Angels And Insects

Product Information

Leaving aside the overly flowery descriptions, and the occasionally clunky dialogue – characters often speak as though they are scientific treatises themselves – another problem in “Morpho Eugenia” is a certain absence of heart. Angels and Insects” is like the dark underside of a Merchant-Ivory film; in one scene, we visit a sunny, pastoral clearing in the woods, and lift up a rock to see the plump, slimy little slugs and larvae beneath, dining on each other.

Although Sir Harold grants his approval, Eugenia's snobbish and spoilt brother Edgar ( Douglas Henshall) dislikes William's humble origins. Especially Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”, which was a response to his 17 years of grief over the death of his beloved friend and fellow poet, Arthur. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen. This is one of so many analogies with the social insects that were his focus in his field work and a major topic of the discussions with his father-in-law.The plot twist featuring the brother had shock value, but was undone with the fatuous inclusion of the INSECT anagram in the following scene. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact.

Even today, in our comparatively godless world, there is something of a taboo on the dead – we try not to speak ill of them. Later I will revisit my choice of words and backpedal, my desire to empower her as a person, as a woman, conflicting with my desire to raise her in a Christian tradition that teaches us “blessed are the meek. My heart aches, too, for her little brother, for my husband, for myself, all who are caught up and left trampled in the wake of her rage.Remake of the 1961 Disney comedy about separated identical twins who meet at camp, change places and hatch a plot to reunite their divorced parents. Emily Tennyson’s story is the most interesting, and with less of the trimmings and lengthy descriptions, it could have been even more effective.