nell65 | (no subject)

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wicked

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So, I'm still thinking about Wicked, and mulling over the way I immediately began comparing it to Mists of Avalon, another re-write of an older story from the POV of the wicked witch, who is revealed as neither wicked, nor a particularly powerful witch - and one who, in this new telling, comes across as hopelessly over-matched by her heroic-opponent in the original tale. That last is the part that I can't figure out if it is intentional, or a by product of something else.

The other point of similarity, in both, were the long periods during which the witch had to be out of commission, time-line wise, to make the plot work out right. In MOA, after the crucial 'get impregnated with Mordred' moment, Morgaine first spends years in Avalon (ignoring her son), then has a brief period of activity and purpose, but then doesn't fight to get out of a really stupid arranged marriage and goes off to be a dutiful wife in boring distant Scotland (or somewhere 'far away') for fifteen crucial, off-stage years - during which she loses her magic altogether for lack of using it. Thus rendering her quite powerless and without friends, resources, allies, or, really, even much purpose, during her final center-stage moments.

In Wicked, Ephaba is center stage during her early adulthood, then - and this part is eerie - gets pregnant by accident and is so distraught by the events surrounding that impregnation that she spends seven years in spiritual retreat utterly ignoring her son - emerges briefly into a period of activity - then once again retreats, this time to mountain fastness (hmm - like - Scotland?!) - where she spends her time learning to create hybrid animals/Animals. A skill that serves little to no purpose during her final confrontations with the hero or the new bad guy.

What bugged me no end in MOA was the way Morgaine and her fellow followers of the old religions, lost out to Arthur and his new gods mostly by absence of mind.

Wicked has - to me - a similar dynamic going on, where Elphaba basically never seems to have a clue what the Wizard is up to, or why, or why so many in Oz would put up with it - and never seems very effective at figuring any of it out, either. Rendering her hopelessly over-matched by forces that mystify her at the end.

It's like, there is an undercurrent here of showing that no, these scary, powerful ladies aren't really scary at all! See! No power! Woo Hoo!

And I'm like, wait. Wait. That's not an improvement!

Now I do understand that this is not the most dominate feature of either novel - but when I started thinking about why the one reminded me so forcefully of the other - this is what came up.

Nell

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wow. I haven't read Wicked and haven't read Mists of Avalon for a long, long time (just didn't do that much for me), but your theory here? Is both intriguing and upsetting....

Its also weird - I mean, MZB was a totally committed second wave feminist who wrote self-consciously feminist fantasy and sci fi as she worked and re-worked the question of gender in most if not all of her stories, some of which are truly awesome IMO. Mists of Avalon in particular was intended as a feminist retelling of the Arthur story in which big bad boy christianity is welcomed by Arthur and and the other warriors and the old women centered faith withers away and it's all sad and stuff and opens the way to the modern world and all its patriarchal horror. (Okay - so, it was the early 1980s.... *g*).

I don't know anything about Maguire - but given his beautiful (really!) portraits of a whole range of women, young and old, in his book - most of whom never have conversations about men, and when one really, really, really wants to - the other flat out refuses to oblige! - I can't believe he's *trying* to write a story showing that the scary women aren't so scary because they were really just ineffective and much less powerful than we thought.....

But - I don't think I'm crazy in seeing a pattern here either.

It's hard for me to comment on this, as I haven't read The Mists of Avalon. What you describe *isn't*, for me, a dominant feature of Wicked, but I can't comment on whether it parallels the other book.

I realize you haven't read the sequel to Wicked, and I won't spoil, but one of the things I found most interesting is the answer it poses to the question of what makes someone powerful. Because Liir -- the ostensible hero -- is portrayed as *completely* powerless and ineffectual, and is forever haunted by the fact that he will *never* be able to live up to the (by the time of the sequel) legendary reputation of his mother. In life, she may not have achieved anything, but in death, she becomes a potent icon for resistance, immortalized in near-ubiquitous "Elphaba Lives" graffiti spread across the post-Wizard Oz, which has become even *more* of a totalitarian state since his departure. She's the Che Guevara of Oz -- captured and defeated in life, but impossible to snuff out as a symbol.

And what eventually happens (again, without really spoiling) is that with her symbol as a catalyst, the weak and helpless and outcast of Oz -- the Animals, the maunts -- find that real power comes from standing together as a community rather than anything achieved by individuals. Liir, traveling with his mother's cloak and broom, witnesses and even provokes much of this but himself is very passive. He's not the real hero, as he himself seems to realize. No one person is the hero. Not even Elphaba can be a hero until she stops being an individual and joins the realm of ideas.

So...I think Maguire is saying some interesting things about power, but they're not necessarily about rendering women powerless, per se.

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.

You'll have to explain to me what you mean by this:

but that they think they can actually escape from even having to control themselves

And I'm not sure that Lear/Othello/Hamlet would be fair comparisons, as those characters are intended as traditional, tragic heroes. Elphaba (and, I presume, Morgaine) are, at best, *revisionist* heroes. The more apt comparison would be to John Gardner's Grendel (or the recent opera version of that character, although I don't think it's based on the book) or some other story told from the "villain's" POV. Unfortunately, although I've intended to read that for years, I haven't gotten around to it so can't do the kind of comparison I'm suggesting. But I think if you want to look for a pattern of males versus females, you'd need to use the male version of the revisionist hero to determine whether the trend you've noticed comes from the characters being *female*, or whether it comes from them being *revisionist* in nature.

but that they think they can actually escape from even having to control themselves

Eh. wasn't very clear was it. Comes of typing as I think!

What I'm trying (not very successfully) to articulate is something about how both of these characters try for some sort of detachment from the world, it doesn't work of course, but when you compare them (and again, this stuff only shows up in comparison and is NOT a major theme in either work independently) they both are queerly passive - picked by fate to be mortal combatants, they don't train for the fight. And so they loose.....

I have no idea if I'm making any sense here.

the Che Guevara of Oz

Now this has real possibilities!

It's like, there is an undercurrent here of showing that no, these scary, powerful ladies aren't really scary at all! See! No power! Woo Hoo!

You know, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. That is to say, I know what you're trying to say here, but I didn't see the book this way. The Wicked Witch of the West, as we have her in the original book (and that's the only one I've read), was a symbol of pure, unadulterated evil. She was also a cartoon, somewhat like Maguire's Wizard. Someone who alternately terrified/delighted me, and I'm sure countless other kids as well, as a child. The Wicked Witch of the West worked *because* she was so mysterious and Evil McEvil. Like Sauron, if you please. To portray such a character as the tragic heroine of a book requires some up, close and personal portrayal, which automatically takes away the mystery from the character. As is the same with Glinda, and Nessarose (I know there's a book about Glinda out there, but that Glinda isn't our Glinda). They aren't scary because they *can't* be scary and sympathetic at the same time. But are they really *powerless*? I don't think so. What is power, exactly? Maguire comes back to this question again and again, as

jaybee65 points out. I'm not sure if it has much to do with the gender of the hero and the villain.

That's not very coherent is it? Sorry. I just came back home from a very tiresome train journey.

No, they aren't powerless, exactly - either of them - and maybe the revisionist villain/hero will always find themselves in this trap - remove the mystery and what seemed so powerful is revealed as part glamor, part misunderstanding.

Part of it may also be that it's hard to shake off the habit of privileging the perspective of the hero in the original canon. We are taught that it's the hero's "destiny" to fight and defeat the villain, and so of course everything the hero does is part of the preparation for this task.

But is it the villain's destiny to fight the hero?

Maybe *not*, from the villain's point of view. The villain may see his or her "destiny" in a completely different way, and may be preparing for something *else* -- a destiny that the hero's intrusion (and yes, it can be seen as an intrusion) cuts off unnaturally.

Maybe Elphaba's destiny, for example, was to bridge the gap between human and Animal, between Animal and animal, between outcast and society, between Oz and the other world. Perhaps her power -- and her danger, because the Wizard clearly saw her as his biggest threat -- came from the work she was doing with the monkeys and her attempts to decipher the Grimmerie. Perhaps she was on the verge of succeeding in achieving this destiny -- but was destroyed just before she could achieve this. That wouldn't be the story of someone passive and powerless and demystified -- it would be the story of the universe smacking down someone who came too close to gaining *too* much power.

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