ABSTRACT
The bleakest depiction of femininity on Revolver is, of course, Eleanor Rigby, whose story makes even Father Mackenzie's existence enviable by comparison -he, at least, is still alive at the end of the song. Revolver is hardly the only music that centres around masculinist experience yet still manages to be meaningful to women fans. Female fans are accustomed to navigating a 'youth culture' that is often actually 'boy culture'; whether or not they consciously recognize it, the onus is invariably on girls to find ways of making cultural institutions fit them. By foregrounding the kind of divided identity typical of women's experience, Aretha Franklin turns her death into a rhapsodic experience, attends her own funeral, and can still watch the lonely people. Franklin's recording of 'Eleanor Rigby' doesn't so much deny the story set forth by the Beatles as comment on it, intersecting with the original song but also departing from it.
