Vanessa Ives: Woman Of Action

[David T. Cole]

Eva Green as Vanessa Ives.

[Kromm]

Character Bio:  

 

Poised, mysterious and utterly composed, Vanessa is a seductive and formidable beauty full of secrets and danger. She is keenly observant -- clairvoyant even -- as well as an expert medium. Her supernatural gifts are powerful and useful to those around her, particularly Sir Malcolm, but they are also a heavy burden. Her inner demons are very real to her and everyone around her, and they threaten to destroy her relationships, her sanity, and her very life.

[jbrecken]

I'm disappointed they didn't name her Lady Penelope Dreadful.

[RedheadZombie]

I'm liking the character more and more, but some things strike me wrong for the time period. It would not be respectable for Vanessa to be living with Malcom. She also would not be going about London without a proper chaperone. It seems that the sex scandal was not revealed outside the family, so I believe she would still be accepted by the highest classes. However, there's no way she would be playing at Medium at parties. Women of her class did not work in any capacity, and her activities would have been viewed as either vulgar parlor games, or the work of the devil.

[Irishmaple]

I think Vanessa and Sir Malcolm have some leeway because of the long connection between their families.  If the reason for Mina's breakup was kept secret, then people would probably go on believing that the Murray family remained close with the Ives.  In that context, Vanessa could be considered Sir Malcolm's ward.  She's a bit old for the designation but, as a single woman, might get away with it.  As a "close friend" of Vanessa's parents, he would be expected to look out for her in London.  Vanessa seems old enough to be considered a spinster so socially she'd be an oddity because of that alone and have some freedoms younger single girls wouldn't have.  She's too old to make a good marriage so her reputation isn't as fragile as that of a girl with more to lose.

 

Vanessa isn't working outside the home.  Her occult interests seem known only to those in her intimate circle.  She was a guest at the party and wasn't working there.  The guest medium, Madame Kali (?) was intended to provide the chills and entertainment, but Vanessa's demon wasn't giving up the limelight for anyone.  It was a social faux pas, but the party was composed of people willing to dabble in the occult and probably (like Dorian Grey) not entirely respectable themselves.

[blixie]

 

there's no way she would be playing at Medium at parties

 

What Irishmaple said, Vanessa wasn't the Medium, Madam Kali was the hired hand, and the crowd was like to be filled with those more flexible towards the occult and scandalizing society anyway. Plus we haven't really seen Vanessa running in society circles out side that incident, which both she and Sir Malcolm were loath to avoid. This does though emphasize the one big issue of what happened to her father, and Sir Malcolm's wife. It's possible Vanessa's father simply shunned her, but left her in the "wardship' of Sir Malcolm, but I think it's essential then that his wife is dead. It's also important to remember Eva's playing about 10 years younger than she actually is.

[ganesh]

Oh she is? I thought she was like 30 on the show.

[RedheadZombie]

A lot of these details are driving me crazy. I'm giving them some leeway because I think the info omission is plot related and deliberate. I would like to lockdown the basics of Vanessa's age, how long since her breakdown, where the missing spouses are, and if Malcolm met Mina's husband. Minor question - was Peter gay or simply disinterested or even turned off by Vanessa's aggressive (for the time) sexual overture.

I'd like to think that Vanessa's father did not disown her. They made a point of showing that her parents were loving and supportive. They seemed great parents in a time where the uppercrust handed over their children to servants while visiting with them perhaps once a day.

As much as Vanessa slammed Malcolm's parenting of Mina, it was actually Peter he neglected, not Mina.

I'm hoping fervently that they don't reveal Malcolm as Vanessa's father. I can't unsee their sex scene - even though it was not real, and Vanessa was either subconsciously (or otherwise) attracted to him. I tolerate the excessive incest in GoT because it's set in a fantasy land. There's good chemistry between V and M. Please no incest.

[blixie]

 

thought she was like 30 on the show.

I think she's no more than 24, she was probably 18 when the "transgression" happened, and I think it has been at least 3 but no more than 5 years since then. If any longer than that and the whole guilt complex about her being with Dracula is little absurd. Guilt for the basic betrayal okay, but the domino consequence? If indeed it ever was? Naw. I think an unmarried 24 year old would still be old maid material though.

[phantom bright]

A lot of these details are driving me crazy. I'm giving them some leeway because I think the info omission is plot related and deliberate. I would like to lockdown the basics of Vanessa's age, how long since her breakdown, where the missing spouses are, and if Malcolm met Mina's husband. Minor question - was Peter gay or simply disinterested or even turned off by Vanessa's aggressive (for the time) sexual overture.

 

I'm sort of torn between reading Peter as gay or seeing him as completely ashamed of his "unmanliness". I like the second option better since it's a little less cliche. His frail constitution meant that he was never close to his father although he tried very hard to be (his poor "hey look I can grow one too, Dad" beard had me feeling sorry for him). Could be that he didn't want to be kissed by Vanessa -- the social mores of the time dictated that he kiss her. Which he notably does later when she is weak and in bed and he's going off to a very manly African adventure of doom. Also, you have Vanessa wishing she could have told him that she loved his "weakness", which didn't seem to be a metaphor for gayness.

 

I'm hoping fervently that they don't reveal Malcolm as Vanessa's father. I can't unsee their sex scene - even though it was not real, and Vanessa was either subconsciously (or otherwise) attracted to him. I tolerate the excessive incest in GoT because it's set in a fantasy land. There's good chemistry between V and M. Please no incest.

 

Yeah, that would be too much for me. In Game of Thrones, the series resembles more of an epic (this is especially true of the books). The incest there is much more like something I'd read about the Ancient Egyptians. It's removed from real life by a far distance. Penny Dreadful isn't too far from the audience since its set on Earth, in a relatively recent time period. The whole thing with Sir Malcolm being a paternal figure that Vanessa liked better than her own parents and the (sort of) catalyst to her own sexual awakening/freakshow is fairly disturbing on its own. Plus there's that whole "you're the daughter I deserve" thing. The subtext is just creepy enough. Making them actually related would be too sick, and I say that about a show where people are ripped in half and Dorian Gray likes bloody makeout kisses.

 

Plus, as you say, the Vanessa/Sir Malcolm chemistry is excellent. Almost co-dependently poisonous.

[ganesh]

Also, you have Vanessa wishing she could have told him that she loved his "weakness", which didn't seem to be a metaphor for gayness.

Yeah, not *everybody* who isn't a manly macho man back then was due to unrevealed gayness, nor is it today. I was thinking, oh he's gay when he was squicked out by the kiss, but then I figured well, he could think of her really as a sister too, since they took enough time to show them family-like as kids.

 

And during the seance there wasn't anything "he" said (as Vanessa) that tipped me off either. 

[ironclown]

Boy, belladonna seems to be getting name-checked a bit more frequently in TV. First White Collar, now Penny Dreadful. In any event, Dorian's reading of Vanessa does seem apt. She is a beautiful lady ("bella donna") harboring a terrible secret.

 

Eva Green is just wonderful. I already was a fan of her from her performance in Kingdom of Heaven. Here, she lends Vanessa much gravitas.

[sjohnson]

This was the age of Oscar Wilde among other things. Walter Pater's Aestheticism and French Symbolists and Decadents were influential. These were early days of New Woman and George Bernard Shaw and the Fabians. The Fenians were already in the history books, as were suffragists. Religious bigots no more had universal consent to their opinions than humanists have universal constent to theirs today. Murray's tolerance for her later divergences from orthodoxy was discreetly upheld by many Victorians in one fashion or another. (A. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories are fairly sympathetic to women while discreetly paying lip service to more rigid ideals.) The isolation and pariah hood of Ives is a little overdrawn. I think it would have been Chandler and Gray who would have suffered much more from disapproval. i doubt Murray, Ives, Frankenstein or Van Helsing would overlook it, if drawn true to period. Chandler will get more sympathy from them for his occasional massacres.

 

Since Ives is possessed of a demon, Dracula doesn't need to seize Ives, whether working through Mina or not. That's all a pointless diversion. Dracula just needs an introduction. Then he and the demon can bring Egyptian Hell on Earth. Except that would shorten the series to one episode. A house divided against itself cannot stand: Her demon is not fighting the Egyptian Vampire Demons because, supernaturally speaking, they're on the same side. I can't see anything else making sense.

 

As to the incest motif...yes, there is an excellent chance Ives is truly Murray's daughter, and yes, she fantasizes acting on her sexual lust for him. And I daresay that John Logan forgot that Mina was supposed to be neglected (and substituted Peter as the neglected one) because he needed to hint that Murray reciprocates the lust. I think Logan was upping the monstrousness quotient by revealing it, not taking a backstory break. When Fenton moaned about all the monsters, Murray's monstrous passion was what he saw. 

 

And Ives? Maybe her monster is not an external demon who burrowed inside, but always was her? That her amorality attunes her with her own inner powers? Alternatively, her worship of evil by perverse sexual rites essentially makes her a witch? Many of the torments aimed at her in her "treatment" were clearly aimed at suppressing female sexuality. 

As a bonus, Dracula could be planning to tap her powers to raise Amonet (who as Ives denied, isn't here yet?) At least the plot would make superficial sense.

[RedheadZombie]

sjohnson, I found your fourth paragraph particularly interesting. I came here to comment on what I perceive as a little Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde overtones.

While Jekyll and Hyde are perceived as a split personality, the dark compulsions are within Jekyll himself, who then creates an outlet of Mr. Hyde. This enables Jekyll, for a time, to act out these negative impulses while maintaining the moral superiority of Jekyll.

I think a comparison to Vanessa can be drawn, in that she acknowledges the bold behavior and sexual fascination were inherent within her. The "Hyde" in Vanessa is either the devil or a spirit that can make use of her medium abilities. Meanwhile, the "Jekyll" Vanessa manages to live a sexually repressed life (appropriate for the time), demonstrated by her not acting on her strong sexual attraction to Dorian Gray, or perhaps the pull that Malcom has on her. Instead, she becomes "possessed" by something that allows her to walk out into the street and initiate sex with a stranger.

One other comparison. Jekyll's friend drops dead of shock after witnessing him transform to the other personality. Vanessa's mother drops dead of shock after witnessing Vanessa acting out her hypersexual nature.

Edited June 15, 2014 by RedheadZombie

[sjohnson]

Good call, I think. The resemblances are possibly intentional on Logan's part.

[Pippin]

Re the possible incest between Murray and Vanessa:  Let me remind everyone that Freud was so horrified by all the reports of father/daughter incest that he receieved from his female patients that he decided that it could not possibly be true and so declared these to be mere fantasy.

 

I leave it to you to reflect on the amount of harm his close-mindedness caused.

 

Edited to add:  And of course, Penny Dreadful takes place in approximately the same time period and in the midst of the same social attitudes.

Edited June 16, 2014 by Pippin

[otherclaudi]

 

"To be beautiful is to be almost dead, isn't it? - Vanessa Ives from Penny Dreadful:  http://xova.in/rIa

[bilgistic]

I think she's no more than 24, she was probably 18 when the "transgression" happened, and I think it has been at least 3 but no more than 5 years since then. If any longer than that and the whole guilt complex about her being with Dracula is little absurd. Guilt for the basic betrayal okay, but the domino consequence? If indeed it ever was? Naw. I think an unmarried 24 year old would still be old maid material though.

Looking through my modern feminist lens, I'm annoyed by Vanessa being called and addressed as "girl" many times throughout the show. In a way, it makes even less sense then than now because life expectancies were shorter then, she *is* relatively old to be still unmarried at her age, whatever it is (Eva Green is 34 in real life) and women would therefore be expected to be "women" sooner in life. It's not as if you remain in suspended animation because you don't marry and/or have children. Time still passes. Maybe I'm projecting a bit, because I get very annoyed at grown women being called "girls".

[ganesh]

I can buy Malcolm calling her 'girl', but yeah.

 

I have a friend who also hates that too so I've learned to check myself. I go with 'ladies' with people I know. 

[taanja]

Lady Penelope Dreadful!

 

Boy oh boy! The creators really missed the ball on this one!

 

Best thing I have read in a good long while! In my head I will now always call her that! Lovely! Thanks for the laugh.

[RedheadZombie]

I watched the season marathon, and I still don't see any answer to the question of Vanessa's father.  Is he still alive?  What does he think of Vanessa living with Malcolm?  Why show us how close her family was, only to leave this detail hanging?

 

I'm totally reaching here, but I'm intrigued by how Madame Kali will impact season two.  I interpreted her interaction with Malcolm as odd - I don't get good vibes from her.  This leaves me wondering if she contributed to what happened to Vanessa at the séance.  Could she have set her up?  Like I said, totally reaching.

[TudorQueen]

I've generally been neutral on Eva Green - didn't love her or hate her, and her performances were often circumscribed by the script or genre. But I do think she's wonderful as Vanessa here, and the new season will once again have her front and center, along with the men with whom she's had such intriguingly evolving relationships.

 

However, I find the trope of every single man being in love or lust with Vanessa boring and irritating.

 

[Sakura12]

Saw this and I'm very happy. She deserves recognition for her performance on this show.

 

Golden Globes 2016: Complete list of nominees

Actress in a TV series, drama

Caitriona Balfe, "Outlander"
Viola Davis, "How to Get Away with Murder"
Eva Green, "Penny Dreadful
Taraji P. Henson, "Empire"
Robin Wright, "House of Cards"

 

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-et-mn-golden-globes-2016-nominees-winners-list-story.html

[Roaster]

Go Eva!

 

Though I wish they'd give her more latitude to show her range on Penny Dreadful.  Most of her screen time is scowling at somebody or being possessed.

[Hamatron]

She got to be light and whimsical this year too, though! Like when she went shopping with Frankenstein and in that scene where the devil shows her how awesome her life could be if she went to the dark side.

That seance scene in the first season where she has that epic monologue though? That was when I really realized what a bad-ass actress she was.

[spaceghostess]

Yay! It's about time people (other than us) noticed the way EG kills it every episode.

Edited December 15, 2015 by spaceghostess