OH NGAIO MARSH NO
Sep. 9th, 2010 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerTuesday was idyllic, sunny and warm, so I went to Riccarton Bush and fed the ducks.
Mostly, though, it's been rainy, and the shops have been closed and open briefly then closed again, on account of earthquake damage and aftershocks, so I've been sitting in the kitchen reading Ngaio Marsh.
Marsh wrote murder mysteries, cozy mysteries a la Agatha Christie (according to reviewers; I've never read Christie); after Katherine Mansfield she's probably New Zealand's most famous author. (And you know something great about New Zealand? They're such a young country that they have a tremendously high proportion of famous women.)
Anyway, murder mysteries. I can't say if the mystery part is well-constructed, because I never guess the murderer in any murder mystery ever, but the pacing is excellent (as in, "I could go out and sightsee in this fantastic country I may never see again...or I could find out who killed Cara Quayne. Obviously Miss Quayne is more important").
The characters are quite well done too. Generally Marsh portrays her characters with sympathy: even sad-sack drunks and spinsters clinging to Victorian gentility are treated kindly. There's a remarkable lack of sexism in her books, too, especially given she was writing from the thirties to the seventies. In Died in the Wool Marsh gives a multi-faceted, nuanced portrait of a female MP: generous, politically talented, but deeply flawed; a lot of authors couldn't manage such a subtle portrait of a powerful woman today.
Unfortunately this sympathy does not extend forever. Although Marsh is remarkably lacking in sexism (possibly because she's a woman herself?), she's plentifully furnished with the other prejudices of her time. The first chapter of Died in the Wool involves a Japanese character, and it's all Jap this and Jap that; the book would be insupportable if he didn't disappear after that chapter. A couple of her later books have gay characters, or rather characters who are through stereotype heavily implied to be gay: they flit, gush, call everyone darling, and read Wilde and Andre Gide.
This, however, is better than her early attempt at a gay couple in Death in Ecstacy. They exist, I think, to show that the pagan cult where the murder took place is Sinisterly Degenerate, and their appearances tend to go something like this (not a direct quote, but rather a concentrated paraphrase):
OH NGAIO MARSH NO. The sympathy with which you treat decaying spinster aunts and aging tyrannical actors! Your kindness to even uncouth American characters! (Even if you think we pronounce terrible turrible.) Your not entirely successful but nonetheless laudable attempt to make Maori characters who were more than (noble or otherwise) savages! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?
It's too much, I know, to expect authors to transcend their times in all things. But it's still awful to see them wallowing in bigotry, and doubly so when the author seems in every other way a decent and generous soul.
(Skip Death in Ecstasy. But Died in the Wool, beyond the distasteful first chapter, is still worth reading.)
Mostly, though, it's been rainy, and the shops have been closed and open briefly then closed again, on account of earthquake damage and aftershocks, so I've been sitting in the kitchen reading Ngaio Marsh.
Marsh wrote murder mysteries, cozy mysteries a la Agatha Christie (according to reviewers; I've never read Christie); after Katherine Mansfield she's probably New Zealand's most famous author. (And you know something great about New Zealand? They're such a young country that they have a tremendously high proportion of famous women.)
Anyway, murder mysteries. I can't say if the mystery part is well-constructed, because I never guess the murderer in any murder mystery ever, but the pacing is excellent (as in, "I could go out and sightsee in this fantastic country I may never see again...or I could find out who killed Cara Quayne. Obviously Miss Quayne is more important").
The characters are quite well done too. Generally Marsh portrays her characters with sympathy: even sad-sack drunks and spinsters clinging to Victorian gentility are treated kindly. There's a remarkable lack of sexism in her books, too, especially given she was writing from the thirties to the seventies. In Died in the Wool Marsh gives a multi-faceted, nuanced portrait of a female MP: generous, politically talented, but deeply flawed; a lot of authors couldn't manage such a subtle portrait of a powerful woman today.
Unfortunately this sympathy does not extend forever. Although Marsh is remarkably lacking in sexism (possibly because she's a woman herself?), she's plentifully furnished with the other prejudices of her time. The first chapter of Died in the Wool involves a Japanese character, and it's all Jap this and Jap that; the book would be insupportable if he didn't disappear after that chapter. A couple of her later books have gay characters, or rather characters who are through stereotype heavily implied to be gay: they flit, gush, call everyone darling, and read Wilde and Andre Gide.
This, however, is better than her early attempt at a gay couple in Death in Ecstacy. They exist, I think, to show that the pagan cult where the murder took place is Sinisterly Degenerate, and their appearances tend to go something like this (not a direct quote, but rather a concentrated paraphrase):
The odious Claude minced into the room. "Hello," he lisped. "Inspector! You look particularly dashing today!" And then he saw the woman's corpse on the floor and collapsed shrieking incoherently.
"What a despicable creature it is," murmured the right-thinking onlooker. "Do you think he killed her?"
"I would put no infamy past his ilk," said the manly inspector, "except that one of his kind doubtless wouldn't have the guts to do it."
OH NGAIO MARSH NO. The sympathy with which you treat decaying spinster aunts and aging tyrannical actors! Your kindness to even uncouth American characters! (Even if you think we pronounce terrible turrible.) Your not entirely successful but nonetheless laudable attempt to make Maori characters who were more than (noble or otherwise) savages! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?
It's too much, I know, to expect authors to transcend their times in all things. But it's still awful to see them wallowing in bigotry, and doubly so when the author seems in every other way a decent and generous soul.
(Skip Death in Ecstasy. But Died in the Wool, beyond the distasteful first chapter, is still worth reading.)
