On literary analysis, gaslighting, Mary Sues, truth and reconciliation, and the fantasy patriarchy

[deborah]

Kristin Cashore, author of the Seven Kingdoms series (Graceling, Fire, and Bitterblue), posted on her blog last week "Brother Cansrel, Father Leck."

Content notes, in Kristin's words: "priests, rape, suicide."

And secondly, two disclaimers: One, Kristin is my friend (I've never talked about any of this with her), so the objective close reading I think I'm bringing to this post is almost certainly bullshit. And two, I'm not discussing any authorial intent in my interpretation below (even where Kristin explicitly claims one in her post). Instead, I'm musing on places where her post has made me rethink my own interpretation of the characters.

This post is not about the horrible real world events. It's just about how that very personal blog post gave me a new way of looking at the residents of the Seven Kingdoms, especially (but not exclusively) the women and girls. But because of the subject matter, look here, a cut tag! 👉🏽



When Fire came out, one of the arguments I saw most commonly was whether Fire herself is a Mary Sue. By checklist, she certainly is: super-powered Fire has magically unnaturally beautiful hair, is magically beautiful, is overwhelmingly desired by all, and that makes her life sooooo difficult. Even the idea that Fire's desirability makes life harder for her seems like it ought to have been the worst kind of Mary Sue.[1] Yet she never read like a Mary Sue to me, and, at the time, I wasn't sure why not.

Rosie Vela, Pantene ad, 1989

In this new light, I see why her Mary Sueism was actually a necessary component of her character. Fire is a young woman whose freedom and safety have been overwhelmingly curtailed by the way others see her as desirable. She's not a rape victim[2], per se, but she repeatedly has sex she doesn't want because a man makes it clear that his desire for her is her responsibility. Fire doesn't want to tell people, "don't hate me because I'm beautiful." She wants to tell them, "don't find me beautiful." Her life is one long toxic masculinity hate crime: men try to rape and murder her both because they desire her and because they loathe her for their own desire. Fire is the young woman you'd get if you start by accepting misogyny's basic premise that men are innocents helplessly tempted into depraved lusts by the presence of a female, and then ask why the fuck is that her problem? It's the most marvelous subversion of religious modesty codes I've ever seen.

In all the 7K books, of course, gaslighting is prominent. Katsa's and Fire's are personal, but the gaslighting in Bitterblue is societal. Leck gaslit all of Monsea magically, of course -- that is his superpower, in the most terrifying way. But in the aftermath of his crimes against humanity (none of which are more terrible than things real world humans do to one another), the society creates its own, self-sustaining gaslighting. In a terrible situation, through fear or greed or helplessness, many Monseans of Leck's generation had collaborated with an evil system. During Bitterblue's reign, lacking a truth and reconciliation commission, the society tells itself that truth isn't truth. Those who witnessed the king's horrible crimes against children want to sweep those truths under the rug, even when the cognitive dissonance literally steals their sanity.

This excerpt from Kristin's blog post could have been Bitterblue speaking to her therapist:

We were told that we were not in fact seeing what we thought we were seeing. ... We were told that our anger was wrong. We were also told to do what we were told.

And then maybe one of my peers would try to kill herself, not for the first time. I mean, I’m not talking about small stakes here. ... Yet in the minds of the adults, the connection between a culture that was systematically dehumanizing us and us trying to kill ourselves was never made. Why? Why couldn’t they see? Why wouldn’t they help us? Because the adults had been lied to too, and they chose to trust the powerful leaders, instead of the vulnerable ones who were crying. Oh, my lord. And we were crying so hard. And there were consequences. Not everyone made it out okay.

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Notes

1. There's legit critique that the concept of Mary Sues is just a way to attack competent women in storylines. I'd argue that even within that critique (which I don't disagree with), Fire, as a collection of bulletpoints, looks like she ought to have crossed a line. (Which is part of the point of critiquing Mary Sue complaints, obviously!) [back]


2. At least, not to my recollection. Fire is the 7K book I've read least recently. [back]

On a less serious note: fanfic about Katsa's, Fire's, and Bitterblue's conversations with their therapists would be rad.