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Jul. 20th, 2006 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nell65So, 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
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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Date: 2006-07-21 04:02 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2006-07-21 04:50 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2006-07-21 02:39 pm (UTC)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.