Lulu Revisited

May 26, 2018

So the original story has Lulu as a young woman whose husband gets murdered. She surprises herself and everyone else by how little she cares. 

Lulu who has inherited a bunch of money spends her time having affairs with men and at least flirts with one other woman. Her second husband is disgusted by Lulu and it’s not even clear whether he knows his son is lusting after her. He tells Lulu to kill herself and gives her a gun. Lulu takes the gun but thinks to herself “You’ve got to be kidding.” So instead. she pops him- five times, in the back... On a lark she decides to work as a prostitute in London where on her first night she meets an untimely end when she invites a guy to spend the night and it turns out to be Jack the Ripper.

Here’s another ending:

London, Lulu has just invited Jack the Ripper to spend the night.

In her bedroom, after he pulls a knife, she surprises him by shooting him, first in his face, then in the back five times. Sounds familiar.

Lulu washes and leaves the crime scene, carrying two small bags.

Several men approach her in the street.

She shoots them in turn.

Lulu hires a livery cab. She instructs the driver to take her to, no surprise Liverpool.

It is the next morning; she buys modest clothing and boards a train to Bristol. From Bristol she boards a boat for Marseille.

Her French is passable.

Lulu entertains the idea of entering a convent.

She buys a journal and writes about a life of repentance and reflection. After a few hours of this, Lulu decides it’s way too boring. She muses about opening a brothel. She then thinks of how to obtain the money she inherited- too many clues for the authorities to find her. She decides to forfeit that money, at least for now.

She buys canvas and oils. Lulu is prolific turning out painting after painting, at first they are violent seascapes thick with three dimensional green gobs of paint. Her use of color and composition are striking, her pain, her buried feeling emerge from her depths. Lulu is in the agony of creation, she is quite mad; she writes her first novel, “Frankenstein Revisited,” it is part autobiography but mostly about Lulu falling in love with the monster who essentially becomes a prince charming, Beauty and the Beast kind of thing. Really Lulu is learning to love herself.

She learns to garden and cook.

She had enough gold hidden in her luggage to buy a small cottage in the midst of nowhere. Forty days, forty paintings. Forty months, forty short stories. Forty years, forty novels and Lulu has forgiven herself. She goes to Mass every morning.

She turns herself in. At the murder trials she is hailed as a heroine who ridded London of Jack the Ripper. She is however found guilty; after all she confessed to the murders of her first husband and the men who accosted her on that fateful post midnight flight from Jack’s corpse.

As she is lead away, Lulu has a heart attack. She recovers in prison where she works in the kitchen cleaning. Eventually at the age of 75 she is promoted to cook.

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Lulu becomes a model of helpfulness and charity.