Tabula Rasa

I wanted to look more carefully at the impolite friend in Buffy and Northanger Abbey. Although, we had been focusing completely on Willow during class, I thought looking at Giles’ role would be interesting as well. In this episode, we find out that he has decided to leave Buffy for good and return to England. He has a very difficult time with this decision, but believes that he is doing the right thing in order for Buffy to gain some independence. In many ways, Buffy sees this as betrayal and abandonment and has difficulty understanding why Giles is leaving. From Buffy’s perspective, Giles has become the impolite friend by leaving her at such a time, just as Willow is the ‘bad’ friend for using magic on Tara and Buffy. Both Willow and Giles believe, wholeheartedly, that they are doing the right thing, however, each is seen as the ‘enemy’ for doing it. However, there is a significant difference between them, Giles is actually doing the right thing (because every heroine needs to stand alone), while Willow is not. This distinction, although very clear to the audience, is not necessarily clear to the characters. In fact, Buffy hardly seems concerned with the poor choices that Willow has made and it is only Tara that shows the viewers the extent of Willow’s mistakes. My question, therefore, is what exactly makes an ‘impolite friend’? Based on Northanger Abbey, the distinction is clear: there are friends that follow the rules of society and those that only pretend to. The first set will always help you do what is right, while the others will try and lead you astray. The distinction is very black and white, leaving very little room for misinterpretation, making each character perfectly fit one mold or the other. However, Buffy has a much more complex set of societal rules, which sometimes makes it very difficult to distinguish between the good friend and the bad. Willow is one of Buffy’s best friends and although the viewer acknowledges that what she did was wrong, it is impossible to dismiss her based on her error. This is made extremely clear as the season ends and Willow turns ‘evil’, although, ‘out of control’ might be a more accurate term for her change. We never forget, as viewers, that Willow is a good person and that there is a reason that she is friends with Buffy. She may have been misguided for a time, but Buffy never gives up on her and always remains her true friend. Isabella, however, the reader never likes and never supports in anyway, or at least, I never did. Jane Austen makes it very clear that she is a manipulative social climber who does not value friendship or any other social etiquette. The reader never forgets that she is not Catherine’s true friend, even though Catherine believes that she is and has faith in her. This distinction between Willow and Isabella, however subtly portrayed by the director/author, completely changes how each character fills the role of the ‘impolite friend”. Although Willow does portray an element of ‘evilness’, I don’t think that she is truly the impolite friend because she only ever acts because she believes that she is doing the right thing. I do not think this of Isabelle. I think that she knows exactly what she’s doing and is doing it only for her own personal gain, rather than the benefit of others.