The world of Darkover created by Marion Zimmer Bradley is an universe I’d always return to. When I was a teen, books about Darkover were like a symbol to me. A symbol meaning that I knew English well enough to read novels written in it, and that I could buy books from the US at all. And it remains a symbol to me, even if a very problematic one.
You see, even during my first readings I could see some problems in the series. Classism, that kind of feminism which has aged poorly on some levels, orientalism, and covert racism. And here is my revisit through the omnibus edition, The Saga of the Renunciates, telling a story of the Renunciates, a guild of independently working woman in a patriarchal lost colony of feudal Darkover planet. Which has been discovered by the Terrans. So, there’s culture clash, there’s feminism, and there are things which made me angry but also things which surprised me in a positive way. I’ve been through The Shattered Chain and I’m reading Thendara House currently, and so far, I’d tell you that these two are one of my favourite novels about Darkover. But there are problems, too. Oh, they are. Let’s see. This time, with quotes! AND WITH SPOILERS.
The Shattered Chain is, after a way, a story of two rescues and two loves. At first, Mellora, a well-born lady who’s been kidnapped by the desert Dry Towners, is taken back to her homeland by an expedition of the Renunciates hired by Mellora’s cousin, Lady Rohana Ardais. Mellora dies at childbirth. Her son is adopted by Rohana, but her twelve-years-old daughter, Jaelle, chooses to stay with the Renunciates and be schooled in their Guildhouse in Thendara, Darkover’s capital. Several years later, Jaelle, already a Renunciate, meets a woman only poising for a Renunciate, treating it as a guise to travel into the mountains and rescue Lady Rohana’s son from bandists. The woman, Magdalene Lorne, is a Terran agent raised on Darkover, and she is convinced that the kidnapped is actually her ex-husband, Peter Haldane.
So, it’s a 1976 book and you’ve got a story of a Noble Lady having been kidnapped and literally chained by a guy from a desert. What can go wrong with such associations? Just as you’ve expected. Everything.
The way the Dry Towns are described is purely orientalist, and the fact that Dry Towners are fair-haired is all too convenient. Because you can always say, no, the author didn’t want to misrepresent a culture based on WENA/MENA people, come on, they are all blondes!
The square was deserted for a while, then some Dry-Town women, wrapped in their cumbersome skirts and veils, began to drift into the marketplace [..] each of them, with the small metallic clash of chains. (Marion Zimmer Bradley, “The Shattered Chain”)
Do you see? Those Muslim women are not only opressed by The Veil, they are also literally chained!
And let’s see how our liberated Renunciates see the issue of this particular aspect of Dry Towns’ culture…
I feel no very great sympathy for them. Any single one of them could be free if she chose. If they wish to suffer chains rather than lose the attentions of their men, or be different from their mothers and sisters, I shall not waste my pity on them [..] (Marion Zimmer Bradley, ‘The Shattered Chain”)
So, the Dry-Towns women are shown not ony as oppressed, but also as the ones to be blamed for the said oppression. They are spoken about and for, but they are, themselves, only being observed. They don’t speak for themselves. Just as the Orient can’t present itself, it needs to be described and explained by the Occident. And honestly? If the Renunciates consider the chain-custom violent, they really should know better, as a society centred around women and helping them, how violence and its mechanisms of helplessness work.
I must admit, however, that there’s a counterbalance to such voices in the novel. The Domains of Darkover, after all, are also patriarchal, and it pleases them to think how benevolent, by contrast, they are to their own women.
And speaking of orientalism, The Veil Metaphor is only the beginning.
[…]Jalak, and his wives and concubines […] will return before noon tomorrow; and one of the slave-girls told me that they would have returned tonight […]
Slavery and polygamy… What else can we add to the stereotype? And please bear in your mind that the Dry Towns, for some reason, are contrasted with the Domains’ society where a man can have a wife and a concubine at once, and where sleeping with a sister of your pregnant wife is perfectly acceptable, and where non-“human” people, such as cralmacs and kyrii, have been enslaved for centuries. Big contrasts, aren’t they?
Here you’ve got the description of Jalak, Mellora’s oppressor, and his entourage:
First came a dozen of his guards, in trappings so alien to Rohana as to make little impression on her except the genral one of rude splendor: sashes and baldrics, elaborately gilded tunics, high headdresses.[…]And then came Jalak himself.
Rohana had to turn away before she had more than a sight of his thin, hawk-keen face[…]
Near him rode […] a couple of his favorites, slaves or concubines […] On Jalak’s other side a thin, elegant boy, a pretty minion; too curled, too jeweled and perfumed to be anything else.
Do you see? Dry Towns here are portrayed just as the Orient has been depicted for centuries. They are alien, strange, uncivilized, dangerous, barbarian. And they are also sensous. They mean indulgence and debauchery while your square Domains are the standard Celtic and Spaniard derived locations. And when I write “Spaniard”, it doesn’t refer to Latin-American or Moorish heritage, no. It’s white, Latin-inspired “spanishness”. That’s partailly why the Dry Towns can be depicted as so alien and separated from the “default” Darkover culture. Because the Orient, the unknown, is, to paraphrase Edward Wadie Said, a set of curiosities. Concubines, slaves, male sex-workers, desert, ornaments, all this is a code for the re-imagined (and stereotypized again) Orient.
Bradley can be nuanced and subtle, why not, but only when it comes to the culture of the Domains and the Terran Empire. Here are the thoughts of Rohana, once the expedition is over, and she’s going to adopt Mellora’s son while Jaelle will stay with the Renunciates:
Rohana knew, now, that she was living that life by choice; not because her mind was too narrowly bounded to imagine any other life, but, because, having known another life and weighted it, she had decided that what was good in her world-her deep affection for Gabriel, her love for her children, the responsibility of the estate of Ardais that demanded the hand of its lady-outweighted what was difficult, or hard for her to accept. (Marion Zimmer Bradley, “The Shattered Chain”)
Now, that’s a complicated and truthful reflection: that one shoe doesn’t fit all. If a woman prefers to be a mother and a house-keeper, if that’s her own choice, that’s fine. If a woman prefers to be more into career, that’s also fine. And maybe we should get rid of this dichotomy altogether. Feminism is not to tell you how you should live, but to liberate us all.
So what will we get in the following parts? We’ll get something more about Darkovan customs and Terran culture, and Bradley’s reflections are going to be more subtle than her depiction of the Dry Towns.
Thus, let me finish part one of my micro-analysis with this optimistic accent.
Left Hand of Fiction 