This post is not quite a review, but might as well count as one--or the first part of one. It is my follow up to previous posts, here and here, on Regina Doman's latest Fairy Tale novel, Rapunzel Let Down. If you have read the previous posts, you know that I went into the book hopeful but skeptical. That I, as a reader felt let down--and feel consistently let down--by Doman's particular strategy of moralizing in her novels. Specifically, I object to having evil tied so explicitly to an ideology, and I felt--and still feel, if to a lesser extent--that she gives the male protagonist a distorted impression of sexuality by way of Catholic guilt, except that at least in that case, it modulates into more of a distorted sense of his own motivations. You might have guessed that I had basically abandoned the novel, but was convinced to continue it (after finishing my reread of The Goblet of Fire and packing up the Harry Potter books for the move) by a commenter, ibmiller, who offers some observations on this post. And as it turns out, once things get really, really bad for the protagonists, the novel takes a definite upward turn. I could really like this novel--if there weren't things that were truly off-putting and almost bigoted, most of which can be tied to the author's modernization of the fairy tale genre, and inability to see the implications of her artistic chocies--and her further inability to find editors early in the writing process who can steer her away from really awful mistakes and excessive caricature and exaggeration. The storytelling is spot on. The suspense and action are riveting. The character development starts out pretty weak, but recovers. After all, the protagonists really are children at the beginning, and they definitely mature. (I still say that there's a lot of creepy in the sex-with-a-15-year-old part of the equation...)
So why can't I like the book? Again, we're talking resistance, but I think that my resistance is not wholly subjective. The flaws really prevent enjoyment of the novels for a reader who is attuned to such things and unable to look past them. I feel like the novel as a piece of rhetoric--which it is (which all novels are, really), particularly because it makes several explicit arguments--hits below the belt on several counts. In addition to the evil villian feminist, who is extreme, but still operates as a mechanism to teach impressionable young Catholics why feminism is bad, we get an evil sadist who interestingly comes fairly close to the level of disturbing sadism exhibited by Jack Randall in Outlander, prison sex, and two interesting characters who are gay--gay and sympathetic--but still not what you would call your normal, everyday homosexual on the street. I guess I should give Doman points for trying, because it almost seems that she took my advice here and here. But then there is the problem of race. And there's that nagging poem that makes some of the choppiest chapters even more choppy, and annoys more than it contributes--yes, there are a couple of things to be said about literacy, too.
First, the villain--Raphaela's mother. This is both the problem that won't go away and one of the things that bothered me less as the novel progressed. I can accept her both as an extreme, and as someone deeply psychologically scarred. Her story is short, grotesque, and utterly unbelievable. It rather reminded me of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Things like that don't really happen. Well, sure they do. Some guy in Germany kept his daughter in a bunker and impregnated her multiple times. Women are mistreated by lovers all the time. But I'm not sure that I can suspend disbelief enough to accept the sequence of events and their outcome. Parts of it, yes. And it was the icing on the cake that the abusive lover was an academic, taking advantage of his students' sexual liberation. Most of the mentions of academia play into the worst stereotypes. Doman's readers are never going to be able to relax and enjoy and English class in college unless they go to Steubenville, Ave Maria, or the University of Dallas, and while I have problems with academia that intersect with Doman's concerns, her representation is--once again--heavy-handed and unfair. "Watch out for predatory academics!" it suggests. "They will exploit and brainwash you!" Well, peachy. Some of us are trying honestly to teach through this attitude, and would thank the rest of you to stop the generalizations.
In spite of her tragic backstory, Dr. Zilburger (is that a Jewish name? Great. Another stereotype.) becomes a renowned doctor--albeit a wacky one. Two things are going on here. First, the conflict between science and rationality and learning on the one hand, and religion on the other. Catholics are not anti-science. And yet clearly science is represented here as the means of neutralizing and ultimately anihilating faith, religion, and morality, for a start. It is cold and unfeeling--experimental seed lettuces are more important than starving families, after all. And it generally distorts the scientist's attitude towards people, who are expendable in any form, not just when in utero. Because yes, abortion is there, too.
Now, I have no problem with the way abortion is treated. No suspension of disbelief needed either in the way ideology informs the situation or how coercion tactics are used. But she didn't have to be trying to establish a city of "womyn" (oh please) and she didn't have to be a scientist. Feminism was fine. Less emphasis on specific and overblown extreme radical ideologies would have made a better read and provided for a more realistic villian.
The other thing that happens with Dr. Zilburger and her profession in the story is that the choice of acceptable professions for women is clearly delineated. Scientist is out, both because of the damaging influence of scientific rationality and objectivity, and also because of the long hours that keep her from being a good parent. Law is a possibility, because somehow both female lawyers become somewhat sympathetic. Academia - no. Because by implication, women in academia are either heartless grotesque feminists or abused by male professors who want to use their bodies. And generally, being a single female professional is highly suspect, and might possibly make women masculine and contradict the essential nature of feminine identity. And so the kind of attitude espoused by Rapunzel Let Down ends up being the very thing against which feminism is, in its most admirable forms, trying to combat. The charitable women are quaint and poor. The med student's wife is not necessarily aspiring to be anything but a mother. Does Hermes's mother work, or simply support her husband's political career? And while Raphaela will become a doctor--perhaps after the babies are grown, as one character suggests--she will be an ob/gyn or a pediatrician, which are apparently the most feminine options. This is not explicit, but these are the directions in which the portrayals of women and women's work point in the novel, and it's pretty disturbing. This might simply have been an unfortunate offshoot of the story the author wanted to tell, but this is what a good editor and critic can do--unpack the implications that the author might not have created intentionally so that the decision to communicate this message can become intentional. The writing process is pretty mysterious, as I know.
The extremes of Zilburger's behavior at the end of the novel do not trouble me in terms of character development. She seems consistent and believable at the end. The main problem is the level of idological baggage that the novel communicates to the reader by way of this character, her profession and intellectual pursuits, and how she has raised Raphaela. It is a huge stumbling block, and my greatest enjoyment of the novel came when I did not have to hear about feminist-this-or-that, the patriarchy (although a little of that would have been fine), or "womyn," which made me cringe unbearably, mainly because the term evokes an outdated mode or wave of feminism, and to someone who knows anything about feminism, makes the author look a bit ridiculous and uninformed.
18 comments:
Nice review! As my previous comments indicate, I enjoyed it a lot more, though your response seems similar to my response to Doman's The Midnight Dancers, where the tension between fairness and didacticism centered around fundamentalist Protestants - my own background.
I'm curious about the issue of race - I admit, it's a bit easy for Doman to choose Hispanics, given their cultural Catholicism, but I did enjoy the cultural exploration and ideas they brought to the story. And it was very nice to have a non-white character as a viewpoint and heroic character where her race actually matters - something I was more than a bit disappointed with in Alex O'Donnell.
There is a somewhat anti-intellectual strain in all of Doman's books - one that is also mirrored in my own Protestant fundamentalist tradition. However, I think there is reason for this, and I didn't find the circumstances of either Zilberger's upbringing or her professor's treatment of her that unbelievable. If all of the feminists had had that kind of abuse, I would have found it silly, but to have it motivate the mother's behavior I thought worked quite well. (I would also add that I am myself an aspiring academic, so I do recognize the barbs and struggle in Doman's overall treatment of higher education.)
I would have agreed that Zilberger's ideologies were overblown had I not spent a fair amount of time with some more extreme feminists in the past couple of years. Although a less extreme version might have been more realistic or plausible, I thought to fit Doman's general narrative climax pattern (capturing one of the heros and threatening them with extremely painful death), the ideology had to be pretty far gone (and I appreciated that the motivation for the ideology wasn't treated as simple or easily dismissed, even while I am not super on board with the particular narrative climax pattern Doman employs in every single one of her Fairy Tale novels).
I think the female lawyers should get a bit more weight - both of them are feminists, and as you mention, both are sympathetic.
The med student's wife actually wants to be a fashion designer (they are the hero and heroine from Midnight Dancers - and yes, it's completely not arguable to say "well, in other books, they have more depth," to counter the impression given by this one, but there is more thought behind it than simply "med students should have pregnant wives." It's probably still in what most would consider "female coded" professions, but her non-familial ambitions aren't ignored when she's the center of perspective).
(Sorry for the tangent there.)
I think, given Doman's likely beliefs about male and female roles, there's a fair treatment of alternative choices while still wanting to reinforce her beliefs. Disagreement with those beliefs is absolutely fair - but I don't expect her to truly affirm something she thinks is harmful, any more than I would write a novel which claimed that God is dead and we should live for our own selfishness.
Thanks again for such a thoughtful, thorough review!
You're very welcome! I'm not finished, quite... I *will* talk about race, because it is treated VERY well in some ways in Rapunzel, but there are one or two ways in which it is treated *very* badly.
I thought that the background of Zilberger explained her actions well, yes. And her feminist anger. But both the background and the ideology were so exaggerated as to be offputting to me. It might have been *either* the abusive father *or* the abusive professor. Four abortions are not out of the question, but so many pregnancies from one man and yet we're to accept her as strong and independent? Okay, with a history of abuse from her father she would have been susceptible, but... I mainly feel like Doman is overselling it, and it becomes something like begging the question. I've heard of a fair amount of nastiness in academia, no doubt!
With the boxing women in to certain professions, if it is her vision of Catholicism that I quarrel with, which is likely, that's one thing, and I would definitely not want her to espouse something she did not believe, though I might quarrel with it. I wondered, though, it if was truly intentional... And it might have been. There is a strain of that among some Catholics, but it's not something I embrace.
Great point about the climax pattern. She does *execute* it well, at least!
I had recently heard about the Protestant family in Midnight Dancers from a blogger friend, and I'm curious... Not really a recommendation, though!
Thanks for the tip about the med student's wife. The three stories I have read have been fairly unconnected, so I forgot that there was a larger context. It's not necessarily something an author can rely on when it's not strictly a "series," but in this particular case, it helps.
I look forward to the post about race!
What works and what pushes readers over the suspension of disbelief is often very individual - if Zilberger didn't work for you, she is definitely very extreme in both background and beliefs.
I'm curious about your blogger friend - did they post about Midnight Dancers? If so, I'd love to read it.
As I said, it's not fair of an author to expect readers to have read all the books in a series just to catch ideological nuances - but I think they are there. Plus, despite some of my problems with it, Midnight Dancers was very fun - I'm from a large family, and enjoy seeing that type of dynamic.
In fact, Melanie DID post about Midnight Dancers, here! As you will see, she thought the Protestant-Catholic dichotomy was a weak point as well.
Interesting that you should mention what works for some readers vs. others--this is something I'm rather interested in; on the one hand, narrative strategies that authors use to engage reader with specific questions or ideas, and on the other hand, whether there is a way to understand readers' subjective "taste" in books. It was always a problem when teaching--students would be resistant to a text, or would claim that there wasn't a way to judge whether a book was objectively *good* because what mattered was whether it was well-written. I think that certain personality types might be disposed to approach books in certain ways, looking to engage with particular elements, whether plot, character, or ideas. I admit that I focus on PEOPLE--not to the exclusion of all else, but certainly poorly sketched characters can ruin a book for me (as you can probably tell!).
That's a great review - thanks so much! While I naturally disagree about the various strengths and demerits of Protestants in the post, I think her insight absolutely applies to Rapunzel as well. It's more obvious when it hits things we hold dearer - I am much less attached to feminism than to being Protestant, and not attached to atheism at all, so my objections/tension with Rapunzel stems mostly from a desire to be fair and honest with ideologies I hold to be false while still respecting the people who hold them. But when I do hold some of those ideologies, as in Midnight Dancers, it's much more uncomfortable, and one finds oneself arguing back to the text.
That being said, I do think a discerning reader can see Doman is really trying to be fair, even if her own philosophy and perspective dominate the story (fairly or unfairly).
I, too, focus intensely on character - probably why I enjoy wrestling with your reviews. We approach the books similarly, but our alliances are at least slightly different, leading to different levels of reaction to the ideological conflict and its execution in the story.
Your thoughts about readers and taste are very much in my thoughts as well. I struggle with the place of subjectivity in literary evaluation - on the one hand, I think beauty is objective and tied to truth, and art should reflect that clearly. On the other hand, I believe beauty is infinite, and thus my own finite perspective cannot grasp all the ways you can see and react to beauty.
It is a struggle when teaching books I really love and students don't - I try to be as fair as I can, even while internally screaming "Why can't you fall in love with the beauty of this book as I did!" Especially when there's a strong element of laziness in their dislike. :)
Yes, that was the struggle. Sadly, I am estranged from academia and teaching. An unfortunate result of going onto the market in a bad year--and staying there. When I was teaching as a grad student and postdoc, I was teaching students who were very culturally different from me--a population that had very little use for the arts in general, when I come from a very artistic city. So definitely difficult to work with the emphasis on "liking" rather than appreciating on the one hand, and the resistance. It is also a student culture that can be fairly anti-intellectual in the ways we were discussing before.
However it might sound in these posts, I am actually *not* attached to feminism. In fact, I agree with many of her critiques; I simply find them overblown. AND--I guess I want for Doman a more general audience, and I find that in writing to, and often in trying to sway or indoctrinate--a particular audience, she is removing all possibility that she might reach a larger audience. I don't *want* Doman to set herself up as a target for mockery by that "other side" because she doesn't have enough knowledge to issue a serious critique. But that's not something she cares about. It's the difference between preaching to the choir and real evangelization, I guess. And the rhetoric and comp teacher in me objects to preaching to the choir.
I love this line from your last comment: "On the other hand, I believe beauty is infinite, and thus my own finite perspective cannot grasp all the ways you can see and react to beauty." This makes me think of the Catholic concept of the "sacramental" in literature or art (not, actually, widely discussed). Here's an excerpt from a previous post of mine on the topic:
"A few years ago now, I read the introduction to an anthology of contemporary Catholic poetry edited by a professor of mine. At the time, I was trying to understand, basically, various Catholic concepts related to the term "Sacrament." Not being raised Catholic, and having attended various Protestant churches, there was a lot for me to wrap my mind around! I had recently read Andrew Greeley's book The Catholic Imagination, the gist of which seems to have been, if you've been influenced by Catholicism culturally, you know about Catholicism indirectly--or all that you need to know. It was very much a divorcing of Catholic culture from the Catholic Church and the practice of the Catholic Faith, which is a common gesture in popular culture. But I think there must have been something theoretically interesting in the Greeley book, since it is linked in my mind to the anthology of poetry that I mentioned at the beginning of this meandering paragraph. If I'm remembering it correctly, the anthology's introduction discusses the idea that literature can be "sacramental," not "sacramental literature" as in "literature relating to the Sacraments," or literature used directly for prayer or lectio divina, but rather, literature that can act like a sacramental--a visible sign that reminds us of God and propels us toward Him. Again, not a very "academic" line of reasoning. But can it be?"
And then I go into rhetoric. Which is what I tend to do. The post is here, but the middle to end is better than the initial stuff. I've made a kind of tentative peace with Reader Response theory in the meantime, though it still strikes me that the mode of Fish and others was deeply flawed.
Interesting experience. My teaching at the community college level in very basic writing courses has exposed me to what I would consider "typical" students - they don't like reading, they don't think very deeply about narratives in general, and they don't even have a sense of skilled vs. unskilled writing. I view my goal in these courses to just show them the importance and impact narratives have on them, and giving them the tools to explore and articulate those things.
The question of writing for a ghetto of any type is a serious one, and I absolutely agree that Christians of all types should write truth winsomely for all people. I'm not sure there's absolutely no place for Christian-targeted books, but I think there is probably more need of baptized imaginations for the world, rather than reinforcing those who agree with you.
I like your thoughts about sacramental literature - fitting with the idea of a baptized imagination, or incarnational fiction - the truth should be present in all we do, fictional or not. And since fiction clothes our ideas in the world of relationships, giving us a simalcrum of the consequences of living out ideas, we should be as honest in portraying those consequences as we can.
I quite like some forms of Reader Response - not quite sure which era of Fish you refer to. I do think his idea of interpretive communities is quite useful, though I don't share a lot of his later thoughts.
Well, there was a deconstructive element to Fish--the idea that the text only exists insofar as readers read it. It's an interesting and clever perspective, to be sure, but while I believe in acknowledging and drawing out what the reader brings to the table, and how the reader interacts with author and text, and how the author defines and engages the reader (I love narratology), the creative writer in me never quite wants to say that the text only exists in those discursive communities. I feel like the text gets *lost* that way, and I am too text-focused--too attached to the words on the page in their unique arrangements--to want that to happen. I have definitely softened and gained greater understanding of Fish and Reader Response since I wrote that post--thanks for reading it, by the way! I sometimes think that my rhetorical, often reader-center approaches to literature are similar to RR.
Ah, yes. I do reject deconstructionism, while still acknowledging the tensions which led to its acceptance. I'm not a writer, but I believe firmly that authors write to communicate, and if you kill the author off, there's no real communication happening. The text is the result of someone's intention, and even if that intention doesn't match with the effect, it's not necessarily helpful to ignore it. Narratology and rhetorical strategies do seem to have a lot in common with reader response - I have a friend who worked a lot with rhetoric, and we often agree (I'm more reader response) about reading and analysis.
I try to avoid specifically mentioning intentionality. They trained it out of me, and I just can't shake it. I think it's because I do acknowledge that we can't know what the author was thinking, we can just analyze the text as an artifact of the author's context, worldview, and process. And having been a creative writer (I actually did just submit a novel manuscript to a Catholic press), I know that texts do come together in ways that are not strictly *intentional,* so there's that. But that's a lengthy disclaimer to say that I do believe in the author--but not making the author sacred. New Criticism, antiquated and rejected as it may be, was always my preferred mode because of the centrality of the text. And of course, that's what Reader Response was trying to unseat. My undergrad professors allied themselves with New Criticism, and I had no idea until grad school that it was outmoded. It served me well, though. My grad school profs always admired my close readings, and that was what I loved doing. I haven't *talked shop* in a long time. *sigh*
Fair enough. As only a lowly M.A. holder, I didn't have to face that ...yet. Though I did avoid using intentionality in any actual papers.
Agree that both the author and not idolizing the author are essential to my interpretive process. I love New Critical methods, but am really unenthused by the emphasis on irony (despite the fact that it favors my dearest author, Jane Austen). I try to function as a New Critic in method and a reader response in theory. Sadly, it seems to me that reader response, while accepted as part of teaching and history, has gone the same way as New Criticism in terms of actual fashion.
I try to talk shop with some of my friends from undergrad who were more successful than me, but I am sadly rusty.
Yes, Reader Response is largely considered passé. Your best bet is to try to call it something else!! When I was in grad school, everything in my particular program was Marxist, Feminist, Postcolonial (with a heavy Marxist strain), New Historical/Marxist... and did I mention Marxism? We got too much Judith Butler early on, so Performativity was the buzz word, and The Gaze was a thing, too, though that was on its way out. When I was on *my* way out (2008, though I was a postdoc until 2011), Transnationalism was the new thing. I missed the boat on that one, which was a shame. And only NOW are they doing Digital Humanities in my old department, which was something that the then-profs kept firmly to themselves and a select few. I could have liked DH, and even proposed that the department move in that direction, but it was as if I had suggested killing puppies. *shrug*
I pretty much had to figure out how to do what I wanted to do in a way that was acceptable--and that turned into Discource Studies/Rhetorical Criticism. I probably should have done PoCo, but the Marxism was overwhelming and the theoretical writing was unnecessarily dense. I *like* theory--I just don't like reading it. And then there's the problem that I like teaching poetry, but writing about fiction. There was no one to teach me how to write about poetry on the grad level. At the end of the day, I was extremely flexible as a job candidate, but didn't necessarily fit into the pre-defined academic parameters. And I was just plain unlucky and only got offers that would have been a gamble. *shrug* And I had other considerations beyond myself. I'm not sure if that's a cautionary tale or venting, but there you go! You catch me at a time when I've made a kind of temporary, tentative peace with it, but I'm still pining. Ah well.
And when I say a gamble, I mean moving and taking a Visiting Assistant for a year or on faith, hoping they would make it permanent, or taking an Instructor position with a really high load and low pay. I didn't even get on at the community colleges that pay well. *shrug*
Oh, and the New Critics were big on irony, yes--and that's *okay,* but I'm more into their methodology. I latch onto the close reading, and the "poem washed up on the beach" (when of course decontextualization is bad). Rhetorical criticism helps me to bring back the context in a way that works for me.
Ah, yes, the contortions one does to fit one's own preoccupations into what is acceptable. I suppose it ultimately like vegatables and good for me, but I don't much like it.
And I took some CultStud courses, and had the blinding revelation (heavy irony there) that pretty much all of it was at the very least Marxist in vocabulary, if not outright Marxist in belief. Quite annoyed me, since I have very little patience with Marxism. I have less patience for the snake-devouring-itself of Performativity, even though I think there is a lot of value in the tensions that lead to its formulation. Interestingly, the Gaze never popped up in my program - but I didn't take any heavily feminist courses. Is Transnationalism connected with comparative lit? I had a bunch of classmates and friends who did that, and they seem pretty marketable (I'm a dinosaur). I had one professor who is really, really into digital humanities - but I'm not quite sure why it's not more of the way things are done. Seems intuitive. But it does sometimes seem like English departments are the last holdouts of outdated philosophies.
I like thinking and using theory sometimes, even though most of it annoys me (the Marxism and deconstructionism), but completely agree that the jargon is really hampering to enthusiasm.
I always feel quite underprepared for poetry - I enjoy reading it and trying to analyze it with my students, but I only took one course on poetry in my undergrad, and none in my grad program. My training in form was completely done in high school, and because I don't have enough of a taste for poetry reading for pleasure, I've not pursued more training on my own.
I like the sound of your method :)
Thanks! This blog is the non-professional version of my method. :)
Transnationalism is not quite comparative lit, though it can be--and might as well be. It would have allowed me to connect British and American Lit in Modernism, which is something I very much wanted to do, but wasn't allowed to do. It's mostly centered on relationships between the U.S. and other countries--Europe in particular--as reflected in relationships between writers and their works. Basically, you can discuss intertextuality, even if it isn't explicit. That paper I always wanted to write on Emerson and John Stuart Mill would be okay if I called it Transnationalism. ;)
Trying to contort myself into what was acceptable ruined grad school for me.
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