Dead Lauras
My first Dead Laura was Laura Palmer (from Twin Peaks). That beauty with darkness surrounding her…
She is already dead when we are introduced to her, although we fall in love with her anyway. She is us — she is every girl, forced into other people’s ideas of who she is.
“I shall never forget the weekend Laura died…”
My second Dead Laura was Laura Hunt (from the 1944 film Laura).
She is also already (believed to be) dead as well when we meet her, and the detective investigating falls in love with her. She didn’t conform to the desires of the man who coveted her, so he killed her. I always felt that David Lynch drew heavily from this film for Twin Peaks: both have themes of identity/being idealized (an illusion of who someone really is) and obsession (obsession over a dead girl named Laura).
“A dead woman is utterly incapable of offering up even the most cursory contradiction to the narratives that entomb her.”
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My next Dead Laura was Laura Fairlie (from The Woman in White). Another girl believed to be dead when we first hear her story…
Innocent, beautiful heiress — she was coveted by a powerful, vile man, who used her, drugged her, and had her locked away in an asylum — claiming her inheritance.
From this story, I came across another Dead Laura: Laura Wishart (from Jasper Jones). Discovering her death (suicide) is the event that begins the story. Over the course of the book, it is revealed that Laura’s father, Pete Wishheart, raped and abused her. Her purity was the flame that the darkness was drawn to once again…
We want all of our Lauras to prevail, to triumph over the darkness they are surrounded by. Idealized, coveted, defiled, and finally murdered — our Lauras are stripped of everything they (the powerful men) wanted. Laura Fairlie does finally prevail. Laura Hunt does, but mainly by proving she is nothing like the idealized version of herself. (She is a real flesh-and-blood person, who is not perfect, who makes mistakes.) Laura Wishart is dead. She triumphed, in a way, by refusing to stay in an intolerable situation. And in Twin Peaks, our beloved Laura Palmer, well, I haven’t watched the new series yet, but I’m rooting for her…
Happy birthday, Laura Palmer
July 22, 1971
