I’ve just been through Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. And it seems to me that what is good and bad in her writing was enhanced alike. As a result, nothing has been changed at all.
The good thing which I can say about the trilogy is that, at least, the plot and the grey characters improved. SPOILERS This time, fifteen years after the first trilogy’s ending, we get the tale of culture clash between Kettricken’s son and his fiancee, an OutIslander Elliania. Soon it’ll come out that the choices of her and her family are more tragic and complex than we initially suppose. On the other hand, there are the Witted Ones struggling for emancipation. The Witted Ones are especially interesting; we learn of fractions among them and of unwritten rules of theirs, and we’ll meet their spiritual leader who is, I would say, one of the wisest characters depicted in the series. SPOILERS
All which is wrong, inconsistent or simply naïve, overcomes any possible advantages, however.
On the broader scale, nothing has changed. The monarchy of the Farseers, according to Fool, is still the key to the world’s survivival. Which doesn’t convince me at all. I just don’t like characters which are important because of being the Chosen Ones, not because of their actions. I hate all the trope of keeping the establishment because the Fate!1! and blackmailing the reader with it. I hate it because in the light of it, the Witted Piebalds become the villains rather for the sake of their disobedience towards the Holy and Sacred feudal rules than for the sake of their cruelty. They are Evil! because they want to overthrow monarchy. They are evil because they oppose the establishment. They are evil because they dare to imagine another kind of rules. And when rapes&tortures are added to the list of their crimes, it seems to me it’s merely because Hobb can’t depict the opponents (especially the opponents of Good and Noble Farseers) who aren’t villains.
I hate that vision so much that I wish the timid image of Six Duchies was somehow deconstructed. I wish prostitution, ruthless feudals, hooked-up maids, disease and poverty; all the things which we would never see in those books. *regrets it isn’t Westeros* I wish our naïvely loyal Fitz or constantly intriguing Chade met some antimonarchist like John Laurens, contradicting not only their image of the government’s forms, but of masculinity as well.
The main problem is that the Six Duchies is a wishful fantasy of Happy and Justful medieval kingdom which has NEVER EVER existed. It’s a wishful fantasy on every level, from the work of feudal monarchy to interpersonal relations, resembling more those in white middle-class families in the 1950′ than the connections of abuse and power in medieval society. Repeat after me—Middle Ages DIDN’T look like that!
It is, actually, the very opposite of such series as ASoIaF, Darkover or Tearling, or Guy Gavriel Kay’s quasi-historical books, whose characters are aware that their universe is less than petfect; it’s unjust. The abuse and hierarchy blight everything in Westeros, Darkover or Batiara, including interpersonal relations. From Hobb, on the other hand, we get an idealized image of feudalism and social order.
And guess what? I wouldn’t mind the world where wives are afraid of being dismissed because of their infertility. Where teenage girls are threatened with leaving home because they dared to have premarital sex. Where widows’ future is decided between their dying husbands and former lovers. Where homosexuals are found unnatural and immoral.
I wouldn’t mind it as long as the said social order would be depicted as wicked at worst and imperfect at best. But here, it isn’t. It’s depicted as the righteous one, and those who defy it—either as the immoral ones (Starling and Hap’s girlfriend) or the eccentric ones (Fool). The eccentric ones are allowed to differ because they support the Farseers and come from the milieu so different from ours that we can forgive them their gender queerness and specific clothing style. The immoral ones… The immoral ones are to warn us as anti-role models.
Let’s take Hap, Fitz’s adopted son, and his girlfriend. SPOILERS She’s Evil! because she prompts the Virgin Country Boy to have premarital sex. Because of her, Hap loses his reputation as an apprentice. She takes on with another guy, and she convinces Hap that it was at her parents’ wish. Then, she marries for money. SPOILERS
You may say that the lass is simply unfair. She is, but why? Because Hobb wanted to Exemplify a Thesis of EvilWantonGreedy Girls seducing Good Boys. Remember—good girls are waiting till tying the knot and do not initiate a relation, not to mention an intercourse.
Starling and her story is even a better example, however, how to demonize and overdraw a sexually liberated woman. SPOILERS In the previous trilogy, we learn that Starling was a victim of war-rape and had an abortion as the result, an abortion which has made her infertile, probably. Remember, infertility is the punishment for terminating a pregnancy! Now, she’s a famous singer forbidding other artists to perform her works. She’s selfish, you know. Because she recognizes the copyright law. If that isn’t enough, she has casual sex with Fitz not informing him that she’s married at once. Her husband doesn’t know of anything. Because, ye know, it couldn’t be that they have a free-love relationship. But, oh wait, free love (or friends with benefits overall) is considered as something bad by Fitz even when he has sex with his friend Jinna, and they both aren’t bound to anybody else.
No, Starling must be a cheating trickster unfair towards her spouse and her lover as well. And when she says that she has the right to decide about her own body, one might interpretate it as a caricature of the feminist viewpoint; see, dear reader, all that liberty is about cheating and manipulating, not about freedom.
And how will she end? As a woman who’s pregnant—as she’s been dreaming for years. SPOILERS But as a Trecherous Bitch, she can’t have a child and retain her fame at once. No, she must be punished for her liberty and for her Licencious Behaviour. She leaves her singing career behind and plays a humble matron. And because from now she allows other singers to perform her works, we are clearly suggested that her decision was righteous, and her change good. “The Taming of the Shrew” so much.
Another example of taming the women with social expectations (either the author’s or the Six Duchies’ culture; I prefer not to know) are Kettricken and Molly.
You see, after almost fifteen years Kettricken is still a widow recalling Verity and longing for Verity. She couldn’t fall in love again or have any sexual life. And why? Because, assuming the political situation, she would rather have to take a lover than a husband. And for a Good Female Character, it’s unbecoming in Elderlingsverse. Only Broken Boys like Fitz are allowed to have extramarital sex (with only two partners, Starling and Jinna) and remain the Good Ones and the Not Led Astray Ones. They must repent for it, however. Of course. There is Chade, also. He could be an old jerk bedding young women due to his Merits for the Crone and his discretion.
And then, there is Molly. Oh, Molly. I wish you’d been allowed to decide about the life of you and your kids after Burrich’s death. I wish Fitz hadn’t been stalking you. I wish there was no “she’s my woman” and “Burrich took Molly from me!1!” in the books, refering to supposedly beloved woman as to some precious chattel. I wish there was no subtext of “she needs somebody to look after her and her children”. I wish there was no trope of “they parted and then she got a husband&pack of kids, and he got (numerous) lovers”.
Maybe I’m exaggerating. Maybe it isn’t sexism, but only the popcultural notion of love and relations in which the lovers belong to each other, and from it, some not especially healthy tropes are derived. Maybe our culture is still so dominated by males that even our good Fitz considers making men out of Hap and Dutiful something universal. Comparing it to Starling afraid that her husband would get rid off her because of her supposed infertility, and to Hap’s girlfriend’s dad behaviour “Your boy put a shame on my daughter!1!” suggests other conclusion, however.
As I’ve noticed in my previous text on Hobb—puritanism doesn’t serve women well. Gender equality isn’t about “let’s forbid lads an’ lassies alike having extramarital sex”. Putting aside its sexism on women’s social roles, Catholic Church—and Protestantism, then—tried to treat sex in such a way. And failed. As a result, it only strenghtened the double standards of boys allowed to fuck everything except other boys and “decent” (well-to-do) girls.
The situation in Six Duchies is even more ridiculous, assuming some social factors. Why sex is treated in such a way while there is nothing about it in the local religion? Eda and El do not have Jesus-like aproach towards the intimate life (religion is barely present, anyway). Why women’s virginity is required even when a woman is the heiress to her family, and her line, not the father’s, is important?
I think I know the answer. Hobb thinks that the Six Duchies’ social order is justful. That it’s about mutual care, not about power and abuse. That she can have a cake and eat a cake. Women warriors, hunters and princesses on their own—treated as the obvious and natural elements of the society— alongside with puritanical obsession. Dishwashing Burrich on the one side and “womanly touch” of Jinna at Fitz’s kitchen on the other one. (Notice that when the men are doing some domestic chores, it isn’t affiliated with their gender at all.)
Actually, she can’t have a cake and eat a cake.
The case of Dutiful and Elliania SPOILERS marrying quickly and having a child at the age of fifteen, roughly SPOILERS and being praised for it, made me realize something.
The whole thing isn’t about “values” or “the teens should wait with sex till they know what they want and whom they like/love/prefer”. It’s about something common to Ancient Greeks and Romans, to medieval Anglo-Saxons and to nineteenth-century bourgeoisie alike. It’s something out of “good vs evil” approach towards sexual life because it has been present in the societies differing from each other a lot on the moral ground.
It’s about so-called “propriety” which is actually abuse. Power. Control over the bodies of the others. It isn’t about sincerity towards one another or about anybody’s well-being. It’s about sustaining the guise of virtous conduct and high morals of the society. That’s why Dutiful can have sex openly and Hap cannot, even if they are both not entirely mature teens. Dutiful has a piece of paper conveniently called “marriage ceremony” and thus his relation with Elliania is considered better. Entitled to produce kids even if it might be too early, in biological and psychological terms as well. But these kids won’t be bastards, and good girls do not bring bastards to their homes. Remember—as long as you tied the knot, you can procreate prematurely! Propriety. That’s why Dutiful’s love is praised and Hap’s love—condemned. For the same reason for which some conservatives scorn cohabitating couples nowadays. It isn’t even about extramarital sex. It’s about “THEY DARE TO DO IT OPENLY!1!1” Double Standard rules, as usual. And as usual, it hurts women more than men. It causes Patience and Starling to be blamed of infertility (and what if it was Chivalry and Dewin Fisher who had problems, not their wives?), it causes young Nettle to be ushered into the Only Proper Role of a Dame. It forces all those who are considered “indecent” and “ill-behaving” to remain invisible to the “honest folk”; it’s a kind of symbolic power . It saves nobody and resolves nothing. This is the thing which makes harm to the Six Duchies’ society, not the queerness of Fool or the “immoral conduct” of Hap and his girlfriend. And the funniest thing is that alongside with the hereditary practices and political position of women in the realm, it doesn’t make sense. But Hobb cannot see it. She thinks that the rule of “no extramarital sex (openly)” is universal and normative, and the other rules—like those of the OutIslanders or Jamaillans—are exotic at best and deceptive at worst. She doesn’t see that out of her rule, one won’t make an equarchy. Only good, old patriarchy.
And the worst is that there is yet another trilogy to examine—Fitz and Fool. Do not expect, however, that I’ll deal with it soon.
NOTE: I do not have anything against Tawny Man trilogy in the matter of style or the plot overall. I’m also aware that there are numerous book series—even those contemporary ones—which are sexist in a much more open way. What I wanted to show it’s how Hobb’s writing reveals its social faults in supposedly unimportant details. You may say that it’s only talking; why should we care about it while there are female warriors and sovereign queens and princesses in her universe? I think, however, that sometimes words could reveal more than deeds.
P. S. I’ve chosen that queer and dandy picture of Fool on purpose, of course.
Left Hand of Fiction 