The OG Cathedral
OGEE, n., adj. and OGIVE, n., adj. I first heard the word “ogee” while taking a class about Gothic art and architecture in college, and I had absolutely no idea what it meant. I couldn’t parse it at all. I remember thinking, “Surely my extremely upper-crust white British art history professor is not saying OG?” She wasn’t, of course. Those words don’t have the same stress pattern, and it made no sense in context. My professor was saying “ogee,” which is the fancy technical term for what normal people might call a Gothic arch, that is, one that looks like the doors to Notre-Dame in this picture:
(Yes, I could have provided a more professional photo of this frequently photographed international landmark, but I thought it would be more… personal? if I used this thoroughly mediocre one that I took myself as a tiny baby visiting Paris in 2005.)
“Ogee” is of uncertain origin in English, but it perhaps comes from the French word “ogive,” meaning the same shape. We also have the word “ogive” in English, because why not? (In English, “ogive” rhymes with “dive” and the g makes the sound in “gin.”) Both words refer not only to the shape of the doors in the photo above, but also to the particular shape of vaults in Gothic architecture shown below, and the arcades created by those vaults:
(Here’s some of the vaulted ceiling of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Again, this is a photo taken when I was a tiny baby.)
The Trésor de la langue française indicates an uncertain origin for “ogive,” but it might come from Spanish (through Arabic) algibe/aljibe, meaning “cistern,” since cisterns often have vaulted ceilings. (Though cistern ceilings are usually simple rounded arches.) But there’s little attestation of this word in texts before the 1600s, so probably not. More likely, according to the TLF, the Latin word obviatum, “that which goes against,” is the root of both ogee and ogive, since the two arches in an ogive vault brace against each other.
This word has been on my mind since in my Capital-R Romance reading, I’ve been oh-so-slowly listening to Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, which has a lot of very detailed descriptions of the titular cathedral and Gothic architecture in general. In classic Hugo fashion, some chapters of Notre-Dame are essays where the characters and plot of the novel are completely absent, and I just got through a famous (infamous?) one called “Paris à vol d’oiseau” (A Bird’s Eye View of Paris), in which he maps out medieval Paris in prose. This is not the book’s most thrilling chapter, but it’s essential to the novel’s material impact on the world—Hugo’s interest in and praise for Paris’s crumbling medieval monuments, especially Notre-Dame, sparked a mid-nineteenth-century campaign to restore the cathedral and other historic sites around France.
In small-r romance, here’s what I’ve read recently:
The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (m/f, both cis and bi, historical) by Cat Sebastian. Two chaotic bisexuals falling in love via blackmail letters, going on the run for murder, then roaming the country doing Robin Hood crimes together—this book was made for me. And Marian had a life-threatening pregnancy and can’t risk another one and the hero respects and understands that, so they have sex that isn’t PIV sex, which is the obvious solution and one that I have rarely seen in historical romance. So as a person who had life-threatening pregnancies who flinches every time a histrom heroine who almost died from intercourse blithely gets dicked down because ~True Love~, I am here to say: thank God for Cat Sebastian. In addition to that tailored-just-for-me content, this also has lovely prose and a sweet, cheerful man who is head over heels for a prickly, ill-tempered woman, which, well, that also feels tailored just for me. I want to read this again just thinking about it. Content guidance from the author.
The Love Hypothesis (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary) by Ali Hazelwood. This mini-review is a funny one because I liked this book but I absolutely understand why people wouldn’t. I was initially resistant because of the academic (grad school, no less) setting, until a friend with a similar degree assured me the setting was written fairly well, except for an extraordinarily optimistic view of how quickly, thoroughly, and publicly sexual harassment complaints might be dealt with. (Sigh.) And I was resistant because of the book’s fanfiction connection as well, not because I don’t like fanfiction—longtime readers might know that I love it dearly and have written quite a lot—but because I have different views of the characters this book is adapting. (In fandom speak, I’m not a reylo and the serial numbers weren’t sufficiently filed off.) The fake-dating premise of this book is—as basically all non-celebrity fake-dating premises are—tissue-thin and bonkers, but that never puts me off. So, after all those caveats, I confess that reading this was a ton of fun. It was fast and easy in the way of the best fanfiction, but also really focused on the characters and their feelings, also in the way of the best fanfiction. Your mileage may vary. Content guidance from the author.
After Dark with the Duke (m/f, both cis and het, historical) by Julie Anne Long. This has a whimsical setting—a boarding house on the Thames whose owners, staff, and residents form a strange and lovable little family. It hosts a famous war hero elevated to the rank of duke for his valor and a disgraced opera singer in hiding from a mob who believes she instigated a duel between two young men who were rivals for her affection. Both of these people are hemmed in by their reputations, the duke by his honor and the opera singer by her dishonor. They hate each other at first and then he ends up teaching her Italian, which she only knows by ear and doesn’t understand, and the slow-dawning recognition that they actually really like each other is done beautifully. And they express themselves via example sentences in the language lessons! It’s been too many weeks of babycare since I read this and I can’t remember enough for content guidance, apologies.
Off Limits (bi f/lesbian f, both cis, contemporary) by Vanessa North. I love a character leading a double life. By day Nathalie is the ultra-professional concierge at the Thorns, a private club in New York with an elite, mostly sapphic membership, and by night she’s Nat, lead singer of the punk band Vertical Smile, known for their very sexy live show. She’d get fired if her employer knew she was violating the professionalism standards of her contract, and she’d definitely get fired if they knew she was starting a relationship with event planner and Hollywood scion Bex Horvath. But Bex and Nat can’t stay away from each other, so things get messy. This is so hot and I loved both Nat and Bex. The supporting characters are all wonderful and this book shows queer people staying friends with their exes in a way that feels so real. Content guidance: self-harm and a suicide attempt by a supporting character, fat-shaming from one main character’s family, sex.
And in books that are neither Romance nor romance, my beloved and I listened to an audiobook of Sara A. Mueller’s fantasy novel The Bone Orchard, which his book club selected. I wouldn’t have picked this book up on my own—there’s infanticide in it, which, as a person spending all their time caring for and obsessing over a baby, is very upsetting!—but I ended up finding the book compelling. The protagonist is a woman who has both suffered and been complicit in atrocities; she has coped with the trauma by literally compartmentalizing, splitting herself into different bodies/selves, which are named after their function: “Pride,” “Shame,” and “Desire,” for example. This led to a lot of joking in our household about which parts of our selves we would split off and delegate if we had the power—the part that feels anxiety, the part that has to spend thirty minutes rocking the baby back to sleep at three in the morning, etc. Ultimately we decided it was too cruel to create a being of pure anxiety. Then again, it’s also very cruel to create a being designed to feel your shame for you.
The way the main character divides herself so she won’t have to feel or think about violent or painful things echoes how the empire in the book sustains itself on prosperity exploited from territories conquered by a general so vicious and sadistic that he is forbidden from returning to the capital. Violence undergirds the empire, but it’s distant, separate, easy to pretend away. Anyway, The Bone Orchard gave us a lot to talk about other than babycare, and conversation topics are a scarce and precious resource these days.
Word Suitcase will continue to be on a once-a-month-if-I-can schedule because taking care of a baby is, as it turns out, a lot of work. It’s weird how not one single person or book or article or forum post or tweet told me that. Somebody should write about it.
I hope to get my shit together enough some day to return to an every-other-week schedule, but for now, I’ll be back in your inbox in August, friends. Until then, I hope July is treating you right!
