Catwoman Black & White: Perfect Gem

Perfect Gem

Few things demonstrate a failure to understand Catwoman’s motivations and character like a writer who insists on her coming from poverty.  The associations Selina formed in Cattitude between luxury and the trappings of wealth and the love and safety of her parents home create the perfect foundations for a thief of her class and specialization, and her growth beyond it once she found real love with Bruce is demonstrated with particular poignancy when she finds one of those old gems in her Swiss deposit box in Vault:

I looked through the rest of the contents: some cash, that Egyptian necklace, a ruby necklace, an emerald necklace, some canary earrings, some other canary earrings, a sapphire… Oh.

It was a sapphire brooch, a large sapphire brooch, Van Cleef and Arpels, invisible mount.  I’d taken it because it was so similar to the earrings I’d left that night at Cartier.  Our first Cartier encounter.  Our first kiss.  Our first Christmas…  I’d taken an awful ruby collar that was an absolute horror, destined to be broken down into a half dozen bracelets by my European contacts.  But while I was in the vault, I just happened to see these wonderful earrings, sapphire petals around a diamond center, not too big, not too small, perfect for my coloring.  But then when Batman showed up, after that kiss, I… I just left it all.  A year later I saw the brooch in the VCA window, sapphire petals bordered with diamonds around a diamond center.  I had to have it.  I dropped everything else I was working on until I had this brooch in my hands.  At the time, something so valuable and so linked to that kiss seemed incredibly… something.  Precious.  Significant.  Powerful… Something.

Now it was just a piece of jewelry, a beautiful piece but no different from a thousand others.  If I was still the woman I was then, I would let Igor sell it and pick up a few more acres for the Catitat.  There was no need to be clinging to this one brooch like a magic talisman…  But then, when I had been that woman, selling this piece was unthinkable.

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Tags: catwoman, balent costume, claws

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