Rapunzel... Redeemed?: The Review, Pt. 2

One of my continuing problems with Doman's novels are her tendency to "type" characters according to--well, basically identity politics.  I have already discussed Dr. Zilberger, the feminist scientist villain, at length.  I won't do that again.  No, really.  I promise.  Even though I remain irritated that Doman has put me in the position of having to defend feminism.  Instead, I want to treat stereotyping and identity politics in the novels--the good, the bad, the intentional, the unintentional, social identity, and racial identity.

There are two characters who are very interesting, and seem to represent an attempt to humanize the "other side," by which I mean the characters whose self-defined identity contradicts Church teaching, and who normally would be cast as villains.  These characters are Minot and Pinkie.  Minot was probably my favorite character in roughly the first part of the book.  I think this is because unlike the other characters, she felt real to me rather than simply being a "type."  Here, I must acknowledge that character is extremely important to my engagement with a novel.  If I don't find enough to like in a character, or at least something that intrigues me, or if I don't find the characterizations credible, I find it very difficult to like the novel as a whole.  When I read, I want to be able to get inside the character's head and live in there for a while, trying it on for size.  So while I rebel against the "types," even while realizing that there is some excuse for this given the appropriation of the fairy tale genre, while other readers don't mind so much.  So I was intrigued by Minot, who is well-sketched, and is also more typical of a Doman villain rather than a hero.  (Had characterization of the protagonists not improved substantially, interest in Minot would not have been enough to carry me through, however.)

Minot is a self-proclaimed lesbian.  She is even having a "coming-out" party of sorts.  She is in love with Raphaela, or so she says, but it is unclear whether she is able to really love anyone.  She practices extravagance, and picks particular habits, like smoking, to irritate her adoptive mother.  Raphaela has her own, more subtle barbs for this purpose, but Minot pushes her own "mother" to the limits of her tolerance as a sort of protest of the life her mother prefers.  She seems to be drawn to literature, the arts, and drama--drama--drama.  Her desire for Raphaela, cloaked in friendship, is immature and eventually becomes disturbing, but in an instant modulates into a truer friendship as she opts to save Raphaela from their mothers.  She is a "good" lesbian, if you will, and registers as authentic with her drama, if not particularly honest with her sexuality.  Her lifestyle choice is clearly a choice--and one based on a desire for a particular kind of attention.  But she is also manipulative, coercive, and dangerously close to being a rapist.   Her flaws are not small, but she remains sympathetic because of her choice to do the right thing.  Her indictment of their mothers' feminism is also stinging, brutally honest, and, quite frankly, awesome.

Pinkie seems like a more "natural" homosexual, if you will.  He does not seem to have "chosen" his identity in quite the same way as Minot, although the reader does not know as much of his story.  He seems to be--and to have been--a male prostitute.  I am almost reminded of the character Agrado (who is transgendered) from Pedro Almodòvar's Todo Sobre Mi Madre, though Pinkie is less strictly honest than Agrado.  He is a friend to Hermes in prison, and in an extremely surprising turn, offers more--and Hermes considers, rejects the idea, and then promptly confesses.  And that was fairly amazing to me--the admission, in such a didactic book, that a young heterosexual male might be susceptible to homosexual temptation.  I applaud Doman.  Pinkie is also sympathetic because he is a caretaker, and has been sentenced falsely--something the reader has to learn along with Hermes, who is cautious with his prison associates.  But Pinkie is in prison.  He is a prostitute.  And he is a drug addict.  So even more so than Minot, who is testimony to how adoptive single feminist lesbian parent(s) can screw up a child, he is clearly not what we might consider a normal, functioning member of society. But unlike Minot, his sexuality seems to be something intrinsic rather than chosen.  So both arguments about the nature of a gay identity are present in the novel--that it is strictly chosen, and that it is something that is naturally a part of who the person is.  The coexistence of these two characters suggests that both claims might be correct, depending on the circumstances.  So homosexuality rather than being cast simply as a sin, is also associated with prostitution, drugs, drama, protest, and self-indulgence, while at the same time treated as something that can't quite be explained away as a simple choice, and something that doesn't necessarily make a person into a hateful villain.  We've come a long way from Shadow of the Bear with this one!  (And I don't mean to imply that I expect Doman to espouse acceptance of homosexual lifestyles through the novels or in other ways contradict Church teaching, becuase I certainly do not.)

So let's turn to an aspect of identity that has absolutely no ties to choice, and absolutely no relationship to sin:  Race.  While Doman fights against some ways of characterizing homosexuality that might be considered insensitive or bigoted (while relegating the homosexual characters to a sort of freak show, which is not wholly charitable...  Can we have a genuinely good, celibate character with same-sex attraction?  Just to show that someone who is gay can lead a good Catholic life?), she allows stereotype to seep into her sympathetic portrayal of the Mexican biological family of Raphaela.  From the beginning, I found it interesting that Dr. Zilberger, in adopting Raphaela, has also effectively stripped her of her cultural identity.  Raphaela is Mexican, but has no knowledge whatsoever of her cultural or linguistic heritage, which Zilberger associates with superstition, religion (which is basically the same for her), poverty, ignorance, and patriarchy.  These associations develop over the course of the novel, and I'm not going to evaluate how they connect with her feminist ideology, which seems to be more radical than liberal, and doesn't seem to fit comfortably into the American two-party system.

I'm going to admit, first, that the worry dolls as angels smacked of superstition to me, even as they were a bit childish, but (beyond their wonderful plot significance) I rather liked the way that they became the vehicle for her first stirrings of spirituality, and sort of a bridge to prayer and to Our Lady of Guadaloupe.  As Our Lady of Guadaloupe has particular importance for Mexican-Americans, and since I happen to have lived in Texas for a while, and since I have a husband who travels to Mexico frequently and observes that you just don't see Our Lady of Guadaloupe as much in Mexico as you do in Mexican-American communities, I admit that I rolled my eyes a bit when Our Lady of Guadaloupe was introduced.  You know, because the Irish kid has to have St. Patrick, so Raphaela has to have Our Lady of Guadaloupe.  *sigh*  How original.  But it does speak to the cultural manifestations of Catholicism, so there is that.  How Our Lady of Guadaloupe became significant to Raphaela, however, and the level of significance, redeemed the easy assigning of patron saints, and I was frequently moved by Raphaela's first gestures toward prayer. Now, both protagonists do seem to be praying to the saints rather than praying for intercession, which is how it is understood in Catholic thought and practice--Saints only have the ability to take one's prayer to the next level, but they are better suited to do so, since they are closer to God than we are.  This theology is not explicit in the novel, but the novel is so burdened with other ideas at times, that this is hardly a flaw--especially since Doman would expect her reader to understand this--just worth noting in passing.

Treatment of the Mexican Catholic biological family as a family was good.  I mean, of course they were going to be illegals, and interestingly neither the liberal Raphaela or the conservative Hermes wants to deal with that--though the good Republican comes through in the end.  (To be clear, I avoid aligning myself with political parties, though it is likely apparent from time to time that I am right of center, though this is modulated by academic training and temperament.)  My main problem with this is that it's too expected.  I like the unexpected.  Mexicans as illegal aliens and migrant workers isn't a stereotype--oh wait! yes, it is absolutely a stereotype.  It is also believable.  But it is not my biggest problem with treatment of Raphaela's family.  Nor is their religion, which is perfectly believable and very well integrated--it's simply a part of who they are.  I find the dynamics of the (predictably) large family to be believable as well, and I was particularly pleased at the way Raphaela has to come to terms with the presence of people in her space.  I think this is one problem that chlildren raised in small families, or large houses with a room for each person, face--they are unable to share space.  Communal spaces are reserved for specific times and purposes, and otherwise, people go their own way.  Having lived such an isolated life, it is natural for Raphaela to feel overwhelmed, but the affection of the family--their genuine warmth--makes it much easier for her to cope.  Having lived with 5 brothers and sisters in an 800 sq. ft. house growing up, I know something about people and small space.  And even now, with my own children, I prefer to create shared spaces in our small-by-Texas-standards apartment rather than partition individual space to each person according to gender or age or birth order or whatever.

The problem I have with Doman's portrayal of the Mexican Catholic family comes from something that is perhaps more subtle than the family's poverty, the stereotypically large number of children, their immigration status, or even the father's theivery (yes, okay, it was lettuce, but even so)--though I think some, particularly of Mexican descent, might be justified in finding the stereotypical representation off-putting or offensive.  Again, Doman is playing to general, ininformed perception to create types.  But the real problem I have is with the admittedly clever use of the fairy tale narrative-within-a-narrative.  This is a device I should love, because it is clever, and because I am a big fan of frame narratives.  But I don't.  And it really comes down to rhetoric.  Rather than simply being separate from the narrative--a "pull-out story," if you will, rather like J. K. Rowling's story of the three brothers in The Deathly Hallows, which is more sophisticated and attributed to a particular author, Raphaela's history is framed as a story told by Raphaela's new-found biological sister, Mona.  Mona is in her thirties.  And whether or not she was a child when she first heard what happened to her youngest sister, because the retelling is infantile, it suggests an immature understanding of Raphaela's abduction.  Zilberger is represented as a sorceress, a witch--because scientists are witches, or because Mexicans are superstitious?  You decide. Even if Mona is simply repeating the story as it was told to her as a child (and an older child--of 15 or 16), this shifts the telling to her parents (specifically her father).  So he is the one who is superstitious and lacks the understanding to communicate in a sophisticated way.  The brothers, in particular, retain the impression that Zilberger is an ogre, and they all regard her as some kind of evil supernatural creature.  And yet, this is a realistic story, even if a fairy tale.

What we have here is a conflict between the fairy tale mode and the realistic novel genre.  I understand that Doman is bringing the fairy tale back in, but the way in which she executes this motif emphasizes the child-like and superstitious nature of the family--who are also Mexican.  And Mexican culture has a fair number of practices that are, or appear to be, superstition.  However kind and good they might be, Raphaela's biological family are like superstitious children. In fact, this portrayal validates Dr. Zilberger's impression of them.  The reader is certainly supposed to think of them fondly, but is not asked to relate to them on any level.  We are left with no alternative than to feel superior.  And this is when it becomes very clear--as it was in Alex O'Donnell and the 40 Cyber-Thieves, that Doman's ideal/intended/implied audience, and likely her own background, is white and suburban.  And if that's the case, I wonder whether it is a good idea to try for diversity at all. At any rate, it's difficult to applaud her efforts at inclusion when she overlooks the larger implications of her creative choices.

So that's what I see as the good, the bad, and the ugly with the treatment of the "marginalized Other" in Doman's novel.  I will try to wrap up with some final thoughts by way of conclusion and closure--in another post.