Revisiting a classic
I came up with the idea of creating a site offering commentary and analysis of the Japanese anime Lady Oscar after rediscovering the series more recently. I had never entirely forgotten it, but I believed the impact that the anime had on me as a child and a teenager had inevitably waned over the years. And yet, watching the series today, I am struck by the lasting influence it did have on me; it is this surprising discovery which convinced me to dedicate a site to the series. The need to better understand the roots of this influence, to examine it more critically, finally did away with my initial reticence. It is said that a classic can be revisited at any age, thus allowing us to guage the distance separating the person we were from the person we've become. Lady Oscar is one of these works. Indeed, this famous animated series was based on The Rose of Versailles, a very long manga by Japanese author Ryoko Ikeda which was directly inspired by the 1933 biography that reknowed author Stefan Zweig devoted to Marie-Antoinette. Published in the early 70s, this manga is today considered one of the masterpieces of the genre. 

A strange work
If I take the time to write on the subject, it is also because I felt the need to further explore what might be called the fundamental strangeness, or foreigness, of this work, but also its universality. I will examine it using four themes: (1) the aesthetic concept of mono no aware, (2) the samurai and Bushido, (3) violence and alienation, and (4) sexual personae. Finally, (5) in the section Upstairs, Downstairs I include a character analysis of Oscar and Andre, and will evenutally add essays by different authors. I believe many fans would agree if I said that Lady Oscar, just as the original manga, stands out from amongst those other works belonging to the same genre. One thinks, for instance, of series like Sans famille ou Les quatre filles du Docteur March, which were so popular in the 80s (in Quebec at least) and belonged to the same type of Japanese animation. And yet, the difference between these animes and Lady Oscar--the second half of which benefited from the masterful direction of Dezaki and boasts an animation and a narrative style of very high quality--is readily apparent. As for the manga, despite the considerable influence it had on the development of the genre, works of comparable quality are rare, even amongst those which admit to being most heavily influenced by The Rose of Versailles (let us think, for instance, of Revolutionary Girl Utena). In truth, Ikeda's work--just as its animated adaptation--are memorable because they powerfully succeed in transcending their respective genres.

Albrecht Durer's very introspective Sainte Apolline, 1521 (detail). Kupferstich Kabinett, Berlin

A revolutionary romance
Lady Oscar, in fact, has become much more than a manga or an anime. In the country where it was created, it has become a complete social phenomenon. Indeed, the story has been turned into an extraordinarily popular Japanese theater musical (significantly, alongside Gone with the Wind and The Tale of Genji) as well as a film (with poorer results), and spawned a vast number of commercial products. Its reputation is now international (with the notable exception of Anglophone countries, as the manga was never translated into English). But what, exactly, is the nature of the mystique on which this popular cult is founded? What one must realize, first of all, is that Ikeda's work was hugely innovative for its time, and remains so today. Scholars have even called it ''revolutionary'', in all senses of the term (those who need an introduction can find two excellent summaries below). The reason being that the work, at the time it was published, transcended the limits imposed on manga by breaking down a number of barriers: is the manga for children or adults, for girls or boys, is it a work of romantic or historical fiction? Does it depict homoerotic or heterosexual romance? The Rose of Versailles dared to redefine all genres and class itself in a category all its own. The manga was an instant success, becoming famous as much for its rather subtle psychological portraits (their universality at times echoing that of Ishiguro's in The Remains of the Day or even of Emily Brontë's in Wuthering Heights, a novel which remains a perennial favorite in Japan) as for its clever interweaving of historical and fictional events and characters.

The return of autumn
It might be said that the Japanese have a particular sensitivity to the ephemeral nature of time and it is one which is picked up, amongst other themes, by French-Canadian writer Marie-Renée Lavoie in her recent novel La petite et le vieux (finalist for the France-Quebec 2011 literary prize). Here we explore, through the eyes of her young protagonist Hélène, the intense fascination which the series exerted on our imaginations. Hélène is very taken with Oscar de Jarjayes, her favorite heroine, and she attempts to explain to us, as we follow her youthful adventures and her own evolving sense of self, the true nature of the special bond between them: 

''The end of times was announced on Canal Famille with the return of autumn. The Estates General were proving to be an immense disapointment for the people, whose representatives were being muzzled, which only increased their desire to be heard. (...) Like many soldiers and certain elements of the clergy and small nobility, Oscar had changed allegiances. She would continue to fight, more so even than ever before, but to defend the people and thus her own ideals of eqality and justice. Hers was, in truth, a genuine nobility. Her men had understood this and had rallyed behind her. Andre, who had lost an eye in a duel, remained faithfully by her side while hiding the truth about the darkness which now threatened to engulf him (...) Oscar, for her part, was dying of tuberculosis (...) But the virulence and violence of illness was as nothing compared to the threat which the Revolution represented for soldiers fighting every day on the front lines. And so they formed a beautiful pair, both of them condemned to die, and attacked on all fronts. But they loved each other, the urgency of the situation having broken the last of the barriers they still maintained between them. This changed everything (...) All resistance was now broken down and, along with it, the false persona she had so long been forced to adopt. And along with it, a part of me which could not survive on its own.'' 
(« Marie-Renée Lavoie, La petite et le vieux, Montréal, Éditions XYZ, coll. « Romanichels », 2010, p. 195-196. », voir le site http://www.editionsxyz.com. Traduction libre.)

To all the young Hélènes who have since grown up, I dedicate this site. Please do not hesitate to send me your comments by using the form at the bottom of the page!

VERY BEAUTIFUL FAN ART BY UNKNOWN ARTIST (please email me using the form below if you can identify who the artist is!!)

The androgynous, melancholy beauty of Greta Garbo in a still from Queen Christina (1933). Christina was the cross-dressing, 17th century queen of Sweden

1. A (Precious) Sense of Loss

One of the defining features I remember noticing in Lady Oscar, even at a young age, is its atmosphere of strong but diffuse melancholy. This particular aesthetic, I have since learned, has a number of different sources. The Tale of Genji, by Lady Murasaki, is a classic masterwork of Japanese and of world literature, and has heavily influenced Japanese authors ever since its publication in the 11th century. A parallel between the main protagonist of The Rose of Versailles and the shining prince has been duly noted. In reference to Genji, one author writes that it ''was composed at a point in the Heian period when the stature of the aristocracy had begun to decline. Genji himself embodies a sense of loss that can be associated with the realization that an era is coming to an end. In the opening chapter of the tale, Genji experiences profound loss. His mother dies when is is three (...) From an early age, Genji is the embodiment of lost traditions as well as personal loss. He excels in the performance of traditional arts such as music, dance and poetry. His mastery sets him apart from his contemporaries and makes his elders recall fond memories of a better age. This sense of loss, as both painful and precious, resonates throughout the tale.' (from Appraising Genji, State University of New York Press, Albany, 2006). Much the same can be said, of course, about the heroine of The Rose of Versailles, whose lifelong sense of honour and duty is inextricably bound up to the fate of the aristocracy she was born into. Although Oscar eventually rebels against it, she does not long survive the passing of that social order. One notices--and this is quite important--that this sense of loss pervades the story to the point of driving the plot forward. It begins, much as in the case of Genji, with the founding drama of the 'death of the mother'. It is interesting to note that, while Oscar's mother does not actually die, she is, for all intents and purposes, symbolically 'dead'; indeed much of the story's tragedy is rooted in the absence of any strong maternal figure who might have tempered her husband's terrible moral violence, and mitigated the devastating emotional effects on their daughter. It is, indeed, impossible to watch Lady Oscar and not wonder about the author's purpose in withholding almost all maternal affections from her heroine--although Oscar's mother is rather more present in the original manga than in the animated adaptation of it. Still, both tend to depict a remarkably passive woman, who is, in the end, as much a victim of a violent patriarchal authority as her daughter (it is interesting to note that in his live action film adaptation, Jacques Demy has Madame de Jarjayes die in childbirth). This founding drama (symbolizing the loss of femininity) announces, in many ways, all that is to come. For indeed loss in the wider sense of spiritual and emotional alienation comes to define Oscar's adult life. Her love of Fersen, for instance, is a love for what cannot be, for that which is forbidden. She loves him, essentially, because he is inaccessible; this is made rather obvious when she fearfully runs away from him at the ball and then again several weeks later when he suddenly confronts her over her actions. But a more important turning point in her life is when Andre first confesses his love for her. This occurs, significantly, right after he loses an eye in a duel. His confession remains rather understated at this point, and one has to wait for episode 28 for him to confess to her fully. Again, this only happens because he is driven to it through a sense of impending loss: he is frightened of losing Oscar because she is leaving the Royal Guard and he is frightened by the prospect of losing his eyesight. He might also be terrified of losing her to Fersen. But why such a constant and all-pervasive, such a 'precious' sense of loss? 

Mono no aware, or the pathos of things

It could be said that a fundamental concept underlying the storyline in Lady Oscar is the Japanese aesthetic principle of 'mono no aware'. The concept was originally used by the 18th century scholar Motoori Norinaga in his literary criticism of The Tale of Genji. Wikipedia defines it as: literally "the pathos of things", also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera", is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of impermanence (Jap. 無常 mujō), or the transience of things, and a gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing.'' One can find a more detailed description of this classic cultural trait here: http://ezinearticles.com/?Mono-No-Aware:-The-Essence-of-Japan&id=435418.  As John Paul Gillespie notes, ''According to mono no aware, a falling or wilting autumn flower is more beautiful than one in full bloom; a fading sound more beautiful than one clearly heard; the moon partially clouded more appealing than full. The sakura or cherry blossom tree is the epitome of this conception of beauty; the flowers of the most famous variety, somei yoshino, nearly pure white tinged with a subtle pale pink, bloom and then fall within a single week. The subject of a thousand poems and a national icon, the cherry blossom tree embodies beauty as a transient experience.'' The cherry blossom was also a symbol of the samurai figure, which we shall examine shortly. It is worthwhile to note the presence of the cherry tree in many anime, and in Lady Oscar in particular, where flowers, the rose especially, seem to symbolize the transience of things as well as the understated eroticism of thwarted love. The beauty of 'the wilting autumn flower' is a powerful symbol of the doomed or impossible romance which awaits the main protagonists (note that Marie-Renee Lavoie also uses the symbol of autumn in her appraisal of the romance between Oscar and Andre). But it is important to note that ''an appreciation of beauty as a state which does not last and cannot be grasped is not the same as nihilism, and can better be understood in relation to Zen Buddhism's philosophy of earthly transcendence: a spiritual longing for that which is infinite and eternal--the source of all worldly beauty.'' The major influence of this Zen concept in the genre of Japanese animation has been duly noted. As Patrick Drazen writes in Anime Explosion (2003), 'More important than eternal life, in the Japanese view of the cosmos, is the intrinsic value of our very limited life: compassion for the essence of a thing. This is a rough translation of the phrase mono no aware and it carries the idea that something may be special precisely because it is impermanent and fated to disappear." For the Japanese, the beauty of the sakura, or cherry blossom, conveys the idea that sensual intensity is inversely proportional to its duration, hence the beauty of a romance that lives briefly and dies suddenly. One can now see why the Japanese public has made The Rose of Versailles the hit that it was, as it presents its readers with a love story which is clearly doomed from very early on (as a Garbo fan, I can only point out the parallel one can make with Garbo's later films such as Camille and Anna Karenina, with one commentator noting that ''every cause seemed a lost cause and every paradise a lost paradise''). Mono no aware tends to manifests itself in a particular sensitivity to the fleetness of time, which is notable in The Rose of Versailles. One scene of the anime stands out as an example of this aesthetic. It presents us with a mature Oscar sitting in a tete-a-tete with her father and slowly plucking a rose's petals as she reflects on the meaning of her life. ''I have stolen your youth in a way no father ever had a right to,'' he says to her in a rare moment of lucidity. She tells him that she does not blame him for his past ways, yet resists listening to this newfound voice of consciousness. Her silence seems to imply that it has all come too late. She blows on the loose petals in her hand and they scatter in beauty. Another author who comments on the influence of mono no aware in anime is Antonia Levi (Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Anime, Chicago Open Court Publishing Co, 1996). She points out that this concept tends to explain the fundamental difference between Japanese and American animation, the former presenting us with a far more complex moral universe.

2. The samurai and the bushido code of honor

The inspiration for the character of Oscar finds its essential source, of course, in the Japanese cultural world of the samurai. The samurai is Japan's answer to the problem of the ''superior being''. He is a man ''whose characteristics and ideals transcend social clivages, or caste systems, in order to represent and embody the values that are common to his people, common to the collective unconscious. (...) The fundamental elements constituting these superior beings find their origin in the birth of the chevalerie, and developed through the ages to become a blend of ancient warrior virtues and of a civility relative to the cultural and artistic progress of their time and place.'' (Albert Palma, Geido: la voie des arts du samorai a l'artiste martial, 2001). Much of the ''strangeness'' of The Rose of Versailles, I feel, resides in the (very foreign) idea of the culturally complex samourai figure. Indeed, Oscar's extreme sense of duty and self-sacrifice, although convincingly portrayed in a French historical context, never succeeds in feeling completely ''Western''. While the drama of a woman being forcefully educated and coerced into being a high-ranking soldier does succeed in rendering the story psychologically compelling and universally appealing, the complex Oscar de Jarjayes deserves to be more fully understood as the unique product of an Eastern mindset. In order to gain insight into the portrayal of this ascetic female warrior, I spent some time searching for potentially comparative figures in literature, and eventually hit upon the main protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro's higly esteemed The Remains of the Day (1989, see also the 1993 Merchant-Ivory production starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson). This novel, which the author preceded by two others both set in Japan, tells the story of Stevens, an aging English butler who undertakes a sight-seeing trip through the countryside, leading him to revisit the main episodes of his life and to come to terms with his essential failure to find love and personal fulfillment. Belonging to very different artistic genres, The Remains of the Day and The Rose of Versailles invite comparative study because both works portray characters who evolve in Western, aristocratic settings while retaining a very strong Japanese influence (they are also similar in that they are set in politically turbulent times, with The Remains of the Day depicting the particular social atmosphere prevailing in England in the years leading up to the Second World War). Indeed, the similarities in temperament between the two main character, namely Stevens and Oscar, are quite remarkable. As John G. Rothfork writes in his fascinating essay (see http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jgr6/mosaic.html) ''The Japanese term for [Steven's unwavering sense of duty] is bushido: "it required the samurai specifically to serve his lord with the utmost loyalty and in general to put devotion to moral principle (righteousness) ahead of personal gain. The achievement of this high ideal involved a life of austerity, temperance, constant self-discipline (...) qualities long honored in the Japanese feudal tradition (...) [and which were] given a systematic form (...) in terms of Confucian ethical philosophy" (de Bary 1: 386). According to Ruth Benedict, whose 1946 book, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, remains a classic starting point for the analysis of Japanese culture, "such strength [of character] is the most admired virtue in Japan" (192). The purpose of Confucian ethics is to produce a person who exhibits grace and authority under any social circumstance.'' 

The Confucian vs the Christian worldview

Rothfork further explains that ''The contrast between Eastern and Western attitudes in regard to social roles provides a door into Kazuo Ishiguro's world. In the Western view, Stevens is pathetic because his obsession with duty has arrested the development of adult autonomy. Westerners believe that something like Erik Erikson's "Eight Stages of Man" specifies objective and universal stages of human, in contrast to cultural, development. Measured by this standard, Stevens fails to grow-up; he follows a social role instead of becoming his own person. Exasperated when Stevens fails to drop the role of butler and does not romantically respond to her, Miss Kenton asks, "Why, Mr Stevens, why, why, why do you always have to pretend (154)''. This scene finds an emotional parallel in Lady Oscar when Andre, Oscar's servant and closest friend, attempts to reason with her as she announces that she is leaving the Royal Guard to join another regiment in order to fulfill her duties (she is in fact trying to escape a romantic attachment). In so doing, she dismisses Andre, telling him that he is now free to live as he pleases. Andre responds that ''White or red, a rose remains a rose, you are wrong to believe that you can change the course of things at will.'' (The original Japanese has him say ''A rose is a rose. It will never become a lilac.'' Both offer an alternative version of Ishiguro's question ''Why must you always pretend?'') The statement infuriates Oscar, as it calls into question her false way of life, and a (famously) violent scene ensues. Rothfork explains that ''Stevens's [just as Oscar's] ambitions remain oedipal: to please a father figure. Especially in the movie version, Stevens remains pathetically defensive until he tragically admits, "All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really -- one has to ask oneself -- what dignity is there in that?" (243). Stevens poses this as a rhetorical question because every Westerner knows the answer: that one's deepest obligation is to develop a unique individuality. Christianity demands this. In Sources of the Self Charles Taylor illustrates that Romanticism/Modernism simply provided different arguments to insist on the same duty. Nothing like this analysis can be made from a Confucian outlook. In Japan filial loyalty (hsiao) -- which is ultimately offered to the person of the Emperor (symbolized in this case by Lord Darlington) -- provides the vocabulary for self-worth. Without this loyalty, which derives from a sense of gratitude and obligation (gimu: the infinite debt owed to parents for giving life and to the emperor for giving culture; giri: the debt owed to teachers, employers and other benefactors), one is no better than a monkey or a sociopath. Benedict explains that "the hero we [Westerners] sympathize with because he is in love or cherishes some personal ambition," the Japanese "condemn as weak because he has allowed these feelings" to erode his moral worth: "Westerners are likely to feel it is a sign of strength to rebel against conventions . . . . But the strong, according to Japanese verdict, are those who disregard personal happiness and fulfill their obligations. Strength of character, they think, is shown in conforming not in rebelling" (207). It is important to note that when Oscar does in fact rebel, she becomes, as one author notes, a 'ronin', meaning a masterless samurai, and fundamentally an 'outcast'. Although she does not commit the ritual suicide which was traditionally expected of a ronin (or does she?), her tuburculosis can be read as a metaphor for her socially (and emotionally) crippled state. As a ronin, she is mortally wounded. 

3. A rose is a rose: violence and alienation

As we have seen, it is all too easy--especially from a Western point of view--to interpret the scene where Oscar suddenly decides to leave the Royal Guard and join another regiment, coming as it does at such a crucial point in the drama, as a fundamental failure on the heroine's part to grow out of the role she is seemingly eternally condemned to play. But Ikeda's work does not merely function as a comment on the traditional samurai ethic, it also incorporates a contemporary feminist critique which tends to open it up to a more universal (or ''Western''?) reading around the theme of the discovery of the individual self. Thus it is possible to see that in another way--and this is what Andre fails to observe--Oscar is actually attempting to reach beyond the rigid strictures imposed by her father and society. For one thing, her decision to leave the Royal Guards represents an open (yet unspoken) challenge to her father the General; it certainly speaks of a newfound courage and determination to assert herself. To some degree, falling in love seems to have made her more self-aware, and the act of dismissing Andre should in fact be read as an attempt to break free of her status as a dependant--although she fails to understand the effect this will have on him. For both characters remain, of course, metaphorically blind. Thus the attempted rape of Oscar, coming just as she manifests a desire to find her own path, simultaneously represents both a desperate resolution to ''see'' clearly and a tragically selfish act. In an important sense, Andre's evolving blindness (initially caused by Oscar's own willfulness in wishing to capture at all costs a dangerous outlaw) is essentially both a product and a metaphor for his master's, that is, for Oscar's emotional repression. Thus the innate violence of her condition and of the social order to which they belong can be said to be revealed in one cathartic scene. For all the (supposed) romance of Oscar's transgendered role playing, the persona she is forced to adopt represents, in the end, the ultimate artifice of a corrupt regime. One that reduces the inner self to acute emotional impoverishment. The anime, it is interesting to note, succeeds in conveying this where the manga often does not (the original work adopts a more sexually playful view of Oscar's role playing, as we shall see). It is true that contrary to the dictates of her class and, most notably, to the actions of her sovereign, Oscar proves herself time and again to be a worthy master as she retains a very genuine empathy. Yet the ''blindness'' which she foists on her friend is real, and it is born of an ignorance which, at its root, is both sociopolitical and very personal. Hence one must argue that the sexual violence, contrary to what some readers have said, is not a shallow (read profoundly sexist) twist in the plot, it is essential to the story because it reveals all that has been severely repressed: Oscar's (feminine) individuality and fundamental vulnerability, yes, but Andre's as well. ''A rose is a rose, whether it blooms in red or white'', is the line that provokes Oscar to distraction. Furious, she hits her friend very hard, demanding to know what his meaning is. The power struggle is obvious as Oscar loses control of herself and suddenly demonstrates all the abusive violence which many an aristocratic master of the time felt entitled to wield over subordinates. But in the very next scene, the violence of the dominant class is unexpectedly redirected at her, in an ominous ''retour du refoule'', as Andre forces her down. Although long a victim of her father's abusive temper, Oscar cannot ever have expected to suffer violence at the hands of a member of the underclass; the shock is brutal and stuns her into relative submission. Both Oscar's and Andre's actions here are highly out of character, as many readers have noted. But their function is to expose the actual, terrible human cost of the sociopolitical (because this is a tragedy of class) and the personal violence upon which the Ancien Regime was founded. Andre's actions, as symbolic of the long suppressed revolt of the working class, also prefigure the revolutionary upheaval that is to come. On many levels, they represent a loss of innocence. 


Down the rabbit hole

We have spoken of the sociopolitical aspect of sexual violence, but it is on a very personal level that we are meant to understand it as well, as the scene serves to expose the self-alienated state of both protagonists. As one reader comments in a wonderful essay (which you can find here: http://odorunara.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/character-control-and-confession-the-theme-part-1/), ''Just as Joseph Conrad's prose wove a jungle-like path of words to mimic the setting of Heart of Darkness, Ikeda want to drag us down the rabbit hole with Andre by forcing us inside his mental breakdown'', with all its implications. Hence the scene conveys a powerful sense of self-alienation, with Andre's confession of love representing a desperate bid to connect and communicate across a vast emotional emptiness. It represents, at bottom, a desperate way back to the self. Indeed, one striking aspect of the anime which is rarely touched upon is the extreme solitude of the characters, their nearly existential loneliness. The theme of a great divide between the personal and the social self is a staple of Japanese literature, and it is greatly developped here. Both the queen and Oscar (and to a lesser degree, Fersen and Andre) are imprisoned in roles that they have not chosen and struggle with the moral consequences of emotional entrapment. Both are supremely lonely, all the more so in Oscar's case, as she has grown up essentially motherless, and, one presumes, separated from her sisters who are all older than she. While close to Andre, Oscar has no female friend to confide in; she cannot relate in this way to other women, nor, of course, can she ever hope to find solace (or so she thinks) in romance, or in children. This sense of alienation steadily grows with the passing of each episode of the series, until the full tragedy of Oscar's situation becomes poignantly clear. This occurs when she abruptly dismisses Andre, after he attempts to force himself on her, and she leaves for Normandy, alone. The escalating sense of alienation which envelops her at this point--for she is separated, for the first time in her life, from her best friend and even from the queen--is hauntingly portrayed in the scene where she is seen standing alone on the beach, looking out over the ocean. A stray dog walks by, she kneels down and reaches out her hand; the dog slowly looks back at her, then walks on... One is confronted here with a moving statement on the fundamental loneliness of life and the loneliness of sorrow itself. Indeed, the intense pain of her predicament, that of being emotionally isolated at a crucial point in her life and, especially, in the aftermath of a rape attempt, is beautifully rendered (the image of the stray dog is highly symbolic in Japan, see http://www.americansuburbx.com/2008/01/theory-daido-moriyama-investigations-of.html). Oscar's escape to Normandy cannot but evoke a former trip that she took there, years before. At the time, she had been forced into exile by the queen for participating in an illegal duel, as she sought to defend an innocent against a corrupt and murderous aristocrat. Now the tables are turned and the victim (symbolically, of the repressed underclass) is Oscar herself. The ''banishment'' of emotional exile is rendered through a powerful use of imagery--one notices the remains of a wrecked ship along the beach, the setting sun on the ocean waves. And yet, this spiritual exile simultaneously functions as a journey toward a growing self-awareness. Just as she learned in Normandy all those years before, knowledge sometimes is very painfully gained (''de quels bouleversements ce vent de la colere etait-il le presage?''). But it is Oscar's exceptional strenght of character and sense of consciousness that faithfully guide her down this newfound path toward self-determination. As a visual reflection of this portrayal of a repressed and yet glowing inner self, one could do little better (I learned, after several years of art history studies!) than Durer's Saint Apolline (1521), of which I include the full image below. It may be worthwhile to note, at this point, that the Christian symbol of martyrdom is the rose, and that Japanese history is populated with a great many Christian martyrs. Did Ikeda wish to make the comparison? Whatever the truth of it, it remains that the anime's credits open and end with the image of Oscar crowned in thorns, as befits the persecuted saint wholly devoted to the Christian faith, that ''religion of sorrow''.

Albrecht Durer, Sainte Apolline, 1521. Kupferstich Kabinett, Berlin.

4. Sexual Personae

So far, we've examined different themes in The Rose of Versailles but now we come to what is perhaps the defining theme of the work: that of the heroine's sexual identity. She was, after all, named after Oscar Wilde... Here we must make a sharp distinction between the manga and the anime. On the whole, one notices that Oscar's transgendered state in the original seems to allow for a more light-hearted sexual playfulness than her anime incarnation which presents us with a more sober portrayal. The disctinction is all the more relevant with regards to the French version of the anime, in which Oscar's true sex is not known util the end--or at the very least, remains a closely-guarded secret. The result of this is that the sexual subtext is consistently toned down. In the manga, for instance, Jeanne de la Motte accuses the queen of entertaining a lesbian relationship with Oscar during the trial which follows The Necklace Affair (it is historically accurate that Jeanne levelled charges of lesbianism at Marie-Antoinette). She also publishes memoirs explicitly accusing the queen of forcing Oscar into the role of transvestite for her own pleasure. The French anime plays down the charges by having Jeanne state that the queen is overly fond of the ''uniform''. When Oscar's men rebel against her at the Gardes francaises, we are told in the French anime that it is because they refuse to obey ''un colonel de cour'', though in the original it is because she is a woman. The manga also has Oscar openly flirting with the courtesans. Ikeda's heroine is granted full sexual agency as is underscored in the scene where Oscar is musing over the sight of a half-naked Andre... And yet this sexual playfulness becomes darkly subversive as Ikeda's manga heroine falls victim to a number of rape attempts. Both the manga and the anime versions can be defended. It is worth noting here that the character of Oscar may have been at least partly inspired by the historical Chevalier d'Eon, an 18th century French diplomat, solider and spy who seems to have lived the first half of his life as man and the secon half as a woman. D'Eon appears to have taken pains to promote his/her sexual ambiguity. To some extent, Ikeda does seem to have borrowed from this history for the portrayal of her main character. Certainly, the presence of an androgynous cross-dresser at the Court would have had tongues wagging; such a person would have likely found themselves to be the subject of much speculation. And the original manga heroine does seem to present the reader with a more socially-conscious, more ''liberated'' character than the Oscar of the anime. And yet, there is something to be said for the French version of the series, with a few commentators pointing out that it might in fact represent the more historically accurate depiction (a number of historians were apparently called upon to work on the French adaptation). For one thing, a woman (essentially considered a minor at the time) would never have been allowed to become a military officer, much less a personal guard to the queen. But the larger point the French version seems to be making is that (supposedly) no one can know Oscar is a woman because, quite simply, she doesn't really suspect it herself. That is, she has embraced a persona which consumes her (very nearly) until the end, and what we are mainly presented with is a projection of her state of mind: ''Imagine that, we had a woman commander all this time, and never suspected anything...'', Alain ironically comments when she finally confesses to her men. The remark is a testament to the French anime's considerable subtlety. Jean-Noel Nicolau further remarks in his excellent synopsis (please see above) that the animated series is ''nearly devoid of humour''. But it can be argued that the somber tone of the anime serves a specific purpose, which is to depict the personal drama of a thwarted inner self. Hence, we are presented with both the childlike figure of a Sleeping Beauty (the beautiful hedge of thorns which enfolds her seems lifted straight out of the book by Trina Shart Hyman) and with a more adult psychological drama (its strong streak of melancholy echoing that, for instance, of Garbo's androgynous Queen Christina, from 1933). For more commentary about the theme of sexual personae in film and literature (including the Rose of Versailles), see http://www.sexualfables.com/Women-in-Trousers.php. For a fascinating look at gender issues in contemporary culture, see this recent article titled ''The End of Gender?'' (do not miss supermodel Andrej Pejic) at: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/24/137342682/the-end-of-gender?sc=nl&cc=brk-20110624-1227&ps=brk-mp

Symbols of eros

What is very important to note here is that the theme of sexual identity as a crucial psychological component of each individual is far more developed in Japan than it is in the West, where it remains rather taboo. Further to this, is the idea of gender as an ephemeral and fluid state of being, a fascinating concept, and one which is altogether foreign to Western thought (see Yaoi: Redrawing Male Love, by Mark McHarry). The Rose of Versailles encapsulates this idea rather well as it presents us with the romantic pairing of two characters who consistently subvert traditional gender roles. As Deborah Shamoon writes in her insightful essay ''Revolutionary Romance: The Rose of Versailles and the Transformation of Shojo Manga'': ''As the story progresses, [Oscar and Andre] increasingly resemble each other, in the shape of the hair and eyes, and in the clothes they wear, usually military uniforms (...) Andre becomes Oscar's ideal love interest not only because he physically resembles her but because his own masculine identity is somewhat compromised. First, he is of a lower social class, little more than a servant in the de Jarjayes household (...) Second, and even more significantly, their romance begins to develop only after Andre loses an eye in the line of duty'', symbolizing a loss of masculinity. For much of the story, the passionate, fiery Oscar represents the 'man' of action, while Andre is represented as a more passive, self-effacing 'feminized' figure. Shamoon writes that the Oscar-Andre relationship follows a homoerotic pattern familiar to the 'doseiai' aesthetic, yet I would argue that this might be truer for the manga than for the anime, where the character of Andre is developed right from the beginning and is a far more compelling figure. While the underlying structure of homogender romance is always present (the samurai culture was proudly homosexual), and the presence of ''yuri'' elements is notable (between the queen and Oscar, Oscar and Rosalie), the narrative power of the anime, if not the manga, is in fact founded on a number of strong heterosexual relationships. The first one is the enduring romance between the queen and Fersen; it provides an essential structure to the plot. And then there is Oscar. Having spent her youth defending and protecting the queen as the medieval knight would his lady, our heroine awakens to love when she suddenly becomes enamoured of Fersen. But this romance remains an adolescent affair and is eventually eclipsed by a mature love for Andre. Indeed, it is the growing sexual tension between Oscar and Andre which defines the second half of the series. Their romance's understated eroticism is subtly conveyed through the use of symbolism. Much is made, for instance, of the nature vs culture dichotomy, of the divide between the natural (sexual) creature and the (repressed) social self. Indeed, Oscar first appears in the opening sequence of the anime, rather surprisingly, as a 'natural' woman, a nude figure surrounded by thorns suggesting both her allegiance and enslavement to Nature. Roses, apples, birds all make an appearance, conjuring up the eroticism and the evanescent quality of love (see the above definition of mono no aware) and of the natural world. The metaphor is used again when Oscar and Andre finally consummate their union, in a forest, on the eve of the Revolution (the fireflies, in particular, are meant to symbolize evanescence because they are very short-lived). But the most significant sequence is perhaps one which occurs earlier in the story; it depicts Andre standing under a tall, dark tree and gazing intensely at Oscar as she attempts to break in a wild horse, in the clearing beyond. This can be understood as Oscar's dangerous attempt to reign in and suppress her erotic self, with the impending threat of sexual violence against her strongly implied--the character's French voiceover is rather explicit here... The violent taming of (one's inner and outer) Nature, we are meant to understand, represents a betrayal of the moral self. The natural order of things must be respected, and only true love, through an authentic meeting of the self and the Other, can allow for its re-establishment at the center of a harmonious universe.
   

5. Upstairs, Downstairs - An analysis of Oscar

I would like to begin this section by thanking all those who have written character studies of Oscar and Andre, and in particular all those members of the ladyoscar-andre.forumactif.fr, whose passionate debates have lately influenced my thinking on the subject. We have seen that Ikeda's character study of Oscar is a morally complex one. Indeed, one quickly notices that the character is deeply flawed. Where Ishiguro's Stevens sacrifices his life to the pursuit of ''dignity'', Oscar dedicates hers to the idea of ''honour''. As we have seen, both protagonists embody the traditional Japanese ideal set out in the Bushido samurai code: to serve another with absolute dedication and selflessness. Significantly, however, both authors present us with a similar moral dilemma: how should a samurai elect to serve an unworthy master? It is a problem which confers universal appeal, and it is presented to us in similar psychological terms. Indeed, it is the very nature of the Japanese conception of filial loyalty (the loyalty due to parents but also to the Emperor) which Ikeda and Ishiguro seem to call into question by portraying the difficult relationship between their main protagonists and their abusive fathers--and by extension, their unworthy masters or sovereigns. As one author has written about The Rose of Versailles, it is the relative absence of dialogue between father and ''son'' which provides much of the dramatic intensity. Much the same can be said about The Remains of the Day, where the author depicts, in very understated terms, the father's considerable cruelty as directly responsible for his son's acute emotional repression and for his extreme sense of duty, as he has brought him up to follow in his footsteps. Where the samurai must traditionally overcome and transcend his fear of death, it seems that Oscar and Stevens mainly suffer through a state of death-in-life. In one very interesting scene from the anime, Oscar is reprimanded by Andre for opting out of a ball she is called upon to attend at Versailles. She says that she can no longer bear to hear the gossip about the queen and Fersen, but in fact it is the liaison between them that is becoming intolerable to her, as her feelings for Fersen begin to surface. "I refuse to play any longer the role they wish me to play," Oscar says, referring to her increasingly awkward role as a go-between. Andre eventually talks her into attending, reminding her of her duties and pointing out that both the queen and Fersen need her, but not before Oscar bitterly observes that ''the queen and Fersen are who they are and I also have a right to exist''. Her words signal both an admission of defeat and a rebellious cry from the heart; it is this fundamental duality which lends Oscar her psychological depth. She is, as one commentator points out, two souls wrapped up into one. Although it is the 'male' part of her, the false persona, which mostly overrides her better (feminine) self, it is immediately apparent that the tug-of-war between them is constant and finally reaches epic proportions as one author notes: ''For quite a while, she defends her queen while at the same time balking against both injustice done the common people and against any radical plot to overthrow the system of state, apparently completely unable to see that all this cannot be reconciled and that something has got to give. (...) Oscar's relative innocence and the late disillusionment ensure that she is taken aback by many of the greater circumstances as many of the main players are, and she convincingly first clings to what she knows and holds dear but later on--and in fact too late--after a few rude awakenings, has to admit that the balance of what she considers to be the right thing has shifted.'' (http://www.myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=106395, scroll down the page). The author is correct: Oscar's awakening comes too late. He further notes, very insightfully, that she has ''no real sense of where she stands (...) [and] never participates in the political arena, never shaping what occurs but always being shaped by it.'' Oscar's moral failings are great, and it is possible to attribute them, at least in part, to the overdetermined nature of the story's politics. And yet, Ikeda's heroine simultaneously cuts a very tragic figure, in the literary sense of the term--that is, she succeeds in embodying, despite her grave flaws, a considerable nobility of spirit. 

It is at this point in the argument that the comparison with Ishiguro's novel becomes most instructive, as it presents us with a main protagonist who, while resembling Oscar to a great degree, fundamentally differs with her in that his personality lacks an essential passion, a certain strenght of conviction, which, though belatedly, will actually allow Oscar to achieve a measure of self-realization that Stevens never does... 

(Full text to come)

The famously androgynous male supermodel Andrej Pejic

An analysis of Andre
To come

Essays, fan fictions and other links
To come