A set of events in the same time and space, two men and one woman with different perspectives.Chapter three, the truth based on Marguerite de Carrouges.The truth, the two words, disappears the slowest. In the darkness, the white font is so blinding. Only such pallor remains, as if to tell the audience to keep looking down, and we come closer to the truest truth.Two rape scenes. The first scene is from Jacques’ point of view. He cheated and broke into the castle. He throws off his trench coat and kneels down with authority, saying that he loves Lady Marguerite so much, that he loves her more than his life, and that he can give her anything that her husband cannot give. His eyes, she just shyly refused, but did not forget to turn back often, with love.
She also walked to the stairs, gracefully took off her shoes and playfully seduced him to the bedroom. Even her dodging in front of the round table was nothing more than lust. In Jacques’ mind, it was just another fling with his mistress.
The camera was pointed at Jacques from the bottom up when the atrocity occurred, and he gasped like a pig feeding, with only the stench of the beast’s underbelly on his breath. But he does not feel, he thinks he is a lion, and quickly expresses “love”. At the end, he left a message: “If you tell your husband, he will kill you.”
The second scene is from Marguerite’s point of view. She is at her desk organizing the affairs of the estate, not only to care for the taxes of her people, but also to take care of the livestock. A sharp knock at the door causes her to be alerted, but the other man only wants to enter and so on, and her kindness leads her to make a mistake.
The man knelt down with the movement of a wild boar that had suddenly broken its foot. He gasped, absurd syllables rolling out of his throat. Madame smelled danger, she knew that her husband did not trust this man, she knew the various contradictions. Fear and anger made her keep refusing, keep backing away, but the man had no shame and pressed on.
On the way to escape, she tripped on the stairs, her shoes fell off in the panic, and almost got caught by the man’s skirt.
Just one second later, the door that could have been closed was pushed open. Madame’s helplessness was also my helplessness. She shouted her servant’s name at the top of her lungs, over and over, the echoes ringing through the gloomy old castle. She was isolated as her mother-in-law was transferred with her maids and the others were bribed.
A few minutes of torture were centuries long. Pain, humiliation, shame, anger, fear …… Hair disheveled, tears and spit wretched into a bloody swamp, bottomless. Blue dress, white stockings, at this point in my eyes, a deep pool of strangled women and white silk. Her pain spilled out of the screen, and I was hard pressed to breathe in my seat.
Just those shoes, different ways of falling, but also just to confirm the same thing in the perspective of men and women in a huge difference. The Squire is not at all guilty of never treating women as human beings. The humiliation of Lady is just a little trick for him to humiliate Jean. Whether he addressed Sir or not was insignificant, he didn’t care about anyone and liked to make wild comments behind people’s backs with Count Pierre d’Alençon. Male gossip about others is never more merciless than female gossip, bottomless and unpleasant. But for many years, the power of narrative has been in the hands of such men. He blamed God’s will for his sins without a hint of remorse until his death.
Jean is a poor man, but Jean is also a ridiculous man. In his perspective, Madame was not only beautiful and meek, but also brought him great wealth. On the afternoon before he left for Paris, in his recollection, he embraced Marguerite in front of a crowd, nose-to-nose with her in conjugal intimacy. But in Madame’s recollections, Jean is simply an arrogant and irritable man with a poor ego bigger than the swollen organ of a stallion in heat – and easily deflated.
The stacking of the three perspectives is a set of stark contrasts. In Jean’s eyes, the wife describes her ordeal with the words: I was raped. In Marguerite’s real narrative, she says: He raped me. There are many similar contrasting details in the film, which directly and nakedly show the different perspectives of men and women telling the same story in a social context. On the male side, the subject of the violence is concealed and the passive voice is used to highlight the female. And when the female statement is made, the focus is to make it clear to others that it is the abuser who is the problem. Until modern times, many media outlets still report gender-related incidents with the subject of the violence hidden and the victim highlighted, using the passive tense to attract attention and make people wonder if the victim has a problem too.
There is no such thing as a perfect victim.
I also think the reason why the story is told using different perspectives just reflects and contrasts the two roles given to women in a male-dominated society: Marguerite is a saint (pure and tender wife) in the eyes of her husband and a slut (provocative bitch) in the eyes of the squire. And it is her own narrative of who women really are and what women’s experiences really are that we need to trust. She is her, not a sanctified object, not a carrier of eroticism, not an alienated other in the male narrative. She has a love-hate relationship, a clear-cut character, a righteous, intelligent and capable person, an independent and noble person who is not subordinate to anything.
This medieval story is still being played out to this day. What makes me feel helpless is not only the narrative from the male point of view, but also the mother-in-law’s line: “I was raped. ” She held back for the sake of the family, and she asked her wife to hold back and not to bring shame to the family. How many years it has been, even if women with the same experience are unable to be empathetic and supportive under the oppression of male power. Every woman is a lapsed speaker in a patriarchal system, we do not form our own language, and our pain and distortions are, as always, covered up and blinded by the narratives of others.
A female friend also distrusts Marguerite because of her once-quoted line He is handsome and charming, but my husband didn’t trust him. The friend completely ignores the point of the latter half of the sentence and just naturally sides with the male, blocking She is so familiar with this story that she even has a problem with it. The story is so familiar that it is even happening all around, in every corner of the globe.
The questioning in court was ridiculous to the extreme. rape does not cause pregnancy. It was an expression of the squire’s love. The judges were all men, and their main concern was not how the woman had been harmed, but to ask her if she had previously felt pleasure when she had intercourse with her husband because she was pregnant. Mental lynching. And such lynching continues today.
Upon learning of Marguerite’s painful ordeal, Jean’s reaction was to sleep with her immediately. Why Madame became pregnant after that, I suspect with horror that she was simply used that night as an outlet for her husband’s lust, humiliation and resentment. Tossed and turned, tortured many times. This is how the child was conceived. Because of the many times, because of the roughness, because the husband wanted to regain control over her, because men do not treat women as human beings.
Jean knew that if the duel failed, Marguerite would be burned immediately. He still decides to participate in the duel even though he knows this worst outcome. He is not dueling for the justice of Madame and the righteousness of the event; he is more mad about his own honor and dignity. He sternly rebukes Marguerite, just because she had to be polite and agreeable for social purposes: He is handsome and charming.
He is handsome and charming, but my husband didn’t trust him.
Jean wins the duel and is reminded of Marguerite, who is still sitting on the woodpile, as he struts around with the dagger that killed Jacques, and the camera takes us to Marguerite, who knows everything and thinks her husband is stupid and ridiculous.
You’re not doing this for me.
But to start telling the story from a woman’s point of view is to reclaim the narrative, to reclaim all that we have lost. We’re doing something for us, for more women. To give the public a more direct view of the world in literature, a more visceral sense of injustice and absurdity. To know my name, to know my pain, to tear down the lies of patriarchy and male power. That’s what MiB is all about.
We tell stories like this for more women. for women to be seen and for the truth to be seen.
Jean died a few years later and Marguerite did not remarry. A Marguerite was set free. But there are millions of Marguerites in the West, in the East, in the North, in the South, from time immemorial, who need to be seen, to be heard, to be free.