Today, we’ll delve into the second part of The Shattered Chain by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Twelve years have passed since the first time and now Magda Lorne, a Terran agent raised on Darkover, begins a journey in a disguise of a Renunciate, on Lady Rohana Ardais’ orders: she thinks that Kyril, the Lady’s son kidnapped by mountain bandits, is actaully her ex-husband Peter, a man strikingly similar to Kyril.
Magda is a translator and an agent, and although she works for the Terrans, she feels divided about her identiy, as being a person raised on Darkover. She doesn’t know where she actually belongs and she is aware that Peter, brought up under similar circumstances, was like her. That’s why, even if their marriage had been ended, she wants to rescue him. She is going to take a guise of a Free Amazon (a mostly Terran name for a Renunciate) because it’s the easiest way to pass for a Darkovan woman and remain independent. So far in her chapters, the observations are believable and interesting, but it’s also strange to read that Dry-Town women are opressed because of what they wear while in the Domains, there are strong fashion codes, too: a woman with her neck bare is considered a sex-worker. Wonderful.
Everything seems to go well for Magda as she heads towards the mountains passing for a Renunciate until she meets a group of actual Renunciates in a mountain shelter. Among them, there are people who will be important in the next installments, such as Camilla, a mercenary who has been neutered and who is considered an emmasca, kind of a third sex on Darkover. However, we are never explained what the said neutering means, only that it is an illegal operation. Does it involve mutilation? Or just makes female hormones to be no longer produced? There is no clue.
Magda discovers, then, that many popular notions about the Guild of the Renunciates are rather… false.
The Renunciates talk about the stereotype of lesbians being over-represented in their company, and how some men make fantasies about it. And fetishizing queer women is, of course, patriarchal and nasty, but here we get the whole talk about sex-workers who dressed as Renunciates. Let’s see what the actual members of the Guild did to them.
‘Why, Rafi and I went there by night when their leering audience had gone , we dragged those shameless wenches out into the main square, we stripped them naked and shaved their heads bald as an egg, and their private parts, too, and smeared them in pitch, and rolled them in wood shavings.’ (Marion Zimmer Bradley, “The Shattered Chain”)
I’m so glad. I’m so glad that nowadays, nobody would let such a slut-shaming in a “feminist” book. What Bradley describes builds walls, not bridges. And even if there’s a more nuanced discussion later, the Renunciates still claim that sex-work is something degrading, the last think which a woman should do to make money. And while a hierarchical patriarchal society certainly makes sex-working dangerous, I think that adding a social stigma to it is the part of the problem. Renunciates, with their condemning attitude, do not help anybody.
Their rules also are quite strange, as a group of fishy men enters the shelter and provokes Magda. She tries to sneak from them and they attempt to rape her. She is saved by the Renunciates, but for a price.
‘You could have involved us all in your stupidity-or your wantoness, whatever it was! What is one of our first basic rules? Never get yourself into anything you can’t get yourself out of again! No one forces a woman into danger, but having taken a risk, you should be able to meet it[…]’ (Marion Zimmer Bradley, “The Shattered Chain”)
Am I the only one to whom this whole thing smells like some victim-blaming? Such are the rules of a society dedicated to women? Accusing a near-victim of being wanton and claiming that “no one forces a woman into danger”? Really?! It’s such a misunderstanding, rooted in the conviction that men rape because they are “lusty”; while it’s often more about showing one’s power over his victim.
Anyway, up to the plot: because it is clear that she’s cheated, Magda is forced to take a real oath of a Renunciate. She knows that it’s binding under Darkovan customs, but not under Terran ones, and she’s conflicted about it. She and Jaelle reach the bandits’ dwelling, and they free Peter Haldane, making use of the higwaymen’s boss believing that Peter is Kyril Ardais, the son of Lady Rohana and her husband Gabriel, the lord of Castle Ardais.
The three of them heads towards the Ardais estate, where they are received with kindness. Lord Gabriel, although conservative, isn’t depicted as a bad chap and it is also clear that Lady Rohana has a big influence over him, although an implicit one.
Magda thought of what Jaelle had said: ‘Anything belonging to Rohana he will treat kindly-pet dogs, Free Amazons, even Terrans…!’ It seemed to her for a moment that Jaelle had been hard on him; from the very touch of his hand she sensed he was a decent man and a kind one, if a little narrowed by the prejudices of his caste, and without much imagination.
It’s Midwinter time, which on Darkover is kind of Christmas with a carnival vibe. You surely know the trope of a time when certain rules are suspended, and so it is at Ardais during Midwinter. Magda is unsure about her husband who makes advances to her, but then she makes him realize that he is seeking Jaelle’s company, actually. Jaelle falls for Peter but after the festival time, they have to conceal their affair. They stay at Ardais because of the heavy snow, and while at a Comyn castle, Jaelle has to play according to the Comyn rules. Among Renunciates, extramarital sex isn’t prohibited, but not among aristocrats. Jaelle is perceived as Rohana’s kinswoman and so she has to hide her affection for Peter. She also ponders a lot on her situation, especially that equal relations between the Terrans and the Darkovan women have been so rare so far, and Terrans are often perceived as literal aliens.
She thinks, for example, about letting her hair grow because Peter wishes it to be long.
“Nothing in the Oath binds me to it,’ she admitted. ‘It is custom, no more; to show, when we work with men, that we do not seek to entice them with feminine wiles.”
And I quote it because it feels so wrong. Here we’ve got a myth perpetuated: that men are easy to be “provoked”, and that women are enticing and seductive. Again, I’m getting vicitim blaming vibes.
There’s also another thing to it: Jaelle’s struggle between love and independence. We are given first signs of Peter being demanding in his relationships. And what can I tell you except that there’ll be a huge pay-off to it in the next book about the Renunciates, Thendara House?
Meanwhile Kyril Ardais, who’s been always after Jaelle, learns of her affair and threatens to tell his father everything. He is portrayed as a blackmailing misogynist, and rightly so. Jaelle defends herself by claiming that she is free as a Renunciate, and that she isn’t suppose to obey the Comyn laws, and not to mention that she hasn’t done anything wrong. This point is completely right, showing how often women are slut-shamed, and how easily it is done. No matter if you have sex for fun or for love, for somebody it’ll always be wrong and indecent. Especially for jealous people who want to control you and your body.
And now brace yourselves because Kyril tells everything Gabriel at breakfast.
Gabriel, shocked, lashes out at his wife.
“What of this, my Lady? Did you know of this and say nothing? Did you permit your shameless ward to play the whore while she is under your care? What have you to say to this, Lady? Answer me, Rohana,” he bellowed.
Rohana had turned dead white. She said in a low voice, “Gabriel, Jaelle is not a child. She has taken the oath of the Free Amazons, and in law neither you nor I have any responsibility for anything she may do, under this roof or any other. I beg of you to calm yourself, to sit down and finish your breakfast.”
“Don’t quote that filthy law to me,” the man shouted incoherently […] “Jaelle is a woman of the Comyn!I forbade you to allow her to join these female scandals, and now do you see what have you done? A woman of our clan, seduced and betrayed-“
It seems that Gabriel wants to streak Rohana so Jaelle rises to defend her.
“Uncle! Rohana is not to blame for anything I may have done! If you are going to shout and carry on like a madman, at least shout at me!” she said angrily. “I am a grown woman, and competent in law to manage my own affairs.”
“Law, law, don’t you talk to me about the law,” Gabriel shouted, beside himself. “No woman alive is fit to manage her own affairs, and it doesn’t matter what you-law-“
Gabriel collapses then, getting an epileptic attack. Rohana is angry at her son for having made him furious, and Jaelle realizes that her aunt has spent much of her life placating her husband and being much more responsible than he has been.
And if the quotes up there are so long, it’s because I think they capture well the hypocrisy of patriarchal society. It isn’t about care and protection, it’s about control. And in the face of other Darkovan customs, such as sleeping with your pregnant wife’s sister, the demand of young ladies having no tell in choosing their extramarital partners is very cringy. Also, it is shown well how women do the emotional work for the rest of the family, and how they are endangered, not protected, by the unstability of men.
Eventually, everything is resolved and Jaelle is going to marry Peter in Thendara as a freemate, the kind of marriage which can be dissoluted much easier than the more oficial form “di catenas”, which is prohibited for the Renunciates. Jaelle also has a talk with her aunt Rohana, who thinks that a freemate marriage isn’t enough, that responsibility in love is for once and all. Here, the tensions between the traditional ways of the Comyn and the independednt ways of the Renunciates are also shown, and in a way which is, luckily, quite nuanced. Rohana is a complicated person, neither intimidated by her husband, nor really striving for the Free Amazons’ lifestyle, either. I think that there are many women like her, living traditionally with the constant awareness of other options being possible, and yet not choosing them. And I am glad that she is shown just as a human being with her own doubts and aims, not as an unhappy victim or a compliant tradwife.
Eventually, Jaelle, Magda and Peter return to Thendara, where Magda is to complete her Renunciate training for six months in the Guildhouse, and Jaelle is to live and work in the Terrans’ headquarters as Peter’s wife.
And so, here’s the end. The end of a book which falls into orientalist and victim-blaming traps, but which also avoids the worst sexist tropes, such as an ex being jealous about her husband’s new partner, or housewives being shown as silly and opressed at their own will. Jaelle and Magda become friends, Lady Rohana is a nuanced character. And these are the things which have surprised me in The Shattered Chain in such a positive way. But I can’t forget either that some social norms of the Renunciates have aged very poorly confronted with our feminist discourse, and that Bradley failed, so far, to portray desert cultures and ordinary people’s life. In the next installments, we won’t see much improvement on the Dry Towns trope, but, brace yourself, there’ll be some critic of the Comyn and their aristocratic rule! There’ll be also a lot about culture clash and gender roles, so please wait for my analysis of Thendara House.
Left Hand of Fiction 