TDIRS: Greenwitch
Mar. 16th, 2003 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyBut first, in prep for The Grey King, can someone please tell me how to pronounce Cafall? I've been wondering now for eighteen and a half years.
I've already talked about Over Sea, Under Stone and The Dark Is Rising. Time for Book Three.
I've been saying for some time now that Greenwitch is the pivot on which TDIRS turns, and it is now time for me to put my money where my mouth is and prove it.
Greenwitch is the shortest of the five books, scarcely more than a novella. It is also, in contrast to TDIR (and to a lesser extent OSUS) very tightly plotted. There's nothing extraneous, and the structure itself is very tidal, with things ebbing and returning (the painter, Captain Toms, the Greenwitch itself; Simon and Barney go twice to the farm, Will's aunt and uncle are forever leaving and coming back). It's also a book which contrasts very sharply the world and power of men and the world and power of women, and that's where I want to focus.
My analysis of TDIR leaned heavily on the lack of important, active female figures, not because (as I said) I think Cooper is being anti-feminist, but because she's setting something up for Greenwitch which is so important and pervasive that she never bothers to spell it out.
The key moment, for my reading, is this one:
That moment of self-centeredness, that Hero's Solipsism (which, for example, Harry Potter also demonstrates), is slyly and cruelly undercut. No, the Greenwitch doesn't mean Will; it means Jane, an ordinary mortal girl. (For contrast, note that as of yet, Harry's Hero's Solipsism has NEVER been undercut. It is all about Harry.) The superhuman male characters in this book (Will, Merriman, Captain Toms, the painter from the Dark) go prancing about wielding their spells of Reck and Mana and Lir, but in the end they are completely irrelevant, as are Simon and Barney racing about all over the map (except that their encounter with the painter does lead to the recovery of the Grail). The ACTION of this book, as opposed to the red herrings Cooper flings gleefully about, is pristinely simple: Jane makes a wish; the Greenwitch responds.
Although the Greenwitch itself is explicitly non-feminine: "She [Jane] had always thought of witches as being female, but she could feel no she quality in the Greenwitch. It was unclassifiable, like a rock or a tree" (Cooper 29), it is made by women, and its master/mother, Tethys, is distinctly female. Here at last is a ... well, not so much a character as a force ... a force of femaleness which is neither supportive nor seductive. Tethys is POWER; she is indifferent, capricious, proud. Greenwitch both shows men's ignorance of and lack of sensitivity to women's power ("sensitivity" meaning being able to sense it, not being all sympathetic and PC about it), and the reality of the power that the men cannot touch or use. For all their power, Merriman and Will would not have been able to attend the making of the Greenwitch; they simply could not have done what Jane does. And because they are powerful, it seems to me unlikely that even if they were there (Will in drag? Merriman in drag? the mind reels), they would think to make that particular wish. They are perhaps too much like the Greenwitch to understand it in the way that Jane does.
The other thematic strand in Greenwitch I want to look at is the idea of isolation, alienation, because it's going to come back in The Grey King. The note sounds loudest in Jane's contemplation of the Greenwitch:
Obviously, this resonates with what I was saying about Will in TDIR. Will's power isolates him from his family and other ordinary humans. The Greenwitch--even more powerful (as its temper tantrum demonstrates)--is isolated from EVERYTHING. Cooper does a beautiful job with the Greenwitch clinging to its secret because it has nothing else. But there are other kinds of isolation in the book: Fran Stanton's isolation as an American; the painter's self-inflicted isolation and fear ("He was a separate sort of man," Simon says (Cooper 117)); Jane's isolation, the only female in a group with four males. And I don't think it's an accident that the Light wins solely because two of these isolated characters reach out to each other and for a tiny moment become less isolated.
Greenwitch also uses the realism of its characters' interactions to good effect; the Drews' reaction to Will is perfectly observed: Simon bridling at a competitor for his alpha spot, Barney resenting having to share Merriman, Jane anxiously playing the peace-maker. Jane's close observation of Will offers confirmation of some of my points about TDIR: "Simon wanted to quarrel, and you wouldn't, she thought. You're like a grown-up, sometimes. Who are you, Will Stanton?" (Cooper 94). There's a very sharp contrast drawn between Simon, who's trying very hard to act "like a grown-up" (Will's first sight of him: "... a boy a little older than himself, wearing a school blazer and an air of self-conscious authority" (Cooper 12)) and Will, who has to remember not to and doesn't always succeed. (There's another quote, which has skittered shyly off to hide, where she remarks that Merriman and Will treat each other as colleagues. I cannot find it, and I'm driving myself mad with the looking.) Will's friendship with the Drews (mostly Jane in Greenwitch) is tentative and awkward and deeply contingent on their awareness of what he is. (I'll be coming back to this, obviously, with The Grey King.)
Greenwitch, for me (and I hasten to add that this is entirely personal and subjective) is also where Cooper begins to get the hang of depicting supernatural events. The stuff with the Dark in TDIR is flashy, but not deep-down disturbing in the way that the Greenwitch is, and the resurgence of the past into the present which it causes. That sequence has flashes of sublimity, in the strict Romantic definition of the word, and is just generally brilliant, more of a piece with the wonders she works in The Grey King and Silver on the Tree.
Greenwitch changes the tone and method of TDIRS. We move away now from the conventions of children's adventure (though Silver on the Tree will return there, and I'll be talking about that when we reach it) and into something else, something I don't personally have a word for except that it's what comes into my head when I think of Susan Cooper. It also begins to emphasize that the moral center of this world is NOT with the Old Ones, but with the mortals. It begins the argument that Will's superhuman powers do not in fact make him stronger, braver, or more important than the mortal characters. All of the crucial decisions and actions in the last three books of the series are made by mortal characters: Jane, Bran, John Rowlands. The Old Ones get an assist for every goal (and my mind has now spiralled off into the doggerel from Silver on the Tree: "I am the womb of every holt / I am the assist of every goal"), but the story isn't about them, and Greenwitch starts to show us why.
I didn't like Greenwitch as much as the other four books in TDIRS the first time I read it. It denies all our expectations; the action/adventure part of the story turns out to be unimportant, and the "happiness" of the ending is deeply qualified, almost overpowered by the sadness of the Greenwitch. (I hope very much that Jane's gift does reach the Greenwitch before the Greenwitch comes to Tethys. I hope. But I also doubt.) The real things going on are much quieter, much more about interpersonal relationships and empathy or lack thereof. (The painter fails, not merely because he's male and from the Dark, but because he cannot even for a second put himself in the Greenwitch's position to understand why commanding it will never work.) It's a quiet, quirky, dark book; the elegiac tone I mentioned with regard to TDIR here is predominant. The entire book is in a minor key.
---
WORKS CITED
Cooper, Susan. Greenwitch. The Dark Is Rising Sequence 3. 1974. New York: Collier Books, 1986
I've already talked about Over Sea, Under Stone and The Dark Is Rising. Time for Book Three.
I've been saying for some time now that Greenwitch is the pivot on which TDIRS turns, and it is now time for me to put my money where my mouth is and prove it.
Greenwitch is the shortest of the five books, scarcely more than a novella. It is also, in contrast to TDIR (and to a lesser extent OSUS) very tightly plotted. There's nothing extraneous, and the structure itself is very tidal, with things ebbing and returning (the painter, Captain Toms, the Greenwitch itself; Simon and Barney go twice to the farm, Will's aunt and uncle are forever leaving and coming back). It's also a book which contrasts very sharply the world and power of men and the world and power of women, and that's where I want to focus.
My analysis of TDIR leaned heavily on the lack of important, active female figures, not because (as I said) I think Cooper is being anti-feminist, but because she's setting something up for Greenwitch which is so important and pervasive that she never bothers to spell it out.
The key moment, for my reading, is this one:
"Has no-one showed care for you, Greenwitch? No-one?"
"No-one!" The huge voice rang through the village, around the hills, over the moors behind; like distant thunder it rumbled and re-echoed. "No creature! None! Not ... one. ..." The fierceness died, the thunder grew less. For a long moment they were listening only to the wash of the uneasy sea against the cliffs, out where the swells broke. Then the Greenwitch said in a whisper, "None except one. None except the child."
"The child?" Will said involuntarily. A thin note of raw incredulity tipped his voice; for a moment he thought the Greenwitch meant himself.
Merriman said softly, ignoring him, "The child who wished you well."
"She was up at the headland at the making," the Greenwitch said.
(Cooper 104)
That moment of self-centeredness, that Hero's Solipsism (which, for example, Harry Potter also demonstrates), is slyly and cruelly undercut. No, the Greenwitch doesn't mean Will; it means Jane, an ordinary mortal girl. (For contrast, note that as of yet, Harry's Hero's Solipsism has NEVER been undercut. It is all about Harry.) The superhuman male characters in this book (Will, Merriman, Captain Toms, the painter from the Dark) go prancing about wielding their spells of Reck and Mana and Lir, but in the end they are completely irrelevant, as are Simon and Barney racing about all over the map (except that their encounter with the painter does lead to the recovery of the Grail). The ACTION of this book, as opposed to the red herrings Cooper flings gleefully about, is pristinely simple: Jane makes a wish; the Greenwitch responds.
Although the Greenwitch itself is explicitly non-feminine: "She [Jane] had always thought of witches as being female, but she could feel no she quality in the Greenwitch. It was unclassifiable, like a rock or a tree" (Cooper 29), it is made by women, and its master/mother, Tethys, is distinctly female. Here at last is a ... well, not so much a character as a force ... a force of femaleness which is neither supportive nor seductive. Tethys is POWER; she is indifferent, capricious, proud. Greenwitch both shows men's ignorance of and lack of sensitivity to women's power ("sensitivity" meaning being able to sense it, not being all sympathetic and PC about it), and the reality of the power that the men cannot touch or use. For all their power, Merriman and Will would not have been able to attend the making of the Greenwitch; they simply could not have done what Jane does. And because they are powerful, it seems to me unlikely that even if they were there (Will in drag? Merriman in drag? the mind reels), they would think to make that particular wish. They are perhaps too much like the Greenwitch to understand it in the way that Jane does.
The other thematic strand in Greenwitch I want to look at is the idea of isolation, alienation, because it's going to come back in The Grey King. The note sounds loudest in Jane's contemplation of the Greenwitch:
Jane stared at it, horrified, and from its sightless head the Greenwitch stared back. It would not move, or seem to come alive, she knew that. Her horror came not from fear, but from the awareness she suddenly felt from the image of an appalling, endless loneliness. Great power was held only in great isolation. Looking at the Greenwitch, she felt a terrible awe, and a kind of pity as well.
(Cooper 30)
Obviously, this resonates with what I was saying about Will in TDIR. Will's power isolates him from his family and other ordinary humans. The Greenwitch--even more powerful (as its temper tantrum demonstrates)--is isolated from EVERYTHING. Cooper does a beautiful job with the Greenwitch clinging to its secret because it has nothing else. But there are other kinds of isolation in the book: Fran Stanton's isolation as an American; the painter's self-inflicted isolation and fear ("He was a separate sort of man," Simon says (Cooper 117)); Jane's isolation, the only female in a group with four males. And I don't think it's an accident that the Light wins solely because two of these isolated characters reach out to each other and for a tiny moment become less isolated.
Greenwitch also uses the realism of its characters' interactions to good effect; the Drews' reaction to Will is perfectly observed: Simon bridling at a competitor for his alpha spot, Barney resenting having to share Merriman, Jane anxiously playing the peace-maker. Jane's close observation of Will offers confirmation of some of my points about TDIR: "Simon wanted to quarrel, and you wouldn't, she thought. You're like a grown-up, sometimes. Who are you, Will Stanton?" (Cooper 94). There's a very sharp contrast drawn between Simon, who's trying very hard to act "like a grown-up" (Will's first sight of him: "... a boy a little older than himself, wearing a school blazer and an air of self-conscious authority" (Cooper 12)) and Will, who has to remember not to and doesn't always succeed. (There's another quote, which has skittered shyly off to hide, where she remarks that Merriman and Will treat each other as colleagues. I cannot find it, and I'm driving myself mad with the looking.) Will's friendship with the Drews (mostly Jane in Greenwitch) is tentative and awkward and deeply contingent on their awareness of what he is. (I'll be coming back to this, obviously, with The Grey King.)
Greenwitch, for me (and I hasten to add that this is entirely personal and subjective) is also where Cooper begins to get the hang of depicting supernatural events. The stuff with the Dark in TDIR is flashy, but not deep-down disturbing in the way that the Greenwitch is, and the resurgence of the past into the present which it causes. That sequence has flashes of sublimity, in the strict Romantic definition of the word, and is just generally brilliant, more of a piece with the wonders she works in The Grey King and Silver on the Tree.
Greenwitch changes the tone and method of TDIRS. We move away now from the conventions of children's adventure (though Silver on the Tree will return there, and I'll be talking about that when we reach it) and into something else, something I don't personally have a word for except that it's what comes into my head when I think of Susan Cooper. It also begins to emphasize that the moral center of this world is NOT with the Old Ones, but with the mortals. It begins the argument that Will's superhuman powers do not in fact make him stronger, braver, or more important than the mortal characters. All of the crucial decisions and actions in the last three books of the series are made by mortal characters: Jane, Bran, John Rowlands. The Old Ones get an assist for every goal (and my mind has now spiralled off into the doggerel from Silver on the Tree: "I am the womb of every holt / I am the assist of every goal"), but the story isn't about them, and Greenwitch starts to show us why.
I didn't like Greenwitch as much as the other four books in TDIRS the first time I read it. It denies all our expectations; the action/adventure part of the story turns out to be unimportant, and the "happiness" of the ending is deeply qualified, almost overpowered by the sadness of the Greenwitch. (I hope very much that Jane's gift does reach the Greenwitch before the Greenwitch comes to Tethys. I hope. But I also doubt.) The real things going on are much quieter, much more about interpersonal relationships and empathy or lack thereof. (The painter fails, not merely because he's male and from the Dark, but because he cannot even for a second put himself in the Greenwitch's position to understand why commanding it will never work.) It's a quiet, quirky, dark book; the elegiac tone I mentioned with regard to TDIR here is predominant. The entire book is in a minor key.
---
WORKS CITED
Cooper, Susan. Greenwitch. The Dark Is Rising Sequence 3. 1974. New York: Collier Books, 1986
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 12:44 pm (UTC)Clearly I need to look for Red Shift. "When found, make a note of."
no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 03:26 pm (UTC)I love it, but it's quite wrenching.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 07:09 pm (UTC)