for the

day...Mother wanted me to come out in a kimono, so we had

quite a fight.”

Her mother seems to be in a state of partial undress

for most of the film, and the display of an overweight old

woman's nakedness seems almost taboo as it is so rarely seen

in public, in art or cinema. The first time Edith Beale is

presented on screen it is her voice that is heard first,

hollering in a rather unladylike fashion for her daughter.

(These wails for 'Edie' run throughout the film). The camera

moves up the hall and staircases, to see that every surface

has been painted an unusual pale shade of turquoise.

During the film we learn that after the raid, when the house

was being redecorated, Edith gave instruction for that

colour to be used everywhere. Edith's eccentric taste in

colours echoes that of the speaker of Jenny Joseph's famous

poem Warning: 'when I am old woman I shall wear purple'20. It

is as if because she is old, Edith has permission - due to

the cliché of the eccentric old woman - to finally have

things her way.

Edith is first revealed sat in a chair at the top of

the stairs, with a strapless top (possibly a jumper wrapped

around her front, (similar outfit, figure:3). The tops of

her tanned arms are decorated with the worn patina of

wrinkles, her loose fleshy under arms are paler, flashing

into view as she wildly gesticulates while shouting commands

and questions to her unseen daughter. Her

unselfconsciousness at her state of partial undress in front

of the two young film makers has a charm that at first seems

like innocence, but quickly reveals itself to be frank

unconcern with the randomness of her dress.

The women spend a great deal of time sunbathing on the20Jenny Jones, Warning: When I am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple (Souvenir PressLtd. London:1997)

bedroom porch half naked in giant hats (Edith) and elaborate

head-scarves made from shabby towels or dresses fastened

with jewelled broaches (Edie). This juxtaposition of the

high and opulent with the low and shabby characterises the

contradictions of these society women who live in filth and

squalor. This is best seen when one of the cats defecates

behind a painted portrait of a very beautiful looking young:

her response, 'at least someone is getting use from it',

expresses the women’s rejection of their upper-class

upbringing.

While sunbathing on the porch Edith writes out a cheque

for Little Edie to give to the gardener Brookes, who is

presumably in the house waiting. When Edith asks her

daughter why she has to write the cheque out there and not

in the house, Edie says:

Little Edie: “Mother, you don't have any clothes on'

Edith: “Well I'm gonna get naked in just a minute so

you better watch out”

Little Edie: “That's what I’m afraid of”

Edith: “Yeah for what? Why, now why? I haven't got any

warts on me!”

Little Edie: “But for the movie, the movie.”

Edith: “I haven't got any warts on me!”

Little Edie: “That is not the point mother darling.”

Edith: “Oh Edie, you know what you got being like that

- no husband, no babies, nothing.”

Although Little Edie herself dresses in quite outlandish

'costumes',she is uncomfortable about her mother's body

being exposed to the gardener. Edie is preoccupied for much

of the film with losing weight, which is poked at here by

her mother who is pointing out that Edie's anxiety over her

figure is for nothing: although she has managed to stay slim

(despite the ice cream that is kept in a fridge in the

bedroom), she is still without a husband. In some ways Edie

is quite conformist: her desire to fashion herself a best

possible self, can be seen to support Rivière's notion that

what is feminine is only surface appearance. Despite the

strangeness of her outfits, Edie is still committed to a

masquerade or feminised performance.

Both woman are somewhat out of time, as Edie muses:

'it's very difficult to keep the line between past and

present'. They appear to be living in a strange liminal

space that is exacerbated by the presence of the documentary

film makers, who ask them to relive their past, playing

their old records and looking at the photographs that

surround them. (Figure:7) As Edie develops a crush on the

much younger David Maysles, her coquettish behaviour towards

him is incongruous with how a woman over fifty is 'supposed'

to act. An older woman with undisguised sexuality is a form

of grotesque, unfortunately. Edie says of the Maysles:

'They're twenty years too late – everybody. Or I'm fifty

years ahead. I can't decide which'. This anachronistic

contradiction reveals Edie's desire to be her own women, an

individual, an attitude ahead of its time for a society

woman in East Hampton.

It becomes clear that due to their isolation, time for

Edith and Little Edie has become permeable. This temporal

displacement erases the effect time has had on the two

women. Listening to old records, Edith decides she will get

her voice back to the condition it was back when she was a

professional singer, expressing her refusal to acknowledge

the effects of time:

Edie (finding the right record and putting it on): “you

can't do that mother darling”

Edith: “oh yes I can, oh yes I can get it back”

Edie: “Something happens. Lets face it.”

Edith (defiantly): “I can get it back in about a month!”

The record starts up, and suddenly Edith looks startled

at hearing her own much younger voice singing Tea for Two. She

adjusts her giant multicoloured floppy hat and starts to

sing, a look of relish on her face. In this exchange the

women's roles are reversed, Edith is the child wanting to

get her own way. For that moment singing along with her old

record she is transported back: hearing her own voice, she

becomes her younger self. Her look of relish captures her

self-delight in the 'convulsive beauty' of the surreal, the

juxtaposition of everyday normality and unravelling,

anachronistic strangeness that is the hallmark of the female

grotesque.