So...I think Maguire is saying some interesting things about power, but they're not necessarily about rendering women powerless, per se.
Oh, yes, absolutely. So is MZB - with a different story, etc...
Its just that the similarities were so surprising, and once I noted them, powerful, that I saw them both from a new angle as a result.
I don't think either author was going for some sort of 'rendering women powerless' thing at all.
But I think there is a larger issue out there of our (meaning mostly the current US, probably the rest of the world too, one way or another) real problems with women who have a "will to power" of their own. So much so that to render witches with real 'wills to power' sympathetic, that gets so minimized in their characters that it almost disappears.
The tragic flaw in both women (Elphaba and Morgaine) is hubris, but it's oddly rendered - not like Lear or Othello or Hamlet who think they should/can control everything, but that they think they can actually escape from even having to control themselves, and it won't matter - that if they don't touch the world, the world won't touch them back.
no subject
Oh, yes, absolutely. So is MZB - with a different story, etc...
Its just that the similarities were so surprising, and once I noted them, powerful, that I saw them both from a new angle as a result.
I don't think either author was going for some sort of 'rendering women powerless' thing at all.
But I think there is a larger issue out there of our (meaning mostly the current US, probably the rest of the world too, one way or another) real problems with women who have a "will to power" of their own. So much so that to render witches with real 'wills to power' sympathetic, that gets so minimized in their characters that it almost disappears.
The tragic flaw in both women (Elphaba and Morgaine) is hubris, but it's oddly rendered - not like Lear or Othello or Hamlet who think they should/can control everything, but that they think they can actually escape from even having to control themselves, and it won't matter - that if they don't touch the world, the world won't touch them back.