Kindness, to the extent that it could be the defining characteristic of a human being, is a rare thing. For anyone unaware of her sexual prowess, this is likely to be the first thing to come to mind when thinking of Rose. Cruelty or indifference to it are the same thing to her, and equally intolerable. Rose is compassion incarnate.
Perhaps even rarer is someone possessing of such compassion and yet not allowing others to take advantage of them. It is a fine line between being a person full of compassion who is essentially a milksop, a mollycoddle, a doormat, and being a person who is equally compassionate and self-serving� And it is a wonderful person who can walk that line like a trapeze rope, dancing over it with an impossible social grace.
No, Rose is no pantywaist. And despite that a great concern of hers seems often to be what will make others happy, when she finds something that she wants, she'll stop at nothing to get it. I've often said of average or boring women that if they had been in Eve's place, we might still be in Eden. If Rose had been in Eve's place, the serpent would have been utterly unnecessary for things to turn out just as they did.
In fact, one could not have stopped Rose from eating the forbidden fruit, even if she were told the consequences of it. Rose is the sort who would weigh her options and decide that one taste of that fantastic fruit, one bite of that sweet thing would be worth the damnation of the human race, or at least life outside Eden. She would decide that life with the forbidden fruit could be an Eden in and of itself.
Perhaps she never belonged there anyway. Rose belongs nowhere where she must fall into line to be considered good or righteous. Rose is not the sort of woman who conforms to such antiquated ideals of women's purity. One has no difficulty imagining her moaning of orgasm or sucking on a penis, or for that matter stealing pornography or leaving a restaurant before the bill is paid. Despite logic, for one to witness it, it seems not that she has abandoned purity, rather that she has redefined it. That because of her existence and her embrace of such things as sex and theft, they are now what is pure. There are those who are defined by their actions, and there are those who define actions by performing them. Rose is the latter, and I'm proud of her for it.
Rose is the perfect demonstration of how a woman does not need to mimic a man to show her strength. I can easily imagine Rose gazing upon a slew of short haired feminazis, saying, "Yes, I can hear you roar. Does that make you women? I am woman, hear me fuck." Rose makes paradoxes of power and strength make sense. She's in control even as she is submitting, she is powerful even as she gives power away. This too, I am proud of her for.
But then, of course, I'm proud of her for almost everything. I'm proud of her for how she would stand up in a room alone, and dance to music that wasn't there. I'm proud of her for her humility despite her virtue. I'm even proud of her for how she is the sort of woman to dye her hair to match her outfit, then change her clothes a minute before leaving the house.
But most of all, I'm proud of the way that she'll always make me feel like whatever I've said, I haven't said enough� So I should probably quit before even not enough is too much for any reader but me.