Already the end of spring is here…and that means the end of the delightful reading challenge, Once Upon a Time, hosted by Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings. At least, the end for this year!
I had very vague goals this time around, hoping only to read more fairy tale retellings and to clear out some of the fantasy books that have languished on my To Be Read list for the longest.
So how did things go? Continue reading “Returning from Ventures in Fairylands…”
Continuing my Once Upon a Time reading (getting down to the end!), I squeezed in another fairy tale retelling with Princess of the Wild Swans by Diane Zahler. By the same author as The Thirteenth Princess, this book is based on the Grimm tale, “The Six Swans,” and the Hans Christian Anderson story, “The Wild Swans.” It makes things a bit less (ahem) grim in the process, but keeps good tension and magical danger too.
At the beginning of the book, Princess Meriel’s chief complaints are that she hates sewing, and that her five beloved older brothers don’t give her enough of their time. Things take a sudden turn when her usually-doting father returns from a trip, and brings a new bride with him. Meriel immediately dislikes Lady Orianna, and the new queen soon shows her true colors. In order to clear the path to the throne for her own future son, Lady Orianna transforms Meriel’s brothers into swans. Meriel seeks the help of Riana, a witch and healer, and her younger brother, Liam. She learns the only way to free her brothers is by undertaking to sew five shirts from nettles…and it must be done before the lake freezes over for the winter and forces the swans away. Continue reading “Princess of the Wild Swans”
Just a reminder that today is the LAST day The Wanderers will be available for purchase on Smashwords–so if you have any non-Kindle ereader, NOW is the time to buy!
Now is also your chance to get a special discount. You can buy The Wanderers for $1.99 on Smashwords, one-third off the usual price. Choose the format you want (Nook included) and enter the code XD94V at check-out.
So if you’ve been delaying or debating about buying a copy for your Nook, iPad, or any other device, today’s your last chance.
If you want to buy a Kindle copy or a paperback, those will continue to be available…but today’s the day for any other ebook format!
I’m not actually a member of The Classics Club (whose members pledge to read 50 classics in 5 years), but I saw the June Meme question recently on Jessica’s blog. I started to comment…and realized I had so much to say that I had better write my own post!
For an example of a classic with racism in it, Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs came pretty immediately to mind. The first book is a classic, though I’ll talk about the rest of the series in the discussion as well. Throughout the series, the overall portrayal of the African natives is both negative and stereotyped (and probably contributed to later stereotypes…), and there are overt comments describing them as inferior to the white man.
Interestingly, Burroughs does make an exception for one African tribe, the Waziri, who Tarzan allies himself with. It’s still troubling in that they make the lone white man, Tarzan, into their chief, but they are at least portrayed as intelligent, valiant and strong warriors. (And just to make things more complicated, in Burroughs’ Mars books, the black Martians are secretly controlling all the other races, and John Carter, while remarking that it’s a strange thing for him to say as a Virginian, comments on the beauty of their dark skin.)
But the positive potrayals really don’t do much besides complicating matters, and the negative portrayals are clear, abundant and deeply unfortunate. There are two reasons that I personally feel like I can still enjoy these books in spite of that.
First, I think that in general, books have to be taken for their time period. That’s not to say that the racism is acceptable, but we also can’t reasonably expect a past author to have modern values. I tend to say this about Shakespeare too (usually while discussing The Taming of the Shrew!) The people and the books are a product of their times, and have to be taken as such. For that matter, our reactions are a product of our time too!
Second, and this is equally crucial or more so, I don’t feel like the racism is a core part of the Tarzan books. The racism is fully apparent, but it always felt to me like a sidenote. The focus of the series is on Tarzan, the struggles in the jungle, his efforts to rescue the frequently-kidnapped Jane, or to explore one of Burroughs’ many lost cities (which seem to crop up all over Burroughs’ Africa). The strengths of the book carry through into the present and are just as appealing now.
I want to talk about two of the later books in the series as different examples (and together they make quite a good story too…) Book Seven, Tarzan the Untamed, was written during World War I and is very anti-German. Burroughs planned to have a German officer kill Jane (although his publishers saved her life by talking him out of it!) After the war, some of the Tarzan books were translated into German and became wildly popular…until someone, without authorization, translated Tarzan the Untamed. Burroughs wound up completely blacklisted in Germany, to the point that booksellers were afraid to stock even his other books.
But Burroughs apparently learned nothing from this, because during World War II he wrote Tarzan and the Foreign Legion, which is virulantly anti-Japanese…
Tarzan and the Foreign Legion is an example where I can’t get past the racism and just accept it as a product of the time. It’s so overt and so integral to the plot that it’s actively uncomfortable to read. So while in principle I don’t think I can extend morals into the past, there are incidents where, as a modern reader, on an emotional level I can’t enjoy a book with objectionable morals. It also doesn’t help that, by Book Twenty-two in the Tarzan series, Burroughs was getting formulaic to an extreme, and the book has very little to recommend it anyway.
All of this is, of course, highly subjective. I can probably get past the racism in one book that someone else would find too uncomfortable, and another person might be bothered less by a different example I can’t handle.
Have you read any Classics with racism in them, and how did it feel to you?
And maybe some other time I’ll do a post about sexism in the Tarzan books…because that could be a whole discussion on its own!
I found myself with a slight crisis recently, short on books and still waiting on holds, wandering the shelves of my tiny local library looking for something to carry me through the week…and was delighted to stumble upon I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett. Discworld is the one series I somehow feel no pressure to finish–it’s too big and too rambling and I just dip in at random whenever I feel so inclined. But the Tiffany Aching subseries as always felt much more self-contained and continuous, so I have been meaning to finish that off.
The final book in the sub-quartet presents Tiffany Aching at sixteen, still new to her role as Witch of the Chalk, but settling into the position. But Tiffany’s dance with the Wintersmith in the previous book has awoken an ancient evil–one who hates witches. With hostility towards witches rising throughout the land, Tiffany must find a way to fight through the fear and prejudice to confront its root. And that while dealing with the upcoming wedding of Roland, her some-time beau, and the sometimes harmful help of her devoted allies, the Nac Mac Feegles.
I love the way Pratchett has presented Tiffany’s growth throughout the quartet. She has always been someone who does what needs doing, from rescuing her little brother from a Fairy Queen in the first book, to the unglamorous witch work of caring for the ill, elderly and forgotten in this final book. Tiffany has gained wisdom and confidence all along the way, but like life, it’s often been a few steps forward, a stumble or two back, a redirection and a new leap ahead. Tiffany’s not only learned how to fulfill her role, she’s very consciously had to figure out what that role is, and how she wants to fulfill it. Pratchett has done a masterful job of keeping Tiffany always the same person, while growing her throughout the series.
And then there are the Nac Mac Feegles, the Wee Free Men, the drinking, fighting, carousing, honor-bound (but always their own interpretation of honor!) clan who swore loyalty to Tiffany as the Hag o’ the Hills and will stick with her through thick and thin, no matter how many times she tells them to go away. I love how well Tiffany understands them by now, and her back and forth with them is hilariously brilliant. For instance, she’s somewhat less than surprised–and remarkably calm–when Daft Wullie sets fire to her broomstick in midair, and staunchly denies responsibility while holding a lit match…
I also appreciated that Rob Anybody, the Nac Mac Feegle chief, did get one moment of more depth. The Nac Mac Feegles, basically, are never serious…until the humans try to dig up the Nac Mac Feegle hill, and for just a moment we glimpse a very real fear and anger from Rob Anybody about his wife and children. I’m not sure I really want more than one serious moment from the Nac Mac Feegles, but one was perfect.
Having read other Discworld books, I enjoyed a cameo for Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg. It’s always fun to see familiar characters from a different perspective, and I liked seeing them through Tiffany’s eyes–still the same characters as when they tell the story themselves, but with maybe a little more awe mixed in.
Pratchett’s books are all the more remarkable for being hilariously funny, while sharply insightful in their satire. Here he personifies a familiar and particularly ugly side of human nature, the hatred of the Other simply because they’re Other. Or as was said in another fantasy story, “we don’t like what we don’t understand; in fact, it scares us” (Beauty and the Beast, “The Mob Song”). There it was against the Beast; here it’s against the witches, and there’s an added subtlety in the sense that part of the hatred comes because people know that the witches do what needs doing–what people guiltily realize they ought to be doing themselves and aren’t.
I already own all the City Guard Discworld books, and I think I need to start collecting the Tiffany Aching books. They’re both my favorite kind of comedy–we have one stable, complex main character to ground us and guide us through the constant hilarity of everyone else around them. This book was a wonderful end to the quartet, hilarious, insightful and deeply satisfying.
Author’s Site:
Other reviews:
Tethyan Books
Escape Pod
Book Aunt
Anyone else?
Buy it here: I Shall Wear Midnight
Tales of the Marvelous 