October 23rd, 2007
by
the angry black woman
I have an interview with David Anthony Durham, author of Acacia, in the next issue of Fantasy magazine (coming out this month!). One of the things I noticed right away about Acacia is the self-conscious gender issues present. For instance, in an early chapter a female soldier brings a message to the prime minister of Acacia. The narrative voice provides us with information about a female soldier:
She could have been no older than twenty-five, but there was more than that length of suffering and perseverance tin her face. Thaddeus had often believed this to be true of female soldiers. They were, by and large, cast of finer steel than average men.
On the surface, that is all well and good. But reading that gave me the sense that Durham may have been trying a bit too hard. As if including female soldiers didn’t come naturally to him and he felt the need to justify their existence. Now by itself, this isn’t a huge problem. At least the author is trying. However, it caught my eye and resulted in my paying a lot closer attention to how Durham dealt with the other female characters in the book.
Minor Spoilers under the jump.
Of the main characters, there are two prominent females, the princesses Corinn and Mena. As I mentioned in my review of Acacia, the royal children bear a more than passing resemblance to the kids from Narnia. The elder princess, Corinn, reminded me so much of Susan — both kid Susan and adult Susan from A Horse and His Boy. She’s the beautiful one and is well-versed in all the ways she can use her beauty to manipulate the world around her. She makes a major decision early in the book based on the fact that, if she put herself in a particular situation, she would always be the “prettiest”. It’s not surprising, then, that later in the book it’s Corinn who is thrown into a character arc that involves romantic love and sex.
Mena is more Lucy-like. She doesn’t begin the book as a tomboy per se, but she clearly couldn’t care less about makeup and jewels and beauty and feminine wiles. This could be because she’s not quite the right age for such things (preteen to her sisters late teens), but that doesn’t account for it all. Mena is never put in a position where her sexuality matters, where she is even called upon to be a sexual being. Even as the years go on and she meets a young man who may end up being her eventual love interest, she engages him in teaching her the culture’s combat style (which she easily masters). When it comes time to fight back against the people who invaded her land and usurped the throne, she gets to fight alongside her brothers. Corinn never gets that chance.
By the end of the first Acacia book, Corinn has taken some very questionable actions. She isn’t a weak or stereotypically “feminine” character by any stretch, but compared to her sister she’s definitely taken a darker turn and the sense of what comes next does not point to Corinn ending up a heroine.
Other than the two sisters, there aren’t many prominent female characters in the book. The world of Acacia is very male-dominated. Men rule the country, the trade guilds, the armies, and the resistance. When I asked Durham about this, he replied:
Certainly, the core of the novel is the four Akaran children. In that regard it’s 50/50, male to female. Around them, though, are primarily male players. I’d like to think that by the end you’ll see just how important the female characters are to me and to the story to come. I’d even suggest that the fact that the novel begins in regular male-dominated form is crucial to the ways that I eventually work to break from that.
Unfortunately we’ll have to wait until the next books in the series to come out to properly gauge his success.
Though I must say that, while I understand the need for deconstruction, I wonder if we’ll ever come to a time when it’s seen as a less effective tool than starting from a positive text (something I discuss with Catherynne Valente in another interview coming out later this month). I can see how Durham, writing an epic fantasy for the epic fantasy fan base, may feel the need to hook the audience with the familiar first before breaking it down. But it makes me wonder how many readers, not knowing that the break down is coming, will write the book off?
It comes down to the same thing it always comes down to — do we trust the author enough to read on until the payoff? New authors of epic fantasy have it even harder, because sometimes that payoff won’t happen until the last book in the series. I’m willing to keep on keeping on, but I’ve got my critical hat at the ready…
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the angry black woman at
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Filed under Books & Literature, Criticism & Scholarship, female characters | Comments (2)
I’m glad you’re keeping an eye on this — I’ve been intrigued by this series (racially diverse epic fantasy–woo-hoo!), but the memory of Durham’s _Pride of Carthage_, which I suffered through (despite being a great fan of that type of epic historical fiction), is still too strong. That book almost drowns in machismo–which is historically accurate, and yet there was something about it that bothered me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Alas, the female characters all faded away…It’d be great if Durham has figured out a way to tell an epic story without fumbling on the women.
I like both your analysis and your hesitation to rush to judgment, and I think the point about deconstructing the narratives we’ve already been given versus creating new ones can’t be discussed often enough.
Very much looking forward to what you find next!
I’d love to be proven wrong on this, but I suppose one of the reasons high fantasy tends to feature male dominated societies is that there is little to no precedent for gender-equal or female dominated hierarchical, geographically stable, large-scale nations in human history.
Certainly there have been countries with queens, and some smaller tribal nations had matriarchal tendencies, but the types of cultures that produced cities and fortresses and large armies seem to have all been patriarchal (if occasionally matrilineal). Such a departure from known history would require an extensive and well-thought out explanation, which would force the issue into the foreground of the book, perhaps at the expense of moving the story along. Is there a book (or historical example) that contradicts this notion ? This is my first time on this blog, so if you’ve already covered it in another post, I apologize, I’ll keep an eye out for it in the archives.
Another reason for Durham’s choice, I imagine, is that he didn’t want the original Acacian Empire to seem too idyllic. A major element in the first book (haven’t gotten to the second yet) seems to be social progress and righting past injustices. If total gender equality had already been met, there would be less room for improvement, and the upheaval of that society may even be interpreted as an implicit chastisement of gender-equal society as a concept.