June Book Blogging: Me Jane. You WTF? (Public Post)
I was inspired by this post to book blog. I probably won't be doing it exactly the way they had in mind, but I probably will talk about books I'm currently reading. After all, the original point of this blog was mostly to blog about a particular book series. I'll probably mix and mash topics - current reads, old reads, want-to-reads, how certain books have impacted me, and general thoughts about books.
Today I'm going to talk about Earth's Children by Jean Auel, in particular the sixth book, Land of the Painted Caves. I may or may not do a longer post on the clusterfuck that was the originally strong series. There will be spoilers for Land of the What Just Happened? Painted Caves, and this post assumes you have at least some familiarity with the books (although I do include a basic recap/explanation for anyone whose memory needs a quick jog.) I'm also making this post public so I can share with my ecfans friends. :)
I discovered the series in 2000, when I was fifteen. I loved it. I was on vacation when I was reading COTCB, and I got hit with a weird 24 hour stomach bug. Yet I could not stop reading. I wanted to know what happened to Ayla. Ayla was strong as hell. I was sad to see her leave the Clan, but eager to see where life took her. I read Ayla's journey into the Valley, and Jondalar's parallel story. I read them meet The Mammoth Hunters, and, like most fans, rolled my eyes at the love triangle. I read the Plains of Passage. I realized there hadn't been an addition to the series in twelve damn years.
(I can hear GRRM fans laughing at me.)
I also found a fandom on ecfans.com and on a now-defunct forum that turned to more political topics. It was a small yet amazing fandom I could go on all day about. Book five came out; it was okay. Book six came out... you know how Game of Thrones fans felt about season 8? That's how most of us felt.
As a quick recap: The Clan, or Neanderthals, was an extremely patriarchal society. Interestingly, we learn that this wasn't always the case - Creb remembers a time when women also hunted. However, Clan women now no longer hunt, or really do much of anything, including deciding when to "Mate." (That's exactly what it sounds like. It's partly pinpointed on instinct, but women are also able to look away and pretend they didn't see "the signal", whiiich... calls the instinct theory into question.) Anyway, Ayla is Homo Sapiens Sapiens/us, so nevertheless she persists. Unfortunately, she's still forced to leave in the end, leaving behind her son, who is part Clan.
Also, there's absolutely no concept of fatherhood, which is odd for a tribe that is so strong about sex. They don't know that men = babies. They think women "swallow spirits."
Ayla finds the Homo Sapiens Sapiens/us (or "Others") and we learn all about them between books 2 and 6. Ayla keeps kicking ass, is a bit of a Mary Sue, yada yada. The Others are a very Matriarchal society, honoring The Mother (the Venus figure, basically - all Venus figurines in this universe are The Mother). They also don't know how babies are made. Ayla has figured it out, but only tells a few people, including her mate Jondalar.
In the case of the Others, not knowing the deal about babies allows them not only to be a very Matriarchal society, but open overall. The books were actually quite progressive for their time when it came to sexuality; one Shaman is implied to be transgender, and when Jondalar asks what gender the Shaman is, realizes it doesn't really matter. Sex is a large part of their culture. Basically in ECverse, the Others' world was pretty much Burning Man meets Woodstock, as narrated by Margaret Atwood and Gloria Steinem.
Here's where the Margaret Atwood part comes in. Ayla reveals The Deal About Babies. (It's a really long and convoluted story I can't even explain, except to say it involves Jondalar screaming "HE'S MAKING MY BABY".) Much tl;dr short, we discover that this reveal is the dawn of sexism. Ayla has a dream where thousands of women point at her going "YOOOOU." The book ends with Jondalar thinking that things were going to change. (Yah.)
Fans debated furiously over what happened. Had Jean Auel even written the book? Had she ghost written? Was she just tired of her own story? I will say that beyond the ending, the book just wasn't... good. The focus was much more on cave paintings than it was on plot. I didn't really enjoy any of it. It definitely seemed that Jean Auel just got tired and threw in the towel.
However, I'm not sure that's why she gave the series the ending that she did. I think all along, Ayla was meant to be something of an Eve figure. Following Abrahamic tradition, it's knowledge that has a part in dooming women. Ayla's knowledge leads to a vulnerability that apparently will cause women to be repressed for thousands of years. The first book itself hints that Clan women were once independent, allowed to lead their lives as they wished; it was only later that they were oppressed. I think this somewhat foreshadowed that society can and will backslide. In the case of the Clan, it was concern for children that caused women to have to submit to men. In the case of the Others, it's the realization that it takes two to make a baby. Men want control over who is making their baby. Sex becomes more and more regulated. Truth be told, it's actually a deeply ironic and clever twist: Ayla broke barriers, yet she also becomes those barriers. The strong female character we followed becomes her own downfall.
I think there are two problems. The first problem is that while it's a great (if tragic) twist of irony, it's also a frustrating one as a reader. Not all endings have to be happy, but the truth is that a lot of women had come to look up to Ayla, and even see themselves in her. So to re-invent her as the source for our problems was a huge blow, even if calling her the source of our problems is also unfair. (It's not really Ayla's fault that men took a simple biological fact and turned it into a reason to oppress women.) We obviously all knew society would become sexist, we just didn't expect Ayla to have a hand in it - even inadvertently. To become a victim of her own truth.
The other problem is Jean Auel's writing. I think that as the series went on, she did get tired of it. Thus, while the twist at its original conception might have been a gentler blow, and made a lot of sense it was thrown into a mess of generally bad writing. I think Jean Auel knew what she was doing when she first got the idea. I'm not so sure she really knew what she was doing when she finally published the book.
Moreover, even before LOPC, Ayla was written as an almost flawless person. The fact that she's a Mary Sue is a huge in-joke among fans. Her only flaw is that she can't sing. That's it. Maybe if Ayla had had more flaws, the tragic ending would have seemed more like a story of a tragic hero, rather than a cautionary tale against Sex Ed. True, Jondalar's outburst is due to Ayla cheating on him out of revenge, but even this isn't written very realistically. It's not established as part of Ayla's character (thankfully). It's just a random moment of hurt that goes too far.
In conclusion, my issue with LOPC isn't just that it ends with Ayla "inventing sexism." It's that the writing of this deep blow is so poor, there's no way for it to land well. The fans who followed Ayla from the forest where a Cave Lioness attacked her to Lascaux deserved a stronger story.
Ayla deserved a stronger story.
Today I'm going to talk about Earth's Children by Jean Auel, in particular the sixth book, Land of the Painted Caves. I may or may not do a longer post on the clusterfuck that was the originally strong series. There will be spoilers for Land of the What Just Happened? Painted Caves, and this post assumes you have at least some familiarity with the books (although I do include a basic recap/explanation for anyone whose memory needs a quick jog.) I'm also making this post public so I can share with my ecfans friends. :)
I discovered the series in 2000, when I was fifteen. I loved it. I was on vacation when I was reading COTCB, and I got hit with a weird 24 hour stomach bug. Yet I could not stop reading. I wanted to know what happened to Ayla. Ayla was strong as hell. I was sad to see her leave the Clan, but eager to see where life took her. I read Ayla's journey into the Valley, and Jondalar's parallel story. I read them meet The Mammoth Hunters, and, like most fans, rolled my eyes at the love triangle. I read the Plains of Passage. I realized there hadn't been an addition to the series in twelve damn years.
(I can hear GRRM fans laughing at me.)
I also found a fandom on ecfans.com and on a now-defunct forum that turned to more political topics. It was a small yet amazing fandom I could go on all day about. Book five came out; it was okay. Book six came out... you know how Game of Thrones fans felt about season 8? That's how most of us felt.
As a quick recap: The Clan, or Neanderthals, was an extremely patriarchal society. Interestingly, we learn that this wasn't always the case - Creb remembers a time when women also hunted. However, Clan women now no longer hunt, or really do much of anything, including deciding when to "Mate." (That's exactly what it sounds like. It's partly pinpointed on instinct, but women are also able to look away and pretend they didn't see "the signal", whiiich... calls the instinct theory into question.) Anyway, Ayla is Homo Sapiens Sapiens/us, so nevertheless she persists. Unfortunately, she's still forced to leave in the end, leaving behind her son, who is part Clan.
Also, there's absolutely no concept of fatherhood, which is odd for a tribe that is so strong about sex. They don't know that men = babies. They think women "swallow spirits."
Ayla finds the Homo Sapiens Sapiens/us (or "Others") and we learn all about them between books 2 and 6. Ayla keeps kicking ass, is a bit of a Mary Sue, yada yada. The Others are a very Matriarchal society, honoring The Mother (the Venus figure, basically - all Venus figurines in this universe are The Mother). They also don't know how babies are made. Ayla has figured it out, but only tells a few people, including her mate Jondalar.
In the case of the Others, not knowing the deal about babies allows them not only to be a very Matriarchal society, but open overall. The books were actually quite progressive for their time when it came to sexuality; one Shaman is implied to be transgender, and when Jondalar asks what gender the Shaman is, realizes it doesn't really matter. Sex is a large part of their culture. Basically in ECverse, the Others' world was pretty much Burning Man meets Woodstock, as narrated by Margaret Atwood and Gloria Steinem.
Here's where the Margaret Atwood part comes in. Ayla reveals The Deal About Babies. (It's a really long and convoluted story I can't even explain, except to say it involves Jondalar screaming "HE'S MAKING MY BABY".) Much tl;dr short, we discover that this reveal is the dawn of sexism. Ayla has a dream where thousands of women point at her going "YOOOOU." The book ends with Jondalar thinking that things were going to change. (Yah.)
Fans debated furiously over what happened. Had Jean Auel even written the book? Had she ghost written? Was she just tired of her own story? I will say that beyond the ending, the book just wasn't... good. The focus was much more on cave paintings than it was on plot. I didn't really enjoy any of it. It definitely seemed that Jean Auel just got tired and threw in the towel.
However, I'm not sure that's why she gave the series the ending that she did. I think all along, Ayla was meant to be something of an Eve figure. Following Abrahamic tradition, it's knowledge that has a part in dooming women. Ayla's knowledge leads to a vulnerability that apparently will cause women to be repressed for thousands of years. The first book itself hints that Clan women were once independent, allowed to lead their lives as they wished; it was only later that they were oppressed. I think this somewhat foreshadowed that society can and will backslide. In the case of the Clan, it was concern for children that caused women to have to submit to men. In the case of the Others, it's the realization that it takes two to make a baby. Men want control over who is making their baby. Sex becomes more and more regulated. Truth be told, it's actually a deeply ironic and clever twist: Ayla broke barriers, yet she also becomes those barriers. The strong female character we followed becomes her own downfall.
I think there are two problems. The first problem is that while it's a great (if tragic) twist of irony, it's also a frustrating one as a reader. Not all endings have to be happy, but the truth is that a lot of women had come to look up to Ayla, and even see themselves in her. So to re-invent her as the source for our problems was a huge blow, even if calling her the source of our problems is also unfair. (It's not really Ayla's fault that men took a simple biological fact and turned it into a reason to oppress women.) We obviously all knew society would become sexist, we just didn't expect Ayla to have a hand in it - even inadvertently. To become a victim of her own truth.
The other problem is Jean Auel's writing. I think that as the series went on, she did get tired of it. Thus, while the twist at its original conception might have been a gentler blow, and made a lot of sense it was thrown into a mess of generally bad writing. I think Jean Auel knew what she was doing when she first got the idea. I'm not so sure she really knew what she was doing when she finally published the book.
Moreover, even before LOPC, Ayla was written as an almost flawless person. The fact that she's a Mary Sue is a huge in-joke among fans. Her only flaw is that she can't sing. That's it. Maybe if Ayla had had more flaws, the tragic ending would have seemed more like a story of a tragic hero, rather than a cautionary tale against Sex Ed. True, Jondalar's outburst is due to Ayla cheating on him out of revenge, but even this isn't written very realistically. It's not established as part of Ayla's character (thankfully). It's just a random moment of hurt that goes too far.
In conclusion, my issue with LOPC isn't just that it ends with Ayla "inventing sexism." It's that the writing of this deep blow is so poor, there's no way for it to land well. The fans who followed Ayla from the forest where a Cave Lioness attacked her to Lascaux deserved a stronger story.
Ayla deserved a stronger story.