Old Pulp Gender Role Bending
This isn't the Barsoom post I was intending to write (still working on that one) or rather, it's a chunk of it broken out, because it was obviously not all going to fit under one essay-umbrella. In honor of the possibility that Dark Horse has thought better* of gambling a dozen or more thousand simoleons on the dark horse named "Gor", as noted over at James Nicoll's - Amazon still has it for pre-order, but DH now no longer has it listed on their website, so it's still up in the air as to whether or not they've yanked it or are just screwing around with their site database - I'm going to address the oft-claimed comparison to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars novels, and see which comes out better in terms of its depiction of female characters and/or pronouncements on gender.
(BTW, it isn't exactly Victorian sf, although well within the grand pulp tradition starting in the latter half of the 1800s, and it's even a year too late to be Edwardian sf, but it is most definitely eve-of-WWI sf, and as with ST:TOS there is a certain amount of cake-having-yet-eating with the simultaneous constant refrain of peace and cooperation for the good of all instead of war of all against all, and indulgence in the fun of swashbuckling, fisticuffs, and ship-to-ship battles between Our Heroes and their adversaries.)
First, for a bit of history - I'd always heard via the fannish grapevine that the Mars books were incredibly risque and lurid, and so it was with a feeling of being Bad and Endangering My Soul that I finally got hold of a copy at the ripe old age of twenty-three or so, and flipping through the opening chapters of this Near Occasion of Sin, wondered what on Earth - or off of it - the fuss was about. I mean, okay, yeah, everybody's naked - and? This is the big to-do? everybody's running about in a pre-lapsarian state of dishabille, like they're Amazon tribesfolk or mythological heroes, and it's no big deal to them, and OMG!Lewdness!TEH LEWD! like third graders chanting "I see England, I see France, I see Soandso's underpants!" In terms of disturbing nudity, and still more disturbing eroticism, A Princess of Mars had absolutely nothing, I felt, on CSL's Space Trilogy. Obviously I was not such a prim and prudish sort as I had been made to feel, since the idea of John Carter, Starkers, bouncing about the surface of Barsoom like an india-rubber ball only made me giggle - as I think ERB intends, for all the H. Rider Haggard/ sobriety of tone, I suspect a tongue-in-cheek stolidity paralleling his contemporary P.G. Wodehouse at times.
Because it is funny, it's portrayed as funny, Carter himself thinks he's ridiculous as he struggles to learn to cope with the gravity differential, and the Green Martians think he's the funniest thing they've ever seen and bear him away to be their comic mutant-dwarf-thing to amuse their leader.
So, right from the start, there's a vast difference in tone between the Barsoom books and the Gor books. There's a whole slow leisurely sensawunda sequence as Carter discovers himself mysteriously on Mars, and explores the strange flora and fauna and geography of this new world - and his accidental, and kind of silly, "superpower", which is that he is smaller and lighter and also doesn't know how to walk in lower gravity, and thus can boing circles around the Martians, albeit without much control at first. Eventually of course he does get control of it, and become a great fighter with it, and finally to Save The Planet, casting it firmly into the What The World Needs Is A Honkey genre, but even the John Carter, Earthling Hero stuff takes a long second to ERB imagining how cool another world could be, and how wild discovering it would be, and all the strange creatures (with wildly implausible biology, even by the standards of almost 100 years ago) and even stranger sociological structures a traveler would encounter going to another planet and meeting sentients there.
It reads like a Victorian travelogue, combined with a Victorian novel about Antiquity - The Voyage of the Beagle meets Quo Vadis, tripping over Anna Leonowens along the way. Like I said, I do want to tackle the way that the Barsoom books both invoke and, nonetheless, subtly subvert early 20th century mainstream Western attitudes and assumptions of race and culture, but that's an entire henge to deal with, so I'm going to start with the menhir of gender roles for now. (Of course, this will not be as neatly dichotomized as all that.)
There is a good bit of discontinuity in the series (although not more than in your typical TV show!) and so we get alternately told first that among the humanoid red Martians, women don't fight and are never involved in violence, in their so-chivalrous culture (unlike the Spartan lifestyle of the four-armed green Martians) and then get later shown Red Martian women intrepidly wielding weapons, so this makes it a little more difficult to say "Here is how ERB presents models of femininity on Barsoom," but generally speaking, he starts out with very "traditional" depictions, for a given value of "traditional" that is!
To start with, we meet the trollish and terrifying green Martians, whose unrelenting violence and ruthlessness turns out not to be the result of nature, nor decline, but a deliberate choice their ancestors made to turn their civilization into a Spartan analogue, killing off both their weaker members and all "weakening" sentiments such as tenderness from their social mores for both men and women as their response to the ecological catastrophe that was turning the planet into a desert.
We thus meet the one "throwback" to their past gentler state in the person of the young green Martian woman who is assigned to mind Carter and teach him to communicate and get around, and instruct him in the culture and environment of Barsoom, and boy does she talk a lot! We learn her pitiful story, her parents' forbidden love violating the eugenics laws of their people, and their tragic fate, and her existence as an unsuspected violation of it due to her mother's heroic sacrifice, and how she has inherited their atavistic yearnings for a kinder, gentler way of life, and how Carter wants to help and protect her even though she's a four-armed green giantess with tusks, and she does more protecting of him from her rougher compatriots at least at the beginning - so right there is a whole lot of difference between Barsoom and Gor, because yes, Ivanhoe-like putting of Patient, Virtuous Woman on a pedestal, and presentation of Manliness being about protecting her, but young Sola (only 8 feet tall, yet) is both a Damsel in Distress, despite being olive green with four arms, eyes like dinnerplates and ginormous tusks, (all of which kind of work against the "WOOT!Naked" impulse of the bare facts of Barsoomian society) and a Tutelary Genius: she's the one who makes it possible for Carter to survive by teaching him, including how to use Martian weaponry, as well as physically protecting him on occasion. And, being the Hero, and not just a Protagonist, Carter is grateful to her and cares about her well-being, psychological as well as physical, instead of resenting this.
Then we meet Dejah Thoris, the red Martian Princess of the title (though, as it proves, Sola too is a Princess of Mars, in a way) and yes, we are reminded that the Martians don't wear clothes, and this is a gender-neutral custom, they're ALL walking around stark naked except for weapons and jewelry, hubba hubba--
As Sola and I entered the plaza a sight met my eyes which filled my whole being with a great surge of mingled hope, fear, exultation, and depression, and yet most dominant was a subtle sense of relief and happiness; for just as we neared the throng of Martians I caught a glimpse of the prisoner from the battle craft who was being roughly dragged into a nearby building by a couple of green Martian females.
And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life. She did not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing through the portal of the building which was to be her prison she turned, and her eyes met mine. Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.
She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure.
--and then it's let go, again ("Okay, they're NAKED! Geez, DEAL with it!"), and we find out that far from being a spoilt and useless aristo, she was a scientist out risking her life to conduct atmospheric tests as part of her government's constant activities to hold back the complete desertification of Mars when her airship was destroyed by green raiders:
"What is your name?" asked Lorquas Ptomel, addressing the prisoner.
"Dejah Thoris, daughter of Mors Kajak of Helium."
"And the nature of your expedition?" he continued.
"It was a purely scientific research party sent out by my father's father, the Jeddak of Helium, to rechart the air currents, and to take atmospheric density tests," replied the fair prisoner, in a low, well-modulated voice.
"We were unprepared for battle," she continued, "as we were on a peaceful mission, as our banners and the colors of our craft denoted. The work we were doing was as much in your interests as in ours, for you know full well that were it not for our labors and the fruits of our scientific operations there would not be enough air or water on Mars to support a single human life."
We also find out that she can hold her own in discourse, and is no shrinking violet, despite having been smacked around a fair bit already by her 2x-as-tall captors:
"...For ages we have maintained the air and water supply at practically the same point without an appreciable loss, and we have done this in the face of the brutal and ignorant interference of your green men.
"Why, oh, why will you not learn to live in amity with your fellows, must you ever go on down the ages to your final extinction but little above the plane of the dumb brutes that serve you! A people without written language, without art, without homes, without love; the victim of eons of the horrible community idea. Owning everything in common, even to your women and children, has resulted in your owning nothing in common. You hate each other as you hate all else except yourselves. Come back to the ways of our common ancestors, come back to the light of kindliness and fellowship. The way is open to you, you will find the hands of the red men stretched out to aid you. Together we may do still more to regenerate our dying planet. The grand-daughter of the greatest and mightiest of the red jeddaks has asked you. Will you come?"
Lorquas Ptomel and the warriors sat looking silently and intently at the young woman for several moments after she had ceased speaking. What was passing in their minds no man may know, but that they were moved I truly believe, and if one man high among them had been strong enough to rise above custom, that moment would have marked a new and mighty era for Mars.
I saw Tars Tarkas rise to speak, and on his face was such an expression as I had never seen upon the countenance of a green Martian warrior. It bespoke an inward and mighty battle with self, with heredity, with age-old custom, and as he opened his mouth to speak, a look almost of benignity, of kindliness, momentarily lighted up his fierce and terrible countenance.
What words of moment were to have fallen from his lips were never spoken, as just then a young warrior, evidently sensing the trend of thought among the older men, leaped down from the steps of the rostrum, and striking the frail captive a powerful blow across the face, which felled her to the floor, placed his foot upon her prostrate form and turning toward the assembled council broke into peals of horrid, mirthless laughter.
For an instant I thought Tars Tarkas would strike him dead, nor did the aspect of Lorquas Ptomel augur any too favorably for the brute, but the mood passed, their old selves reasserted their ascendency, and they smiled. It was portentous however that they did not laugh aloud, for the brute's act constituted a side-splitting witticism according to the ethics which rule green Martian humor.
That I have taken moments to write down a part of what occurred as that blow fell does not signify that I remained inactive for any such length of time. I think I must have sensed something of what was coming, for I realize now that I was crouched as for a spring as I saw the blow aimed at her beautiful, upturned, pleading face, and ere the hand descended I was halfway across the hall.
Scarcely had his hideous laugh rang out but once, when I was upon him. The brute was twelve feet in height and armed to the teeth, but I believe that I could have accounted for the whole roomful in the terrific intensity of my rage...
Which is interesting, because we have a bit of preaching against the same model of society which, borrowed mostly from Plato's Republic, is the nemesis in Ayn Rand's Anthem - the protofascistic idea of community in which everything is subordinate to the brutal warrior ethos of conquest, held up as the idol of species survival - only in the arguments of the heroine, who is not presented as being foolish, or naive, or weak-minded, either in herself or because she is female, it is turned around and presented as selfish because it refuses to accept a wider community, a commonality of all races stuck on the same doomed planet, and as counter to the goal of survival, and thus foolish, because competing violently for scant resources instead of cooperating to make the most of them is wasteful.
And this is an example of how argument must be subordinate to the story, and not Story to Argument, if you want to have it not bog down and turn into a talking-head tract. Dejah Thoris gets to make a short, impassioned speech on the importance of cosmic cooperation, and then we get lots of wild fighting and ominous warnings of future political dangers to Our Heroes (all of them, the group now including Carter's Martian dog, set to keep him from straying but his deep affinity and kindness towards all animals no matter how grotesque he finds them, winning its trust - again, old Tarl Cabot is but a pallid imitation) and the story rolls on.
Now, overall, the plot of A Princess of Mars and most of the Barsoom books is pretty traditional manly-hero stuff, with Carter (and other guys) swashbuckling away to rescue Dejah Thoris, and other distressed damsels, from the clutches of monsters, or monstrous villains, (although politics enters in to the kidnappings of Martian princesses, as well as lust, so that makes a bit of a diverting change.) The woman-as-precious-object, or at least as utilitarian-object (among the green Martians) is as default as it is in Hollywood today.
But it's not as simple as that - for one thing, we've seen that Martian Princesses don't swoon or simper, even in peril of their lives. Granted, Dejah Thoris' characterization is a little uneven, and we get moments of dialogue more suited to an ingenue in an old move, like this:
"I am of another world," I answered, "the great planet Earth, which revolves about our common sun and next within the orbit of your Barsoom, which we know as Mars. How I came here I cannot tell you, for I do not know; but here I am, and since my presence has permitted me to serve Dejah Thoris I am glad that I am here."
She gazed at me with troubled eyes, long and questioningly. That it was difficult to believe my statement I well knew, nor could I hope that she would do so however much I craved her confidence and respect. I would much rather not have told her anything of my antecedents, but no man could look into the depth of those eyes and refuse her slightest behest.
Finally she smiled, and, rising, said: "I shall have to believe even though I cannot understand. I can readily perceive that you are not of the Barsoom of today; you are like us, yet different--but why should I trouble my poor head with such a problem, when my heart tells me that I believe because I wish to believe!"
It was good logic, good, earthly, feminine logic, and if it satisfied her I certainly could pick no flaws in it.
but even that gets subverted shortly thereafter when we find out that Dejah Thoris has studied Terra and can't believe he's an Earthling because, well, she's familiar with Terran nudity taboos:
As a matter of fact it was about the only kind of logic that could be brought to bear upon my problem. We fell into a general conversation then, asking and answering many questions on each side. She was curious to learn of the customs of my people and displayed a remarkable knowledge of events on Earth. When I questioned her closely on this seeming familiarity with earthly things she laughed, and cried out:
"Why, every school boy on Barsoom knows the geography, and much concerning the fauna and flora, as well as the history of your planet fully as well as of his own. Can we not see everything which takes place upon Earth, as you call it; is it not hanging there in the heavens in plain sight?"
This baffled me, I must confess, fully as much as my statements had confounded her; and I told her so. She then explained in general the instruments her people had used and been perfecting for ages, which permit them to throw upon a screen a perfect image of what is transpiring upon any planet and upon many of the stars. These pictures are so perfect in detail that, when photographed and enlarged, objects no greater than a blade of grass may be distinctly recognized. I afterward, in Helium, saw many of these pictures, as well as the instruments which produced them.
"If, then, you are so familiar with earthly things," I asked, "why is it that you do not recognize me as identical with the inhabitants of that planet?"
She smiled again as one might in bored indulgence of a questioning child.
"Because, John Carter," she replied, "nearly every planet and star having atmospheric conditions at all approaching those of Barsoom, shows forms of animal life almost identical with you and me; and, further, Earth men, almost without exception, cover their bodies with strange, unsightly pieces of cloth, and their heads with hideous contraptions the purpose of which we have been unable to conceive; while you, when found by the Tharkian warriors, were entirely undisfigured and unadorned.
"The fact that you wore no ornaments is a strong proof of your un-Barsoomian origin, while the absence of grotesque coverings might cause a doubt as to your earthliness."
I then narrated the details of my departure from the Earth, explaining that my body there lay fully clothed in all the, to her, strange garments of mundane dwellers.
And more often we get this instead:
I liked and trusted Sola, but for some reason I desired to be alone with Dejah Thoris, who represented to me all that I had left behind upon Earth in agreeable and congenial companionship. There seemed bonds of mutual interest between us as powerful as though we had been born under the same roof rather than upon different planets, hurtling through space some forty-eight million miles apart.
That she shared my sentiments in this respect I was positive, for on my approach the look of pitiful hopelessness left her sweet countenance to be replaced by a smile of joyful welcome, as she placed her little right hand upon my left shoulder in true red Martian salute.
"Sarkoja told Sola that you had become a true Thark," she said, "and that I would now see no more of you than of any of the other warriors."
"Sarkoja is a liar of the first magnitude," I replied, "notwithstanding the proud claim of the Tharks to absolute verity."
Dejah Thoris laughed.
"I knew that even though you became a member of the community you would not cease to be my friend; 'A warrior may change his metal, but not his heart,' as the saying is upon Barsoom."
"I think they have been trying to keep us apart," she continued, "for whenever you have been off duty one of the older women of Tars Tarkas' retinue has always arranged to trump up some excuse to get Sola and me out of sight. They have had me down in the pits below the buildings helping them mix their awful radium powder, and make their terrible projectiles. You know that these have to be manufactured by artificial light, as exposure to sunlight always results in an explosion. You have noticed that their bullets explode when they strike an object? Well, the opaque, outer coating is broken by the impact, exposing a glass cylinder, almost solid, in the forward end of which is a minute particle of radium powder. The moment the sunlight, even though diffused, strikes this powder it explodes with a violence which nothing can withstand. If you ever witness a night battle you will note the absence of these explosions, while the morning following the battle will be filled at sunrise with the sharp detonations of exploding missiles fired the preceding night. As a rule, however, non-exploding projectiles are used at night."
While I was much interested in Dejah Thoris' explanation of this wonderful adjunct to Martian warfare, I was more concerned by the immediate problem of their treatment of her. That they were keeping her away from me was not a matter for surprise, but that they should subject her to dangerous and arduous labor filled me with rage.
"Have they ever subjected you to cruelty and ignominy, Dejah Thoris?" I asked, feeling the hot blood of my fighting ancestors leap in my veins as I awaited her reply.
"Only in little ways, John Carter," she answered. "Nothing that can harm me outside my pride. They know that I am the daughter of ten thousand jeddaks, that I trace my ancestry straight back without a break to the builder of the first great waterway, and they, who do not even know their own mothers, are jealous of me. At heart they hate their horrid fates, and so wreak their poor spite on me who stand for everything they have not, and for all they most crave and never can attain. Let us pity them, my chieftain, for even though we die at their hands we can afford them pity, since we are greater than they and they know it."
Had I known the significance of those words "my chieftain," as applied by a red Martian woman to a man, I should have had the surprise of my life, but I did not know at that time, nor for many months thereafter. Yes, I still had much to learn upon Barsoom.
"I presume it is the better part of wisdom that we bow to our fate with as good grace as possible, Dejah Thoris; but I hope, nevertheless, that I may be present the next time that any Martian, green, red, pink, or violet, has the temerity to even so much as frown on you, my princess."
Dejah Thoris caught her breath at my last words, and gazed upon me with dilated eyes and quickening breath, and then, with an odd little laugh, which brought roguish dimples to the corners of her mouth, she shook her head and cried:
"What a child! A great warrior and yet a stumbling little child."
"What have I done now?" I asked, in sore perplexity.
"Some day you shall know, John Carter, if we live; but I may not tell you. And I, the daughter of Mors Kajak, son of Tardos Mors, have listened without anger," she soliloquized in conclusion.
Then she broke out again into one of her gay, happy, laughing moods; joking with me on my prowess as a Thark warrior as contrasted with my soft heart and natural kindliness.
"I presume that should you accidentally wound an enemy you would take him home and nurse him back to health," she laughed.
"That is precisely what we do on Earth," I answered. "At least among civilized men."
This made her laugh again. She could not understand it, for, with all her tenderness and womanly sweetness, she was still a Martian, and to a Martian the only good enemy is a dead enemy; for every dead foeman means so much more to divide between those who live.
I was very curious to know what I had said or done to cause her so much perturbation a moment before and so I continued to importune her to enlighten me.
"No," she exclaimed, "it is enough that you have said it and that I have listened. And when you learn, John Carter, and if I be dead, as likely I shall be ere the further moon has circled Barsoom another twelve times, remember that I listened and that I--smiled."
It was all Greek to me, but the more I begged her to explain the more positive became her denials of my request, and, so, in very hopelessness, I desisted.
Day had now given away to night and as we wandered along the great avenue lighted by the two moons of Barsoom, and with Earth looking down upon us out of her luminous green eye, it seemed that we were alone in the universe, and I, at least, was content that it should be so.
The chill of the Martian night was upon us, and removing my silks I threw them across the shoulders of Dejah Thoris. As my arm rested for an instant upon her I felt a thrill pass through every fiber of my being such as contact with no other mortal had even produced; and it seemed to me that she had leaned slightly toward me, but of that I was not sure. Only I knew that as my arm rested there across her shoulders longer than the act of adjusting the silk required she did not draw away, nor did she speak. And so, in silence, we walked the surface of a dying world, but in the breast of one of us at least had been born that which is ever oldest, yet ever new.
I loved Dejah Thoris. The touch of my arm upon her naked shoulder had spoken to me in words I would not mistake, and I knew that I had loved her since the first moment that my eyes had met hers that first time in the plaza of the dead city of Korad.
There is not much in common between the romantic John Carter and the whiny, self-obsessed privilegeboy Tarl Cabot, when you actually compare the texts. Dejah Thoris isn't just intrepid by the standards of the Gilded Age, but she does pretty darn well by comparison to the writing of far too many feeble, squeaky, or faux-action-girl "heroines" of 21st century television. As the stock Precious Object of swashbuckling adventure fic, she gets way too many good lines and defiant moments, and is loved not as something to be broken and tamed, but in her proud and indomitable self - it's Carter who has to assimilate to Barsoom, and not the other way round.
There's even more challenge to the Campbellian/Gravesian notion of female characters as inherently passive, to be fought over by the male characters which they inspire, but not active in themselves, as much to the notions of what is ladylike and proper behavior from scantily-clad SF heroines, in The Gods of Mars, second book in the series.
Here we meet Thuvia, another captive princess, in the forbidden mountain region where supposedly resides Martian paradise, but in fact is the hideaway of a corrupt and powerful secret priesthood, whose rule Carter and friends vow to overthrow, despite the fatal penalties for blasphemy on Barsoom. Returned unexpectedly and still more unexpectedly discovering an old acquaintance from his first stay, the noble green Martian warrior who became his friend (and is revealed as Sola's father as well), they wander through the hellish mazes of this "paradise" from frying pan to fire, ending up in a dungeon where they battle the guards:
As I rose to my feet I glanced hurriedly about the chamber in which I had just encountered such a warm reception. The prisoners and the savage brutes rested in their chains by the opposite wall eyeing me with varying expressions of curiosity, sullen rage, surprise, and hope.
The latter emotion seemed plainly evident upon the handsome and intelligent face of the young red Martian woman whose cry of warning had been instrumental in saving my life.
She was the perfect type of that remarkably beautiful race whose outward appearance is identical with the more god-like races of Earth men, except that this higher race of Martians is of a light reddish copper colour. As she was entirely unadorned I could not even guess her station in life, though it was evident that she was either a prisoner or slave in her present environment.
It was several seconds before the sounds upon the opposite side of the partition jolted my slowly returning faculties into a realization of their probable import, and then of a sudden I grasped the fact that they were caused by Tars Tarkas in what was evidently a desperate struggle with wild beasts or savage men.
With a cry of encouragement I threw my weight against the secret door, but as well have assayed the down-hurling of the cliffs themselves. Then I sought feverishly for the secret of the revolving panel, but my search was fruitless, and I was about to raise my longsword against the sullen gold when the young woman prisoner called out to me.
"Save thy sword, O Mighty Warrior, for thou shalt need it more where it will avail to some purpose--shatter it not against senseless metal which yields better to the lightest finger touch of one who knows its secret."
"Know you the secret of it then?" I asked.
"Yes; release me and I will give you entrance to the other horror chamber, if you wish. The keys to my fetters are upon the first dead of thy foemen. But why would you return to face again the fierce banth, or whatever other form of destruction they have loosed within that awful trap?"
"Because my friend fights there alone," I answered, as I hastily sought and found the keys upon the carcass of the dead custodian of this grim chamber of horrors.
There were many keys upon the oval ring, but the fair Martian maid quickly selected that which sprung the great lock at her waist, and freed she hurried toward the secret panel.
Again she sought out a key upon the ring. This time a slender, needle-like affair which she inserted in an almost invisible hole in the wall. Instantly the door swung upon its pivot, and the contiguous section of the floor upon which I was standing carried me with it into the chamber where Tars Tarkas fought.
The great Thark stood with his back against an angle of the walls, while facing him in a semi-circle a half-dozen huge monsters crouched waiting for an opening. Their blood-streaked heads and shoulders testified to the cause of their wariness as well as to the swordsmanship of the green warrior whose glossy hide bore the same mute but eloquent witness to the ferocity of the attacks that he had so far withstood.
Sharp talons and cruel fangs had torn leg, arm, and breast literally to ribbons. So weak was he from continued exertion and loss of blood that but for the supporting wall I doubt that he even could have stood erect. But with the tenacity and indomitable courage of his kind he still faced his cruel and relentless foes--the personification of that ancient proverb of his tribe: "Leave to a Thark his head and one hand and he may yet conquer."
As he saw me enter, a grim smile touched those grim lips of his, but whether the smile signified relief or merely amusement at the sight of my own bloody and dishevelled condition I do not know.
As I was about to spring into the conflict with my sharp long-sword I felt a gentle hand upon my shoulder and turning found, to my surprise, that the young woman had followed me into the chamber.
"Wait," she whispered, "leave them to me," and pushing me advanced, all defenceless and unarmed, upon the snarling banths.
When quite close to them she spoke a single Martian word in low but peremptory tones. Like lightning the great beasts wheeled upon her, and I looked to see her torn to pieces before I could reach her side, but instead the creatures slunk to her feet like puppies that expect a merited whipping.
Again she spoke to them, but in tones so low I could not catch the words, and then she started toward the opposite side of the chamber with the six mighty monsters trailing at heel. One by one she sent them through the secret panel into the room beyond, and when the last had passed from the chamber where we stood in wide-eyed amazement she turned and smiled at us and then herself passed through, leaving us alone.
So yes, she is a Damsel in Distress needing rescue, but then she turns around and rescues her rescuers, completely unflappable - and no indication that this is unfeminine of her, or that her rescued-rescuers think this a slur on their manhood. She's decisive, supremely competent, and conscientious:
"We have the right to escape if we can," I answered. "Our own moral senses will not be offended if we succeed, for we know that the fabled life of love and peace in the blessed Valley of Dor is a rank and wicked deception. We know that the valley is not sacred; we know that the Holy Therns are not holy; that they are a race of cruel and heartless mortals, knowing no more of the real life to come than we do.
"Not only is it our right to bend every effort to escape --it is a solemn duty from which we should not shrink even though we know that we should be reviled and tortured by our own peoples when we returned to them.
"Only thus may we carry the truth to those without, and though the likelihood of our narrative being given credence is, I grant you, remote, so wedded are mortals to their stupid infatuation for impossible superstitions, we should be craven cowards indeed were we to shirk the plain duty which confronts us.
"Again there is a chance that with the weight of the testimony of several of us the truth of our statements may be accepted, and at least a compromise effected which will result in the dispatching of an expedition of investigation to this hideous mockery of heaven."
Both the girl and the green warrior stood silent in thought for some moments. The former it was who eventually broke the silence.
"Never had I considered the matter in that light before," she said. "Indeed would I give my life a thousand times if I could but save a single soul from the awful life that I have led in this cruel place. Yes, you are right, and I will go with you as far as we can go; but I doubt that we ever shall escape."
I turned an inquiring glance toward the Thark.
"To the gates of Issus, or to the bottom of Korus," spoke the green warrior; "to the snows to the north or to the snows to the south, Tars Tarkas follows where John Carter leads. I have spoken."
"Come, then," I cried, "we must make the start, for we could not be further from escape than we now are in the heart of this mountain and within the four walls of this chamber of death."
"Come, then," said the girl, "but do not flatter yourself that you can find no worse place than this within the territory of the therns."
So saying she swung the secret panel that separated us from the apartment in which I had found her, and we stepped through once more into the presence of the other prisoners.
There were in all ten red Martians, men and women, and when we had briefly explained our plan they decided to join forces with us, though it was evident that it was with some considerable misgivings that they thus tempted fate by opposing an ancient superstition, even though each knew through cruel experience the fallacy of its entire fabric.
Thuvia, the girl whom I had first freed, soon had the others at liberty. Tars Tarkas and I stripped the bodies of the two therns of their weapons, which included swords, daggers, and two revolvers of the curious and deadly type manufactured by the red Martians.
We distributed the weapons as far as they would go among our followers, giving the firearms to two of the women; Thuvia being one so armed.
And it gets better, when Thuvia meets another former jailer, and implicitly her rapist, outside:
We had proceeded for possibly an hour without serious interruption, and Thuvia had just whispered to me that we were approaching our first destination, when on entering a great chamber we came upon a man, evidently a thern.
He wore in addition to his leathern trappings and jewelled ornaments a great circlet of gold about his brow in the exact centre of which was set an immense stone, the exact counterpart of that which I had seen upon the breast of the little old man at the atmosphere plant nearly twenty years before.
It is the one priceless jewel of Barsoom. Only two are known to exist, and these were worn as the insignia of their rank and position by the two old men in whose charge was placed the operation of the great engines which pump the artificial atmosphere to all parts of Mars from the huge atmosphere plant, the secret to whose mighty portals placed in my possession the ability to save from immediate extinction the life of a whole world.
The stone worn by the thern who confronted us was of about the same size as that which I had seen before; an inch in diameter I should say. It scintillated nine different and distinct rays; the seven primary colours of our earthly prism and the two rays which are unknown upon Earth, but whose wondrous beauty is indescribable.
As the thern saw us his eyes narrowed to two nasty slits.
"Stop!" he cried. "What means this, Thuvia?"
For answer the girl raised her revolver and fired point-blank at him. Without a sound he sank to the earth, dead.
"Beast!" she hissed. "After all these years I am at last revenged."
Then as she turned toward me, evidently with a word of explanation on her lips, her eyes suddenly widened as they rested upon me, and with a little exclamation she started toward me.
"O Prince," she cried, "Fate is indeed kind to us. The way is still difficult, but through this vile thing upon the floor we may yet win to the outer world. Notest thou not the remarkable resemblance between this Holy Thern and thyself?"
The man was indeed of my precise stature, nor were his eyes and features unlike mine; but his hair was a mass of flowing yellow locks, like those of the two I had killed, while mine is black and close cropped.
"What of the resemblance?" I asked the girl Thuvia. "Do you wish me with my black, short hair to pose as a yellow-haired priest of this infernal cult?"
She smiled, and for answer approached the body of the man she had slain, and kneeling beside it removed the circlet of gold from the forehead, and then to my utter amazement lifted the entire scalp bodily from the corpse's head.
Rising, she advanced to my side and placing the yellow wig over my black hair, crowned me with the golden circlet set with the magnificent gem.
"Now don his harness, Prince," she said, "and you may pass where you will in the realms of the therns, for Sator Throg was a Holy Thern of the Tenth Cycle, and mighty among his kind."
As I stooped to the dead man to do her bidding I noted that not a hair grew upon his head, which was quite as bald as an egg.
"They are all thus from birth," explained Thuvia noting my surprise. "The race from which they sprang were crowned with a luxuriant growth of golden hair, but for many ages the present race has been entirely bald. The wig, however, has come to be a part of their apparel, and so important a part do they consider it that it is cause for the deepest disgrace were a thern to appear in public without it."
In another moment I stood garbed in the habiliments of a Holy Thern.
At Thuvia's suggestion two of the released prisoners bore the body of the dead thern upon their shoulders with us as we continued our journey toward the storeroom, which we reached without further mishap.
Here the keys which Thuvia bore from the dead thern of the prison vault were the means of giving us immediate entrance to the chamber, and very quickly we were thoroughly outfitted with arms and ammunition.
She executes her torturer unapologetically, and then instantly decides to use his personal effects to aid their escape, once again telling Our Hero what to do and how to do it. And he's just glad to have someone who knows her way about, and is capable of taking charge as needed.
Notice too, that although yes, they're all once again Stark Naked, it's not an issue, there's no smarmy leering at Thuvia or coy commenting on her bouncy bits, and if you don't believe that there was such in turn-of-the-century pulp fiction you haven't read enough. It's just the custom of the country, and when in Barsoom...
Anyway, that's just a little sample of the first two books of ERB's Mars series, but I think it's sufficient to show that the similarities are superficial and serve to show up how much worse the Gor books are, and to prove that no, Gor really doesn't look better or more modern when it comes to depictions of gender.
*If it really did get pushed back or canned, this may explain why there was a recent simultaneous incursion of possible-sock-puppets on our pejorative posts - maybe they're the Gor fans at DH showing up to beat their breasts and hurl imprecations at us for having spoiled their holy quest to revive their master's undead corpus of work...
(BTW, it isn't exactly Victorian sf, although well within the grand pulp tradition starting in the latter half of the 1800s, and it's even a year too late to be Edwardian sf, but it is most definitely eve-of-WWI sf, and as with ST:TOS there is a certain amount of cake-having-yet-eating with the simultaneous constant refrain of peace and cooperation for the good of all instead of war of all against all, and indulgence in the fun of swashbuckling, fisticuffs, and ship-to-ship battles between Our Heroes and their adversaries.)
First, for a bit of history - I'd always heard via the fannish grapevine that the Mars books were incredibly risque and lurid, and so it was with a feeling of being Bad and Endangering My Soul that I finally got hold of a copy at the ripe old age of twenty-three or so, and flipping through the opening chapters of this Near Occasion of Sin, wondered what on Earth - or off of it - the fuss was about. I mean, okay, yeah, everybody's naked - and? This is the big to-do? everybody's running about in a pre-lapsarian state of dishabille, like they're Amazon tribesfolk or mythological heroes, and it's no big deal to them, and OMG!Lewdness!TEH LEWD! like third graders chanting "I see England, I see France, I see Soandso's underpants!" In terms of disturbing nudity, and still more disturbing eroticism, A Princess of Mars had absolutely nothing, I felt, on CSL's Space Trilogy. Obviously I was not such a prim and prudish sort as I had been made to feel, since the idea of John Carter, Starkers, bouncing about the surface of Barsoom like an india-rubber ball only made me giggle - as I think ERB intends, for all the H. Rider Haggard/ sobriety of tone, I suspect a tongue-in-cheek stolidity paralleling his contemporary P.G. Wodehouse at times.
Because it is funny, it's portrayed as funny, Carter himself thinks he's ridiculous as he struggles to learn to cope with the gravity differential, and the Green Martians think he's the funniest thing they've ever seen and bear him away to be their comic mutant-dwarf-thing to amuse their leader.
So, right from the start, there's a vast difference in tone between the Barsoom books and the Gor books. There's a whole slow leisurely sensawunda sequence as Carter discovers himself mysteriously on Mars, and explores the strange flora and fauna and geography of this new world - and his accidental, and kind of silly, "superpower", which is that he is smaller and lighter and also doesn't know how to walk in lower gravity, and thus can boing circles around the Martians, albeit without much control at first. Eventually of course he does get control of it, and become a great fighter with it, and finally to Save The Planet, casting it firmly into the What The World Needs Is A Honkey genre, but even the John Carter, Earthling Hero stuff takes a long second to ERB imagining how cool another world could be, and how wild discovering it would be, and all the strange creatures (with wildly implausible biology, even by the standards of almost 100 years ago) and even stranger sociological structures a traveler would encounter going to another planet and meeting sentients there.
It reads like a Victorian travelogue, combined with a Victorian novel about Antiquity - The Voyage of the Beagle meets Quo Vadis, tripping over Anna Leonowens along the way. Like I said, I do want to tackle the way that the Barsoom books both invoke and, nonetheless, subtly subvert early 20th century mainstream Western attitudes and assumptions of race and culture, but that's an entire henge to deal with, so I'm going to start with the menhir of gender roles for now. (Of course, this will not be as neatly dichotomized as all that.)
There is a good bit of discontinuity in the series (although not more than in your typical TV show!) and so we get alternately told first that among the humanoid red Martians, women don't fight and are never involved in violence, in their so-chivalrous culture (unlike the Spartan lifestyle of the four-armed green Martians) and then get later shown Red Martian women intrepidly wielding weapons, so this makes it a little more difficult to say "Here is how ERB presents models of femininity on Barsoom," but generally speaking, he starts out with very "traditional" depictions, for a given value of "traditional" that is!
To start with, we meet the trollish and terrifying green Martians, whose unrelenting violence and ruthlessness turns out not to be the result of nature, nor decline, but a deliberate choice their ancestors made to turn their civilization into a Spartan analogue, killing off both their weaker members and all "weakening" sentiments such as tenderness from their social mores for both men and women as their response to the ecological catastrophe that was turning the planet into a desert.
We thus meet the one "throwback" to their past gentler state in the person of the young green Martian woman who is assigned to mind Carter and teach him to communicate and get around, and instruct him in the culture and environment of Barsoom, and boy does she talk a lot! We learn her pitiful story, her parents' forbidden love violating the eugenics laws of their people, and their tragic fate, and her existence as an unsuspected violation of it due to her mother's heroic sacrifice, and how she has inherited their atavistic yearnings for a kinder, gentler way of life, and how Carter wants to help and protect her even though she's a four-armed green giantess with tusks, and she does more protecting of him from her rougher compatriots at least at the beginning - so right there is a whole lot of difference between Barsoom and Gor, because yes, Ivanhoe-like putting of Patient, Virtuous Woman on a pedestal, and presentation of Manliness being about protecting her, but young Sola (only 8 feet tall, yet) is both a Damsel in Distress, despite being olive green with four arms, eyes like dinnerplates and ginormous tusks, (all of which kind of work against the "WOOT!Naked" impulse of the bare facts of Barsoomian society) and a Tutelary Genius: she's the one who makes it possible for Carter to survive by teaching him, including how to use Martian weaponry, as well as physically protecting him on occasion. And, being the Hero, and not just a Protagonist, Carter is grateful to her and cares about her well-being, psychological as well as physical, instead of resenting this.
Then we meet Dejah Thoris, the red Martian Princess of the title (though, as it proves, Sola too is a Princess of Mars, in a way) and yes, we are reminded that the Martians don't wear clothes, and this is a gender-neutral custom, they're ALL walking around stark naked except for weapons and jewelry, hubba hubba--
As Sola and I entered the plaza a sight met my eyes which filled my whole being with a great surge of mingled hope, fear, exultation, and depression, and yet most dominant was a subtle sense of relief and happiness; for just as we neared the throng of Martians I caught a glimpse of the prisoner from the battle craft who was being roughly dragged into a nearby building by a couple of green Martian females.
And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life. She did not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing through the portal of the building which was to be her prison she turned, and her eyes met mine. Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.
She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure.
--and then it's let go, again ("Okay, they're NAKED! Geez, DEAL with it!"), and we find out that far from being a spoilt and useless aristo, she was a scientist out risking her life to conduct atmospheric tests as part of her government's constant activities to hold back the complete desertification of Mars when her airship was destroyed by green raiders:
"What is your name?" asked Lorquas Ptomel, addressing the prisoner.
"Dejah Thoris, daughter of Mors Kajak of Helium."
"And the nature of your expedition?" he continued.
"It was a purely scientific research party sent out by my father's father, the Jeddak of Helium, to rechart the air currents, and to take atmospheric density tests," replied the fair prisoner, in a low, well-modulated voice.
"We were unprepared for battle," she continued, "as we were on a peaceful mission, as our banners and the colors of our craft denoted. The work we were doing was as much in your interests as in ours, for you know full well that were it not for our labors and the fruits of our scientific operations there would not be enough air or water on Mars to support a single human life."
We also find out that she can hold her own in discourse, and is no shrinking violet, despite having been smacked around a fair bit already by her 2x-as-tall captors:
"...For ages we have maintained the air and water supply at practically the same point without an appreciable loss, and we have done this in the face of the brutal and ignorant interference of your green men.
"Why, oh, why will you not learn to live in amity with your fellows, must you ever go on down the ages to your final extinction but little above the plane of the dumb brutes that serve you! A people without written language, without art, without homes, without love; the victim of eons of the horrible community idea. Owning everything in common, even to your women and children, has resulted in your owning nothing in common. You hate each other as you hate all else except yourselves. Come back to the ways of our common ancestors, come back to the light of kindliness and fellowship. The way is open to you, you will find the hands of the red men stretched out to aid you. Together we may do still more to regenerate our dying planet. The grand-daughter of the greatest and mightiest of the red jeddaks has asked you. Will you come?"
Lorquas Ptomel and the warriors sat looking silently and intently at the young woman for several moments after she had ceased speaking. What was passing in their minds no man may know, but that they were moved I truly believe, and if one man high among them had been strong enough to rise above custom, that moment would have marked a new and mighty era for Mars.
I saw Tars Tarkas rise to speak, and on his face was such an expression as I had never seen upon the countenance of a green Martian warrior. It bespoke an inward and mighty battle with self, with heredity, with age-old custom, and as he opened his mouth to speak, a look almost of benignity, of kindliness, momentarily lighted up his fierce and terrible countenance.
What words of moment were to have fallen from his lips were never spoken, as just then a young warrior, evidently sensing the trend of thought among the older men, leaped down from the steps of the rostrum, and striking the frail captive a powerful blow across the face, which felled her to the floor, placed his foot upon her prostrate form and turning toward the assembled council broke into peals of horrid, mirthless laughter.
For an instant I thought Tars Tarkas would strike him dead, nor did the aspect of Lorquas Ptomel augur any too favorably for the brute, but the mood passed, their old selves reasserted their ascendency, and they smiled. It was portentous however that they did not laugh aloud, for the brute's act constituted a side-splitting witticism according to the ethics which rule green Martian humor.
That I have taken moments to write down a part of what occurred as that blow fell does not signify that I remained inactive for any such length of time. I think I must have sensed something of what was coming, for I realize now that I was crouched as for a spring as I saw the blow aimed at her beautiful, upturned, pleading face, and ere the hand descended I was halfway across the hall.
Scarcely had his hideous laugh rang out but once, when I was upon him. The brute was twelve feet in height and armed to the teeth, but I believe that I could have accounted for the whole roomful in the terrific intensity of my rage...
Which is interesting, because we have a bit of preaching against the same model of society which, borrowed mostly from Plato's Republic, is the nemesis in Ayn Rand's Anthem - the protofascistic idea of community in which everything is subordinate to the brutal warrior ethos of conquest, held up as the idol of species survival - only in the arguments of the heroine, who is not presented as being foolish, or naive, or weak-minded, either in herself or because she is female, it is turned around and presented as selfish because it refuses to accept a wider community, a commonality of all races stuck on the same doomed planet, and as counter to the goal of survival, and thus foolish, because competing violently for scant resources instead of cooperating to make the most of them is wasteful.
And this is an example of how argument must be subordinate to the story, and not Story to Argument, if you want to have it not bog down and turn into a talking-head tract. Dejah Thoris gets to make a short, impassioned speech on the importance of cosmic cooperation, and then we get lots of wild fighting and ominous warnings of future political dangers to Our Heroes (all of them, the group now including Carter's Martian dog, set to keep him from straying but his deep affinity and kindness towards all animals no matter how grotesque he finds them, winning its trust - again, old Tarl Cabot is but a pallid imitation) and the story rolls on.
Now, overall, the plot of A Princess of Mars and most of the Barsoom books is pretty traditional manly-hero stuff, with Carter (and other guys) swashbuckling away to rescue Dejah Thoris, and other distressed damsels, from the clutches of monsters, or monstrous villains, (although politics enters in to the kidnappings of Martian princesses, as well as lust, so that makes a bit of a diverting change.) The woman-as-precious-object, or at least as utilitarian-object (among the green Martians) is as default as it is in Hollywood today.
But it's not as simple as that - for one thing, we've seen that Martian Princesses don't swoon or simper, even in peril of their lives. Granted, Dejah Thoris' characterization is a little uneven, and we get moments of dialogue more suited to an ingenue in an old move, like this:
"I am of another world," I answered, "the great planet Earth, which revolves about our common sun and next within the orbit of your Barsoom, which we know as Mars. How I came here I cannot tell you, for I do not know; but here I am, and since my presence has permitted me to serve Dejah Thoris I am glad that I am here."
She gazed at me with troubled eyes, long and questioningly. That it was difficult to believe my statement I well knew, nor could I hope that she would do so however much I craved her confidence and respect. I would much rather not have told her anything of my antecedents, but no man could look into the depth of those eyes and refuse her slightest behest.
Finally she smiled, and, rising, said: "I shall have to believe even though I cannot understand. I can readily perceive that you are not of the Barsoom of today; you are like us, yet different--but why should I trouble my poor head with such a problem, when my heart tells me that I believe because I wish to believe!"
It was good logic, good, earthly, feminine logic, and if it satisfied her I certainly could pick no flaws in it.
but even that gets subverted shortly thereafter when we find out that Dejah Thoris has studied Terra and can't believe he's an Earthling because, well, she's familiar with Terran nudity taboos:
As a matter of fact it was about the only kind of logic that could be brought to bear upon my problem. We fell into a general conversation then, asking and answering many questions on each side. She was curious to learn of the customs of my people and displayed a remarkable knowledge of events on Earth. When I questioned her closely on this seeming familiarity with earthly things she laughed, and cried out:
"Why, every school boy on Barsoom knows the geography, and much concerning the fauna and flora, as well as the history of your planet fully as well as of his own. Can we not see everything which takes place upon Earth, as you call it; is it not hanging there in the heavens in plain sight?"
This baffled me, I must confess, fully as much as my statements had confounded her; and I told her so. She then explained in general the instruments her people had used and been perfecting for ages, which permit them to throw upon a screen a perfect image of what is transpiring upon any planet and upon many of the stars. These pictures are so perfect in detail that, when photographed and enlarged, objects no greater than a blade of grass may be distinctly recognized. I afterward, in Helium, saw many of these pictures, as well as the instruments which produced them.
"If, then, you are so familiar with earthly things," I asked, "why is it that you do not recognize me as identical with the inhabitants of that planet?"
She smiled again as one might in bored indulgence of a questioning child.
"Because, John Carter," she replied, "nearly every planet and star having atmospheric conditions at all approaching those of Barsoom, shows forms of animal life almost identical with you and me; and, further, Earth men, almost without exception, cover their bodies with strange, unsightly pieces of cloth, and their heads with hideous contraptions the purpose of which we have been unable to conceive; while you, when found by the Tharkian warriors, were entirely undisfigured and unadorned.
"The fact that you wore no ornaments is a strong proof of your un-Barsoomian origin, while the absence of grotesque coverings might cause a doubt as to your earthliness."
I then narrated the details of my departure from the Earth, explaining that my body there lay fully clothed in all the, to her, strange garments of mundane dwellers.
And more often we get this instead:
I liked and trusted Sola, but for some reason I desired to be alone with Dejah Thoris, who represented to me all that I had left behind upon Earth in agreeable and congenial companionship. There seemed bonds of mutual interest between us as powerful as though we had been born under the same roof rather than upon different planets, hurtling through space some forty-eight million miles apart.
That she shared my sentiments in this respect I was positive, for on my approach the look of pitiful hopelessness left her sweet countenance to be replaced by a smile of joyful welcome, as she placed her little right hand upon my left shoulder in true red Martian salute.
"Sarkoja told Sola that you had become a true Thark," she said, "and that I would now see no more of you than of any of the other warriors."
"Sarkoja is a liar of the first magnitude," I replied, "notwithstanding the proud claim of the Tharks to absolute verity."
Dejah Thoris laughed.
"I knew that even though you became a member of the community you would not cease to be my friend; 'A warrior may change his metal, but not his heart,' as the saying is upon Barsoom."
"I think they have been trying to keep us apart," she continued, "for whenever you have been off duty one of the older women of Tars Tarkas' retinue has always arranged to trump up some excuse to get Sola and me out of sight. They have had me down in the pits below the buildings helping them mix their awful radium powder, and make their terrible projectiles. You know that these have to be manufactured by artificial light, as exposure to sunlight always results in an explosion. You have noticed that their bullets explode when they strike an object? Well, the opaque, outer coating is broken by the impact, exposing a glass cylinder, almost solid, in the forward end of which is a minute particle of radium powder. The moment the sunlight, even though diffused, strikes this powder it explodes with a violence which nothing can withstand. If you ever witness a night battle you will note the absence of these explosions, while the morning following the battle will be filled at sunrise with the sharp detonations of exploding missiles fired the preceding night. As a rule, however, non-exploding projectiles are used at night."
While I was much interested in Dejah Thoris' explanation of this wonderful adjunct to Martian warfare, I was more concerned by the immediate problem of their treatment of her. That they were keeping her away from me was not a matter for surprise, but that they should subject her to dangerous and arduous labor filled me with rage.
"Have they ever subjected you to cruelty and ignominy, Dejah Thoris?" I asked, feeling the hot blood of my fighting ancestors leap in my veins as I awaited her reply.
"Only in little ways, John Carter," she answered. "Nothing that can harm me outside my pride. They know that I am the daughter of ten thousand jeddaks, that I trace my ancestry straight back without a break to the builder of the first great waterway, and they, who do not even know their own mothers, are jealous of me. At heart they hate their horrid fates, and so wreak their poor spite on me who stand for everything they have not, and for all they most crave and never can attain. Let us pity them, my chieftain, for even though we die at their hands we can afford them pity, since we are greater than they and they know it."
Had I known the significance of those words "my chieftain," as applied by a red Martian woman to a man, I should have had the surprise of my life, but I did not know at that time, nor for many months thereafter. Yes, I still had much to learn upon Barsoom.
"I presume it is the better part of wisdom that we bow to our fate with as good grace as possible, Dejah Thoris; but I hope, nevertheless, that I may be present the next time that any Martian, green, red, pink, or violet, has the temerity to even so much as frown on you, my princess."
Dejah Thoris caught her breath at my last words, and gazed upon me with dilated eyes and quickening breath, and then, with an odd little laugh, which brought roguish dimples to the corners of her mouth, she shook her head and cried:
"What a child! A great warrior and yet a stumbling little child."
"What have I done now?" I asked, in sore perplexity.
"Some day you shall know, John Carter, if we live; but I may not tell you. And I, the daughter of Mors Kajak, son of Tardos Mors, have listened without anger," she soliloquized in conclusion.
Then she broke out again into one of her gay, happy, laughing moods; joking with me on my prowess as a Thark warrior as contrasted with my soft heart and natural kindliness.
"I presume that should you accidentally wound an enemy you would take him home and nurse him back to health," she laughed.
"That is precisely what we do on Earth," I answered. "At least among civilized men."
This made her laugh again. She could not understand it, for, with all her tenderness and womanly sweetness, she was still a Martian, and to a Martian the only good enemy is a dead enemy; for every dead foeman means so much more to divide between those who live.
I was very curious to know what I had said or done to cause her so much perturbation a moment before and so I continued to importune her to enlighten me.
"No," she exclaimed, "it is enough that you have said it and that I have listened. And when you learn, John Carter, and if I be dead, as likely I shall be ere the further moon has circled Barsoom another twelve times, remember that I listened and that I--smiled."
It was all Greek to me, but the more I begged her to explain the more positive became her denials of my request, and, so, in very hopelessness, I desisted.
Day had now given away to night and as we wandered along the great avenue lighted by the two moons of Barsoom, and with Earth looking down upon us out of her luminous green eye, it seemed that we were alone in the universe, and I, at least, was content that it should be so.
The chill of the Martian night was upon us, and removing my silks I threw them across the shoulders of Dejah Thoris. As my arm rested for an instant upon her I felt a thrill pass through every fiber of my being such as contact with no other mortal had even produced; and it seemed to me that she had leaned slightly toward me, but of that I was not sure. Only I knew that as my arm rested there across her shoulders longer than the act of adjusting the silk required she did not draw away, nor did she speak. And so, in silence, we walked the surface of a dying world, but in the breast of one of us at least had been born that which is ever oldest, yet ever new.
I loved Dejah Thoris. The touch of my arm upon her naked shoulder had spoken to me in words I would not mistake, and I knew that I had loved her since the first moment that my eyes had met hers that first time in the plaza of the dead city of Korad.
There is not much in common between the romantic John Carter and the whiny, self-obsessed privilegeboy Tarl Cabot, when you actually compare the texts. Dejah Thoris isn't just intrepid by the standards of the Gilded Age, but she does pretty darn well by comparison to the writing of far too many feeble, squeaky, or faux-action-girl "heroines" of 21st century television. As the stock Precious Object of swashbuckling adventure fic, she gets way too many good lines and defiant moments, and is loved not as something to be broken and tamed, but in her proud and indomitable self - it's Carter who has to assimilate to Barsoom, and not the other way round.
There's even more challenge to the Campbellian/Gravesian notion of female characters as inherently passive, to be fought over by the male characters which they inspire, but not active in themselves, as much to the notions of what is ladylike and proper behavior from scantily-clad SF heroines, in The Gods of Mars, second book in the series.
Here we meet Thuvia, another captive princess, in the forbidden mountain region where supposedly resides Martian paradise, but in fact is the hideaway of a corrupt and powerful secret priesthood, whose rule Carter and friends vow to overthrow, despite the fatal penalties for blasphemy on Barsoom. Returned unexpectedly and still more unexpectedly discovering an old acquaintance from his first stay, the noble green Martian warrior who became his friend (and is revealed as Sola's father as well), they wander through the hellish mazes of this "paradise" from frying pan to fire, ending up in a dungeon where they battle the guards:
As I rose to my feet I glanced hurriedly about the chamber in which I had just encountered such a warm reception. The prisoners and the savage brutes rested in their chains by the opposite wall eyeing me with varying expressions of curiosity, sullen rage, surprise, and hope.
The latter emotion seemed plainly evident upon the handsome and intelligent face of the young red Martian woman whose cry of warning had been instrumental in saving my life.
She was the perfect type of that remarkably beautiful race whose outward appearance is identical with the more god-like races of Earth men, except that this higher race of Martians is of a light reddish copper colour. As she was entirely unadorned I could not even guess her station in life, though it was evident that she was either a prisoner or slave in her present environment.
It was several seconds before the sounds upon the opposite side of the partition jolted my slowly returning faculties into a realization of their probable import, and then of a sudden I grasped the fact that they were caused by Tars Tarkas in what was evidently a desperate struggle with wild beasts or savage men.
With a cry of encouragement I threw my weight against the secret door, but as well have assayed the down-hurling of the cliffs themselves. Then I sought feverishly for the secret of the revolving panel, but my search was fruitless, and I was about to raise my longsword against the sullen gold when the young woman prisoner called out to me.
"Save thy sword, O Mighty Warrior, for thou shalt need it more where it will avail to some purpose--shatter it not against senseless metal which yields better to the lightest finger touch of one who knows its secret."
"Know you the secret of it then?" I asked.
"Yes; release me and I will give you entrance to the other horror chamber, if you wish. The keys to my fetters are upon the first dead of thy foemen. But why would you return to face again the fierce banth, or whatever other form of destruction they have loosed within that awful trap?"
"Because my friend fights there alone," I answered, as I hastily sought and found the keys upon the carcass of the dead custodian of this grim chamber of horrors.
There were many keys upon the oval ring, but the fair Martian maid quickly selected that which sprung the great lock at her waist, and freed she hurried toward the secret panel.
Again she sought out a key upon the ring. This time a slender, needle-like affair which she inserted in an almost invisible hole in the wall. Instantly the door swung upon its pivot, and the contiguous section of the floor upon which I was standing carried me with it into the chamber where Tars Tarkas fought.
The great Thark stood with his back against an angle of the walls, while facing him in a semi-circle a half-dozen huge monsters crouched waiting for an opening. Their blood-streaked heads and shoulders testified to the cause of their wariness as well as to the swordsmanship of the green warrior whose glossy hide bore the same mute but eloquent witness to the ferocity of the attacks that he had so far withstood.
Sharp talons and cruel fangs had torn leg, arm, and breast literally to ribbons. So weak was he from continued exertion and loss of blood that but for the supporting wall I doubt that he even could have stood erect. But with the tenacity and indomitable courage of his kind he still faced his cruel and relentless foes--the personification of that ancient proverb of his tribe: "Leave to a Thark his head and one hand and he may yet conquer."
As he saw me enter, a grim smile touched those grim lips of his, but whether the smile signified relief or merely amusement at the sight of my own bloody and dishevelled condition I do not know.
As I was about to spring into the conflict with my sharp long-sword I felt a gentle hand upon my shoulder and turning found, to my surprise, that the young woman had followed me into the chamber.
"Wait," she whispered, "leave them to me," and pushing me advanced, all defenceless and unarmed, upon the snarling banths.
When quite close to them she spoke a single Martian word in low but peremptory tones. Like lightning the great beasts wheeled upon her, and I looked to see her torn to pieces before I could reach her side, but instead the creatures slunk to her feet like puppies that expect a merited whipping.
Again she spoke to them, but in tones so low I could not catch the words, and then she started toward the opposite side of the chamber with the six mighty monsters trailing at heel. One by one she sent them through the secret panel into the room beyond, and when the last had passed from the chamber where we stood in wide-eyed amazement she turned and smiled at us and then herself passed through, leaving us alone.
So yes, she is a Damsel in Distress needing rescue, but then she turns around and rescues her rescuers, completely unflappable - and no indication that this is unfeminine of her, or that her rescued-rescuers think this a slur on their manhood. She's decisive, supremely competent, and conscientious:
"We have the right to escape if we can," I answered. "Our own moral senses will not be offended if we succeed, for we know that the fabled life of love and peace in the blessed Valley of Dor is a rank and wicked deception. We know that the valley is not sacred; we know that the Holy Therns are not holy; that they are a race of cruel and heartless mortals, knowing no more of the real life to come than we do.
"Not only is it our right to bend every effort to escape --it is a solemn duty from which we should not shrink even though we know that we should be reviled and tortured by our own peoples when we returned to them.
"Only thus may we carry the truth to those without, and though the likelihood of our narrative being given credence is, I grant you, remote, so wedded are mortals to their stupid infatuation for impossible superstitions, we should be craven cowards indeed were we to shirk the plain duty which confronts us.
"Again there is a chance that with the weight of the testimony of several of us the truth of our statements may be accepted, and at least a compromise effected which will result in the dispatching of an expedition of investigation to this hideous mockery of heaven."
Both the girl and the green warrior stood silent in thought for some moments. The former it was who eventually broke the silence.
"Never had I considered the matter in that light before," she said. "Indeed would I give my life a thousand times if I could but save a single soul from the awful life that I have led in this cruel place. Yes, you are right, and I will go with you as far as we can go; but I doubt that we ever shall escape."
I turned an inquiring glance toward the Thark.
"To the gates of Issus, or to the bottom of Korus," spoke the green warrior; "to the snows to the north or to the snows to the south, Tars Tarkas follows where John Carter leads. I have spoken."
"Come, then," I cried, "we must make the start, for we could not be further from escape than we now are in the heart of this mountain and within the four walls of this chamber of death."
"Come, then," said the girl, "but do not flatter yourself that you can find no worse place than this within the territory of the therns."
So saying she swung the secret panel that separated us from the apartment in which I had found her, and we stepped through once more into the presence of the other prisoners.
There were in all ten red Martians, men and women, and when we had briefly explained our plan they decided to join forces with us, though it was evident that it was with some considerable misgivings that they thus tempted fate by opposing an ancient superstition, even though each knew through cruel experience the fallacy of its entire fabric.
Thuvia, the girl whom I had first freed, soon had the others at liberty. Tars Tarkas and I stripped the bodies of the two therns of their weapons, which included swords, daggers, and two revolvers of the curious and deadly type manufactured by the red Martians.
We distributed the weapons as far as they would go among our followers, giving the firearms to two of the women; Thuvia being one so armed.
And it gets better, when Thuvia meets another former jailer, and implicitly her rapist, outside:
We had proceeded for possibly an hour without serious interruption, and Thuvia had just whispered to me that we were approaching our first destination, when on entering a great chamber we came upon a man, evidently a thern.
He wore in addition to his leathern trappings and jewelled ornaments a great circlet of gold about his brow in the exact centre of which was set an immense stone, the exact counterpart of that which I had seen upon the breast of the little old man at the atmosphere plant nearly twenty years before.
It is the one priceless jewel of Barsoom. Only two are known to exist, and these were worn as the insignia of their rank and position by the two old men in whose charge was placed the operation of the great engines which pump the artificial atmosphere to all parts of Mars from the huge atmosphere plant, the secret to whose mighty portals placed in my possession the ability to save from immediate extinction the life of a whole world.
The stone worn by the thern who confronted us was of about the same size as that which I had seen before; an inch in diameter I should say. It scintillated nine different and distinct rays; the seven primary colours of our earthly prism and the two rays which are unknown upon Earth, but whose wondrous beauty is indescribable.
As the thern saw us his eyes narrowed to two nasty slits.
"Stop!" he cried. "What means this, Thuvia?"
For answer the girl raised her revolver and fired point-blank at him. Without a sound he sank to the earth, dead.
"Beast!" she hissed. "After all these years I am at last revenged."
Then as she turned toward me, evidently with a word of explanation on her lips, her eyes suddenly widened as they rested upon me, and with a little exclamation she started toward me.
"O Prince," she cried, "Fate is indeed kind to us. The way is still difficult, but through this vile thing upon the floor we may yet win to the outer world. Notest thou not the remarkable resemblance between this Holy Thern and thyself?"
The man was indeed of my precise stature, nor were his eyes and features unlike mine; but his hair was a mass of flowing yellow locks, like those of the two I had killed, while mine is black and close cropped.
"What of the resemblance?" I asked the girl Thuvia. "Do you wish me with my black, short hair to pose as a yellow-haired priest of this infernal cult?"
She smiled, and for answer approached the body of the man she had slain, and kneeling beside it removed the circlet of gold from the forehead, and then to my utter amazement lifted the entire scalp bodily from the corpse's head.
Rising, she advanced to my side and placing the yellow wig over my black hair, crowned me with the golden circlet set with the magnificent gem.
"Now don his harness, Prince," she said, "and you may pass where you will in the realms of the therns, for Sator Throg was a Holy Thern of the Tenth Cycle, and mighty among his kind."
As I stooped to the dead man to do her bidding I noted that not a hair grew upon his head, which was quite as bald as an egg.
"They are all thus from birth," explained Thuvia noting my surprise. "The race from which they sprang were crowned with a luxuriant growth of golden hair, but for many ages the present race has been entirely bald. The wig, however, has come to be a part of their apparel, and so important a part do they consider it that it is cause for the deepest disgrace were a thern to appear in public without it."
In another moment I stood garbed in the habiliments of a Holy Thern.
At Thuvia's suggestion two of the released prisoners bore the body of the dead thern upon their shoulders with us as we continued our journey toward the storeroom, which we reached without further mishap.
Here the keys which Thuvia bore from the dead thern of the prison vault were the means of giving us immediate entrance to the chamber, and very quickly we were thoroughly outfitted with arms and ammunition.
She executes her torturer unapologetically, and then instantly decides to use his personal effects to aid their escape, once again telling Our Hero what to do and how to do it. And he's just glad to have someone who knows her way about, and is capable of taking charge as needed.
Notice too, that although yes, they're all once again Stark Naked, it's not an issue, there's no smarmy leering at Thuvia or coy commenting on her bouncy bits, and if you don't believe that there was such in turn-of-the-century pulp fiction you haven't read enough. It's just the custom of the country, and when in Barsoom...
Anyway, that's just a little sample of the first two books of ERB's Mars series, but I think it's sufficient to show that the similarities are superficial and serve to show up how much worse the Gor books are, and to prove that no, Gor really doesn't look better or more modern when it comes to depictions of gender.
*If it really did get pushed back or canned, this may explain why there was a recent simultaneous incursion of possible-sock-puppets on our pejorative posts - maybe they're the Gor fans at DH showing up to beat their breasts and hurl imprecations at us for having spoiled their holy quest to revive their master's undead corpus of work...