Category: S1Ep18: The Third Lorelai

“$250 000”

LORELAI: You lost out on $250,000 today.
RORY: What?!

Trix never said how much she was giving Rory in the trust fund, so I’m not sure where Lorelai got the figure of $250 000 from. Maybe Trix told her offscreen, or Lorelai has just added up everything Rory needs for her education and decided it must be around that amount. I guess we have to accept the figure as something Lorelai knows and we don’t.

Trix originally intended the trust fund to be something Rory could access when she was twenty-five. It isn’t clear whether Rory is still getting that arrangement, or whether Trix was so angered that she decided not to give her any trust fund at all.

She did say that she now thinks “that trust fund” was a bad idea, sounding as if she had decided against any trust fund. However, as she was angry at Emily and Lorelai, it doesn’t seem fair to punish Rory for their behaviour (she specifically says she thinks Rory is mature enough to handle the money).

Trix seems to be leaving Hartford before consulting a lawyer, which looks bad, but she’s taking a train, which might mean that when she said “into town” she meant New York, which looks good.

Fergie

TRIX: Raising your voice during high tea, whoever heard of such a thing? It’s like Fergie all over again.

Trix is referring to Sarah, Duchess of York (born Sarah Ferguson in 1959), a British royal known as “Fergie” by the British press. She married Prince Andrew in 1986; after having two daughters, they separated in 1992, and divorced in 1996.

Fergie’s demeanour as a royal was always very casual, and she could be loud and exuberant socially, which people either found a breath of fresh air, or like Trix, rather vulgar. We can see from her comment that Trix has been in high society in London, although the fact that she calls the duchess by her “press name” betrays that she doesn’t really know her at all.

Rose tea

LORELAI: Rose tea. That’s funny. That’s not really tea, is it? It’s like rose petals in hot water. More like a bad floral arrangement.

Lorelai is clearly referring to rose petal tea, or rosebud tea, rather than rose-hip tea which is made from the fruit of the rose bush instead of its flowers. Despite her distaste for the idea, rose petal tea has many health benefits.

The Fight Between Paris and Rory

Paris finds out that not only does Tristan not want to date her again, even though their evening together seemed to go fairly well, but that it was Rory’s idea that he ask her out. She immediately throws a fit, accusing Rory of giving Paris her “cast offs”, so she’s obviously been quite aware of Tristan’s attraction to Rory.

Whenever Paris and Rory seemed to be becoming friends, something would happen to ruin it. Of course Rory could never do anything to hurt Paris, and would instantly forgive her whenever she hurt Rory, so the only way it could happen was for Paris to behave in a completely insane way, where she got angry over almost nothing, and would hold a grudge about it for an inordinate time.

“Let them eat cake”

PARIS: God, this is so weird. I can’t stop smiling.
RORY: Good, then it’s a good time to talk about our over-taxed peasants.
PARIS: Oh, let them eat cake.

Paris is referring to Marie Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI, and the last queen of France before the French Revolution.

“Let them eat cake” is a phrase popularly ascribed to Marie Antoinette upon being told the peasants were starving and had no bread to eat. The phrase supposedly demonstrates either an indifference to their plight, or a complete lack of understanding of it. It doesn’t fit with what we know of Marie Antoinette, who was quite concerned with the poor, and donated generously to charitable causes.

She almost certainly did not say it. It comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions (1782), where he mentions a “great princess” who once said it. Not only does he not name the princess, but that part of his autobiography covers the years when Marie Antoinette would have been a little girl in Austria. He may have invented the anecdote entirely.

“Women shouldn’t drive”

TRIX: I’ve ordered a car; women shouldn’t drive. Are you ready? [heads for the door]

Trix told Lorelai that she approved of her working, which she thought was good for a woman. However, she apparently doesn’t think women should drive. I guess they should only get jobs on a public transport route, or within walking distance.

It’s also not clear why Trix needed to order a car – in Love and War and Snow, Emily sent their chauffeur (?) Lance to pick Rory up from school. Did they sack Lance, or is Sunday his day off?

Whore of Babylon

EMILY: I don’t care if she [Trix] demeans me and looks down on me. I don’t care if she thinks I’ve tarnished the Gilmore name. I don’t care if she thinks I’m the Whore of Babylon.

The Whore of Babylon is is a mythological female figure mentioned in the book of Revelations in the Bible. Her full name is given as Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. This is handily written on her forehead, presumably in fairly small writing so it can all fit.

This “great whore” is described as lavishly dressed, drinking the blood of saints and martyrs in a jewelled cup, and sitting on a scarlet beast of blasphemy, with seven heads and ten horns. Revelations explains that the seven heads mean seven mountains and seven kings, while the ten horns are ten further kings who will receive power for a short time, while the woman stands for a great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.

The Great Beast is regarded as the Antichrist, and the Whore of Babylon is usually taken by biblical scholars to mean Rome, or the Roman Empire, with the seven mountains the seven hills of Rome. Many modern scholars point out that the Great Whore is more likely to be Jerusalem, which also sits on seven hills. The seventeen kings are quite unidentifiable in either case.

Although Emily takes the Whore of Babylon to be a sexual figure, which is the way most people probably understand it, the frank sensuality of the image is symbolic of blasphemy and pagan idolatry – the Bible often talks about “whoring after idols” when it means that people are chasing after false gods. (In other words, they are being unfaithful to God and their religion, like a bride cheating on her husband).

Gaslight

LORELAI: Hey – [looks at Sookie’s watch] Aw! No! I’ve got to go home.
SOOKIE: Why? What are you doing?
LORELAI: I have to change, and go to tea with Gran and the cast of Gaslight.

Gaslight is a 1944 mystery thriller film directed by George Cukor, and adapted from the successful 1938 play Gas Light by British dramatist Patrick Hamilton.

Set mostly in Edwardian London, the film is about a woman named Paula (Ingrid Bergman) whose husband Gregory (Charles Boyer) tries to convince her that she is going insane as part of a fiendish criminal scheme: one of his methods is to contintually turn down the gas lighting in the house and tell her that only she can see it flickering.

Because of the film, the term gaslighting now refers to a form of psychological abuse where the abuser gradually manipulates the victim into doubting their own sanity, thus making them more dependent on the abuser. Lorelai is saying that’s exactly what her mother is doing to her.

Gaslight was the #13 film of 1944 and well-received by critics. It won two Academy Awards, including a Best Actress for Ingrid Bergman.

According to the town clock they walk past, it is around 11.35 am when Lorelai and Sookie leave the flower shop. Lorelai seems to need an inordinate amount of time to get changed so she can be in Hartford for afternoon tea, which is usually somewhere between 4 and 6 pm.