Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Women and Susanna Clark
We talked in class a little about the small role that the women in this story played. I have been thinking that the reasons for this small role may be that this story is written in the same style as the other magical histories described in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I got the feel as I read through this novel, especially from the footnotes, that this was intended to be a modern magical history telling of Strange Norrell's rise and fall. These same footnotes also contain a few stories about women and magic. Two especially come to mind. There was one where they described the controversy over whether or not the correspondence of some magician was a man or a woman. The footnote went on to mention that many were unwilling to accept a woman as a magician. There was also the detailed story of the woman who went to retrieve the magic ring. At the end of this footnote, it was revealed that this story was really a cover up for a ring of female magicians. From these stories I get the idea that the magical histories often downplayed or hid the role of women magicians. If this story is indeed a magical history perhaps this was the idea that Clark was trying to convey. What do yall think?
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6 comments:
I definitely agree with you. If it is supposed to be a modern magic book, and since it's written in that time period... it explains how men were iffy about accepting women as intellectual or equally skillful beings the majority of the time. It just mirrors society in that day.
I also agree. I didn't feel like Clark was trying to put down women; I felt that she was portraying women as they were seen in that time period.
I like that Clarke kind of points this out to the reader without making a comment about it. Y'know?
I totally agree. It goes along with the female characters in the book also, how they aren't really all that developed over the course of the novel.
I'm still pretty uneasy about this whole thing. Isn't it fairly discouraging that someone writing a magical history after the return of the Raven King would keep using old, rather discriminatory chronicling methods? At least Kalen found some places where women are mentioned in the footnotes. Perhaps our enigmatic editor is a bit more on the feminist ball than our narrator.
Yep! I have to agree with you also. I was thinking about the way that Arabella reacted to Strange's situation at the end of the book and at first it made me feel as though she might not have cared too much. Then I thought more about it and came to the conclusion that it might have just been the normal demeanor of women in that time period to act as she did.
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