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Post by absurdlittlebird on Jan 9, 2018 5:00:17 GMT
I'm not sure if this has been discussed at length anywhere else but I've been pondering this of late after reading several different fanfictions.
(Also can I state that I'm only thinking about/want to explore this in terms of Maria the character in the film/musical not in terms of Maria the real life woman).
Keeping the timeline of Maria and Georg coming back from their honeymoon and having to flee the country straight away, and assuming that they did eventually end up voyaging all the way across to the U.S.A, how do you feel Maria would have personally fared coping with all of it considering the following factors:
1) The first year of marriage is hard for anyone, let alone a marriage with such a significant age and class gap, ghost of a late wife, step-mothering etc.
2) Her jump from future nun to governess to baroness in one summer was monumental enough (fleeing the country aside) in terms of expanding her worldview/simple exposure to things, perhaps challenging of beliefs, changing understanding of her identity, generally coping with the enormous shift of the direction of her life.
3) The toll of leaving behind your homeland and everything you've ever known (which for a person like Maria who was so connected to the nature that surrounded her in her homeland I feel this would have been huge)
4) The toll of helping the family resettle in this new life away from everything they've ever known.
5) The lingering fear of living during a World War where you've had to flee your country because your husband refused to serve a particular army and now therefore would no doubt be on their target list.
How do you think she personally would have dealt with all of these issues? Do you think it would have raised some tough challenges in their marriage? What challenges do you think particularly would have cropped up the earliest or have been the most difficult to get through?
I'm so curious to know what you think!
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Post by indigoblue on Jan 9, 2018 14:52:19 GMT
Ooooh! I do love posts like this!
I'm going to have to think about such matters...
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Post by indigoblue on Jan 12, 2018 23:58:48 GMT
Lots of things to think of! Thank you for such an interesting question. Here are some first thoughts of mine:
No doubt it would have been tough, but I feel there were two factors in particular which would have ensured she would have given it her best shot.
Firstly, she had volunteered for privation when she entered the Abbey, so any physical or disciplinary hardships would not have been new to her,so she would not have been intimidated by them. Secondly, one has to ask what her alternatives were. One could argue that no-one would have been safe in Nazi Germany (not even a convent of nuns, and we know that IRL the von Trapp home became the headquarters for Nazi commanders), so once she was married to Georg, she had no alternatives.
My own feeling is that, having a strong and resilient character, coupled with the desire to be a strong mother and good wife, would have been enough for her to treat hardships as mere obstacles to be overcome: winning over Georg in the first place was her biggest challenge!!
There are lots of other things that you mention which are very relevant, not least leaving your country, but I have known a few emigre families from wartime Austria and elsewhere who have settled in the UK, and who are still here. Presumably some of them settle down reasonably quickly (one such female friend says that it is far easier to be a (very) successful and independent female in the UK than in Southern Europe- perhaps Maria found the US the same?!)
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Post by lemacd on Jan 13, 2018 21:59:17 GMT
I think I'll just end up echoing a lot of what indigoblue so eloquently has already said. But I'll try to add and sound intelligent at the same time. 1. This was never going to be a typical marriage no matter what outside forces were conspiring against the family; she acquired an entire family instantly and so I think Maria had braced herself for all kinds of challenges and set her mind to being ready for anything from the start. The key for her is that she finally found her life, that life... I don't think she abandoned the things she learned at the abbey which was to find the will of God and do it wholeheartedly. I think there were days she was frustrated and tired and more than just overwhelmed, but it was finally the life she was meant to have and that likely gave her a lot of peace amidst the crazy. 2. I amuse myself often by thinking that a lot of Maria's biggest fears before the wedding were about fitting in to Georg's life in high society and so when they returned from Paris and had to give it all up and go back to her practical clothes and simplified living, she was super relieved. I mean, she was the one who thought drapes would make great clothes for the kidlets, she has a practical streak and finds solutions. But there was the honeymoon in Paris and I imagine it was a bit of a crash course. I also don't think that Georg would ever put her in a situation where she was be laughed at or uncomfortable and that it was actually an adventure for her to experience it when she could. 3. Leaving her homeland would have been hard, definitely. But she was not alone, her family was more important than the mountains or culture. I do think she would have made a promise to herself to hold on to traditions and culture and never forget. She told the children that she hoped they'd return someday. I think she held fast to that hope for a long time. And the most beautiful part of nature is that it is everywhere... , well, no. It's not everywhere. It would not be in a Nazi prison. It might be different wherever they were headed, but it was there waiting for her and better than the alternative. 4. The move vTs were a determined bunch. Think Friedrich assuring his father that they didn't need help crossing the mountain, that they could do it. This burden didn't fall solely on Maria. I think she would have been grateful that she knew how to teach them how to get by, how to cook and make a home, milk a cow, plant a garden... I think she would have seen it very Providential that they all found each other for such a time as that. 5. This fear would be very real. I think she would have coped by not thinking about it, tbh. I think she would remind herself that her husband was smart, brave and protective and fully trained. She would trust that and worry about the things she could do something about. She's not perfect, I think she would have spent a lot of time in tears because parenting is hard, marriage is hard, starting over is hard. She would be like all of us in that regard. But she would never give up and she would never succumb to the despair much of it would bring.
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Post by lemacd on Jan 13, 2018 22:02:55 GMT
I do agree that Maria would have found life agreeable in the US, confusing and maybe a bit... weird, but I think life there would have been more accepting of her free spirited nature.
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Post by indigoblue on Jan 14, 2018 0:11:24 GMT
Just think of the hash the Baroness would have made of it! Haha!
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Post by lemacd on Jan 14, 2018 3:36:52 GMT
Just think of the hash the Baroness would have made of it! Haha! right?! She wouldn't have climb a staircase out of Austria, never mind a mountain.
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Post by augiesannie on Jan 14, 2018 23:19:52 GMT
LOL staircase. This was a great question absurdlittlebird, and great answers by everyone else. I have a draft unfinished story in my folder about some of these challenges, because despite all the good reasons you guys are giving, still, I bet it would have been hard. And let's just throw in here (because it's fanfic) that a baby is on the way pretty quickly. t's really interesting, the idea that staying in Austria might have been harder. OK I am not saying anything new, i should shut up.
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Post by lemacd on Jan 15, 2018 1:11:28 GMT
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Post by bloomandgrow on Mar 14, 2018 5:30:21 GMT
I hope no one minds if I jump in with my thoughts - this is such a great set of questions and I loved reading the responses which I completely agree with, and it is also so helpful to me because I often struggle to write a post-marriage Maria that is not OCC.
I know absurdlittlebird did not want to talk about the RL Maria but focus this discussion only on TSOM Maria, but I hope you don't mind if bring some things up because they seem related. RL Maria mentions in her books how difficult it was being a second wife and a second mother and trying to fill Agathe's very big shoes. Poignantly, she tried to be just like Agathe until her husband figured out what she was doing and stopped her.
Life in America must have been tremendously hard initially and a huge strain on any marriage when they were penniless refugee and initially unsure if they would be sent back to war-torn Europe. Both Maria's books and the German film 'The von Trapps in America' go into this alot; and show there is very little that is romantic about the situation. My own preference is to follow the Beatles idea that 'All you need is love,' to get through the challenges, even though I know that is not the reality. But both RL Maria and TSOM Maria had courage and strength in spades so I believe that would have seen them through the tough times.
A bit off the topic but kind of related: I find post-marriage Maria harder to write than Georg. She went through such a tremendous arc in a compressed time frame - from being impulsive and a bit clownish etc (everything in How do you solve...) to sudden maturity after heartbreak and then marriage. She seemed to shed all her girlish characteristics quickly to emerge as a serious, mature young wife and mother (though that could be because of the deadly threats they were facing in the film and then escape). When I write her character in some (goofier) stories I tend to keep a lot of her more playful aspects because I find them so endearing, but I struggle with whether they are OCC or if she did retain them even after she married. If it is not off the topic of this thread, I would love to know what others think about her post-marriage characteristics. (And apologies if this has already been discussed in other threads that I haven't found yet).
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Post by indigoblue on Mar 14, 2018 23:40:34 GMT
I think people can give rein to different aspects of their personality in different situations. So, whilst I can see that Maria learnt to be more serious in her new role as wife to Capt von Trapp, and also in the demanding position of being a refugee with seven children in a strange country,I'm sure she kept her more mischievous traits for when she was alone with the children.
Perhaps also she used them to jolly along ol' Georg when he got too despondent?! It must have hit him hard to realise he was not going back to Austria, because people like that are so regimented they 'fit into a slot' and often find it difficult to cope when the 'slot' is taken away.
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Post by andhereweare on Mar 16, 2018 3:13:10 GMT
As well, I'm sure she would have been worried about everyone at Nonnberg, especially as the war went on.
Then there's the culture shock. I understand how difficult it would be to write about it since United States of the 20s/30s was a vastly different place than it is today, but it's another thing to gloss over it entirely.
While I'm typing, I'm going to get on a soapbox for a moment. If Georg wound up teaching at the Naval Academy he would have been a professor, since USNA is a university. And Annapolis is not a Navy port. The Revolutionary War was the last time the Navy parked ships nearby, I believe.
I can't recall the name, but there was one story that got it right that if Georg did work for the U.S. Navy and directly with submarines the family would have ended up in Connecticut.
I'll get off my soapbox and resume watching college basketball...
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Post by augiesannie on Mar 17, 2018 0:06:16 GMT
Those stories where Georg ends up at the Naval Academy are not favorites of mine (there are a lot of them). I find it hard to write Maria in general, compared to Georg; I find it difficult to strike the right balance that makes her young and vulnerable without tipping over into pathetic. Having that problem a lot with the story I'm writing now. He's just more ... interesting . Also I find post marriage harder to write about than premarriage. But I think, bloomandgrow, that if I had to write Maria post marriage, I would make her playful and not try to compress her into a suddenly mature person. So I guess thats what I think of her. Still big hearted and impulsive and emotional. I have a harder time figuring out how she so quickly left her vocation behind! Someday I've got to dig out that marriage drama story and finish it. Also bloomandgrow why would we MIND? This is a discussion forum!
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Post by bloomandgrow on Mar 17, 2018 11:22:01 GMT
I have to admit I haven't read any stories where Georg is a teacher at the Naval Academy. But it is so interesting, particularly because it is such a contrast to the RL Georg's life. Maria mentions in her books that her husband's offer of his services to the US Navy was declined in WW2. I always assumed it was because he fought on the other side to the US in WW1, because his sons were allowed to serve. BTW, if there is a thread that discusses the contrasts between RL Maria and Georg with TSOM M and G I would love to read it. I have read some wonderful stories which meld some aspects of both and come with a great amalgam of the best parts of each universe.
But getting back to the issue of how do you write a person like Maria, when she has so many facets to her character, I agree augiesannie that she is much harder to write than Georg. But I have always loved your Marias, both pre and post marriage! I do hope you will dig out the story you mentioned. As to the issue of how she left behind her vocation so quickly I think it is quite telling that RL Maria took a very long time to get over her disappointment about not becoming a nun. She was well into her marriage before she came to terms with it. But then, if I had to choose between the Abbey and CP's Georg, it wouldn't take me at all long to come to a decision, lol.
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Post by indigoblue on Mar 20, 2018 0:20:39 GMT
BloomandGrow, I can't think of a thread which contrasts the qualities of RL M&G with TSOM M&G, but what a great opportunity for YOU to start one here!
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Post by bloomandgrow on Mar 25, 2018 4:08:50 GMT
Thanks for the suggestion indigoblue. I don't want to hi-jack this thread so I will post something on one of the Movie background threads and see if there is interest to discuss similarities and differences between the books and the film
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