DWJ Reread: The True State of Affairs
"This was a terrible waste of feeling."
It's been a year since my last DWJ Reread post, and I've read The True State of Affairs twice throughout, and I still don't know how I feel about it. From what I know, this novella was written in the 60s, but was never published until 1995, when it was included in the limited print collection Everard's Ride. It doesn't really read like any of the fantasy books I've read from the time, so I think I can kind of understand if her agent or publisher wasn't keen when she first wrote it. It's a little strange and meandering, and not quite like her other works.
For one, it's a lot darker and rather pessimistic. It's definitely got a more YA/adult vibe than her other works. In the introduction, DWJ revealed that it was inspired by The Kingis Quair, which describes the imprisonment of James I of Scotland who spent his time watching a woman from his prison window and fancying himself in love with her, or something like that. Of course, his imprisonment came to an end with him marrying Joan Beaufort, so I wasn't going into this novella thinking that it was going to get a happy ending.
Set in a kind of proto-Dalemark (which was why I was looking forward to reading it, having discovered a love for the Dalemark Quartet during my rereads), the story is told from the point of view of a woman (older teen?) named Emily who seems to come from our world, and a time contemporary enough for her to mention automobiles and electricity. Emily doesn't know how or why she ends up in Dalemark, which is in the midst of a civil war, and when we find her she is being imprisoned after being mistaken as one of the rebels. Her captors realise early only that she isn't Hilda, the woman she's being mistaken for, but kept her locked up because they don't know what else to do with her.
From the courtyard of her prison, she could see another courtyard where someone else is being imprisoned, and any time that she isn't trying to find out more about the land she's found herself in, she is either (secretly) communicating with him or speculating about him. Asgrim, the other prisoner, seems to be the leader of the opposition (of their captors), and is being held until his side of the war has been completely "mopped up." We are also introduced to her prisoners/guards - Edwin, Wolfram, and Hobby who are all awful in one way or another, although I can't dislike them for some reason.
This entire novella is just moody and melancholy and it makes me think about the first lockdown when I was stuck alone at home and sometimes sitting at the balcony to look at trees or observe others in their respective balconies. Of course, I wasn't a prisoner in the middle of a civil war, but I guess it's what the mood of the story makes me think of.
Speaking of the civil war, there's a lot of politics in this book, but everything is filtered through the (probably unreliable) information Emily gets from her captors. Emily's problem isn't just the fact that (1) her captors may not know what's actually going on and are merely speculating or repeating rumours, and (2) they are reluctant to reveal anything to her, as they still believe she is from the North. There are cultural differences and different nuances to their language that causes her to misunderstand several things - one of them being her relationship with Asgrim.
Like I'd said, I wasn't expecting a happy ending, and being a longtime reader of DWJ I guess I'm used to how she tends to rush her endings, so these things didn't bother me. I'm mentioning them because I can definitely see how others might be bothered. One part of the ending that does bother me is how we don't really find out what happens to Emily, if she ever goes back to her own time/world. There are only little hints as to what her future MIGHT hold, and it is really very bleak.
Another thing that bothers me is the characterisation of Wolfram, who is probably the only person besides Emily who has any real development in the story. He's the chief of her guards and when we first meet him he's just this very unpleasant person that everyone seems to hate. Emily later realises that he's just a deeply unhappy man, and part of his unhappiness stems from his homosexuality and the fact that he lives in a time where it's neither understood nor accepted by society. All this would've been fine with me - I'm quite pleased to find a DWJ work that deals with queerness at all, let alone how it might affect someone in this kind of fantasy world. But the way that Wolfram expresses his sexuality is kind of problematic - it's not even that he's stalkery and sleazy, which I'm glad was clearly written as HIS vice, and not a generalisation about homosexual men. It's the fact that the object of his obsession is a much, MUCH younger boy, which is just uncomfortable to read.
After going through this story twice (taking a very long time to finish it both times, because I really am no good at reading anything that feels too "historical", even when I find them enjoyable) I still don't know how I feel about it. I appreciate it and I like how different it is from her other writing. I kind of wish for more - both of this story, and of this kind of more adult/literary writing from DWJ. At the same time, I don't think I ever took this long to read (and reread) a DWJ story. It took me awhile, and there are things I'm not comfortable with or wish would be different, but I did appreciate and enjoy it, I guess.
Next in my list will be another book that might take me awhile to read, for very different reasons!
DWJ Re-Read no. 49 | The True State of Affairs (1996)
previous read: Everard's Ride
next read: The Tough Guide to Fantasyland