The premise of LeGuin’s Lavinia is to depict events from Virgil’s Aeneid from the point of view of Aeneas’s wife, Lavinia. Lavinia is named in the original poem but she doesn’t speak a single line; LeGuin has given her not only a voice but regard worthy of being the point-of-view character.

Lavinia, then, is a perfect model of how fantasy literature can give life and strength to the women that it depicts. Because it concerns an ancient culture of our world, Lavinia is, of course, bound more by reality than fantasy novels that occur at a complete remove from our own world.  LeGuin is bound somewhat by what is known of early Latin history and by the “canon” of the Aeneid. That she takes liberties in breaking with both, when the story (or Lavinia herself) demands it, makes me think of the novel more as fantasy rather than historical fiction, though it is flavored by both.

I would love to say that I was delighted with Lavinia, that I couldn’t put it down, that it represents a zenith of feminist fantasy fiction. Honestly, though, there were times when I was more overcome with my disappointment with the book, when I couldn’t help but to regard it as opportunity squandered. As I finished the novel today and thought on it more while in the comfortably silent company of my herbs and vegetable plants, though, I realized that it is still an important novel, if even if did fall shy of the mark in many regards.

Lavinia is a relatively short book for the subject and time period that it covers. The hardcover Harcourt edition that I borrowed from the library checks in at 279 pages, including LeGuin’s afterword. Typical for LeGuin, there were passages wrought with breathtaking skill and the introspection was beautifully handled and never ponderous; her characters achieve a delicate elevation in worth yet remain grounded, believable as human beings. The short length of the novel should, one would think, make for an intense plot, but the opposite often seemed to be the case. I found myself baffled as page after page was spent summarizing action going on off-screen: battles fought and treaties made, harvests brought in and journeys embarked upon; LeGuin opens the novel with a map, but we are privileged to see inside only three of its cities, although many more are discussed. Surely LeGuin, I thought, who is quite possibly the greatest living fantasist, doesn’t need to be told that cardinal rule of writing: show don’t tell. Yet so much of the novel does tell, through second- and third-hand news coming to Lavinia, what is happening in the world that the plot drags and I found myself sighing with relief for an clip of dialogue to relieve the endless parade of off-screen places and people.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that this was less a failure of plotting and more a failing of point-of-view. The novel is told from Lavinia’s point of view, so we see what she sees. And she is a woman in ancient Latium; she does not go to battle or even leave her home city for more than a few days at a time, being as her sacred duty is the upkeep of her household. Although a handful of scenes in a dream world where Lavinia converses with “her poet” Virgil give more intimate insights into the world beyond her own, we as readers are largely confined to the “women’s side” right alongside Lavinia, at most getting a glimpse of battle from a rooftop.

Of course, this doesn’t make those sections of the book any more effective because they are hampered by PoV rather than poor plotting. But it does, I think, reveal something interesting about literature in general and about us as readers and the expectations that we bring to stories.

Here is a question worth considering: Why must we hear about the battles at all? We are in a woman’s PoV, and if she does not ride out to battle, then why should battles (and other political maneuvers) be given anything more than cursory attention? Well, of course, the canon demands it; the Aeneid discusses those battles and events and so they form the fictional backdrop for LeGuin’s story as well. Is it possible, too, that we’ve come to expect it? That we’ve come to regard those battles and political maneuvers–the work of men, not women, in ancient Latium–as the meat of such a story? In fact, Lavinia is surprisingly devoid of details about Lavinia’s life and work as a woman in her world. While we do learn of her religious rituals and her expectations (and fears) concerning the life she faces and her political role and her stewardship of the household, I couldn’t help but to wish that more of those passages devoted to summarizing the doings of men outside of Lavinia’s sphere could have been devoted to her life instead.

But, of course, this puts LeGuin in a difficult situation. Lavinia’s character is knowledgeable about the world around her; she is trusted worthy of learning and contributing to both her father and husband’s reigns, and so the focus on the work of men like her father and her husband also proves her competence, her abilities beyond being a good wife, mother, and housekeeper. But, here, we fall into the trap of defining worthiness from a masculine perspective. Why should Lavinia’s work for her household and her people be any less worthy? I felt like LeGuin was seesawing between wanting to show Lavinia as possessing traditional competence–knowledge of the world around her, of politics, of how to get what she wanted from other people–and wanting to show the feminine contributions to that sort of life. In the latter regard, LeGuin did a good job of showing how the women in Latium were often the silent, unacknowledged backbone of the Latin people: those who provided comfort, healing, sustenance, and foresight enough to see beyond a single day’s battle to the deeper future. I just wish that there could have been more of it, and that LeGuin could have embraced tighter the worth of Lavinia’s contributions in these areas rather than attempting to define her competence in masculine terms.

Still, this represents also a shortcoming of our own perceptions concerning competence and worth. We’ve still not reached the point where “the work of small hands” (to borrow the title of one of my own stories that attempted to show how the quiet, unacknowledged influence of a woman saved her people) is appreciated the way that prowess in battle and agility in politics are. In a way, this conundrum parallels closely a conversation between Aeneas and his war-mongering son Ascanius:

“If you are to rule Latium after me … I want to know that you’ll learn how to govern, not merely to make war, that you’ll learn to ask the powers of the earth and sky for guidance for yourself and your people, that you’ll learn to seek your manhood on a greater field than the battlefield. Tell me that you will learn those things, Ascanius.”

This wisdom, gentle guidance, and piety are feminine traits: They are Lavinia. If only the story could have honed closer to Aeneas’s own ideals for his kingship and that of his son, they too could have been Lavinia.

But, as noted, these are hurdles that we are only learning to overcome in trying to depict strong women and show positively femininity in a world that traditionally has and a society that continues to view those traits as signs of weakness. I applaud LeGuin for aiming high in her novel and making a strong attempt to accomplish these goals and, at times, doing so. I give Lavinia 2.75 E.L. Fudge “Elves Exist” cookies out four.

Douglas Charles Kane’s Arda Reconstructed is an attempt to take those published sources and answer some of these questions. Kane painstakingly, word for word, traces each line of The Silmarillion and locates from where in JRRT’s early writings it came. When first I’d heard of Arda Reconstructed from a fellow fan, I was over the moon. I had attempted this on my own as part of research projects before, and it is not an easy task. To have a book providing at least a starting point for this sort of research would make my own forays into Tolkien’s legendarium that much easier. However, I also operated under the assumption that the results of such a study would make for rather dry reading and would stand primarily as a reference, to be opened at need and otherwise unread.

I was wrong on the latter as well. Kane’s research reveals several interesting trends as far as the construction of The Silmarillion is concerned. Several of them hit my own buttons as a researcher and fan-writer.

During a discussion of Arda Reconstructed on the SWG mailing list, the most frequently asked question was, “Exactly what is this book?” I feel like the book has two important components. Firstly are the charts–one per chapter with the exception of the chapters where CT has already provided a similar breakdown of sources as part of the HoMe series–that detail the sources of each line of The Silmarillion. At times, CT (and Guy Kay) took whole swaths of JRRT’s original sources and plunked them, nearly verbatim, into the published Silmarillion. At other times, they created a patchwork from numerous sources by cutting and pasting in ways that are dizzying to behold. These charts show this and, for me, these alone are worth the price of the book. I don’t even want to imagine the combined number of hours spent on such sleuthing. I’m just glad that, now, I don’t have to do it.

The second component of the book is the author’s commentary, which is largely based on observations made while, presumably, compiling the charts. Here, the book gets interesting and here, also, the book will prove problematic for some. The saying goes that if you put two Tolkien fans together, you will end up with three opinions, and Kane is not shy about expressing his, which I’m sure will imperil him in the minds of others in the community. But so it goes.

He traces several trends that occurred during the compilation of The Silmarillion that I found particularly interesting because, as noted, they relate directly to research interests and “canon” interpretations of mine. Firstly is the diminishment of female characters during the compilation of the published Silmarillion. I’ve already heard this idea poo-pooed: They were minor characters to start and were cut as part of a general goal of downplaying minor characters. Only this isn’t what Kane’s evidence shows. Nearly all of the women of Aman, for example, had at least one detail removed by CT and Guy Kay, seemingly without reason. Other roles were eviscerated, shoving female characters into the background when, according to Kane’s research, it seemed that JRRT intended them to maintain more prominent roles, often illustrative of some of the philosophical ideas that the “Silmarillion” was meant to include.

Míriel Serindë is one such character. With the total elimination of “The Story of Finwë and Míriel,” not only is Míriel moved to the margins of the story, but the philosophical and cultural concepts that she was meant to illustrate are lost as well. Ungoliant undergoes a diminishment that greatly reduces her complexity: the complexity of character that JRRT achieved in very few words being one of the truly notable aspects of the “Silmarillion.” Nerdanel is reduced from a strong and independent woman to one who, as I illustrated in my essay A Woman in Few Words, receives only four mentions in the text, all of which concern her status as a wife and mother. JRRT’s original material on her character, as my essay also illustrates, shows her importance beyond her relationship to important males.

Still other female characters–like Andreth and Nellas–were eliminated from the published story altogether, despite evidence in the published sources that JRRT meant to include them.

Also taken from the published Silmarillion are all references to the mythological sources of the stories being presented. Again, this is an argument that I have been making for years, largely in the context of fan-writings and the attempt to establish an absolute “canon” regarding events and characterizations. My point has always been that this is complicated–even rendered impossible–by the fact that JRRT framed his stories as tales told not by himself as an omniscient and omnipresent narrator but by sources that either lived through the events being described (as in Pengolodh’s depiction of the fall of Gondolin) or received information from other sources (as in Rúmil’s construction of the Ainulindalë based on what he was taught by the Valar). That this was JRRT’s intent is hard to argue against, even though I am generally averse to assigning “authorial intent” to any of the posthumous published works. From The Book of Lost Tales on through the final written sources, JRRT often directly ascribed a source of the tales he was telling or information he was presenting. Some of his later ideas–such as the attempt to integrate a round, heliocentric world with his existing mythology–directly rely on this framework. Yet this information is completely missing from the published Silmarillion. Where did it go and why?

Kane makes a compelling argument that, in an effort to achieve consistency, CT eliminated these attributions because they themselves presented inconsistencies. JRRT ascribed tales as being passed through two lines: from the Elves on Tol Eressëa to the mortal mariner Ælfwine, or from the Elves via the escaped Númenóreans. Kane suggests the CT thought it should be one or the other but not both–that having both would introduce inconsistency into the story–and so struck them altogether. Kane regrets this choice, and I agree. As a reader, it adds the illusion of historical depth and context that the published Silmarillion lacks. As a fan-writer, I wonder, if these attributions had been made clearer, would we see a greater allowance for imagination and invention in Tolkien-based fanworks? It would be more difficult to argue something from The Silmarillion as inarguable fact with a living, breathing narrator easily perceived just on the other side of it.

Kane makes a third intriguing point: the complexity of characters presented in The Silmarillion. The characters in all their shades of gray are what first seized my imagination about the book over even LotR, which is much more prone to dualism where its characters are concerned. “Silmarillion” characters, though, have always defied such easy classification. Just ask a room full of Tolkien fans whether Fëanor or Maeglin or Manwë are good guys or bad guys and observe the variety of responses that you get.

Yet Kane demonstrates a tendency of CT, during the assembly of the published Silmarillion, to edit the texts in such ways that characters are greatly reduced in complexity. Ungoliant has been mentioned; Melkor receives similar treatment. Fëanor and his sons are deprived moments that show them more sympathetically. Manwë’s tendency to look like an ignorant buffoon is not present in the source texts, but many readers walk away from The Silmarillion with this impression–I certainly did. Kane doesn’t suggest this, but I wonder if these changes were aimed at satisfying the notions of really evil villains and really fabulous heroes that seem present in many of the epics on which The Silmarillion is patterned. Garnering sympathy for the bad guys is a relatively new phenomenon and still not one that is universally liked, especially among fantasy fans. Perhaps CT felt that taking the book in this direction would be keeping truer to the epic form and make it appealing to the same fans who adored LotR.

Without having researched any of Kane’s claims for myself, I come away from Arda Reconstructed with just one major complaint. Arda Reconstructed uses only the published source texts–The History of Middle-earth, Unfinished Tales, and so on–which is advantageous in that it allows any reader to reconstruct Kane’s work (Arda Reconstructed Reconstructed?) but is also limiting as far as drawing conclusions about the correctness of CT’s decisions in putting together The Silmarillion.

Kane acknowledges this up front in the book:

It is possible, even likely, that som eof hte changes, omissions, and additions that I describe reflect textual material not included (for whatever reason) in those works, or some other source only available to Christopher (including, perhaps, personal conversations taht he had with his father). (pg. 25)

However, as the analysis proceeds, the reality of the methodological limits of the book sometimes seems to fall by the wayside in favor of expressing a strong, certain opinion about how The Silmarillion was created. On the one hand, I understand this desire. Few are the Silmarillion fans who don’t maintain a least one negative opinion as far as CT’s choices go. At the same time, one of the quips I hear uttered at times by Silmarillion fans is, “I could have done a better job of putting together The Silmarillion than Christopher Tolkien did,” and this unfailing makes me grit my teeth because, no, chances are that if just about anyone besides CT had attempted to create The Silmarillion, we would have an inferior book. I think that–given the time and effort put into it–the “mistakes” in the published text illustrate the enormity of the task more so than any shortcomings CT possessed.

Kane doesn’t go so far as this, obviously; in fact, he speaks in gratitude for CT’s role in bringing JRRT’s posthumous writings to fans and also points out the special relationship between them that made CT the ideal choice for compiling his father’s writings. But even with all of this, I don’t feel as though his conclusions are qualified enough in terms of their shortcomings. For example, when he discusses the diminishment of women in the published Silmarillion, he is often quick to place the responsibility for this onto CT’s shoulders, identifying these changes as wrong or, at best, puzzling. For example, in discussing the removal of the detail that Nerdanel, as well as Fëanor, learned metalsmithing from Mahtan, Kane remarks, “This is one of the most blatant examples of how Christopher’s changes appear to weaken an important female character” (pg. 80). And, true, the changes are puzzling, but the reason doesn’t necessarily lie in any choice that CT made. That is a spurious conclusion to draw based solely on the fact that the published material does not immediately illuminate the reason behind such changes.

In fact, another secondary work about J.R.R. Tolkien underscores the perils of drawing such conclusions. Shortly after finishing Arda Reconstructed, I found a copy of Paul H. Kocher’s Master of Middle-earth at the library. Master of Middle-earth was published in 1972, five years before The Silmarillion, so nearly everything about the Elder Days was left to piecing together details from LotR and The Hobbit or pure speculation. Even after the publication of The Silmarillion, The History of Middle-earth, and the other supplementary texts, I was often amazed at how on-target Kocher was in his speculations about the Elder Days. Yet, at times, he was also dreadfully off-base. For example, he writes,

If the navigable sea has any such boundaries Middle-earth cannot be a rounded sphere as we now conceive Earth. In the imrama tales this point posed no dificult to the wonder-oriented Celtic mind of the Dark Ages, which popularly accepted the world as bounded and flat anyway, or, when it did not, was quite willing to forget roundness under the spell of a good story. But is such a prescientific cosmology intended by Tolkien for Middle-earth? He never discusses the question explicitly one way or the other. He leaves us to survey the text of the epic and its Appendices for ourselves. Quite possibly he considers the question to be of no real importance to the story, and so is indifferent whether it is raised or not. (pgs. 12-13)

Never explicitly discussed? Of no real importance? Indifferent?? With access to the texts we have now, we know to be as wrong-headed as Kocher’s assertion that Idril must have become a mortal because she married one. The question of how to integrate scientific reality–so important to the underlying philosophy of “subcreation” that JRRT used in his stories–with the primitive but beautiful myths he had constructed actually pre-occupied JRRT quite a bit at the end of his life, and he’d even begun changing some of his writings to reflect a round, heliocentric world. My point isn’t to berate Kocher for not having read texts that weren’t even close to publication when he wrote his otherwise insightful book about JRRT’s mythology. My point is that the sources that build all of JRRT’s works are unbelievably complex, and even after the publication of The Silmarillion and more than a dozen texts to support it, there are still troves of unpublished notes and documents to which most of us don’t have access. And this is to say nothing–as Kane himself admits–of conversations between JRRT and CT to which even the most devoted researcher will never have access.

It may well be that CT is a misogynist intentionally bent on diminishing the roles of prominent women; it may be that he possesses a less nefarious (but no less harmful) bias that caused him to choose certain details over others when editing the book to a reasonable length; it may well be that he simply made some unfortunate changes in the interest of slimming and simplifying the text that gives that impression. Or it may be that there is somewhere a scribbled note indicating that Nerdanel should not have learned her father’s art. Or it may be that JRRT expressed to CT his uncertainty about the direction Ungoliant’s character was heading. It may be that we will never know, or that what seems a “trend” is really no more than an unfortunate coincidence, and the label of “misogynist” is too dire, in my mind, to attach to a person without full proof of malevolence or ignorance underlying his decisions.

And this, I think is the major shortcoming of Arda Reconstructed. If CT’s theoretical intellectual heir publishes another twelve volumes of the History of Middle-earth illustrating why CT made the changes that he did, then Kane’s book will become as much of an anachronism as Kocher’s: useful in some regards but generally unreliable for its opinions that fail to account for texts and information that it knows exists but cannot access and the possibility that such information will fundamentally alter one’s conclusions. It is not that those opinions should not be expressed. To the contrary, I suspect that Kane’s conclusions will make for some wonderful discussion and debate in the fan community. But I think the book should have done more to remind readers of the limitations posed by its methods and should have taken more care in assigning responsibility for choices with which the author did not agree.

So should you buy the book? Its price tag was a little wince-worthy on my starving student’s budget but, yes, it is worth every penny. As a researcher, I cannot be anything but grateful to Kane and relieved at not having to compile the information that he makes available in tidy tabular format in this book. The tables alone are worth the price of the book and, I suspect, will be well-thumbed in the years to come. The discussion is lively and moves surprisingly fast, given the density of the material that Kane covers. Aside from my misgivings about his certitude at points, he brings to light interesting trends that I think are worth considering and discussing, even if we never reach any definite conclusions.

As a fan-writer, too, Kane’s work if anything demonstrates the frailty of what we fans often identify as “canon”: that notion that there exist facts in JRRT’s writings that can unequivocally be determined as “right” or “wrong.” Several of my fellow fan-writers raised the question of how Kane’s work will change how fiction based on JRRT’s writings is perceived. Pie-eyed optimistic heretic that I am, I believe that Arda Reconstructed defends a less stringent notion of canon. It is a firm reminder of the state of flux in which many of JRRT’s writings were at the time of his death. While any single fan can take a work or works and pin it down as “This is truth to me”–as many do with the published Silmarillion–that really cannot be defended beyond personal preference, and Arda Reconstructed illustrates why.

I give Arda Reconstructed 3.5 Keebler E.L. Fudge “Elves Exist” cookies out of four.

Mists joins a tradition of exploring the Arthurian legends, a tradition that includes hundreds of works and spans centuries, but differs from the vast majority of these treatments in that its concerns with the cultural mainstays like King Arthur and Sir Lancelet are secondary to the women of the legends. The story centers itself on the life of Morgaine, Arthur’s half-sister and priestess of the isle of Avalon, where old magics hold sway amid an increasingly Christianized Britain. The lives of the other women in the Arthurian stories are also focal points of the story: Morgaine and Arthur’s biological mother Igraine, Morgaine’s foster-mother Viviane, Arthur’s wife and queen Gwynhyfar, Morgaine’s aunt Morgause, and Lancelet’s wife Elaine.

The unique perspective would not be nearly as notable if the Arthurian tradition didn’t have such a lengthy history of misogyny. In works dating from the medieval period to the present, the best a woman in an Arthurian tale can hope for is to be sidelined, to be a name in a text notable only for her marriage or mothering of an important male. Her unfortunate sisters are cast as villains prone to open malice or astounding weakness, particularly in matters of self-control and morality. In The Reclamation of a Queen, Barbara Ann Gordon-Wise traces the literary history of Gwynhyfar, perhaps the most maligned of Arthurian women. Gwynhyfar’s improper sexual desires serve to bring down her husband’s paradisial kingdom in many of the works in which she plays a part while her most frequent partner in crime–Lancelet, the most beloved of Arthur’s knights–tends to be regarded favorably, despite his illicit activities in the Queen’s bed. Her inability to provide Arthur with a son and an heir is also scorned by literary history for its weakening of Arthur’s kingdom. Saddled with the lowest of expectations–to be an obedient wife and provide a child to her husband–Gwynhyfar fails at both, and literature has judged–and continues to judge–her harshly for it.

Morgaine is generally a more active villain, with the fact that she bore a child to Arthur–her half-brother–usually used as proof of that. Despite the fact that it takes two to tango, Arthur’s role in that pregnancy tends to go unexamined or is excused by Morgaine’s skill in deception and trickery. Relying on a motif that goes back to the moment that Adam first bit into the apple, he is an innocent victim of the wiles of a woman. Their son Mordred goes on to destroy the peace that Arthur has so carefully wrought. Once again, the vile actions of a woman destroy the accomplishments of a man.

To say that women have been mistreated throughout the history of literature is to state the obvious, and bemoaning the lack of gender equality as it is reflected in the literature of medieval Europe is pointless. What is disturbing is the tenacity with which these negative depictions of women have held their places in literature and other forms of entertainment, despite their coming to light in a society that is supposedly moving toward gender equality. In this, fantasy literature holds its unique power for promoting the empowerment of women.

To write historical fiction or even fiction set in the modern day is to be constrained by gender expectations and inequalities that are represented in the interest of accurately depicting reality. I have had conversations with people who complain about stories masquerading as historical fiction that attempt to level the gender playing field by showing empowered women where, in all likelihood, there would have been none, or who portray cultures with much more progressive attitudes toward gender than they in fact had. I am forced to agree, even as I lament that harmful stereotypes of women must be thrust forth again and again in literature because of it. Herein, fantasy literature possesses a unique advantage. In its most elemental definition, fantasy literature changes an aspect of reality (without concern about the mechanism of that change, unlike science fiction) and follows that change through to its conclusion. Fantasy literature is perfect for exploring a world that is not constrained by inequality towards women or that–as with Mists–turns patriarchy on its head to show what a matrifocal civilization might look like. Throughout this, there is no need to “suspend disbelief” as one must when encountering the same ideas in most historical fiction or fiction set in the modern day.

I picked up Mists for my interest in it as a piece of feminist fantasy literature. However, I found its feminist cant secondary to and dependent upon its tendency to look critically upon organized religion. While there is no doubt that Mists is meant to criticize patriarchal institutions–the Christian church in its more conservative incarnation receives particularly scathing treatment–then I felt like it looked unfavorably on both the Christian and the pagan institutions shown in the novel. Although the critiques of Christianity were much more noticeable, the institutions of heathen Goddess worship of which Morgaine and Viviane are part are certainly far from glorified. To the contrary, Mists shows both faiths–Christian and pagan–to be uplifting, positive entities in their purest forms. When tethered to power, ambition, and moral certitude, however, both institutions wreak terrible harm.

Although the pagan faith shown in Mists is Goddess-centered and treats women as higher than men in its institutions and traditions, it certainly is not a pro-woman institution. Morgaine’s mother Igraine is the most shining example of a woman treated as a tool in order to advance her sisters in a male-driven world. Igraine is given in marriage to Gorlois–a Roman much older than she whom she detests and who treats her with disregard bordering on contempt–and she is given by her own sister Viviane, a priestess of Avalon who otherwise affirms the superiority of women. It is clear, though, that this does not include all women so much as it includes women in power. When it is to Viviane’s benefit, she is no better than Gwynhyfar’s father, who gives his daughter to Arthur in marriage as part of a parcel of horses; Igraine, likewise, is used to buy Avalon favor with the Romans. Deserted by her sisters, Igraine’s life becomes focused on pleasing men, and it is no surprise that she dies in a convent, scorning her own daughter Morgaine for her autonomy. In contrast, Lancelet and Gwydion (Mordred) are both connected to Avalon and the Lady of the Lake, and neither is used as a pawn quite in the way that Igraine (and, to a lesser extent, Morgause) are used.

Likewise, Morgaine’s treatment of Kevin the Bard at the end of the novel also shows the pagan institutions as comparably brutal as the Christian church. (Actually, at this point, they are probably more so, but the novel hints at the end of the growing fervor of the Christians that will, presumably, lead into the extreme fundamentalism that characterizes the Middle Ages and continues, to an extent, today.) Kevin is most guilty of not being a religious fundamentalist; his aim is to bring the two religions together as much as possible and to preserve the old ways in conjunction with the flourishing Christianity. To Morgaine and others with a fundamentalist bent, this is unacceptable. Morgaine’s brief embodiment as the Goddess at one of Arthur’s feasts demonstrates the potential of the Britons to receive the old powers, but her refusal to compromise threatens to drive the faith in its entirety into oblivion. When Kevin is discovered to have used the regalia of Avalon in conjunction with Christian ceremonies, he is decried as a traitor, and the original sentence is that he should be brought alive to Avalon (through the trickery of the priestess Nemue, who in the process of ensnaring him must also herself fall in love with him) and there flayed and shut alive inside of a tree.

Even as she herself hands down this sentence, Morgaine is tormented by doubts. For all that she despises Kevin’s actions, he has been her friend and lover, and she wants to do him no harm. When he is delivered into her hands, she makes the decision to grant him a quick death, even if it means that she herself must bear his punishment as a traitor to Avalon. Morgaine’s refusal to play a part in cruel malice is viewed–by her at least–as a weakness; she feels that she has failed in her duty to her Goddess. In despair at Kevin’s fate, Nemue commits suicide. Again, in pursuit of their aims, the machinations of the religious elite have led to the destruction of a woman.

Throughout the novel, Kevin’s sentence remains the most explicit example of such cruelty, though Mists hints that such “blood sacrifices” were once commonplace and that ordinary people (or criminals in their places) were expected to lay down their lives in rituals to ensure a good harvest or in homage to the Goddess. The elite and powerful were, of course, exempt, unless they were traitors, in which case they were subjected to the same cruelties that would become part and parcel of their religious successors, the Christians. This seems to show, again, the short-sightedness of religious institutions, no matter what name they use in worship, and the dehumanization to which they are inclined when they believe that larger spiritual matters require it. Mistreatment of women is a part of this.

So, in the end, what did I think of the book? It is not without flaws, in my opinion, but overall, I really, really enjoyed it. I felt that the feminist purposes were a little too explicit in places, borrowing too heavily from modern discourse common on this subject (particularly in the earlier sections of the book, when Igraine is growing accustomed to living in a patriarchy and often thinks like Gloria Steinem being made to live among the Amish) and would have liked had I felt less like I was being told what to feel about this rather than being shown Igraine’s life and permitted to draw my own conclusions. (Yes, the old adage “show don’t tell” rears its warty head!) Morgaine was constantly realizing that another character was “the only friend she’d ever had” or “the only one she’d ever loved,” which would have been fine except that I think she realized this, independently, of Kevin, Lancelet, Viviane, Gwynhyfar, and Arthur. Since I am prone to this sort of hyperbole and waffling over affections in my own fiction, it leaped out at me here. And the ending happened much too fast. Mordred becomes a delightfully wicked character, and I looked forward to his climactic scene with Arthur but … there wasn’t much there. His betrayal should have been so much more memorable given the skill with which Ms. Bradley constructs his character and installs him in the hearts of those in Arthur’s court. I felt like the book rushed much to fast to its conclusion. Maybe the copy I had from the library had pages missing? It did feel that way.

But, for the past month, there were times when I would want to forsake other activities and things that needed to be done in order to read this book. It is not only an ingenious rendering of one of the most familiar tales in Western mythology but also highly entertaining. I give it 3.75 E.L. Fudge “Elves Exist” cookies out of four.

I had all intentions of reviewing the movie, being as this blog weble is primarily concerned with fantasy literature and the issues that it raises, particularly for those marginalized by traditional discussions of literature. Besides being a fantasy classic in the making, Coraline concerns a lot of these issues. However, since I can’t pick a focus and have decided that I do not want to, then this is the Coraline Grab Bag, a motley of unrelated musings on the novella and the movie.

***SPOILER ALERT!***
I am not going to shy from discussing details and outcomes of the plot when they are relevant to the points I am discussing here. So if you want to go into the book/movie without knowing the details of how it will turn out, get thee to the bookstore or theater and then come back to this post.

First, as far as general impressions of the movie, it is one of the few instances where I feel that a movie adds something significant to the book on which it is based. This is not to say that it is better than the book, but the novella Coraline nearly begs for a visual presentation, and this movie delivers. Oh, does it deliver.

Here is a hundred-word synopsis:

Coraline is an eccentric tween whose parents are workaholic-bordering-on-neglectful. Like many children in such a situation, her imagination becomes her escape. A bricked-over doorway entices her and, one night, she discovers that the door leads into a parallel life where her parents and home embody what she believes to be the ideal. As the story progresses, she realizes that the perfection is a guise for something much darker. And, yes, one of those dark attributes is that everyone in the parallel world sews black buttons into their eyes. Coraline must save herself and others entrapped here from its dark snares.

It is a dark story. It becomes even darker when ideas that were left to the wilds of ones imagination in the novella–like the buttons-for-eyes concept that the movie exploits for every squirm-inducing ounce of dark joy it’s worth–achieve the added tangibility of presentation on the big screen: like the sharp, shining needle and Coraline’s aghast eyes and the Other Father’s suavely creepy assertion that “It’s extra-sharp so it won’t hurt.” This invites the viewer to contemplate the act of exchanging one’s eyes for black buttons that is more easily avoided in the books.

To offer further anecdotal evidence about the need to take care with children at this movie, when we went last week, we had a small child seated in the row behind us. The opening scene shows a ragdoll being remade in Coraline’s image, and as a pair of scissors tore open the doll’s back, the little girl behind us gasped and cried out. This was the first ten seconds of the movie. The rest of the movie was similarly punctuated by little yelps and shrieks from the row behind us. Despite being a kid person like most cats are dog people, I felt truly sorry for the little tyke, whose parents probably saw “Animation!” and thought “Perfect to pacify little Madysyn for two hours!” Not the case, folks. Give serious consideration to taking any child to Coraline who is, well, younger than Coraline.

So there are mutterings about how Coraline is dark and misplaced as a children’s or “family” movie. Well, to be blunt, no shit. I empathized fully with the outrage directed at Despereaux earlier this year. Not only was the movie G-rated, but the previews gave no indication that it would include such scenes as a young woman being tied up to be eaten alive by rats or a rat (however deserving) being trapped by a murderous cat while we the audience are treated to his offscreen death throes. To me, it seemed perhaps the most egregious example of how “child-friendly” or “family-friendly” has come to mean “without sex or curse words,” ignoring the fact that children remain largely ignorant of the meaning of sex and curse words but understand full well what’s going on when that rat gets trapped in a helm with a hungry cat and the helm starts rattling. I was disturbed by scenes in Despereaux, and I write dark fantasy and horror fiction.

The issue with Despereaux was that these elements were sprung upon an audience that expected something very different. As Emily Bazelon notes in the article linked above, parents have a hard time finding out the extent of dark themes and violence in “children’s movies,” things that might not necessarily be revealed in the preview, reviews, or the source material. I agree. But, sorry, you can’t use that excuse with Coraline. The paperback copy of the novella that I bought identifies it as “One of the most frightening books ever written,” at least according to the New York Times Book Review. The two previews I saw of the movie in theaters–before fantasy movies as different as The Strange Case of Benjamin Button and Inkheart–left no doubt that the movie would be dark. The previews even showed the famous buttons-into-eyes scene. In other words, no one is trying to hide that Coraline is a dark story. So I must admit that my patience wears very thin with those who are grumbling that, despite all this, Coraline is a dark movie.

No shit.

I found Filthy Grandeur’s review of Coraline via Feministe. On the darkly seductive Other Mother, Filthy Grandeur writes:

Also, her whole identity is based on being Coraline’s “other mother.” She provides what Coraline desires, which amounts to what Coraline thinks a mother should provide.

Thelma Adams for Women on Film says of Coraline’s real mother:

Yet the disturbing part is the depiction of a self-involved, self-obsessed mother who can’t bother to see to her own daughter’s needs because she’s so worried about getting clean copy to her publisher. She’s a garden writer who can’t grow her own garden — or tend her own plant (Coraline).

Yet, with all due respect to these reviewers, I think they’re only halfway there. Yes, Coraline’s mother is the stereotyped image of the harried, snappish “working mother” whose priority is her career and not her child. The Other Mother is the stereotyped domestic goddess, both in her traditionally feminine interests and in the center-of-my-world treatment that she lavishes on her child. The contrast and conflict between these dual expectations is part of what drives the story. In the novella, there is a particularly revealing scene that was left out of the movie. Coraline’s Other Mother, in an effort to convince Coraline that her missed parents are alive and very well, shows her a scene of them returning from holiday:

In the mirror it was daytime already. Coraline was looking at the hallway, all the way down to her front door. The door opened from the outside and Coraline’s mother and father walked inside. They carried suitcases.

“That was a fine holiday,” said Coraline’s father.

“How nice it is, not to have Coraline any more,” said her mother with a happy smile. “Now we can do all the things we always wanted to do, like go abroad, but were prevented from doing by having a little daughter.”

Filthy Grandeur notes that it is “sort of strange that the child was trying to enforce this gender role,” but I’m don’t find it particularly strange at all. Traditional gender roles are still so prevalent and, most importantly, so subtle in mainstream Western culture and media that I don’t see how a child like Coraline could not absorb the expectation that her mother should be making her child more of a priority than she is. Overcoming these expectations take a conscious effort and a level of thought and analysis that eludes many adults. In a way, Coraline is about Coraline’s growing awareness of how such unreal expectations placed on the shoulders of women tend to play out in actuality.

The important point, for me, is what is revealed in the end of the story. Domestic bliss is an illusion literally created by the Other Mother who, amusingly, in the words of the black cat, describes the Other Mother’s motives as,

“She wants something to love, I think,” said the cat. “Something that isn’t her. She might want something to eat as well. It’s hard to tell with creatures like that.”

The ancient, devouring mother; the stage mom or soccer mom screeching at her mortified and inadequate offspring; the mother who invests herself so strongly in her children that her identity becomes lost and conflated with theirs, who figuratively consumes them in pursuit of her own self-worth: this is the dark side of the domestic bliss in Coraline’s parallel reality. It is a cautionary tale not about women who focus too strongly on something other than their children but about the opposite, about confining a woman’s worth and identity within the home (note that the parallel reality, as an explicit creation of the Other Mother, does not extend much beyond the home) and her children.

In the end, I think that the movie makes its statement about gender roles in Coraline’s choice: Left to choose between domestic bliss with the Other Mother and her imperfect life with her real mother, she chooses the latter. And a glimpse of the price of perfection is enough to change her views of her own mother and family. Especially in the movie version, Coraline’s family at the end seems much better than her family at the start. Have they changed? Or has she? Here, Gaiman and Selick play a subtle game with point-of-view and invite the audience to consider whether Coraline’s life was really so awful to start. Or was a young girl with a vivid imagination simply engaging in fantasy based on what she had absorbed of gender-role “ideals”?

The movie dwells far longer on the blissful scenes whereas the book focuses on Coraline’s quest to save her parents and the souls of other children that the Other Mother has taken. I suspect this is to show off some of the dazzling and innovative scenes and concepts: a garden in the shape of Coraline’s face, a lawnmower built like a giant mantis, the jumping mouse show, a chandelier that doubles as a milkshake dispenser, and so on. I think the shift here was mostly advantageous: Getting to share in Coraline’s discoveries and wonder was a real treat. However, the game of souls at the end felt a bit rushed to me because I was accustomed to the book version and the loving detail put into the full horror of it. Here, the movie scimped a bit, though as dark as the movie was already, I can understand that it may have been a necessary action to keep the movie from tilting into PG-13 territory by MPAA standards. Likewise, Coraline’s prophetic dream meeting with the three stolen children was much more lavishly treated in the book, a scene that I had looked forward to and missed somewhat in the movie, although the unreal sense of time essential to this scene in the book may have presented insurmountable challenges on the screen.

I give it a full four E.L. Fudge Elves Exist cookies out of four.