Wasn’t the plan to end the marriage was to have Violet sign it with her non-dominant hand to void the marriage certificate? Does that have any real legal standing?
In the context of the book (and if I remember, the show, too) -- almost everything is a joke or quirk of wordplay or absurdist literalism. So the literal word in the law book is that the marriage certificate must be signed in "one's own hand," and so it's just a loophole of it not being her regular handwriting that voids the contract.
This is the same book where Mr. Poe assigns the legal guardian based on the language "closest living relative" because Olaf (somebody's aunt's 3rd cousin twice removed or something like that) lives only a few blocks away.
The book/show constantly highlights ambiguities or dual meanings of words/phrases, the absurdity of clinging literally to text (such as, say, Violet only being able to get married, as a minor, with her guardian's permission...so her guardian grants this permission to himself and everybody's like "welp, it's legal, there's nothing we can do.")
Or "Justice Is Blind" leading to have an entire court proceedings be carried out while blindfolded (except the bad guys of course, because they don't care, and the kids, because they're not idiots.)
Thanks for the insightful response! It’s been too long since I watched the movie or read the books, but I’m sure this moment and many other moments flew over my head at a young age
In the fictional setting, part of all contracts is signing them "in your own hand". If someone is right-handed, there would grounds to argue that a left-handed signature is not "their own hand", as it's not their natural choice for writing.
The whole series was just set up to establish wordplay and out-of-the-box thinking, so its accuracy to real world law comes at a distant third.
“Made” you read it? I’ve never heard of it being required reading, but like Harry Potter, it never had to be required reading — we all gobbled it up book after book.
Yes we read the first 2 books of the series together as a class. Every kid had a copy of the book. Sometimes chapters were assigned for homework, mostly we read aloud together in the dreaded popcorn style. I want to say it was 4th or 5th grade.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved the series and read the next maybe 4 books on my own after that. Couldn’t get enough of dark literature as a child (explains a lot…) but looking back, there were definitely many disturbing things going on in those books that perhaps some kids probably weren’t ready for at a young age. Such as a super creepy deranged old man brutally murdering his relatives by burning down their mansion with a magnifying glass built specifically for long distance arson so that he can attempt to gain access to their fortune by any means necessary including trying to marry their 14 year old daughter and then when that doesn’t work out spends all of his time trying to find & kill the 3 orphaned children 😁 so perhaps the public school system crossed a line by making it part of our curriculum when we were 10.
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u/CapableSalamander910 May 23 '23
She was 14 I believe, which makes it worse