God, yes. I tend to forget because I've never got very far in it, but from what I did read, it's part of Rice's pattern advancing a sexual/sensualised view of children that is simultaneously incredibly twee (I'm thinking of the early descriptions of the artist's work on the Bettina(?) series). I don't think I've seen the tweeness brought up, but it reads like a cloying pot pourri failing to cover up an unpleasant smell. Yet Rice argues openly for her self-expression re: the, um, sensuality of children, so I don't think distraction is the motive. It's just a weird aesthetic sensibility running through her work, tied up with the china dolls...
I'm also being disingenuous in omitting Mona "I began my erotic adventures at the age of eight" Mayfair from my post. Rice has acknowledged Belinda as Mona's prototype (or rather, Mona as Belinda's final evolution), and I think I've been less harsh on how Rice uses Mona than I should be over the years just because she is generally a strongly written character, and the sexual stuff is revealed from her own POV as a sexual instigator. I love Mona, but I also worry about her, and she is unfortunately the embodiment of all the rot that gets trotted out in abuse court cases - she was experienced, she made advances, she didn't look or act 13...
I guess it's on the reader to draw out the interpretation that Mona is the neglected child of alcoholic parents, from the poor branch of a rich (i.e. well-resourced to hide abuse), fucked up family, and to read between the lines that Mona's self-empowerment-by-seducing-aged-male-relatives is actually the outworking of deep-seated problems. But damn if it doesn't feel like we are genuinely meant to see Mona's life as pure self-empowerment... with the ultimate consequence of sickness and death, because she's a woman who had a lot of sex and the narrative must punish that.
I'm sorry, but I wrote you a novel...
I'm also being disingenuous in omitting Mona "I began my erotic adventures at the age of eight" Mayfair from my post. Rice has acknowledged Belinda as Mona's prototype (or rather, Mona as Belinda's final evolution), and I think I've been less harsh on how Rice uses Mona than I should be over the years just because she is generally a strongly written character, and the sexual stuff is revealed from her own POV as a sexual instigator. I love Mona, but I also worry about her, and she is unfortunately the embodiment of all the rot that gets trotted out in abuse court cases - she was experienced, she made advances, she didn't look or act 13...
I guess it's on the reader to draw out the interpretation that Mona is the neglected child of alcoholic parents, from the poor branch of a rich (i.e. well-resourced to hide abuse), fucked up family, and to read between the lines that Mona's self-empowerment-by-seducing-aged-male-relatives is actually the outworking of deep-seated problems. But damn if it doesn't feel like we are genuinely meant to see Mona's life as pure self-empowerment... with the ultimate consequence of sickness and death, because she's a woman who had a lot of sex and the narrative must punish that.