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truepennyI reread Deerskin recently, in a spirit of inquiry. I'd read it in college and not been terribly impressed, and was wondering if it was just callow youth, or something else. As my Subject line suggests, it seems to be Something Else.
I was introduced to Robin McKinley when I was ten, with Beauty. The Hero and the Crown was, I think, my first introduction to the in medias res secondary world, where the reader has to figure the world out as they read, because I can remember puzzling out things like what "sol" and "sola" meant from context.
All of which is basically a disclaimer: I like McKinley, I like her books (I'm planning to reread Spindle's End next, just because I'm fond of it), I love her fairy tale retellings. So when I say there was something I didn't like about Deerskin, it's not the project that's the problem.
One problem, which should be gotten out of the way promptly, is the extreme dogginess of the narrative. Now, I have a ridiculous and unrequited passion for greyhounds, so I have no trouble with the pervasive caninity (in fact, the section with Ossin and Lissar trying to save the puppies is one of my favorite pieces of the book), and I have no trouble buying that an extremely lonely young woman would bond extravagantly with her dog. But the aftermath of Ash's encounter with the toro annoys the fuck out of me, first because Lissar's neglecting six young dogs who love her just as unreservedly as Ash does and don't deserve to be shut out of her affection and attention, and secondly because the effect of lines like "If she [Ash] died, a part of Lissar would die with her; a part she knew she could not spare" (McKinley 268) is merely to make some unromantic corner of my mind point out that Ash must already be seven years old, and she's a dog, with a dog's natural lifespan. It does not make me feel better about Lissar as a character to note that she's pinning her entire sanity on the avoidance of an eventuality that IS GOING TO COME TO PASS and most likely (considering the lifespan of large dogs, Ash's rough life, and the cod-medieval healthcare available) before Lissar herself reaches her fortieth birthday. This is the sort of book which, yes, has a certain amount of melodrama, angst, and suffering as inevitable outgrowths of its subject matter, but I don't like how much of that gets localized in the sentimental portrait of Ash. I want to like Ash, but the fact that the narrative also, passionately and desperately, wants me to like Ash, causes me to flatten my ears and dig my heels in.
That's one problem. The second, and similar, problem is with the blatant, blatant dea ex machina that turns Lissar into Deerskin.
Let me be clear. I fully agree that McKinley has to do SOMETHING. She's got Lissar, crazy, miscarrying, crippled, entirely alone except for a dog, and oh yes, freezing to death, all at the same time. And I don't object to the dramatic intervention of the Moonwoman on principle, but the way the narrative handles it just jars me out of the story completely. For, itself, a couple of reasons.
1. We have heard nothing whatsoever about the Moonwoman before this--at least that I can recall--certainly nothing to prepare us for this sentimentalized (there's that word again) portrait of the Good Mother who solves all of Lissar's problems (no, not all, but all of them that can be solved without recourse to a time-machine). This has been, up to this point, a book remarkably devoid of magic, and having it burst upon us like fireworks now also makes me balk. (It's the obverse of Chekhov's dictum about the gun: if a gun's going to go off in the third act, you'd better have a gun on the wall in the first.)
2. And this is the real unswallowable porcupine for me: the MANNER of the machina. In the original Perrault fairy-tale, Donkeyskin, the heroine assumes a donkeyskin and smears her face with ashes so that she will not look like a princess (and her creepy-ass father won't find her), and becomes a kitchen drudge--emerging for balls with the help of three dresses that can be kept in walnuts, if I remember correctly. But what happens to Lissar? Her hair becomes long and stunningly white--Lilac remarks on how beautiful it is (McKinley 232)--her eyes become pitch black, she acquires a magical white dress that can't be stained, and she loses the scars and injuries that her father's attack inflicted. Also, people start mistaking her for a goddess.
I don't know what the word for this is, but my problem with it is that it's too easy. I mean, obviously, no, Lissar's situation is not easy, and McKinley does (I think) an excellent job with the MENTAL damage, but the unrestrained beautification feels wrong to me, fake. Insofar as one can use the word of a fairy-tale retelling set in a fantasy world, it's unrealistic. It alienates me from Lissar. I'm not explaining this at all well, but--maybe this will do--it's too much like the Fairy Godmother in a bowdlerized fairytale, who bestows beautiful gifts without consequences or costs. And the first half of the book has been working very hard to show us that that's not how this world works. It seems to me to trivialize--not the rape, but the entire weight and importance of Lissar's childhood.
I'm still not explaining myself well. *sigh*
I also think the beautification-as-disguise gives Ossin short shrift. He's one of my favorite of McKinley's heroes, and frankly I'd give him credit for being able to see past a donkeyskin and dirt--but in this story he doesn't have to.
The final problem I have is the way in which Lissar's parents--but especially Lissar's mother--disappear from the story. The beginning of Deerskin is wonderfully creepy and Poe-esque, and I love the way in which everyone has assumed that beauty equals virtue and goodness, and the narrative patiently and obliquely shows us that, no, there is nothing but black howling selfishness in the queen. I have nothing but contempt for the king, but Lissar's mother is an incredibly powerful figure, whom the narrative simply erodes out of existence.
Yes, I know, there's that bit in the climax where apparently Lissar is choosing between becoming a woman like her mother and becoming a woman like herself, but it's incidental, because we've had an entire book to figure out that Lissar would never be like her mother anyway. The plot elements are resolved (Ossin's sister saved from Lissar's evil father) but there's no revelation in what happens, no newness, no ... I can't find the word I want, but nothing that made the back of my brain stop singing la la, Lissar defeats her evil father, la la. The climax matches expectations, but does not exceed them.
And thus, although I love that last scene between Lissar and Ossin, it is contaminated by proximity to the over-wrought melodrama of the climax (Lissar breaking the doors, bursting into flames, the weird and unnecessary Vulcan Mind-Link with Lilac, all the rest of it), so that I can't quite believe in it, either.
I think the first half of the book--up to the interruption of the Moonwoman--is brilliant. She does a fantastic job with the court and the king and this poor trapped princess; the sense of claustrophobia and madness is amazing. (I hate to say this, but it just occurred to me that the whole book would make much more sense, and I think would be more resonant and honest, if the king did kill Ash.) And the second half is very competent McKinley fantasy, with a recognizably similar feel to Spindle's End and her other books. The problem is that the two halves simply don't fit together, and the Moonwoman is like clashing paisley wallpaper over the crack.
---
WORKS CITED
McKinley, Robin. Deerskin. 1993. New York: Ace Books, 1994.
I was introduced to Robin McKinley when I was ten, with Beauty. The Hero and the Crown was, I think, my first introduction to the in medias res secondary world, where the reader has to figure the world out as they read, because I can remember puzzling out things like what "sol" and "sola" meant from context.
All of which is basically a disclaimer: I like McKinley, I like her books (I'm planning to reread Spindle's End next, just because I'm fond of it), I love her fairy tale retellings. So when I say there was something I didn't like about Deerskin, it's not the project that's the problem.
One problem, which should be gotten out of the way promptly, is the extreme dogginess of the narrative. Now, I have a ridiculous and unrequited passion for greyhounds, so I have no trouble with the pervasive caninity (in fact, the section with Ossin and Lissar trying to save the puppies is one of my favorite pieces of the book), and I have no trouble buying that an extremely lonely young woman would bond extravagantly with her dog. But the aftermath of Ash's encounter with the toro annoys the fuck out of me, first because Lissar's neglecting six young dogs who love her just as unreservedly as Ash does and don't deserve to be shut out of her affection and attention, and secondly because the effect of lines like "If she [Ash] died, a part of Lissar would die with her; a part she knew she could not spare" (McKinley 268) is merely to make some unromantic corner of my mind point out that Ash must already be seven years old, and she's a dog, with a dog's natural lifespan. It does not make me feel better about Lissar as a character to note that she's pinning her entire sanity on the avoidance of an eventuality that IS GOING TO COME TO PASS and most likely (considering the lifespan of large dogs, Ash's rough life, and the cod-medieval healthcare available) before Lissar herself reaches her fortieth birthday. This is the sort of book which, yes, has a certain amount of melodrama, angst, and suffering as inevitable outgrowths of its subject matter, but I don't like how much of that gets localized in the sentimental portrait of Ash. I want to like Ash, but the fact that the narrative also, passionately and desperately, wants me to like Ash, causes me to flatten my ears and dig my heels in.
That's one problem. The second, and similar, problem is with the blatant, blatant dea ex machina that turns Lissar into Deerskin.
Let me be clear. I fully agree that McKinley has to do SOMETHING. She's got Lissar, crazy, miscarrying, crippled, entirely alone except for a dog, and oh yes, freezing to death, all at the same time. And I don't object to the dramatic intervention of the Moonwoman on principle, but the way the narrative handles it just jars me out of the story completely. For, itself, a couple of reasons.
1. We have heard nothing whatsoever about the Moonwoman before this--at least that I can recall--certainly nothing to prepare us for this sentimentalized (there's that word again) portrait of the Good Mother who solves all of Lissar's problems (no, not all, but all of them that can be solved without recourse to a time-machine). This has been, up to this point, a book remarkably devoid of magic, and having it burst upon us like fireworks now also makes me balk. (It's the obverse of Chekhov's dictum about the gun: if a gun's going to go off in the third act, you'd better have a gun on the wall in the first.)
2. And this is the real unswallowable porcupine for me: the MANNER of the machina. In the original Perrault fairy-tale, Donkeyskin, the heroine assumes a donkeyskin and smears her face with ashes so that she will not look like a princess (and her creepy-ass father won't find her), and becomes a kitchen drudge--emerging for balls with the help of three dresses that can be kept in walnuts, if I remember correctly. But what happens to Lissar? Her hair becomes long and stunningly white--Lilac remarks on how beautiful it is (McKinley 232)--her eyes become pitch black, she acquires a magical white dress that can't be stained, and she loses the scars and injuries that her father's attack inflicted. Also, people start mistaking her for a goddess.
I don't know what the word for this is, but my problem with it is that it's too easy. I mean, obviously, no, Lissar's situation is not easy, and McKinley does (I think) an excellent job with the MENTAL damage, but the unrestrained beautification feels wrong to me, fake. Insofar as one can use the word of a fairy-tale retelling set in a fantasy world, it's unrealistic. It alienates me from Lissar. I'm not explaining this at all well, but--maybe this will do--it's too much like the Fairy Godmother in a bowdlerized fairytale, who bestows beautiful gifts without consequences or costs. And the first half of the book has been working very hard to show us that that's not how this world works. It seems to me to trivialize--not the rape, but the entire weight and importance of Lissar's childhood.
I'm still not explaining myself well. *sigh*
I also think the beautification-as-disguise gives Ossin short shrift. He's one of my favorite of McKinley's heroes, and frankly I'd give him credit for being able to see past a donkeyskin and dirt--but in this story he doesn't have to.
The final problem I have is the way in which Lissar's parents--but especially Lissar's mother--disappear from the story. The beginning of Deerskin is wonderfully creepy and Poe-esque, and I love the way in which everyone has assumed that beauty equals virtue and goodness, and the narrative patiently and obliquely shows us that, no, there is nothing but black howling selfishness in the queen. I have nothing but contempt for the king, but Lissar's mother is an incredibly powerful figure, whom the narrative simply erodes out of existence.
Yes, I know, there's that bit in the climax where apparently Lissar is choosing between becoming a woman like her mother and becoming a woman like herself, but it's incidental, because we've had an entire book to figure out that Lissar would never be like her mother anyway. The plot elements are resolved (Ossin's sister saved from Lissar's evil father) but there's no revelation in what happens, no newness, no ... I can't find the word I want, but nothing that made the back of my brain stop singing la la, Lissar defeats her evil father, la la. The climax matches expectations, but does not exceed them.
And thus, although I love that last scene between Lissar and Ossin, it is contaminated by proximity to the over-wrought melodrama of the climax (Lissar breaking the doors, bursting into flames, the weird and unnecessary Vulcan Mind-Link with Lilac, all the rest of it), so that I can't quite believe in it, either.
I think the first half of the book--up to the interruption of the Moonwoman--is brilliant. She does a fantastic job with the court and the king and this poor trapped princess; the sense of claustrophobia and madness is amazing. (I hate to say this, but it just occurred to me that the whole book would make much more sense, and I think would be more resonant and honest, if the king did kill Ash.) And the second half is very competent McKinley fantasy, with a recognizably similar feel to Spindle's End and her other books. The problem is that the two halves simply don't fit together, and the Moonwoman is like clashing paisley wallpaper over the crack.
---
WORKS CITED
McKinley, Robin. Deerskin. 1993. New York: Ace Books, 1994.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-12 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-12 06:49 pm (UTC)I think what frustrates me about Deerskin is the way in which it sabotages itself--which is what this post was an effort to articulate.
By the "womanliness" of the audience, do you mean the way in which the novel focuses on--and stays focused on--Lissar's physical femininity? Or something else?
Re:
Date: 2003-07-12 07:04 pm (UTC)And did well. LOL Sorry, should have noted that - I was really pleased to read something on this, and mostly did agree. I had no idea this was based on another faery tale - you'd think I'd have suspected it, but I assumed it was her attempt to create her own.
By the "womanliness" and the "unabashed way it treated its audience", I meant that, for me, Deerskin was the first time I ever read a book in which feminine language (which you can debate the existence of, but which I tend to believe exists) was constantly used, a woman's life was studied in graphic terms (including her body), and found an author who seemed to be speaking as a woman. The book (as I recall it - I admit I have not reread in a good 3-4 years) seems in many ways to be speaking only to female readers - and having at that young age, as I recall, just finished Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, and possibly The Portrait of Dorian Gray (I was in a groove), it astounded me.
Unlike many writers, I started reading relatively late, a typical 6 or so, but when I did, I literally stole my parents' library and didn't come out of hiding for years. The discovery that books of a wholely different nature from the above existed (or the many Agatha Christies and Rex Stout novels of theirs I read) - books where I was treated, not as a man, or even as an audience memeber, but, so it felt, as a female, a girl, and eventually a woman - came as something of shock to me. (My parents are of the 50s generation - had me very late.) This
no subject
Date: 2003-07-12 07:05 pm (UTC)I love Robin McKinley--
Date: 2003-07-12 06:49 pm (UTC)--and never made it past ten pages into Spindle's End. What kept you reading?
Re: I love Robin McKinley--
Date: 2003-07-12 06:56 pm (UTC)I'm not sure. I think I was just enjoying the sort of cheerfully matter-of-fact wackiness of the world-building. And by the time I got to the anecdote about the queen's sweetmeats (and, no, there's nothing even remotely obscene about it, thank you very much) I was hooked. That's page 13-14 in the hardback.
Spindle's End does take a phenomenally long time to get rolling, but I was just enjoying the guided tour until then.
Re: I love Robin McKinley--
Date: 2003-07-12 07:03 pm (UTC)Out of curiosity ...
Date: 2003-07-12 07:05 pm (UTC)Re: Out of curiosity ...
Date: 2003-07-12 07:10 pm (UTC)Too dense and self-consciously Fantasy.
Re: Out of curiosity ...
Date: 2003-07-12 07:30 pm (UTC)But one man's meat is another man's heartburn. I shan't proselytize.
Am I the only one
Date: 2003-07-12 07:46 pm (UTC)Re: Am I the only one
Date: 2003-07-12 08:24 pm (UTC)Re: Am I the only one
Date: 2003-07-12 11:30 pm (UTC)And the point-of-view switches (and associated structure) drive me bananas. The pov positively lurches, yanked around obviously by authorial necessity. There's no inevitability or seamlessness about the pov changes, and therefore they leap out and grab me by the throat. It's the only major flaw in the book, and it yanks me out of the story every time I read it.
YSensitivityToPOVSwitchesMV.
Re: Am I the only one
Date: 2003-07-13 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-12 09:30 pm (UTC)Adoration of Ash: Well...yeah? Lissar loves her dog in an overwhelming and unhealthy way, because Ash is all she has to love from childhood. Her friend at court and the old herbalist don't count at all when the chips are down. And no, using a dog as the linchpin of your sanity is not a smart choice; but is it so implausible? She's not just lonely, she's badly broken. It takes a long time for her to accept the puppies at all - she knows on a gut level that they may disappear any time, and she doesn't think that about Ash. I like Lissar, but she is playing with a pinochle deck. :)
Fairy Godmother Moonwoman: Her intervention does seem rather pat to me as well, though I note that she doesn't step in until Lissar is on the verge of death, and that Lissar is a hardworking commoner for the rest of the book. (In Ossin's idealized kingdom, of course.)
The real gift Lissar gets that Donkeyskin doubtless doesn't is the grace of forgetting: the past is put aside until she is strong enough to deal with it. Her ethereal beauty and cleanliness (the white dress symbolically linked to recovery, perhaps? A promise that whatever happens to her, it can be washed away?) is icing on the cake.
Hm. Also, her looks make life *harder* for her, not easier. Lissar doesn't want or need to be mistaken for a goddess. The people in Ossin's household would befriend her more closely if she was ordinary. So perhaps the point was to isolate her? Exotic beauty gets you more personal and emotional space in this world. (Whether it was a good idea is another question.)
Melodramatic Showdown With Bonus Female Symbolism: I don't have the book to hand, but was there a point where Lissar actually chose to be unlike her mother? As you point out, there wasn't ever a possibility she would be. I thought her mother's spirit had passed into the portrait, and through it into her father. She seemed a very real and malevolent presence. (But my memory is suspect.)
Hm. One of the things I like best about the book is the lack of pat resolution: Lissar has unmasked herself and publicly fought with her demons, yay rah, but she is not suddenly all better. The only person who is saved is Ossin's sister, whom we barely know.
Maybe we want two different books here. :) You can have the atmospheric horror novel in the palace - how about Lissar's friend (Viaka?) as a continued viewpoint character? - and I'll take the PTSD recovery narrative.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 06:30 am (UTC)So. Let me try again.
1. I agree absolutely that it makes emotional and psychological sense for Lissar to have a obsessive and unhealthy co-dependent relationship with her dog. I'd be surprised if she didn't. And insofar as that's part of Lissar's character, I have no problem with that.
2. My problem is that the narrative seems to have the same relationship with Ash that Lissar does. Deerskin is tight third person, but we aren't anchored inside Lissar's head--we swoop out to see other people's PoVs from time to time, including Ash's. And none of these other snippets of PoV offer us any corrective on the glowing godlike Ash that Lissar sees.
3. Which, as I said, I don't buy. I'm perfectly willing to love dogs in fiction, and generally do. But Deerskin has stacked the deck so heavily to make us like Ash that I become perverse and contrary and find her annoying instead.
4. So that, by the time we reach the toro debacle, because I don't care about Ash, I become profoundly impatient with Lissar's melodramatic wallowing. And my heart is breaking for the six younger dogs, who do not deserve to be treated by the narrative as Ash's retinue.
Which doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the toro scene, as both you and
***
re: Lissar choosing (or not choosing) not to be her mother. There's a moment in the climax where there seem to be two women, one of whose beauty is terrible and inhuman (I returned the book to
And it's not that the resolution isn't pat that I'm complaining about; it's that the resolution is too pat. (Except for Lissar and Ossin, who clearly still have a lot of work to do, which is the part I like best.) But I can tell I'm not going to be able to explain what I mean.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 09:04 am (UTC)As I've said, I don't especially like dogs. Which is possibly where I've missed "the glowing godlike Ash" you see in the narrative, and I don't. Ash is (my recollection) lazy, greedy, licks Lissar's face annoyingly, and is occasionally liable to piss on the floor: she's also absolutely devoted to Lissar, in a perfectly doggy sort of way. (It seems clear, too, that she's ended up as the leader of the pack of sighthounds, the six surviving puppies, by being the adult dog they imprinted on, as Lissar's the human they imprinted on.)
Lissar has tied herself to Ash: she sees Ash as the perfect dog. (Perhaps that's the problem: I do have a hard time visualising Lissar actually giving Ash obedience lessons and training her. Rather I would expect Ash to have turned out annoyingly spoilt and irritating, the kind of dog I especially dislike because their owners only look on dotingly as they wreck the place. Hmmm.)
When I got to the toro scene, when Lissar pushes aside the six puppies, two of whom are injured, to devote herself to Ash... well, I didn't expect Lissar to do anything else. Not because the narrative had led me to believe that Ash is so wonderful, but because the narrative had led me to believe that Lissar would do anything for Ash. No, the puppies didn't deserve to be ignored for Ash: I didn't see anything into the narrative that suggested they did.
I suppose you could argue that Lissar has absolutely no excuse for being emotionally unstable over Ash's possible death, because after all, Ash is just a dog: if Lissar thinks she's anything more than that, that's just her over-emotional reaction to the effects of her lonely childhood, her father raping her, and her escape from her father's kingdom. And people who can't get over little things like that without getting over-attached to a pet deserve no sympathy at all.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 11:23 am (UTC)I think, though, from what you've said, that when you read Deerskin you fill in a lot of typical, untrained, spoiled-rotten dog behavior on Ash's part that we don't see and that the narrative actually doesn't support. (If Ash were that kind of dog, the other kennel hands, and Ossin, would have Things to Say about it, because that kind of dog is incredibly disruptive, especially for working dogs.) We don't see Lissar ever training Ash, and I agree that it's hard to IMAGINE Lissar training Ash, but somehow Ash comes out a perfectly trained dog.
Perhaps that's what I object to, and perhaps that's what I mean when I say the book sentimentalizes, idealizes, and romanticizes Ash.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 12:33 pm (UTC)Oh yes, it does. That is, the faults I specifically mentioned - licking Lissar's face, pissing on the floor, being lazy and greedy - are referenced in the text. (As is Lissar's inability to see that anything her dog does could possibly annoy anyone.)
We don't see Lissar ever training Ash, and I agree that it's hard to IMAGINE Lissar training Ash, but somehow Ash comes out a perfectly trained dog. Perhaps that's what I object to, and perhaps that's what I mean when I say the book sentimentalizes, idealizes, and romanticizes Ash.
Or not Ash, but the process of training a dog?
Is the problem maybe that I'm talking about Ash as a character, not Ash as a dog? I would have exactly the same complaint if she were Lissar's sister and characterized in the same telling without showing way.
But we're shown plenty of stuff about Ash. I'm not sure where this is coming from. We are not shown exactly why Lissar loves her so much, except simply that she was given Ash as something to love, and she had almost nothing else to love. Nothing else, in fact, except her nurse.
I suppose I don't have a problem with an idealised animal companion in a fairy story because idealised animal companions are par for the course in fairy stories. Ash is a real dog, but she's also an animal companion, the kind of wise beast that shows up to accompany the younger son or the king's daughter. Because, yes, I would have a problem about a younger sister who loved and was devoted to Lissar, and Lissar in return, without ever showing how they became so devoted to each other. (Though Mrs Gaskell does a very good job of showing brotherly devotion in Wives and Daughters without ever showing how.)
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 05:51 pm (UTC)And yet Ash is not a mystical beast - she's a present from Ossin's kingdom, which is referenced several times early on as a Better Place. She has an emotional bond with Lissar and can instinctively sense when it's important that she behave and do so.
So does that move Ash more towards the category of telepathic dragons and overly intelligent cats and Lassie? Because I can see how that can become annoying in a story, definitely. There's "sentient nonhumans" and "helpful pets" and a whole lot of squishy territory in between that smacks of wish-fulfillment if written badly.
(And your other clarifications make sense too, I'm just not together enough to respond to them all right now. )
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 08:41 pm (UTC)And I do have a very low tolerance for the Companion genre of fictional animal characters (we were just talking about this a few discussions back, and Papersky mentioned the splendid corrective of C. J. Cherryh's Rider at the Gate and Cloud's Rider), so that may be why my patience with Ash is so extraordinarily non-existent.
And I do hate being pushed around by a narrative.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-15 03:28 pm (UTC)Where? I missed this....
and Papersky mentioned the splendid corrective of C. J. Cherryh's Rider at the Gate and Cloud's Rider),
LOL. YES! I suspect Cherryh at times of a snarky sense of humor and a roll of the eyes, after which she goes off to write a story that corrects whatever idioticy she reads in other places.
Given Companions, et al, I actually approached Rider warily. That lasted as long as it took Burn to 'open his mouth' and image *cattle tails*.
(still laughing about that)
- hossgal
no subject
Date: 2003-07-19 03:58 pm (UTC)It's in the discussion of this post (http://www.livejournal.com/users/truepenny/134471.html). We were talking about Pern and got a little sidetracked ...
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 12:06 pm (UTC)Lissar's beauty
Date: 2003-07-13 07:00 am (UTC)Perhaps part of it is that beauty is SO problematic in the first half of the book. The queen has power because of her beauty, no one can see her true selfishness because of her beauty, it's her beauty that gives her power after her death. And then Lissar is betrayed by her own beauty, because that's why her father rapes her and (it's at least suggested) that's why the court decides, before it even happens, that it's her fault.
So that it bothers me that when Moonwoman heals Lissar and makes her exotic and beautiful, that that beauty is treated simply as the necessary and natural attribute of a heroine. (One of the things I love about Spindle's End is that McKinley goes against her own inclination; she tends to write heroines (Beauty, Aeryn) who think the are very plain while in fact they are drop-dead gorgeous, and I like very very much the fact that the fairy godmothers did everyhing they could to make Rosie beautiful, and it just didn't take.)
It's also a cliché. It's the sort of thing that happens in the things that teenage girls write, where the poor suffering protagonist suddenly gets whomped with the beauty stick, along with picking up some other magical powers (as Lissar does, although they're very subtle) along the way.
It's true that Lissar doesn't want any of that, but I think it smooths a lot of bumps out of her path that she's not even aware of. People don't argue with her, and they never treat her like an ordinary, unimportant, and uninteresting person. And perhaps it merely betrays my own biases for me to say that I think the book would be better if they did.
Re: Lissar's beauty
Date: 2003-07-13 03:07 pm (UTC)I don't have much of a problem with people not arguing with her. In my head, they do that because she's Goddess touched, not because she's beautiful.
And the thing is, as the aftermath of a rape and all... It makes sense to me that she would have a body she absolutely cannot connect with. That it's beautiful makes that lack of connection /worse/, really.
Re: Lissar's beauty
Date: 2003-07-13 03:19 pm (UTC)I think an external uglification would be different from the grime and donkeyskin disguise. I don't know. Maybe she could have done more with beauty thematically in the second half.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 03:00 am (UTC)But I loved The Blue Crown.
Anyway. I also like Deerskin - though I recognise the flaws you point out. Well, most of them.
When I first read it, I got to the part where Lissar's father throws Ash into the wall, and stopped at the end of that chapter. I was certain Ash was dead. I couldn't see any reason why Ash shouldn't be dead, and I wasn't sure I wanted to read on and find out what it was like for Lissar to live on, raped and brutalised, without Ash. And I don't like dogs. Not generically. I have liked two or three dogs personally, but none of them were greyhounds/sighthounds. But I could comprehend how Lissar had tied her life to that of Ash: that made perfect sense. Lissar doesn't love the puppies as much as she loves Ash: she loves them as a normal dog-loving person loves dogs, especially dogs who are that devoted to her. The scene after the toro makes absolute sense to me - it isn't a flaw in the novel at all.
The mechanism of Lissar's transformation does trouble me a little - beauty looks like an easier shield than a donkeyskin. But it is a shield, and one that isolates Lissar among the people she works with far more than a donkeyskin and grime on her face would have.
The real double-flaw is Moonwoman and the Queen - your reversal of Chekov's rule about the gun on the wall is very neat and exact. There needed to be something in the first part of the book: an oath, a story, a reference - to Moonwoman's existence, to the religion of Moonwoman, before she shows up. It didn't have to be much, really: a single line would have done.
The other flaw: I am disturbed that the Queen just sort of faded. If she was supposed to have magically put herself into her picture, I think this might have been made clearer.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 06:37 am (UTC)My reply (http://www.livejournal.com/users/truepenny/140322.html?thread=736546#t736546) to Marith is an attempt to unbotch. See what you think.
***
I don't think we're supposed to understand that the queen did anything magical with the portrait; it's just that her influence is so vast and so unhealthy that she remains as a malevolent presence in the palace. (She reminds me, actually, of Maur's skull in The Hero and the Crown.) But something should happen with that--or, not happen, but continue, or some other word that I'm not finding at the moment. So much energy goes into that in the first half that it's disappointing to not have it there in the second.
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Date: 2003-07-13 04:34 am (UTC)Wow! This has nothing to do with Ash and Lissar, even though I read the book and so probably should have something to say, but I hadn't heard Chekov's dictum before and *had* heard Aimee Mann's 'Frankenstein,' so I got that delightful shock from recognising where something comes from, and had to go wow.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 06:08 am (UTC)I agree that the two halves don't mesh together well. I would argue that the fault lies not so much with the plot devices (yes, yes, yes to your point about the Moonwoman coming out of no where) but with the themes - the first half of the book is about Lissar's abuse and neglect at the hands of her parents (both of them, damnit, not just the insanity of her father). The second half is about Lissar's care for - her nurturing of - Ash, the puppies, and Ossin. There is a whole sub-plot about Lissar fighting against the responsiblities of adoptive motherhood - based on the horrid examples she had from her parents - that is just not there in the book.
As for Lissar's locking in on the sick Ash and pushing the puppies aside - firstly, that, for me, is entirely in line with a single human over-bonding with a companion animal. Yes, Ash is going to die, long before Lissar. (In my experience, it is the HUGE dogs - wolfhounds, Great Danes, etc) who have the micro-lifespans. Even mastiffs - and more so the more moderate sized dogs, like most sighthounds - are 10 to 12 year dogs. Anyway.) But Lissar might understandably refuse to recognize that Ash - like her parents - is going to die and leave her alone.
Secondly, from my experience with nursing small sick things, one goes into the affair with the expectation that you're going to lose them. A hardening of the heart - to keep it from bleeding - occurs, which did not happen with Ash. Lissar might have fallen back into this when faced with the possiblity of Ash dying.
I agree again with you about the Moonwoman's gifts seeming to come without cost. I'm not sure what my reaction would have been *if* there had been costs - would that have been just one more awful burden on an already over-taxed heroine? I mean, isn't that what gods are supposed to do - hand out salvation without payment from those miserables abused by an evil world? Demanding that the recieptient prove themselves worthy of the rescue - when they have not been worthy of the abuse from which they needed rescue - this might have seemed a bit harsh.
*re-reads last paragraph* This made more sense in my head.
Anyway. Good to read your thoughts. Thank you.
- hossgal
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Date: 2003-07-13 06:21 am (UTC)It might have been more realistic, but it wouldn't have been very bearable.
I agree she should have set up Moonwoman earlier, though I don't know where. Yes I do, her friend V could have mentioned her.
By the time Ash naturally dies, she will have other things.
The second half of Deerskin is largely about what you do after you're broken, about putting yourself back together from the bits. It isn't perfect, but there aren't a whole lot of stories about that at all.
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Date: 2003-07-13 06:42 am (UTC)And, yes, I agree. I don't think the book would be readable if Ash died at the king's hands. But--speaking entirely in the abstract (and assuming that we could just cut out the Mystical Experiences on the Mountain section and get Lissar to Ossin's kingdom some other way)--it would make a better pattern. It's not a pattern I want to read, but it's a pattern that would work.
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Date: 2003-07-13 09:09 am (UTC)Hmmm... I suppose it might have worked even if the King had killed Ash, if Lissar had come down from the mountains and been given the puppies and bonded with one of them and named her Ash. (That is, according to Konrad Lorenz, the best way of getting over the death of a beloved dog: get another dog, same breed, as soon as possible.) It would have been a lot more brutal, of course*. Hmmmmm.
(*But then, the original versions of all fairytales are more brutal.)
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 09:32 am (UTC)I think I always assumed that the Moonwoman was a goddess who wasn't known in Lissar's birth country. or if she was worshipped in that country, she existed under another name... hmm, in which case maybe the moonwoman should have been mentioned in another guise in the first half of the novel. again, I can't see where, and understand that there not being a good place for her to come up is part of the problem. yes? (I read the blue sword at age 12, and have never been good at looking critically at McKinley's books i adore them so much.)
the book is split into two halves by the Moonwoman experience. It makes it more readable, not less readable, for me.
hmm, i feel this way too. i definately agree that there is a split. but I feel that i as a reader need the moonwoman period on the mountain and the distancing from Lissar's experience with her parents that goes on the second half, because it makes it bearable for me to keep reading. that Lissar distances herself from the trauma of her past is normal, accurate, yes?
rereading the comments i can see i'll just get more muddled if i keep talking right now. but I'm glad to be reading this discussion!
-kate
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Date: 2003-07-13 03:31 pm (UTC)Anyone read the second Beauty book? um - Rose Daughter? It didn't work as well for me as the first one did, but it was interesting. I also find it interesting that I can hardly remember what happened in it.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 07:50 pm (UTC)But I do remember never settling comfortably into Beauty's viewpoint, or the Beast's, or feeling there was a real romance between them.
Lurker at work
Date: 2003-07-23 09:16 am (UTC)Re: Lurker at work
Date: 2003-07-23 09:58 am (UTC)I, at least, find Aerin's story balances all these things successfully--at least up until the end where the yerig and the folza show up and we get the companion-animal wonkiness I was complaining about. But her illness and the aftereffects of Maur both seem to me to manage the combination of, as you say, remote nobility and gritty realism quite well. (Although Aerin does fall into the Hollywood TB trap, where she gets more beautiful as she's dying.)
Which dei ex are you thinking of?
Dei ex machini
Date: 2003-07-28 07:18 am (UTC)I say that, but I have to confess that I have the same problem: I'm good at writing characters into nice plausible corners no one can get out of, but then I find I have to leave them there for three years until I figure out how they CAN get out.
Thanks
Re: Dei ex machini
Date: 2003-07-28 07:51 am (UTC)And *sigh* I hear you. It's always easier to invent problems than solutions, and even harder to make the solutions graceful.