We are Going to Do Feminism Like It Is 1895: A Review of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy (Part III)

(This is the conclusion of a series of earlier posts. See here and here.) 

While Libba Bray manages to treat the Victorian world fairly, there is an issue, that Bray jumps around, that I wish she had dealt with directly. While the Victorian world, which Gemma and her friends struggle against, might be highly patriarchal and demand absolute conformity, this same world is also offering them a life of luxury, the likes of which few in that time period could even dream about; this is a life that Gemma and her friends have not earned by any merit of theirs nor would they likely be able to gain it through their own efforts. As such they lack the moral ground with which to challenge the Victorian world. They have little in the way of marketable skills; if they had to earn their own way they would likely find themselves with the factory girls they so pity. While most of the men in these books, with a few exceptions, speak of women in ways that would make moderns blush, the men have a point. Most of the women are in fact little better than grown-up children, to be kept as pets, but not to be taken too seriously. Any attempt to argue for women’s equality in such a world would find itself up against a catch-22. Women, in this time period, are inferior. With some few exceptions, there are no female doctors and lawyers nor are there many women with more than a very elementary education. As such women are not in a position to position to demand access to power or even access to the means to gain power, such as higher education and professional careers. With nothing to bargain with, women have no choice but to submit to patriarchal power and must make do with whatever scraps men choose to throw at them. I would have loved it if Bray would have given a character like Mrs. Nightwing a speech like this to unload on Gemma with, challenging her to earn her ability to challenge the world around her. This would set the stage for what Gemma does at the end of the trilogy, providing her motivation. (Do not worry. I will not spoil the ending.) The books do have one weakness; they tend to wander quite a bit, without anything actually happening. Bray, in ways that are reminiscent of J.K Rowling, likes to have her characters wandering about Spence Academy and the Realms, trying to figure out what the larger story is. This becomes a particular problem with The Sweet Far Thing. It is 819 pages long, nearly double Great and Terrible Beauty’s 416 pages and still significantly longer than Rebel Angels’ 592 pages. The reader spends The Sweet Far Thing waiting for the final climactic battle with the forces of the Winterlands. While the climax has its share of interesting moments, along with a few tragic ones, the whole affair seems to go off as a whimper. Circe, the chief villain of series, proves to be an intriguing and nuanced character; it is a pity, though, that Bray does not do more with her. The Sweet Far Thing’s ability to go hundreds of pages without any important plot developments reminds me of the Order of the Phoenix. The difference, though, is that Rowling possessed a singular ability to keep a reader enthralled in her work; the world of Harry Potter was interesting in of itself. No matter what else may have been happening, I loved reading about Harry, Ron and Hermione. Bray, for all of her talent, lacks Rowling’s ability to be able to get away with having nothing happen. Even Rowling had difficulty keeping Order of the Phoenix afloat, Bray fails. I could happily read Rowling simply for the sake of reading Rowling, I do not love Bray to that extent. Ultimately the Sweet Far Thing should not have been more than six hundred pages; the story could have easily been told in four hundred pages. Despite the Sweet Far Thing's failings, the Gemma Doyle trilogy is a very worthwhile read. I believe that the Orthodox audience would particularly enjoy these books; they are in a unique situation to appreciate the struggles of living within a highly structured environment and the various nuances that come out of such a world.

We are Going to Do Feminism Like It Is 1895: A Review of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy (Part II)

(This is the continuation of an earlier post. See here.)

In my mind, these books are everything that feminist literature should be. Without a question, the issue underlying the series is female empowerment and Bray makes no apologies for it. Gemma and her friends, as women, live in a world in which they have few choices and little control over their lives. The Realms offer them a world in which they have power and the possibility of being able to change the course of their lives back home.

Bray is not defending the Victorian world nor is she trying to turn back the clock. She manages, though, to bring a level of nuance that one does not usually find in literature dealing with women’s issues. There is more to her feminism than pontificating about the plight of women struggling against the tyranny of patriarchy. Bray does not feel the need to preach or pass judgment against the Victorian world. In ways that are very reminiscent of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series, Bray is willing to accept the Victorian world for what it was, warts and all, and instead of mocking it, she has fun with it.

Bray has no interest in polemicizing against men; these books do not break down into intelligent and open-minded women going up against the men, who are all stupid and bigoted. Take for example Gemma’s older brother, Tom; he can be an idiot at times, but Bray manages to keep him genuinely likable. Gemma’s love interest, an Indian boy named Kartik, is a very interesting character. Bray is willing to allow him to be Gemma’s equal, instead of turning him into a male version of a damsel in distress. In truth, the main enforcers of patriarchy in these books are not the men but the women, particularly such characters as Spence’s headmistress, Mrs. Nightwing, Gemma’s grandmother, Mrs. William Doyle, and Lady Denby. Ultimately the message here to women is not that men have wronged them and they have the right to demand their due; instead the books ask women to look inward and ask themselves if they are the cause of their own oppression and, more importantly, how are they, as women, going to take the initiative and solve the problems that face them.

I think the reason for Bray’s success in this matter lies in the fact that she not only writes good fantasy but good historical fiction as well. She has created characters that are true to the time period. Her characters do not break down into the rational, intelligent, modern sounding characters and their bigoted intolerant opponents who are essentially straw-men of premodern modes of thought. Gemma does not come across as a modern feminist in a corset; she believably inhabits the world she lives in. She is not striving to prove that she is the equal of men or that she should be able to be a doctor, lawyer or even the Prime Minister just like a man. It is not that she even rejects her world; she is simply someone who finds herself desiring to have more options and struggles with the implications of this desire. One suspects that Gemma would not fit into the modern world. She still wants and needs the structure of the Victorian world, even if it is simply a moderated version of it.

The character who is closest to modern feminism is Felicity. In a Great and Terrible Beauty, she already has gotten involved with a gypsy youth. In Rebel Angels she experiments with going to a ball in a gown with a plunging neckline. By the time we reach The Far Sweet Thing, she is dreaming of going off to Paris, wearing breeches and working as a model. There is even a hint of a lesbian relationship between her and Pippa. Bray, though, conceives Felicity’s “feminism” not as an intellectual or moral struggle against the forces of oppression, but as Felicity being a brat. Felicity is the sort of character who does whatever she wants; damn the consequences to her or anyone else. This is one of the reasons why she is such a fun character and why we love her, but Bray never tries to imbue Felicity with any sort of moral authority. Instead, she ingeniously uses Felicity to turn tables on modern feminism and mock them in turn.

It does not take a whole lot of imagination to realize how the real-life equivalents of Gemma and her friends would lead to modern feminism. Even Ann, the Neville Longbottom of the group, is, by The Sweet Far Thing, working on becoming a professional actress. It is an interesting question to speculate whether the rise of modern feminism was the inevitable result of the women’s movements of the nineteenth century, but at best this could only have been seen in hindsight. The real-life equivalents of Gemma and her friends could not have conceived that they were a movement, where this movement was heading and if they did they would not have necessarily approved of it.

(To be continued …)

We are Going to Do Feminism Like It Is 1895: A Review of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy (Part I)

This past summer a girl, that I was going out with, recommended that, since I, like her, was a Twilight fan, I should try Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty (GTB). The date proved to be lousy, but the book proved to be a wonderful suggestion. Captured by its sharp, tongue and cheek wit and its parade of references to classical literature and poetry, I quickly read A Great and Terrible Beauty along with its sequel, Rebel Angels, and waited until the end of December for the final book in the series, A Sweet Far Thing, to come out. The lesson from this, I think, is that a good book is worth a bad date. The Gemma Doyle Trilogy is a work of historical fiction/fantasy about a nineteenth century English girl who attends a girl’s finishing school near London called Spence Academy. Gemma grew up in India as the daughter of an English official but is sent to Spence soon after her mother, Virginia Doyle, dies under mysterious circumstances. While the official story, which is put out, is that she died of cholera, Gemma saw her, in a vision, stab herself in order not to be captured by a dark creature, sent by someone named Circe in order to capture her. (I do love a book that is not afraid to kill of characters.) Gemma has to balance her visions, her attempts to come to terms with them and their implications with life at Spence. At Spence girls are fashioned into young ladies fit to play their role in high society, which is to marry well, run a household and bear children who can carry on the glory of the British Empire. This is the world of upper class Victorian England; a place in which absolute conformity is demanded and even the slightest act of deviance can destroy one’s reputation. Not that everyone actually plays by the rules; what matters is the appearance of conformity. Gemma quickly befriends Ann Bradshaw, a poor scholarship student, who is an even bigger misfit in this school than Gemma. The two of them have to take on Felicity Worthington and her followers, Pippa Cross, Cecily Temple and Elizabeth Pool. One of the things that I really loved about this series though is that despite Felicity’s Draco Malfoy like character, Bray does not simply keep her as an antagonist. Felicity and Pippa actually end up, by the middle of GTB, becoming good friends with Gemma and Ann. Not that Felicity really reforms; she remains her arrogant, cruel manipulative self, but she is quite lovable in her own way. She may be a vicious snake, but she is our vicious snake. Pippa also is a great character. Not to give anything away, but Bray does some very interesting things with her. One of the weaknesses of the Harry Potter series was that, up until the Half-Blood Prince, Rowling never tried to make Draco Malfoy likable or particularly effective as an antagonist to Harry. There could have been something very attractive about Draco. He has Crabbe and Goyle to protect him from any of the students. He has Severus Snape to protect him from any of the teachers. And if he gets into some real trouble he always has his father, Lucius Malfoy, to protect him from the Ministry of Magic. This boy is untouchable and he can do whatever he wants; who would not want to be him. Gemma, Ann, Felicity and Pippa form a club centered on a diary, which Gemma discovered by following one of her visions. This diary was written by a former student at Spence named Mary Dowd. From the diary the girls learn about a magical world, the Realms, and a group of powerful women, the Order, which maintained order within the realms. Gemma soon discovers that, in addition to her visions, she also has the ability to enter the Realms and even bring people with her. Here Gemma and her friends experience a world unlike the Victorian England they know, a world in which they have power. Needless to say, with the discovery of the Realms Gemma and her friends have far more to worry about than tea and dances. Particularly once Circe and the forces of the Winterlands come after them. (To be continued …)