The Innkeeper's Song - Spoilery Gender Commentary
(For a non-spoilery review, follow the fake cut.)
The Innkeeper's Song (Peter S. Beagle): Spoilery Commentary...
On Gender
I have mixed feelings about the gender work in this book. I'd been eyeing the book for years based on the belief that it was about the interaction of strong female main characters. It's not. Lal is an excellent character, decidedly powerful and also idiosyncratic, human, with an impressive array of strengths and fears. Lukassa is not a bad character; she certainly pulls her weight, both as an interesting concept and as a strong, motive plot force. As a personality, though, she doesn't offer much to sink one's teeth into: she's nice and has insight into being dead...
Nyateneri, of course, is not a woman, and this is where it gets complicated. There's a certain letdown here because Nyateneri would be a fantastic female character, and her interactions with Lal really do initially promise an unusual and successful emphasis on powerful women's relationships.
On the other hand, the reveal, fairly far into the book, that Nyateneri/Soukyan is a man is a very interesting move in gender discourse: one of the only ways I have encountered to thwart the problem of gender expectations in presenting an "equal" relationship between a man and a woman. We hear this debate in fandom all the time: a female character can behave exactly the same way as a male character, but where the male character is "impressive," the female character is "a Mary Sue" (and, of course, gender roles can work against male characters too). Such double standards originate in the reader and her cultural expectations, and thus, there's not a damn thing the writer can do about them.
Except that Beagle found something to do. By introducing Lal and Nyateneri as two different but equally powerful women, he sets up a discourse of equality without reference to gender difference. As readers, we never ask those pesky questions about whether the man is really being presented as better or the woman has to be implausibly amazing in every respect just to be "equal" because we don't have a man and a woman to compare. By the time we find out that Soukyan is male, we have already internalized the dynamic of his and Lal's relationship, and the sense of their being equal partners carries forward to a degree I'm not sure it's possible to achieve in explicitly setting up a male/female interaction. I take my hat off.
Beagle also makes a strong move in invoking the power of androgyny in Soukyan, who states he has always thought of himself as a man but who has lived as a woman for nine years, no doubt absorbing a massive amount of female acculturation. Would that Beagle had really followed through with this. It's a shame that once we have the reveal, Soukyan's femaleness is rarely invoked. Even though long scenes pass where he retains his female form, he is perceived as a "man" by all characters with any investment in him. Indeed, the reader has to grasp a bit to remember which form he's using. This was a great missed opportunity.
The Innkeeper's Song (Peter S. Beagle): Spoilery Commentary...
On Gender
I have mixed feelings about the gender work in this book. I'd been eyeing the book for years based on the belief that it was about the interaction of strong female main characters. It's not. Lal is an excellent character, decidedly powerful and also idiosyncratic, human, with an impressive array of strengths and fears. Lukassa is not a bad character; she certainly pulls her weight, both as an interesting concept and as a strong, motive plot force. As a personality, though, she doesn't offer much to sink one's teeth into: she's nice and has insight into being dead...
Nyateneri, of course, is not a woman, and this is where it gets complicated. There's a certain letdown here because Nyateneri would be a fantastic female character, and her interactions with Lal really do initially promise an unusual and successful emphasis on powerful women's relationships.
On the other hand, the reveal, fairly far into the book, that Nyateneri/Soukyan is a man is a very interesting move in gender discourse: one of the only ways I have encountered to thwart the problem of gender expectations in presenting an "equal" relationship between a man and a woman. We hear this debate in fandom all the time: a female character can behave exactly the same way as a male character, but where the male character is "impressive," the female character is "a Mary Sue" (and, of course, gender roles can work against male characters too). Such double standards originate in the reader and her cultural expectations, and thus, there's not a damn thing the writer can do about them.
Except that Beagle found something to do. By introducing Lal and Nyateneri as two different but equally powerful women, he sets up a discourse of equality without reference to gender difference. As readers, we never ask those pesky questions about whether the man is really being presented as better or the woman has to be implausibly amazing in every respect just to be "equal" because we don't have a man and a woman to compare. By the time we find out that Soukyan is male, we have already internalized the dynamic of his and Lal's relationship, and the sense of their being equal partners carries forward to a degree I'm not sure it's possible to achieve in explicitly setting up a male/female interaction. I take my hat off.
Beagle also makes a strong move in invoking the power of androgyny in Soukyan, who states he has always thought of himself as a man but who has lived as a woman for nine years, no doubt absorbing a massive amount of female acculturation. Would that Beagle had really followed through with this. It's a shame that once we have the reveal, Soukyan's femaleness is rarely invoked. Even though long scenes pass where he retains his female form, he is perceived as a "man" by all characters with any investment in him. Indeed, the reader has to grasp a bit to remember which form he's using. This was a great missed opportunity.