Well, it’s official. Shirley’s secret is out; he’s a woman living as a man. Writing a character opposite that has just been marvelous fun. Dorothea has talked about concluding that Shirley could, indeed, fall in love with a woman. Well, there was Margaret, exactly the sort of woman Shirley admired most, and there was Shirley, treating Margaret with utter respect and courtesy untinged by any condescension. That had been Margaret’s problem with Victorian society; any man who showed an interest in her seemed to take for granted that he would have to be dominant.
So then I had to decide: how would Margaret respond to Shirley’s evidently growing interest? She knew his true gender; she insisted on joining him in part to make sure his secret was safe. Would she let the fact of physical gender interfere? No, I decided, she would not. She is utterly unconventional, making her own decisions about what is right for herself. This seemed right, and she fell just as hard as Shirley in as short a period of time. I wrote quite responsive melodrama sufficiently florid to satisfy even the Victorians, whom if they did not invent it gave it its ultimate refinement.
What was interesting was writing the evolution of her attitude toward him. When they first joined forces in Alexandria, she was concerned about him; he seemed to be not only facing danger, but actively courting it. She was also a trifle (sometimes more than a trifle) impatient with his determination to be responsible for everything that happened or might happen, at one point going off on him quite thoroughly.
By the time they took ship for Osaka she had no more harsh words for him, and infinite patience. He was as he was; she accepted him entirely. No one had done so for ten years; no one had been accorded the opportunity. She let him know the extent to which she accepted him by calling him “Elizabeth” to release him from the emotional constraints he had put upon the “Shirley” persona, then let him cry out ten years of stress and more recent grief on her shoulder. Talk about melodrama! That took the cake and the frosting with it. I’m surprised we didn’t make Li sick with all the cute sweetness imbuing our corner of the game.
I thought about Dorothea’s question of sexuality, and concluded that Margaret had the worst of both worlds: she would have absorbed the Victorian notions that sex was a distasteful duty for a woman, and as a physician, she was familiar with the gross mechanics and found them just that — gross. She had no desire whatsoever for that sort of personal experience. Marrying Shirley was the perfect solution to the dilemma.
One of the funniest scenes Li wrote involved a rather staid, middle aged lady (NPC). Upon being told by Margaret that she and Shirley would be married that afternoon, she realized at once that Margaret’s mother was unavailable for the occasion and proceeded to tell Margaret in detail “what a lady should expect on her wedding night” It didn’t sound nearly as alarming as Mrs. Martingale told it as it had in medical college lecture.
All in all, the Grand Ellipse has been a great lark. Now I suppose I had really better get on the ball in putting my Lunar Ellipse character together. Li won’t let Dorothea and me be on the same team; I think she’s afraid we’ll take over the game again. So we’ll have to compete this time — and that will be interesting too!