[meta] Dawn Summers: Fighting for an Alternative Feminist Narrative (4)
Another segment straight from my brain! This dwindled out towards the end and I got a little gushy/silly. I just have a LOT of Summers-girls feelings that aren't limited to Buffy and Dawn (Faith, that poor forgotten middle-Summers) which came out a little bit down there at the very end. I also am not sure if I really did this section justice, but it is rather lengthy and I'm trying to not be too verbose with these, for my sake and yours. So here it is, ready or not.
Introduction: Rethinking Buffy's Feminism
Presentation: Dawn's Alternative Feminist Narrative
Kleptomania 1/2: Dawn & Buffy - the Rebellious Teen
Kelptomania 2/2: Dawn's relationship to Objects
Taking up magic: Dawn's relationship to magicks and power
Dawn's relationship to power is consistently one that operates on a premise of knowledge acquisition. For the most part, my discussion of Dawn and power has been related to the greater processes of Slaying in general. However, Dawn is shown early on to have a fascination with magicks. Often in the background of scenes, we see Dawn giggling with Willow or Tara about their practice. Upon her introduction of Willow and Tara to her journal and the audience, Dawn first mentions wanting to learn spells with them. This is played off as a joke against her, Joyce interprets "spells" as a euphemism for lesbian sexual activity, an allusion that Dawn does not recognize. In her first discussion of magicks, there is a private joke shared between the writers, Joyce, and the audience at Dawn's expense. Although she genuinely wishes to know more about witchcraft, the language of double entendres that the series has used consistently when dealing with Willow and Tara's romantic relationship, only further pushes Dawn out of the language and knowledge that the narrative and other characters are aware of. Without the audience even seeing the interchange between Dawn and her mother. In other words, from the very beginning, magicks - like Slaying - has been a dialogue that Dawn is incapable of understanding, or has not yet been taught. However, her desire to learn about both aspects of demon killing is apparent from the very beginning. There are countless other examples of Dawn being intrigued by witchcraft, especially in her first few episodes. When the Magic Box is re-opened, Dawn immediately pulls Willow aside to look at talismans in a corner. Later, Willow gives Dawn a book, mostly of anecdotes and histories, which is a big hit with the younger girl.
In "No Place Like Home," Dawn straightforwardly tells Buffy, "I don't care that you're the Slayer." Most of this is probably younger sibling bravado. Placed in contrast to Dawn's giggling glee over Willow talking to her about magicks, it is actually quite striking. Of course, all sibling relationships are complex and contain within them a variety of layers of understanding. Dawn's resistance to Slaying as a younger girl is more than likely colored by her complicated relationship with a sibling. Whereas her relationship with Willow holds less complexity. Willow and magick are allowed to be - in some sense - that which is fun and heroic. While Buffy and Slaying exist more in a realm of responsibility and harm. Dawn has not, up to this point, seen any negative consequences of Willow's witchcraft. On the other hand, being raised in the house with a Slayer would drive home the danger of the job. In the end, witchcraft is something Dawn can //choose// for herself, while Slaying is only truly possible when called, when the previous Slayer is dead. Dawn's relationship to Slaying and Witchcraft seems to primarily united to an acquisition of knowledge. Dawn's curiosity - even before learning that she is the Key - is strong and her primary motivator.
If Dawn shows just as much interest - if not more - in witchcraft at the beginning of her narrative, why then do I posit that Dawn's empowerment comes in the moment when she picks up the sword? There are many answers to that. The first is that, although Dawn has been, in the background, growing in strength and gumption this entire time - when she picks up the sword at the close of S6, this is the first that Buffy has seen and been able to acknowledge Dawn's knowledge and skills. Dawn's struggle against her sister to prove her place in the fight will be dealt with in detail in the next segment. In summary, since Buffy is the character and person in Dawn's life that holds the most power, it is only through proving and asserting herself against (and with) that power, that Dawn's narrative is given it's rightful place. Dawn's narrative of empowerment could very well have been witchcraft-oriented, rather than Slayer-oriented. Especially if one were to ask Spike. Long before Dawn had the gumption to fight beside her sister, she proved herself a powerful and headstrong wicca.
In the season five episode "Forever" Dawn takes Spike with her on a journey to bring back her mother from the dead; the punchline isn't that she fails, it is that she succeeds. In many ways, Dawn's arc in "Forever" is a twisted mirror of the larger arc Willow will experience throughout S6... without all the messy allusions to addiction. After Joyce's death, Dawn decides to bring her back from the dead, goes on a scavenger hunt around Sunnydale with her trusty vampire sidekick, completes the spell, and decides in the final moments to let her mother remain dead - for the sake of her sister. Although Sunnydale seems rampant with would-be witches and demon-worshipers that inevitably cause trouble they cannot fix, most are depicted as proficient, if not a little naive. Dawn's strength - her ability to complete a dangerous and complicated spell with only Spike as her aid - is not noticed or known by anyone else in the narrative but her. In one episode, Dawn brings back a loved one from the dead and sacrifices her happiness for the sake of her sister's sanity. It is in the moment that Dawn sees Buffy's reaction to Joyce's possible recovery, that Dawn realizes the repercussions of what she has done, and stopped it. In essence, Dawn picked up the metaphorical sword long before she stood beside Buffy in that cave with a literal sword in hand.
In contrast to Willow, whose fascination with witchcraft as a young girl ends up spiraling into a painful addiction later, Dawn uses magicks and lets go of the power it contains almost immediately. Granted, Dawn's experience with magicks is very different from Willow's. She had never tried practicing before this spell, as Willow had, and the spell she cast did not seem to have the same psychological or physical effects as that of Angel's ensoulment spell - Willow's first major brush with magicks. Dawn takes a much more ... shall we say practical approach to magicks, only using it when absolutely necessary. We next see Dawn using magicks as a repellent against a poltergeist in season seven's "Conversations with Dead People." Again, as before, Dawn is incredibly proficient and has the desired effects, yet she does not again pick up magicks just for the sake of it.
Part of the question, "why not magicks" as a source of empowerment may also be: "Why not Willow?" Why does Dawn follow a path of Feminist Empowerment that is more directly in line with Buffy than with Willow's path? Buffy and Willow are both legitimate examples of empowered females; and surely Dawn had the choice of either path ahead of her. Why did she pick up the sword and not magick?
In season seven we are presented with a very different version of Dawn than the one that popped up seemingly out of nowhere at the start of season five. She patrols with Buffy at night, she is more assertive and less shy, she's less uncoordinated, she's more aware of herself and her body, she has more self-confidence. She has found her place in the Scoobies at last. And, as Spike says, she's gotten "scary" somewhere along the way. Yet, she is not a perfect mirror of Buffy. Although Dawn did not explicitly pick up magicks as her form of empowerment, Dawn is first and foremost obsessed with knowledge. Her curiosity is never abated. In this way, she is also a reflection of a young Willow. Although she spends her evenings patrolling with and learning from her elder sister, she has also made herself an expert in demonology and apparently dead languages and translation.
The big gestures are the ones that are remembered: sacrificing herself, taking up the sword, kicking Buffy in the shin - these were the three moments that I personally chose as a general trajectory of Dawn's evolution. But in many ways, Dawn is just as much the younger sister to Willow as she is to Buffy. Buffy is a creature of large gestures and little words. Willow's powers, especially in the beginning, were more understated but still pronounced. It is revealed in "Touched" that Dawn read an ancient Turkish text for the sake of Scooby-research. When Willow mentions that she has read a translation, Dawn takes a split second to be surprised then shrugs and says, "I'm over it." This sixteen year old girl just struggled through a text in Turkish, a challenge that in Willow's early seasons would have been met with some remark or scene with Giles or //someone// noticing and encouraging her***. As far as we can see, the only acknowledgement that Dawn gets for this incredible feat is to be told she didn't need to do the work, because it was already done. And she //shrugs it off//. It is an understated moment, a scene between scenes, a character moment in the midst of exposition that can be easily overlooked. Yet it says so much about her relationship not just to the patrolling, but to the //entire// experience of the Scoobies' inner sanctum.
In "Primeval" Buffy is incomplete without the aid of her friends, in order to destroy Adam she needs Willow's magicks, Giles' knowledge, and Xander's heart. By the end of season seven, Dawn is well on her way to surpassing her sister and Willow in her ability to cross both worlds. Dawn first and foremost is a character that blurs lines, that renegotiates what we think we know. Her ability to read ancient Turkish, while still maintaining an interest in the physical aspect of Slaying, and - as Xander points out - her ability to read and understand people, puts her well ahead of the curve her family set out for her. I'd love to see Adam try on Dawn circa season seven. She'd sass him right out of town.
Dawn's slow evolution into empowered young woman is not directly a reflection of Buffy - nor of Willow. Rather, Dawn's relationship to power and knowledge is influenced by both of these strong and vibrant examples in her life. In many ways, her silent struggle is also reminiscent of Tara, her sass holds some echoes of Faith, her quirky humor akin to Anya's... Dawn may be the youngest Summers sister, but she and Buffy are not alone in their sisterhood, in their influence and importance to each other.
*** when I said this at the conference, my adviser came up to me afterwards and said she had always hated this scene and that my reading "rehabilitated" Dawn for her. So just to drive the point home again: had it been Willow, some notice would have been paid to this process. Dawn becomes a character who is allowed to struggle off-screen, become a joke on-screen, but the truth of it is: Dawn Summers is better than you. ((And that's it. I've been a very good girl not getting too rah-rah about my baby, but there are times when I really just want to remind the haters how spectacular and interesting she is. And right now is one of those times.))