Giles and the "Wild Woman"

[norwie2010]

Giles and the „Wild Woman“

Preface 1: No fic, sorry. These are some meta-y thoughts about Giles, his role on the TV show and his relationship with different women. It is a bit incoherent, jumping from point to point and not restricted to Giles-thoughts. The Master, Wesley, Angel/us, Caleb, Snyder, … all make a short appearance. Oh, and the women, of

Comments

[local_max]

On Willow: first off I hope that Willow is counted among the "best" rather than "worst" moments in the show. :P I also want to note that the seven-season story ends with an affirmation of Willow's power and willingness to change the world and reject existing institutions -- even her willingness to change other people's bodies for the better. [[ Second of two comics asides in this post: And I am so excited and scared for what her story will be in the comics I can barely stand it. My feeling is that in the end it will be ambivalent-positive, which suits me fine. ]] But in any case, Dark Willow really does need to be stopped for people who care about whether or not Dawn gets a say in whether she turns back into a Key, whether Jonathan and Andrew really deserve death, or who think genocide needs to be stopped. That said, it is interesting that the last one happens as a result of Giles’ arrival and the accompanying power-up, so that there is in the text perhaps a criticism of Giles’ arrival. But I don’t think it’s just a matter of the text tricking us. Willow really does need to be stopped, for her sake as well as for others.

But the real problem with Willow is not that it is dangerous to have her near power. Power is dangerous and corrosive, yes, yes. But the real issue is that she has no model, whatsoever, for how to be powerful and “good.” Indeed, her entire conception of goodness is largely patriarchy-influenced. Flossing, doing what Giles says, following Snyder’s arbitrary rules, etc. She thinks that this is what morality is, because she is not animated from the pit with an instinctual ethical sense; she is animated with a desire to be good, but it is clear that it is impossible for her to do so with her power. She thinks she’s found a way, leading to early season six: she can make her friends and lover happier! But this collapses, and makes them more miserable and angry at her. Finally her power turns on her, she decides the power must be bad, that she is a bad girl, and that the way to be a good girl again is to reject her power entirely. This happens at the same time Buffy indulges her “wild girl” phase; Willow tries to be as normal and conventional as she can possibly be. But she still wants power and she still dislikes the role that she has to play, especially when the patriarchy ALSO tells her that she is uninteresting and undesirable because she is boring and mousy. She can’t win. So when Tara dies, she decides that being good is impossible, with the meek, ideal female role model Tara's death, Willow's mirror of "goodness" is obliterated. (Tara is an _extremely_ tamed woman, especially in Willow’s idealized conception of her, and while she has many extremely positive qualities she should not be a role model for Willow.) And it’s at this point that Willow feels, because she’s been taught this, that she has to try to kill herself (and possibly take the world with her) because the world leaves her no options to live successfully. In season seven, she has a relationship with someone who is less “tamed” than Tara -- though she has her own issues, of course, tied as she is to wealth -- and finds a way to reapproach her power without feeling that she has to be ashamed of herself. So I think this reading allows us to see why the show’s “tricks” are in place: they are the very tricks that society plays on the characters.

[local_max]

As far as Xander, as ever I think you are too harsh on the boy. ;) But regardless, here is my read of Xander at the end of Grave. Well, I have many thoughts about that, as you know. But I think what is IMPORTANT for your analysis here is this. Giles intends to Tame Willow. I don't think Xander does. I think he goes to her because he recognizes that she is in the most pain and needs to be there for her, so that *someone* can be there for her at the end of the world. Buffy has Dawn, he doesn't know what to do with Anya, and Willow is his oldest friend. Does he hope he can talk her down from destroying the world? Yes. But I think he is sincere in expressing his love for her *anyway*. He does block her from firing at the statue, but he opens himself up to her killing him if she wants to. He can’t stop her: all that he can hope to do is to remind her that she is loved and hope that she chooses not to save the world after that. And ultimately, I don't think Willow wants to destroy the world. She wants to live, she wants to be able to forgive herself. But she can't do that -- and it takes affirmation that she is lovable to do that. Is it unfortunate that it comes from a man? ...Perhaps. But as with Spike’s similar transformation in Grave, I consider it very uplifting. He is the one person who could convincingly say that they love “scary veiny Willow,” in addition to loving “crayon-breaky Willow”: Buffy can’t allow herself to love that much “darkness”, for the same reasons she couldn’t allow herself to love them in Faith, Giles HAS to try to tame her, Dawn has to work to preserve herself and her own life and Willow is a threat to her, Anya is deeply confused about who she is and can barely love anyone until she figures that out a little bit more. Like Spike for Buffy, Xander submits to her, and as a result is a conduit for her own self-acceptance, here platonically rather than sexually. There is an edge to that submission, because he still has some story left -- which is told in Selfless and the episodes afterward -- but it is mostly a submission to her Will, letting her know that she has alternate paths available (that she need not hate herself entirely) rather than telling her what to do or forcing her into it.

(Disclaimer: this might be my favourite scene in the series. I’m not joking. I’m such a sap. It is also one of the least action-oriented climactic moments in the series.)

(And you know, I guess I shouldn’t keep pushing here, but: if Spike is so admirable for changing himself and subjugating himself to Buffy’s narrative, surely Xander, who does *not* get a big flaming-hands incredible death scene but recedes further into the background, coming forth primarily to offer consolation to Dawn, a female character who loses her place in Buffy and Willow’s story with the arrival of the potentials, and will have to find her own narrative after the show ends? I suppose the differing reads on Grave contribute to our differences once again! :) )

[local_max]

In vague response to your comment to Emmie above, a few more Willow thoughts! The one other thing worth noting about Dark Willow is that I think, deep down, M.E. are ambivalent about _the world itself_, and recognize that we all on some level are tempted to destroy it or our little corner of it, _ourselves_. Or maybe that’s just me. But more to the point: Willow, in expressing the desire to destroy the world because it is so painful, losing hope that it can bring anything but misery, gives voice to one of the show’s most central questions in a way that Buffy-who on some level, is perhaps *constrained* to be the hero-cannot directly, though she does indirectly in “The Gift,” “Once More, with Feeling” and “Normal Again.” Angel arguably is motivated by some of the same reasons in Becoming, Part 2, but is certainly *not* concerned about anyone but himself (and the woman he can’t destroy). Willow begins with herself, and then extends her own feeling to the whole world, and, interpreting the whole world through her own understanding of life, concludes that life itself is untenable and must be wiped out. Buffy’s inability to stop her is because, I think, Buffy hasn’t yet figured out consciously what it is that makes life worth living for her, though she has gotten to the point of wanting to live through Dawn.

Anyway, I do agree with most of what you say here, but I do also look upon Giles’ role in Grave a little What Giles does for Willow is the other thing he gives for Buffy. He doesn’t merely tame her, but he does give her a mission. It’s not much; he is not particularly good at being a tutor. But he tells her: this is what you can do. You can save people from vampires. He frames it as things she must do, and this is bad. But I think the show ultimately comes down on the side that it is good for Buffy to slay vampires and help people, and that it is good for Buffy to do so, and that she enjoys it. That service to the community, acts of love for other people, are ultimately good. Giles recognizes this, and he passes it on to Buffy, inexpertly. He passes it onto Willow even more directly, by allowing her direct access to the connectedness of the world and the feelings of other people. His power source is from a mystical Coven, which is a power structure but one explicitly female-coded (though sadly, we never meet anyone working there). He can’t quite get past the idea that there has to be a power structure, but he is moving toward accepting matriarchal rather than patriarchal ones.

I think it’s remarkable and a little heartening that Giles’ answer to Willow’s power-freakout is to give her *more* power, rather than less. It’s not his first choice, but it’s one of his choices. He doesn’t hold anything back. He gives her all the knowledge he has, all the power, and hopes that with it she can make the right decisions. It does have the effect of taming her, but it’s more by imparting on her a sense of responsibility. This is still something to be ambivalent about-should Willow, who took years and years to come to the point where she didn’t have to feel “responsible” at every moment, really be saddled with more responsibility?-but the positive read is that she is given opportunity to understand more clearly the way people are connected to each other in a visceral manner, rather than being given a set of contradictory, unhelpful rules that she must abide by in order to be a good girl. This is why I think while Giles isn’t entirely there at the end of season six, it does reflect a step forward, rather than a step back. To the best of his knowledge, he gives Willow everything he knows, all in one fell swoop.

[local_max]

Anyway, back to Giles and “the wild woman” more generally. Giles’ commitment is to “the world.” That is how he states it in _The Gift_. Like Buffy, Giles is given no choice but to fulfill his role in the patriarchal system. And his role is not entirely a bad one. It is perhaps because of the patriarchy that Wild Women are so dangerous -- but ultimately, as articulated before, they are sometimes dangerous. “The world” includes the patriarchal order, and that is probably what the Watchers Council most badly wants to protect. But the world also includes people of both genders, of all walks of life. It includes Buffy. So what is interesting then is that Giles fulfills a role he actually *needs* to fulfill, on some level. Ordinary citizens -- both men and women -- should be protected from any super-powerful individuals. The Watchers Council tells him this part of his mission and he believes that is his entire mission. It isn't. The rest of his mission is to maintain the current order, which is the Patriarchy, as you say. But he believes, and he is not entirely wrong, that he is doing good works. The Watchers Council appeals to his sense of right as well as his sense of order. It appeals to his desire to help people as well as his fear of a demonized other. In a world where Buffy never came to Sunnydale in The Wish, he is tremendously valuable in the fight against evil. So what fascinates me most about Giles is that tension.

Speaking of Giles: his role in Anya’s story is subtle but huge. He is the one who depowers Anyanka; and he is the one who later gives her a job at the Magic Box. The Magic Box is interesting and representative of Giles’ attempt to bridge different worlds. He attempts to use capitalism to connect people with magic, which is coded-feminine, and thus to empower people. It’s a mixture of the (from your political perspective, which I somewhat share but I’m young and can change my mind on a whim) oppressive with the freeing. Anya stands with him right on that border, but he keeps her somewhat subjugated. As with Buffy and Willow, he both offers her the possibility of power, and restricts her growth. While it’s very tempting to view him as entirely a Tamer of her, we also learn as early as Doppelgangland (which is probably the first episode written with Anya as a recurring character in mind) that she was not a “Wild Woman” but had a place within a patriarchal power structure, headed by D’Hoffryn. Anya and internalized patriarchy/misogyny, even while she rails against patriarchy explicitly: such an interesting story!

OK, I'm done. Really, gender is not my primary lens to look at BtVS -- I think, for one thing, that I would have a hard time being objective, especially because of my close identification with Willow and Xander influencing my takes on them to a large degree. I identify with Buffy a lot too, obviously, though later-series Buffy more so. But gender probably really is the central lens for the show, even if it is not one that 'comes naturally' for me as much. I think, in the end, the show is all "about power," as Buffy says, and it favours taking power away from highly entrenched institutions, and favouring giving it to love-based, female-headed communities. Wow, why I am I telling you this? :)

[local_max]

A clarification:

When I say that I think that Willow and Faith (especially) are influenced by the patriarchy/power structures/society in general and this contributes to their evil, I am talking about a very clever merging of form and content, in-show and without. Faith and Willow live in a world that is basically the same as our world, and just as the writers only have a certain number of tropes to call upon and be recognizable as a pop culture story, the characters *themselves* only have a small number of identities that they can understand and latch onto. Faith has to be a bad girl, and so she goes to the Mayor's door. Willow is convinced she can never be forgiven for her trespasses, and doesn't know any other way to be but 'evil' -- because anything resembling good is no longer available to her.

Since Giles resides within the story world in which Wild Women are going to tend to fall into these tropes -- because people, in the Buffyverse, tend to follow roles that are set out for them by others, in some way or another -- does good in some senses by acting as a Tamer of Wild Women. But it is not nearly as good as it would be to let them know there are alternatives to being evil and destructive. To an extent, imperfectly, I *do* think that he does this with Willow in Grave, by giving her all his knowledge & power and hoping that it will show her a different path than the one she believes she has to be on.

[norwie2010]

First things first: When i said this would be a story about Giles - i was kidding! I even wrote so much. I thought you of all people would get it. :-P

What i'm writing about is our world, our reality, the human condition: The stories our so-called cultural industry tells us about women, and how men relate to them (and vice versa).

So, the writers writing this play as Willow trying to destroy the world - they unmask themselves. The don't have the courage to tell a story about „wild women“ - they fear the „wild woman“ the same as Travers.

When Willow becomes, realizes herself as „Dark Willow“:

Dark Willow becomes the „negation of the negation“ (→ Adorno), she utterly and completely rejects the patriarchal narrative, she tries to undo what the patriarchy and the male narrative did: She tries to set the key free. And really, the key to all the dams breaking, realities bleeding into each other, creating new and wild worlds* is the Innocent, constructed by the patriarchal order (monks!) to keep the „wild woman“, the femme fatale (Glory) in check. This is a rather thinly veiled virgin - whore dichotomy, the male narrative invents the virgin, to keep the „wild woman“ at bay.

Dark Willow tries to raise the temples of the old goddess, female power incarnate: OF COURSE this will destroy the patriarchal world! OF COURSE it will destroy the male narrative! OF COURSE it will destroy the patriarchal world of the storyteller!

I don't think Willow is trying to kill herself: She's trying to change the world. Yes, i agree that she doesn't know how to live in the patriarchal world which leaves her no attractive options - but she actually has power! Only when Giles plants doubts into her mind, Willow thinks the world should die - and here i actually agree with you: Willow, confronted with the male narrative of Giles -WHO STOLE IT FROM THE COVEN OF WISE WOMEN (ah! Such rich soil here...) thinks there is no place for her in the world, and sees suicide as the only option.

* i would laugh my ass off if it weren't so tragic: The story of Glory, who breaks all the dams is fascistic psyche 101 (go forth and read Theweleit's doctorate thesis! „Male Fantasies“! Best book on - fascist - male psyche ever!). The fear of the female flood, menstruation, female ejaculation, breast milk, all the juices flowing - men fear that stuff. They need armor against it. Steel. (Troll) hammers! Robots! Construction vehicles! I mean - Dawn bleeding on the tower, to open the doors: She's becoming a woman! Of course the patriarchal order cannot have any of that.

[local_max]

Well, I knew you were talking about our world -- but that doesn't mean I can't disagree with you about what the stories are. :)

OK, so first of all, Willow, in rejecting the male cultural narrative, still embraces it to some degree. She is playful with it, of course, and wants to use the tools of men against men: the bullet is turned against Warren, the male fantasy/fear of the absolute powerful woman and magic is used against Jonathan and Andrew. She uses it all against her oppressors, and she is rage, and she is revenge. BUT, she is also hatred of herself. Warren is Willow. He is misogynistic, and we can read Willow as being internalized misogyny, but Willow *is* killing herself when she kills Warren, and that is what is required in order to free herself afterward. But it begins with the suicide, the harsh burning off of the view of herself that she hates. And that view includes things that Willow has done *to* other women -- to Tara, especially.

The thing is, as playful as Willow is, her understanding of power is heavily, heavily influenced by a destructive, rather than generative, conception of power. And that is basically the same type of power as Warren. She can turn the tables on Warren. But what actually distinguishes her from him?

You argue that the writers unmask themselves. Possibly. I can understand that interpretation. But mine is that as brilliant as Willow is, she only knows what she has been taught. And the universe does conspire against her: the resurrection spell is Willow's attempt to be GENERATIVE, rather than destructive, to bring life rather than death, and that fails entirely. The reason that fails, it could be argued, is that Willow is an Affront to nature, that this narrative does not permit strong women to shake up the boundaries of narrative. But I think it's simpler: the storyworld, which is still ultimately patriarchal, represents OUR WORLD, which does not allow strong women to shake up the boundary of the narrative. This distinction is crucial. I don't think that the issue is that the writers are afraid of strong women -- or, whether they are or not, I'm not even sure is relevant. (Don't quote me on that.) I think that the writers know that in *this* world, there are consequences to transgressions against what is perceived as natural order. It is why an imposing MALE demon reaffirms to Willow that she cannot resurrect Tara; it is why MALE demon bikers interrupt the resurrection spell. Willow and Buffy pay the price for her "transgression," but it's not about fairness, it's about the way the world just is.

Willow sees herself in Jonathan and Andrew. She sees herself in Dawn. She wants to kill them because she wants herself to be set free of life. She wants to kill Buffy to undo her "mistake" of resurrecting her. She wants to kill Giles to punish him. But mainly I think she wants to destroy everything. You may be right that killing herself is not what is primarily on her mind. But I don't think Willow can even begin to imagine anything other than destruction at this moment.

In narrative purposes, though, this moment is Willow's nadir; she is climbing her way back up. In Chosen, she is generative. Everything that she uses right now for destruction -- which is still, despite her playfulness, patterned after, and running along side, Warren-type behaviour -- is used in that moment to change the world for the better, to give women access to the power that she fought so hard for without the crippling guilt and insecurity that she had to face along the way.

Season six and seven inform each other. Willow goes dark in season six because she literally cannot imagine the power going any other way. But she DOES find another way to use the power. Really and truly. The fact that her first instinct is to use the power badly is BECAUSE she has been trained in-universe that there IS no proper way to use the power -- and that training exactly mirrors the way the world operates. The writers' primary assumption is that the models the characters have to follow are *the same* models that exist in this world, and, since they primarily know their own craft, the models that exist for storytelling.

[norwie2010]

Well, i actually agree with all of that. It is what's so fantastic about BtVS - whenever you peel off a layer, there's another one beneath. :)

But I don't think Willow can even begin to imagine anything other than destruction at this moment.

Especially this. While i twisted the words a bit to make Willow's actions seem more, hm, just and "good" (yes, i'm mean and devious like that ;-)) - i actually think that "the negation of the negation" is fighting Warren with Warren, so to speak. Willow, without Giles interference, would probably not destroy the whole world - but she would flex her muscles, try that power. It is reasonable to assume that this wouldn't be very pretty. Possibly lots of destruction and death.

[local_max]

Yay! Of course, I'm sure you can peel another layer back and reveal why what I said shows the writers' failure even more deeply, but, you know. I prefer to be optimistic. :)

I think Dark Willow has to be understood in part in the context of Tara, too. Because Tara is, in some respects, the 'feminine' idealized. She is warm, caring, mothering, self-sacrificing, quiet, meek, etc. etc. She is what Willow believes Willow should be, and she hates the part of her that is more like, well, Warren. Tara really *is* wonderful, but I think that there is an element of...I think that Tara doesn't quite accept the part of Willow that seeks out power. Tara, coming from her family, learned that this is not something women do. And of course, Willow actually is amoral and has to build an ethical framework from the ground up, whereas Tara is highly moral. The thing that emerges is the thing that is kept hidden from Tara, and so cannot be fully positive. Of course -- the writers could have told a different story, but she does end the series in a place where she doesn't need external validation, and can be both power and caring, destructive & generative, crunchy and smooth -- wait, that's peanut butter. :D

Season six, of course, brings characters to their (near-) absolute worst, before revealing in season seven -- aha! these changes were ultimately good for the characters, after all.

[beer_good_foamy]

A thought: Willow's actions at the end of s6 cross a form of metaphysical Godzilla Threshold. If the story is kyriarchal order vs chaos, then anything that disrupts the order is a solution. It may not be a constructive solution, but that doesn't mean it isn't one. If the world itself is oppressive, existence within a (metafictional) narrative focusing on new ways to destroy you, then nothing remains but to destroy that narrative - and this is the finale in which "Life is the big bad" and there's (supposedly) no more metaphor. Fine: so destroy life, and have the sole remaining metaphor - the mere fact that this is still a story - be the thing that must be overcome. When high school was hell, they had to end by blowing it up. At the start of s6, Buffy looks out at the world and declares it hell. So...

[local_max]

ITA. Though....

The difference, of course, being that there were no people in the high school when they blew it up! OK, so there are no PEOPLE in the storyworld either -- there are just characters. So in a sense, I think that Willow is actually *right* in a certain unassailable way, and no argument is really convincing. If the world is hell, then destroy it! But Xander's counterargument is, "Well, I love you anyway!" which isn't an argument, but makes the world bearable enough to give it a try another day. Season six ends with the affirmation that maybe existence is better than non-existence, even if problems can't be solved, and I am pretty fine with that. I'm not entirely sure I'd blame Willow for choosing the other path, either.

[beer_good_foamy]

Yup. Meant to ETA this just before you replied:

If the story ITSELF is the tamer, and if Willow is aware of this (this is the season where we get "Normal Again", where we get "Dawn's in trouble, must be Tuesday", where Anya comments on there only being three walls in their apartment, where writers appear on-screen several times, where Dark!Willow explicitly comments on what the character of Willow would do (and pretty much calls her tamed)), then it follows that she can only be free by breaking the story.

And if we add another level of metafiction, though I'm not entirely sure this one works - almost all heroes' tales, at least from the last 2,500 years or so, rotate around self-sacrifice and catharsis. Willow explicitly rejects that. She breaks not only the Buffy story, she breaks (or tries to) the very purpose of the story is supposed to do (the Slayer cannot stop her). In a sense, though as a BtVS fan I'm glad she could come back from it, I'm a little disappointed that she did - but there's only so much deconstruction you can do within (!) this type of story, I guess.

[local_max]

And if we add another level of metafiction, though I'm not entirely sure this one works - almost all heroes' tales, at least from the last 2,500 years or so, rotate around self-sacrifice and catharsis. Willow explicitly rejects that. She breaks not only the Buffy story, she breaks (or tries to) the very purpose of the story is supposed to do (the Slayer cannot stop her). In a sense, though as a BtVS fan I'm glad she could come back from it, I'm a little disappointed that she did - but there's only so much deconstruction you can do within (!) this type of story, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not quite sure what I want to have happened. With BtVS, and this is perhaps intellectually bankrupt, but I go with it anyway, I sometimes just decide that the story I like best is the one that happened, so that I save myself sleepless nights. So, there's a lot of story breaking going on. Because Buffy is not only sidelined- but super-sidelined in the finale. (Post-s6, I jokingly think of Buffy Xander and Willow as rock, paper and scissors: Buffy beats Xander, who beats Willow, who beats Buffy....) In keeping with the deconstruction, Willow is stopped by purely non-supernatural means by Xander, once she's started her destructorama. At any rate, I think that to get to Chosen, it's important that Willow basically unseats Buffy as the show's essential protagonist for a few episodes. And you know, she *does* succeed, in that the slayer cannot stop her, and Buffy doesn't. And the fact that Buffy doesn't stop her is I think what sets Buffy free from her constraints of being, you know, the one who has to stop everything.

So: does Xander tame Willow (or allow the narrative to tame her)? And if so, why should we be cheering? I think for me, I identify with Willow's destructive impulses and so recognize that it's good for her to be "tamed"; like Oz being caged on full moon nights (he's probably our most obvious "wild man", a few nights a week), it's better for him and for all of us if he controls himself a bit. But you know, we're all men in this particular subthread, so maybe my (our) identification is not a sufficient explanation. Think think think.

[beer_good_foamy]

Yeah. Briefly, I guess the problem - and my problem with this reading of the story, as brilliant as it is, so I'm using the word "problem" very loosely - is that in order for us to care about the story in the first place, the characters must be more than mere representations of one of two sides. Ie: how do you write a story that breaks the very story it tells, while still telling it (and not alienating or boring the audience)? Especially if you're postmodern enough to think that the story exists in the reading (or in this case viewing) of it rather than as an immutable object.

But that's a slightly different question, I guess (not to mention a massively analytical lot-of-filing-and-giving-things-names take on it) and it's late. Will sleep on it.

[local_max]

I just ETA'd on an earlier comment. (Well, I don't have editing capabilities, so just added a new comment.)

Maybe here we can parallel Willow with the story itself. The writers can push her very close to the edge of breaking out of the role given to her, but if they push her far enough then the story just *is* broken, forever. I mean, you can keep the tension in a story if you're doing "Duck Amuck," but it's much harder in BtVS where ultimately we ARE supposed to care about the characters as people and as people-representatives as well as abstractions. The show is postmodern, but not THAT postmodern, you know.

So OMWF precurses the Willow/Xander ending with Buffy/Spike. Sweet wants to see Buffy dance till she burns, and Buffy does, because life is but a song. But Spike tells her it isn't a song, and he sort of sings it but sort of speaks it. LIFE isn't a show, but the show is a show. So the show both reaffirms itself as being nothing but narrative, and then reaffirms that it is narrative which is about life, and not about narrative. Something similar happens, I think, with Willow and Xander: the (for lack of a better term) most abstract and most concrete characters come together, she recognizing the boundaries of the program itself closing in, and he affirming that real emotions are possible within the closed boundaries. Interesting too, since Xander and Spike are probably the most TV-savvy of the cast. I lost track of where I was going. It is late for me too, and it's only 7 p.m.! So maybe the process for Buffy and Willow is:

1) it's life! (yay)
2) no, it's only a story, and an unpleasant one! (end the misery!)
3) but it's a story about life! (uh...okay, I guess let's keep going).

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

[norwie2010]

I think for me, I identify with Willow's destructive impulses and so recognize that it's good for her to be "tamed";

But then, you and me are able to discuss this while sitting in the comfortable arm chair - it is not you or me who are chained down, enslaved, beaten and killed by patriarchy.

While we might shriek back from the radical solutions - we also lack a certain insight into the graveness of the situation. What beer_good said above: just because we don't like the solution, it might be a solution nonetheless.

"Dos lid geschribn is mit blut un nischt mit blej,
’s nit kejn lidl fun a fojgl ojf der fraj,
dos hot a folk tswischn falndike went
dos lid gesungen mit naganes in die hent."

(Song of the Warshaw Ghetto Uprising, Hirsh Glick, 1922-1944)

"This song is written with our blood and not with lead,
it's not a little tune that birds sing overhead.
this song a people sang amid collapsing walls.
with 'naganes' in hand they heeded he call."

The "lead" he sings about is the lead of the pencil. A story is a story - but real life is different.