Doctrine of Labyrinths
Aug. 27th, 2013 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI’ve been meaning to write a post about Sarah Monette’s Doctrine of Labyrinths quartet for a long while now, because it is the perfect blend of awesome and problematic that ought to be productive of a thousand posts. If “This story fairly drips with angst and woe” makes you perk up and take notice, then man oh man, this may be the series for you.
My very favorite character doesn’t show up until the last book, Corambis, in which Monette basically managed to pile all my favorite things onto a single angst-ridden character: Kay, who was a leading figure in a battle for independence that just failed utterly when Kay’s would-be king (with whom Kay was secretly and unrequitedly in love) died in a magic spell gone horribly wrong, which also blinded Kay.
Blind, deprived of his cause, bound to the would-be king’s catafalque in a great hall in the middle of a city where people come and stare at him like a zoo animal - OH THE ANGST.
(This also highlights one of the more problematic aspects of the series, which is that it tends to eroticize the misery and vulnerability of the characters.)
But I’ve put off my reviews because, as appealing as I find the the worldbuilding and the endless angst, Monette’s handling of female characters has always troubled me - but in a way that I found hard to articulate. What is there to complain about in “Sarah Monette’s female characters are all so functional and efficient and on top of things”?
However, the article I hate Strong Female Characters has shaken a few thoughts loose. The capitalization is important here: the author is not complaining about strong female characters, who are well-written and well-rounded and important actors in their stories, but about the archetype of the Strong Female Character, who shows that she’s effective and can fight and thus circumvents feminist criticism about the tiresome commonality of damsels in distress - but nonetheless remains subsidiary.
(The article is worth reading. The key sentence, with which I agree wholeheartedly, is that “We need get away from the idea that sexism in fiction can be tackled by reliance on depiction of a single personality type, that you just need to write one female character per story right and you’ve done enough.”)
And this is what bothers me about most of Monette’s female characters in the Doctrine of Labyrinths (aside from Ginevra Thomson). They're generally Strong; you could not accuse, say, Mehitabel Parr of being a damsel in distress: she’s brisk and efficient and goes after what she wants.
But Monette’s strength lies in creating characters who are interesting because they’re angsty and tortured and make terrible and self-destructive decisions because their miserable pasts have messed up their senses of self-worth so badly. They may nonetheless be strong, in their own way; but there is no way to make "bound to a catafalque" fit into the box of Strong. And none of these qualities make for brisk efficiency.
And there is something really rather off-putting about the fact that briskness seems to be the most important indicator of a female character’s worth: that you can tell this is a good character because she isn’t going to take up too much narrative space. She will briskly do her duty in the story, and won’t take time away from the main characters’ angsty brooding.
My very favorite character doesn’t show up until the last book, Corambis, in which Monette basically managed to pile all my favorite things onto a single angst-ridden character: Kay, who was a leading figure in a battle for independence that just failed utterly when Kay’s would-be king (with whom Kay was secretly and unrequitedly in love) died in a magic spell gone horribly wrong, which also blinded Kay.
Blind, deprived of his cause, bound to the would-be king’s catafalque in a great hall in the middle of a city where people come and stare at him like a zoo animal - OH THE ANGST.
(This also highlights one of the more problematic aspects of the series, which is that it tends to eroticize the misery and vulnerability of the characters.)
But I’ve put off my reviews because, as appealing as I find the the worldbuilding and the endless angst, Monette’s handling of female characters has always troubled me - but in a way that I found hard to articulate. What is there to complain about in “Sarah Monette’s female characters are all so functional and efficient and on top of things”?
However, the article I hate Strong Female Characters has shaken a few thoughts loose. The capitalization is important here: the author is not complaining about strong female characters, who are well-written and well-rounded and important actors in their stories, but about the archetype of the Strong Female Character, who shows that she’s effective and can fight and thus circumvents feminist criticism about the tiresome commonality of damsels in distress - but nonetheless remains subsidiary.
(The article is worth reading. The key sentence, with which I agree wholeheartedly, is that “We need get away from the idea that sexism in fiction can be tackled by reliance on depiction of a single personality type, that you just need to write one female character per story right and you’ve done enough.”)
And this is what bothers me about most of Monette’s female characters in the Doctrine of Labyrinths (aside from Ginevra Thomson). They're generally Strong; you could not accuse, say, Mehitabel Parr of being a damsel in distress: she’s brisk and efficient and goes after what she wants.
But Monette’s strength lies in creating characters who are interesting because they’re angsty and tortured and make terrible and self-destructive decisions because their miserable pasts have messed up their senses of self-worth so badly. They may nonetheless be strong, in their own way; but there is no way to make "bound to a catafalque" fit into the box of Strong. And none of these qualities make for brisk efficiency.
And there is something really rather off-putting about the fact that briskness seems to be the most important indicator of a female character’s worth: that you can tell this is a good character because she isn’t going to take up too much narrative space. She will briskly do her duty in the story, and won’t take time away from the main characters’ angsty brooding.
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no subject
Date: 2013-08-27 05:40 pm (UTC)Also I really need to reread these books now.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-27 07:50 pm (UTC)But it never seems to have the same devastating psychological effect on her that Felix and Mildmay's tragic pasts have on them. Even the fact that she's being forced to spy doesn't seem to give her much angst.
It also doesn't help that The Mirador is, IMO, by far the weakest book in the series. None of them have very strong plots, but while reading The Mirador I often felt that it was not only not moving very fast, but actually going in circles.
The Mirador was also the book where I most disliked Felix. How could Gideon and Mildmay stand him? (Yes, yes, Mildmay's self-esteem issues.) Admittedly, unlike the reader, they were spared his 'I'm such a terrible person! I'm so horrible to everyone around me!" self-pity parties, but still, they had to deal with him being a terrible person who was horrible to everyone around him.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-28 04:04 am (UTC)It's odd about the gender politics. In a way Mildmay, and to a lesser extent Felix, are the designated damsels in distress and in need of some comfort to go with that hurt. Their suffering is central. They need to be rescued, frequently by each other. Which is in itself an interesting subversion of usual literary gender roles. But if men are both the tormented and the saviors of the tormented, women are just peripheral to an intense, male-only emotional landscape.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-28 01:23 pm (UTC)I've read that in early drafts of The Mirador Mehitabel and Mildmay were married, and I feel like giving him another intense emotional relationship would have let a lot of air and light into that book, and also would have made Mehitabel feel less peripheral.