No hints on the title in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, but I have yet to give up. I have begun piecing together everything I know that could possibly relate to it, and I am in the process of disecting my information- bit by bit.
I was inspired to begin out of nothing when the word "elegance" came up. Though I'm nearly positive (though you can never be sure, right?)that the small mention of the word really had nothing to do with the titile, seeing as the context before and after offered nothing more, it sparked a possibility in my mind.
Renee, the widow and concierge in her fifties, is anything but elegant, and she will be the first to inform you of that. In fact, she talks about her disgusting and unattractive characteristics so often that one may be convinced that she enjoys this about herself, or atleast is proud of it.
Actually, thinking about this for the first time, she could be proud of it. But I promised myself I'd stay on topic this week.
Anyway, though on the outside Renee- from what she's told the reader- is really quite revolting, she is totally different on the inside. She secretly devours the arts, and has extreme appreciation for the tiny, flawless, "elegant" aspects of life in the seemingly small world surrounding her. She takes intense notice of le petit choses, or little things that the poshest of parisians wouldn't look twice at.
But I think she's afraid of being more than the downer, lonely little concierge of Number 7 Rue de Grenelle (I think that's how you spell it!). She knows a lot more than the world outside her appartment and her cat, Leo- but she is reluctant to change. She sees herself as a hedgehog- spiky, gross, and altogether rather unpleasent- but she herself contains more than a few drops of elegance.
Embrace the elegance trapped inside your hedgehog-shaped shell, Renee!
Of course, none of this has anything to do with Paloma. Renee does seem to narrate slightly more often than Paloma does...
I hope my theory isn't totally off.
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sigh. i do love renee so much. i think you are onto something. i also think that maybe part of this is thinking about what elegance itself means...is it an outer or an inner characteristic? I just finished reading a book called "The Lacuna" which means "the missing piece" and in the story it talks about how there is always a missing piece of a person that we don't know...and therefore, we can't make snap judgements, etc. I love the life of renee that people don't know--and kind of love the fact that she doesn't flaunt it...that she just soaks up these small beauties in life and is fed by them. i could talk about her for hours.
ReplyDeleteWow, I have a lot of catching up to do. This is elegantly written, speaking of elegance. I must confess my affection for the hedgehog (the animal as well as the metaphor). The use of the word is a term of endearment, as far as I'm concerned. I suppose the title "Elegance of the Hedgehog" confirms this. Keep on...
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ReplyDeleteI think your blog is very interesting. And I was very surprised that you wrote about this book because this summer I saw the movie of this book. Personally what I enjoyed the most about the movie was the changing of the concierge from the beginning to the end of the movie. I also liked when the little girl went to see the concierge and how more comfortable and peaceful she was with the concierge than with her parents and her sister. And in the concierge she felt understood and liked.
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