Pygmalion and Electra
Cassandra Luthor smiled charmingly as she inclined her head in a polite nod. "Thank you, Professor Rice. Doctor Isley's instruction on transpiration was very enlightening, but I don't think I really understood everything she was trying to tell me about photosynthesis. Your explanation with regards to chloroplasts and mitochondria definitely helped. I'll talk to day after tomorrow?"
"Of course, Cassandra. You're more than welcome. Take care." Emily Rice tried her best not to think about the girl's bizarre transformation as she quickly signed off their little video conference on her laptop. It was easier to control her unease at the girl's rapid changes while they were focused on instruction. At the moment, the best she could do was reconcile herself to the changes where Cassandra couldn't effectively read her mind and see through any lie.
She tapped away at the keyboard on her laptop from her desk at home, reviewing plant biology for their next session, as she took a sip of coffee. From a more selfish perspective, she felt that starting to tutor Cassandra only
after Mr. Luthor had effectively reshaped his daughter in his own image would have been much easier. But that would be a disservice to the shy, awkward, but lovely girl that she'd seen in the few months they'd worked together. And in all honesty, she wasn't sure she could have dealt with teaching Jinx much longer.
Emily sighed, closing the future lesson as she started up a search on child psychology instead. She was a physicist, and didn't intend to risk displeasing Lex Luthor by trying to play psychologist in a role she was unqualified for, but a bit of insight into the situation wouldn't go amiss. It had been helpful in dealing with Jinx- helpful enough that Luthor had been impressed enough to pull out all the stops to recruit her in tutoring his daughter. She smiled ruefully. Whatever her other issues, Jinx was clearly a very lonely girl. She had taken an almost sisterly interest in Cassandra in the past that was distant but incredibly telling given Jinx's normal interactions with people, she hoped the younger Luthor's sudden ability to dance social rings around perhaps 99% of the world didn't drive the two young women apart.
Her skimming paused as she read up on the 'Pygmalion Effect'. It was a study conducted in the late sixties that concluded that if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from a child, the child's performance was enhanced. Simple enough, and some explanation for Cassandra's high performance- there was little question that whatever his sins Lex Luthor loved and prized his adopted daughter, and she was the ultimate 'daddy's girl', practically hanging on his every word. The imagery itself might have held more truth than the definition however.
The image of Lex Luthor gazing on an abstract stone roughly shaped as an awkward and terrified savage, then picking up a chisel and slowly carving away with a sort of meticulous dedication until he had a flawless statue of a refined genius socialite in it's place was frightening. Of course, Cassandra was clearly always something special, which is why Luthor wanted her... But didn't a great sculptor say they could see the image of their statue in the raw stone before even touching a chisel?
Emily found the change unsettling, but she had no illusions that she could have successfully preserved Cassandra's more innocent and unsophisticated nature if her father planned otherwise. Lex Luthor's charisma and intellect was so intense that being in the same room with him was difficult for adults. Her image strayed to another psychological term linked to the article, 'Electra complex', and she smiled at the dim reflection of herself in the laptop window. Part of getting older was learning to accept your own issues.
"Let's be honest with ourselves, Emily. 'Difficult' is not really the word to use for when you and him are in the same room together. Thank goodness I don't think that is really what's going on with Cassandra. I think she'd know, and I think you'd have seen that when she wasn't as skilled at deception. You find it easy to make that assumption because..." Emily blushed. "Because if it were you instead of Cassandra, it might not be so innocent."
God, being in the same room as him, and listening to his voice... He had to have taken lessons at one point or another, because if Lex Luthor hadn't decided to revolutionize business and science, he could have easily made a fortune as an actor. He had an almost hypnotic voice and a dominating presence that reminded her most of Orson Welles... His wit and sense of humor? It was hard to put a name to it, but if she had to she'd say Buster Keaton. There was a calculated but effective air to everything with Lex Luthor. Maybe that came from his engineering genius.
The more sensible part of her dreaded working as closely with him again as they had been while teaching Cassandra culture and etiquette. The part that had been pining after an older married man like Professor Stein for five years suggested that it would be so much easier to act as Cassandra's tutor if she quit her position at Vandermeer and worked for Luthor directly. The fact that she might get to hear Luthor teach his daughter every day, and maybe get such a wonderful father to consider her in a more than professional capacity, had nothing to do with it... He clearly saw something in Emily already, didn't he?
She rapped the side of her head, closed the psychology article she'd been looking at, shut down her computer, and decided to go to the lab to do some tests on her kryptonite. Which admittedly would be even easier to study at LexCorp. "Lex Luthor is a dangerous man who attracts dangerous situations, Emily. Which is not a good thing! I'm amazed that crazy Sutton woman hasn't made a play for him."
