How the men stole the magic (and how the women found out)
So I posted this in the NaNoWriMo forums, but I figure that some of you lurking friends out in cyberspace might have ideas for me, too!
This November, what started out as a simple cross-dressing farce has turned into something approximating a serious commentary on gender roles. I'm actually writing it for someone who bid for it in the livelongnmarry fandom auction on LiveJournal to support marriage equality in California, and her only request was that it involve a woman cross-dressing as a man for some reason, serious or not-so-serious. In my story, the main character Gillian dresses as a man to pretend to be her best friend Leah's fiancee. This is because Leah is actually secretly engaged to a man who is off fighting in the War (something like the crusades), and needs a way to fend off the advances of an upper-level political type who's taken an interest in her. They end up being pulled into a great deal of court intrigue. Leah wants to discover what's happened to the man she's secretly engaged to, and Gillian gets in over her head in pretending to be a man...
But one important aspect of this world is that only men can use magic. At least, that's what everyone has always been told, and what all of the people in this small and isolated island nation believe. Gillian believes it, too, which makes passing as a man in this society even more difficult for her, because she has to find a way around using magic in situations where the average courtly male would be expected to. Well, eventually she gets into one of these situations and there's no way out, and somehow in her desperation, she is able to use magic! Turns out that it was just a big lie that women can't use magic, although I don't know when the lie was first told or if anyone alive in the present knows that it was a lie (they might believe it as true).
My question is -- has it always been like this? Or somewhere, way back when, did some group of magical women do something that caused the men to kill them off and instigate a ban on female magic use, a ban that then translated over the decades/centuries into a complete and insistent belief in the physical inability of women to use magic?
How did they manage the initial silencing of women who could use magic? How is it possible that the men of this nation wiped the potential of women using magic from the minds of everyone, men and women alike?
Also, I don't have a concrete idea of how magic is used in this world. I know that everyone has a small ability for it -- no man is ungifted entirely (and of course none of the women are either, but they don't know that). I'm not too keen on wand-based magic -- or at least, not on the type that implies that magic is dependent more upon the implements one uses to construct it than the intellect/will of the individual. And besides, it would be suspicious if women suddenly weren't allowed to own wands. I think the first thing women would do would be to get wands anyway, by stealing the ones that belong to their brothers/fathers/lovers.
I know this is a lot of stuff...but any ideas about how the use of magic by women could be so extensively covered up, and why this might happen, would be great. Really, any comments about the premise or intent of the story would be much appreciated.
This November, what started out as a simple cross-dressing farce has turned into something approximating a serious commentary on gender roles. I'm actually writing it for someone who bid for it in the livelongnmarry fandom auction on LiveJournal to support marriage equality in California, and her only request was that it involve a woman cross-dressing as a man for some reason, serious or not-so-serious. In my story, the main character Gillian dresses as a man to pretend to be her best friend Leah's fiancee. This is because Leah is actually secretly engaged to a man who is off fighting in the War (something like the crusades), and needs a way to fend off the advances of an upper-level political type who's taken an interest in her. They end up being pulled into a great deal of court intrigue. Leah wants to discover what's happened to the man she's secretly engaged to, and Gillian gets in over her head in pretending to be a man...
But one important aspect of this world is that only men can use magic. At least, that's what everyone has always been told, and what all of the people in this small and isolated island nation believe. Gillian believes it, too, which makes passing as a man in this society even more difficult for her, because she has to find a way around using magic in situations where the average courtly male would be expected to. Well, eventually she gets into one of these situations and there's no way out, and somehow in her desperation, she is able to use magic! Turns out that it was just a big lie that women can't use magic, although I don't know when the lie was first told or if anyone alive in the present knows that it was a lie (they might believe it as true).
My question is -- has it always been like this? Or somewhere, way back when, did some group of magical women do something that caused the men to kill them off and instigate a ban on female magic use, a ban that then translated over the decades/centuries into a complete and insistent belief in the physical inability of women to use magic?
How did they manage the initial silencing of women who could use magic? How is it possible that the men of this nation wiped the potential of women using magic from the minds of everyone, men and women alike?
Also, I don't have a concrete idea of how magic is used in this world. I know that everyone has a small ability for it -- no man is ungifted entirely (and of course none of the women are either, but they don't know that). I'm not too keen on wand-based magic -- or at least, not on the type that implies that magic is dependent more upon the implements one uses to construct it than the intellect/will of the individual. And besides, it would be suspicious if women suddenly weren't allowed to own wands. I think the first thing women would do would be to get wands anyway, by stealing the ones that belong to their brothers/fathers/lovers.
I know this is a lot of stuff...but any ideas about how the use of magic by women could be so extensively covered up, and why this might happen, would be great. Really, any comments about the premise or intent of the story would be much appreciated.