Beyond Selidor

Day Thirty: Whatever you’d like!

Today, I'd like to close off this meme with a recommendation. If you like stories about women, if you like to focus on relationships between girls and women that are collaborative and compassionate, rather than antagonistic and competitive, if you are sick of the way fandom (and the world at large) elevates individual women by tearing other women down, go to ladybusiness. There you will find excellent commentary, so many book, TV show and film recommendations that you won't know what to buy next, and a welcoming, friendly community. They also run a sideblog on Tumblr called thefriendshipzone, which focuses on instances of female friendship.

Honestly, ladybusiness was my find of the year. I am so happy it exists. When I am talking about women's stories, and about feminism, that is what I mean.

Day Twenty-Eight: Favourite female writer (television, books, movies, etc.)

Kate Elliott

She's my favourite because her books are wonderful, her female characters are excellent, and she is empathetic and thoughtful about the wider context of her work. But above all, I love her for this:

Even in patriarchal societies of the past (and present!), women who might otherwise have been banned by custom or law from partaking in the public life of politics, power, learning, work and so on still had personalities. I can’t emphasize this enough. People–even women!–have personalities regardless of how much or how little political power they have. People can live a quiet life of daily work out of the public eye, and still have personalities. Really! They can still matter to those around them, they can matter to themselves, and they can influence events in orthogonal ways that any self respecting writer can easily dream up.

Furthermore, with a little careful study of history, one discovers that women found ways to accomplish plenty of “things” big and small, personal and political. Maybe they did it behind a screen, or around the corner, or in the back room or in a parlor, or ran the brewery they inherited from a deceased husband, but they did all kinds of stuff that was either never noticed or was elided from historical accounts. So much of our view of what women “did” in the past is mediated through accounts written by men who either didn’t see women or were so convinced (yes, I’m looking at you, Aristotle, but you are but one among many) that women were an inferior creature that what they wrote was not only biased but selectively blind. Even now, in “modern” day, so much is mediated by our assumptions about what “doing” means and by our prejudices and misconceptions about the past.

That's why I read, that's what I look for in my fiction, that's what I want in my female characters. Kate Elliott gets it.

( The other days )

Day Twenty-Six: Favourite classical female character (from pre-20th century literature or mythology or the like)

Persephone (Greek mythology)

Look, I'm unapologetic about this. I love any and every iteration of this character (well, maybe not Twilight). There's something so powerful about a mother-daughter relationship that's used to explain the changing of the seasons. There's something powerful about the story of a woman who passes into an underworld, and is transformed and changed. I find it hard to articulate why I love this story so much, and I fear being misinterpreted when I say I identify with Persephone, but it's true. I've always been obsessed with crossing-places, turning points, identifiable moments of profound change, and with visible markers of transformation. As long as I can remember I've looked backwards to identify those tiny moments in my life which had reverberations for years afterwards, which unintentionally shaped and changed me. That's what Persephone means to me.

This post by catvalente says it so much better than I ever could.

I can't leave this question without also mentioning biblical figures such as Esther, Leah and Ruth, and Briseis from the Iliad, whose stories have very personal resonances for me for various reasons.

( The other days )

Some other cool links today: a friend of mine, Ellie Barraclough (who was a PhD student with me at Cambridge and now has a permanent post at Durham), did a radio programme on 'The Supernatural North", featuring Philip Pullman and A. S. Byatt. In more Pullman news, he's releasing a new short story set in the His Dark Materials world. And I'm going to be raiding this list at ladybusiness for book recommendations for next year.

Day Twenty-Four: Favourite female romantic relationship

Angela and Holly (The Lynburn Legacy, Sarah Rees Brennan)

This fictional couple is dear to my heart for several reasons. I love how fiercely they protect and defend one another. Most importantly, I love how clearly they recognise each others' boundaries, and defend said boundaries when necessary. They stand up for each other when other members of their group make unreasonable demands, and provide each other space when it's needed. Holly understands Angela's prickliness, her discomfort at being the focus of attention, and her unease with being touched. Angela understands Holly's insecurities, her desperate desire to anticipate others' needs and put them before her own, and her anguish at people's low expectations of her. Both fear abandonment in different ways and for different reasons, and employ different forms of artifice to guard against their fear that they are unlovable.

On a more meta level, I love this couple because it's comprised of a lesbian and a bisexual girl (who is identified as such). While each comes out at different times in the series, their stories are not 'coming out stories'. Holly is a point of view character in the third book, and that also makes me happy. I like Holly and Angela because they are Holly and Angela, but their representation is an added bonus.

( The other days )

Day Twenty-Two: Favourite female character you love but everyone else hates

Katrina Crane (Sleepy Hollow)

I've been waiting for this day to come around almost since I started this meme. I have so many feelings about Katrina, and have always been utterly infuriated at how she is received by Sleepy Hollow fandom.

It's sort of understandable, since she's very inconsistently written, and in the first season in particular she wasn't given all that much to do, but the amount of vitriol leveled at her is still, to my mind, disproportionate and unjustified. Unfortunately, I fear poor Katrina has found herself on the wrong corner of a fandom love triangle. In other words, she's the victim of shipping preferences.

One of the elements of fannish culture that I find most frustrating is the way it always seems to sell female characters short. If they're not being ignored altogether, there seems to be an oddly Highlander-esque attitude to female characters. In other words, there can be only one. Only one 'well-written, strong female character', only one object of the male lead's affections and so on. This is both inconsistent and extremely transparent. Female characters who aren't interested in the male leads or likely to be shipped with them (siblings, lesbians, older women) never come in for this treatment.

Katrina has the misfortune to be married to the male lead of Sleepy Hollow, but the majority of the fandom would prefer to see him with Abbie Mills, the brilliant young policewoman who is, like him, a Witness to the end times. As a result, fandom's hatred of her is intense. If they're not complaining about her uselessness they're loudly wishing for her to turn evil. (The transparent motives for fandom's hatred are immediately obvious given that Abbie's sister Jenny, who has no interest in Ichabod, is never discussed in such terms.)

I resent this fannish tendency to make everything a zero sum game. I resent the implication that if one woman is strong and beautiful and clever all others must by extension be weak, useless and ugly. I want no part of a feminism that needs to tear one woman down in order to build another up. There is room enough in Sleepy Hollow, in all fandoms, in life itself, for more than one woman to be amazing. There is love enough for Abbie Mills and for Katrina Crane.

ETA: It has been pointed out to me (with a great deal of aggression, and somewhat proving my point) that I spend this whole post whining about the fandom and don't really talk about why I like Katrina. I will concede that I probably should have done that.

So. I like Katrina because she's an example of a particular character and plot trope that I really enjoy. Namely, a woman working on the side of good, undercover in the bad guys' camp, feeding information back to the good guys. But it goes further than that. What I like in particular is how this kind of female character plays on the arrogance and delusions of the bad guys and highlights the depths of their self-deception. If they stopped to think for a single second they would realise that these women have no possible reason to love or respect them, and are disgusted and appalled at having to hang around with them. But they're so deluded and overwhelmed by their own power that they can't see this. (Other characters of this type: Marion in the BBC Robin Hood series, Noriko and Marala in Romanitas, Sansa Stark in A Song of Ice and Fire/A Game of Thrones, Nina in The Americans. Sally Lockhart has a moment like this at the end of The Shadow in the North. I'm hoping Kore in Spartacus is this type of character, but I suspect not. As you can see, they don't always a have particularly happy time of it.)

Often these types of characters — Katrina included — have very little choice about the situations in which they find themselves. I really enjoy watching the way she finds little pieces of power, small spaces that she can carve out and exist in, in defiance of the forces arrayed against her. Sometimes indirectness, circumlocution and a kind of slantwise assertion of control can be a powerful complement to direct confrontation, and I like that Sleepy Hollow has characters who embody both types of defiance.

But I must admit that the real draw of characters like Katrina is the moment in which they throw off the mask, choose their battle and declare themselves to the villains. 'How could you possibly think I could love you?'/'For what other reason do you think I was hanging around?'/'I have always been working against you!' and so on. It's a moment of cathartic justice, although unfortunately in most stories it never ends well for the woman revealing her loyalties.

Katrina is a particularly unsubtle example of this character type — after all, Sleepy Hollow is not exactly subtle itself — and her ruse is so clumsy that her captors look particularly stupid. I do think the writers made an error when they had Katrina escape and join Abbie and Ichabod — why spend an entire episode grappling with how the three of them work out how to work as a team, only to send Katrina away again once they'd solved this problem? — and the less said of the mystical pregnancy trope the better. Ultimately I think Sleepy Hollow would work better as an ensemble show with Abbie and Ichabod as clear leads and Jenny, Irving and Katrina as their sidekicks (i.e. more along the lines of Buffy than The X Files). But if we can't have that, I would like Katrina to continue to run rings around her captors (well, at least around Headless; Henry seems to know her game), and to save up her wrath for that one moment when direct confrontation becomes unavoidable.

( The other days )

Day Twenty: Favourite female antagonist

Mona Vanderwaal (Pretty Little Liars)

I just noticed that this meme (which I copied from someone else's journal) uses US spelling. I've gone through and changed it on this entry, so from today onwards it will be British spelling, but I'm not going to go back and change every other entry. So just imagine those letter 'u's in 'favourite'.

Pretty Little Liars knocks it out of the park in terms of female characters. It's got a great quartet of heroines, complex female love interests, mothers, sisters, female friends and frenemies, all of whom are given rich interior lives, and believable (at least within the soap operatic universe of PLL) motives, fears and aspirations.

And its female antagonists are something else. The show rests on two mirrored themes: female friendship and female enmity, and I could've picked any one of a handful of complicated, antagonistic girls for today's portion of the meme. I picked Mona because I find her thrilling to watch.

She is cruel, but with the capacity for kindness, mentally unstable but perceptive when it comes to understanding what drives other people, observant, watchful and chaotic all at the same time. In this show, which in its essence is about teenage girls making and remaking themselves and trying to control other people's perceptions of them and the stories they tell about themselves because they are unable to control anything else, Mona reigns supreme. She transformed herself, she manipulated others into believing so many lies, and for several years she was able to control her own story. She is one of the few characters in the series with the guts to stand up to queen bee (and master manipulator) Alison DiLaurentis, and one of the only characters able to see through the lies the quartet of protagonists tell about themselves.

Janel Parrish playing Mona is an absolute joy to watch, and I hope to see a lot more from her in the remainder of the season, and the series.

( The other days )

Day Eighteen: Favorite non-warrior female character

Mai (Crossroads series, Kate Elliott)

Today's question is an odd one, in that almost all the characters I like aren't warriors, so I decided to interpret it as 'favourite female character who is essentially the antithesis of a warrior'. I've written frequently about Mai on my various blogs, so I'll keep today's entry brief. Suffice it to say that Mai embodies several characteristics I tend to latch onto in fictional favourites.

We first encounter Mai as a merchant's daughter, living in a trade town that is occupied by a mercenary band led by the exiled noble, Captain Anji. As far as occupations go, it's fairly reasonable, in that the people are able to go about their daily lives without much intrusion and Mai's family is able to retain something of its privileged position under the new regime. Mai is a seasoned market trader, managing her family's stall and very good at persuading people to buy their products. She's also adroit at managing her rather difficult family and carving out a place of calm for herself among the more domineering and aggressive personalities of her relatives. Her talents lie in managing people, keeping a 'market face' on at all times, understanding the needs and desires of others and persuading them gently in a direction that is beneficial to her and hers without people perceiving that they are being manipulated. One thing Elliott does that I appreciate is that she emphasises that Mai's abilities in this area are a skill that she has learned, and that they are valued by those around her. Indeed, the mercurial Captain Anji decides to marry Mai because he wants to embark on a military campaign and recognises that Mai's skills are necessary to smooth his path with the people his mercenaries will conquer.

Once she's married to Anji, Mai does indeed put her skills to use forging ties with the local people by encouraging marriages between Anji's men and local women and helping to establish markets, trade routes and farms. In most cases, especially early on in the series, it's Mai's skills that are more necessary. The region into which Anji moves his army has been wracked by civil war and chaos for quite a while, and the people are quite happy to live under his rule, once Mai's diplomacy has been put to use showing them that they will be able to resume ordinary life, growing crops, building, making crafts and selling them. It's very rare in fantasy novels for talents like Mai's – what I normally term 'mercantile behaviour' — to be presented in a favourable light, and I've always loved the fact that Elliott made them heroic and highlighted their significance.

( The other days )

Day Sixteen: Favorite mother character

Catelyn Stark (A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones)

Sorry to have dropped this meme for a few days. It's just been very hectic recently and I didn't have the time to give blogging my full attention until today.

My Catelyn Stark is a weird amalgam of book!Catelyn, show!Catelyn and idealised-character-I-have-created-in-my-head!Catelyn, so please bear that in mind. She's one of my favourite fictional characters ever, for several reasons.

I think we've established over the past few entries of this meme that I have several qualities that I adore in fictional characters: characters who make compromises, practice diplomacy, and try to give people what they want if it means their survival and the survival of those they love, characters who are fiercely self-sacrificing in the face of threats to their loved ones, characters whose pragmatism is often ignored by others but later shown in the narrative to have been the correct approach.

In other words, Catelyn Stark. She is much more savvy than her detractors - within the text and among the fandom - normally give her credit for. She has a caution and a better ability to read people than most of the men around her - certainly her husband, and her son Robb - so she often comes across as fairly Cassandra-like, dispensing advice that is ignored, offering warnings that should have been heeded, and more willing to make way for allies' or enemies' demands if it means she and hers live to fight another day. All this caution and flexibility is because she is motivated by a single desire: to ensure her children's survival. I've always got the impression that Catelyn would have preferred to stay out of the way in the North, secure in Winterfell and taking no part in the political machinations of Westeros. But once her husband and children pulled her beyond Winterfell's walls, she made the best of a bad situation, and threw everything into first her husband's and then her son's cause.

Catelyn's detractors always hold her treatment of Jon Snow against her, so I will end this post by addressing that. I'm of the belief that Catelyn's attitude towards Jon - who is, at least in her mind, her husband's illegitimate son, and the same age as Ned's first legitimate son with her - is shaped less by his existence and presence in her home and more by Ned's continued refusal to let Catelyn in on the circumstances of his birth and conception. It's the secrecy, rather than the unfaithfulness, that causes her to feel the way she does, and even though some of the things she says and does to Jon are completely inexcusable, this does at least make sense of her actions and feelings.

( The other days )

Day Fourteen: Favorite older female character

Sarah and Mimi Bernstein (The Girls in the Velvet Frame by Adele Geras)

Today is a double-header, but it's not really cheating as the two characters are from the same book and act as foils to one another.

The Girls in the Velvet Frame is the story of Sarah Bernstein, a Jewish widow raising five daughters in British Mandate Palestine. The family live in a great deal of poverty. The oldest daughter, thirteen-year-old Rifka, has to work in a bakery to supplement her mother's income, and although the family is far from starving, there's lots of talk about wasting food and having to eat into savings for the smallest treats. Sarah puts a brave face on, and her daughters are tough and cheerful, but even the youngest of them knows that all is not well.

Part of the problem is that Sarah's oldest child and only son, Isaac, immigrated to New York and promptly dropped off the face of the earth. There have been no letters from him, and Sarah doesn't know if he's even alive. Much of the plot of the novel is concerned with the daughters finding a way to get in touch with Isaac in order to ease their mother's mind on that score.

Sarah followed the path expected by her community. She married young, supported her husband while he pursued a scholarly life, and made every sacrifice possible in order to ensure her children's comfort and bright futures. In some ways she's quite a passive character: she never complains or tries to change her precarious situation (beyond working harder, sacrificing more and trying to instill particular values in her daughters), and all the actions are taken by her resourceful daughters. Nevertheless her strength shines through.

If Sarah is passive and conventional, her sister-in-law Mimi is the exact opposite. By the standards of her day and community, Mimi has led a scandalous life. She never married, but travelled all over Europe, having all kinds of adventures and romantic entanglements, which she never tires of relating to her adoring nieces. (They're most horrified to hear that she once ate a meal in France consisting of 'chicken actually cooked in a cream sauce', which is of course as far from kosher as it's possible to get.) She always dresses in glamorous clothes, floating scarves and jewellery, her face painted exquisitely. Her house is always full of sweets and little bowls of sugared almonds. Her nieces love her, and find her house a welcome contrast from their own genteel poverty.

One thing I find particularly refreshing about Mimi is that she speaks frankly to her nieces about the benefits and disadvantages of her chosen lifestyle. Her eleven-year-old niece Chava is particularly adamant that she will never marry, and that she will follow Mimi's footsteps, and Mimi is very encouraging of this. But she also points out that she is sometimes unbearably lonely. However, when Max, one of her old flames, arrives on her doorstep seeking to pick up where they left off twenty or thirty years ago, Mimi ultimately turns him down, saying that she would have found being a wife to anyone completely stifling.

Mimi and Sarah have spent their entire acquaintance being quite distant and frosty to one another. This is mainly due to animosity on Sarah's part. She has always thought of Mimi as being frivolous, selfish and a bad influence on her daughters. I've also always felt that Sarah found Mimi's life choices to be a subtle criticism of her own conservative life path, although this is never made explicit in the story. But by the end of the book, the two have found common ground, and are able to feel mutual respect and even love for each other. I'm always pleased to find stories where women whose approaches to being a woman are very different are not pitted against one another, and where very different choices made by very different women are treated with respect. I first read The Girls in the Velvet Frame when I was seven years old, so maybe it was the origin of such attitudes for me.

( The other days )

Day Twelve: Favorite female character in a movie

Ree (Winter's Bone)

Looking back at all the entries I've written for this meme so far, I think I have a type, or at least a few types of character that always appeal. Ree shares several qualities with my other favourites, most notably a very specific kind of bravery. It's a passive bravery: she endures, rather than acts, and she carries the burdens of those around her because others can't bear to. Her father is a drug dealer who's long since vanished from the scene, her mother is suffering from untreated mental illness, and her community has closed its doors to her. Ree is the only person trying to keep things together for her younger brother and sister. When it looks as if her family will lose their house unless she can find her father, Ree refuses to give up, and she embarks on an emotionally harrowing quest to bring him home.

I spoke in my entry on Peaky Blinders that it was a show about trauma, and male violence, and the way the women in the community tried to manage that violence. Winter's Bone explores similar themes, although Ree is too worn down, too cut off to have the power to direct and manipulate male violence in the way the women of Peaky Blinders do. Rather, she seeks to contain this violence in the hopes of keeping it from her door. As she continues her search for her father, she is exposed to greater and greater danger and ever increasing violence, as it leads her into corners the community would prefer to keep hidden.

The whole film has a sort of mythic quality. It deliberately emphasises the elements of katabasis in its story, as Ree's search for the truth takes her further and further away from light and hope. There's a fabulous scene towards the end of the film in which a group of women take her in a small boat on a river in the middle of the night, like some kind of Appalachian Persephone or Inanna. The river is inky, Ree is fearful, the women are stern and offer no comfort, and the whole thing is shot like a journey to the underworld.

Winter's Bone is not a very hopeful film, and you get the sense that the when the credits roll, Ree has succeeded only in keeping the storm at bay for a little longer, not that her life has much chance of improving. She should be able to endure all the torments the world throws at her, but she shouldn't have to.

( The other days )