Three Girls on the Bridge in Search of Identity

The Story of Three Girls On the Bridge in search of Identity

Edvard Munch at Tate Modern

Three girls decided to cross the bridge. The bridge was made of ropes and wooden planks. The planks were weathered and the rope was sick. They had no work on the other side of the bridge. They wanted to cross it for the sake of fun and adventure. When they were almost at the midway the bridge broke. One girl fell down in the river, one was hanging by holding the rope and the third one was still standing on the plank of the bridge that was about to give way. The Fallen, The Falling and About to Fall are three women(girls became women when bridge brakes) about whom the whole literature of the world has been written. The women were not insecure, only bridge was insecure. The juxtaposition created an illusion which women enjoyed.

The river beneath the bridge thronged with dead bodies of male. From above the bridge they looked dead, but actually they were not dead. They were at various stages of unconsciousness. Youth was unconscious and elders whimpered inaudibly in semi consciousness. There were no children. No literature in the world has ever portrayed the suffering and agony of the gender of this species. The Nausea had caused Metamorphosis in The Strangers. They all had similar faces. Why would anybody take interest in them. They were all archetypes of cave man wearing different masks. Civilization taught them to conceal their true-type. They were basically disorganized, aimless and inactive. 

Women were organized, active and focused by their natural gift of virginity, menstruation and menopause. They searched for identity since they knew they have one. The man was even unconscious about that. He  became active only when provoked by women.

The level of consciousness of the males changed due to Fallen girl. The Fallen girl had the role models of Anna Karenina, Moll Flanders, Constance Chatterley  and Madam Bovary. All these women had flouted the prescribed norms of the society and lived their life in their own way. The society looked with awe, but did not dare to condemn them. The readers loved them. Atwood would appreciate them for being Bad Women. They did not care two figs about anybody's opinion. They were all part of a stream, which was not unidirectional. Magnanimity and meanness are unconfined. The Fallen women had more magnanimity.

Read Burn Me Naked.

The Falling woman who was still sticking to unstranded rope, and each strand was breaking under the pressure, looked up and down. She was not afraid to fall, she was just waiting for all strands to break and then she would have a natural fall. She remembered the naked dance of Connie in the rain. Connie was in unison with nature. The dance was not an effort of celebration, it was a synchronization of her entire being with all the elements of nature. She danced like a peacock. The final strand would break by her will to power.

The one who still stood on the damaged wooden plank of the bridge was Emma. She had a conditioned mind, initially. She thought fallen are lower class, falling are middle class and she herself was upper class. After repeated mistakes she had learned her lessons. Now she knew her "matchmaking" was actually voyeuristic and she always took pleasure in imagining those couple copulating. Thus she herself had vicariously enjoyed the clandestine pleasure of proximity and copulation with almost all the male characters around her. Now, after getting married with Mr. Knightly, who was much older than her, she knew in her heart that Harriet and Robert Martin would supersede her in  carnal pleasure. So about to Fall was in no way different from Fallen and Falling.

Vipin Behari Goyal

Author

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