Oh goodness YES SO MUCH, thank you for the link! I have a couple thoughts I put in my own space, but that particular post of Le Guin's mostly made me flail and go "but but but" and Athena (and Rose in comments) have very much clarified why.
I never understood LeGuin's thinking about gender and magic at all. I loved The Tombs of Atuan as a kid but the ending with Ged dropping Tenar off with his old master to live a quiet life in the backwoods of Gont while he went and became Archmage and had adventures made my head spin around.
As a young teen, the very first fanfic I envisioned, the first Mary Sue I can remember creating, was a female wizard who went to Roke and badgered them into accepting her.
For all we know, Prospero may have been originally female before she got shoehorned into the Elizabethan mould of what a powerful sorcerer should be. (From the linked article)
She loses me when she claims that UKL considers Shakespeare as uniquely sacrosanct and that women cannot be Prospero-like authority figures. UKL said nothing of the sort. She believes in the integrity of all authors, and her point about a woman as Prospero was not that it was a bad story or an impossible story, but that changing the sex makes it a different story and therefore fundamentally no longer Shakespeare's.
(Better, I'd say, to change more, drop Shakespeare's text except for allusions, and make it a new, revisionist story inspired by Shakespeare's. That's not treating Shakespeare as sacrosanct, and it achieves its new insights without mucking with actual Shakespeare.)
Let's dispense with the disingenuity of pretending there's no difference between a) minor editing, b) the interpretations necessary for any stage production, and c) fundamental changes in the conception of the play, and with the unspoken presumption that if it's been done before, we have to approve of it now.
This is the third time I've tried to read something by the wonderfully named Andreadis--twice linked from your journal.
Every time I get stalled 'round about the third graph by either a "...before I discuss/describe the ideas I'm about to disagree with, allow me to point out that the person expounding them is a poopy-head" or some blatant bulverism.
Which is a pity, because the opening graphs always start out sounding as if she might have some interesting writing to follow...
I loved what you said about the way LeGuin's comments come across specifically "[t]o a middle-aged woman who is a research scientist (as close to a sorcerer as you can get)."
Because I'm a 25 year old undergrad who wants to get a Ph.D in History and part of that is that I want to be that kind of sorcerer and have very deeply for a long time. And Helen Mirren's Prospero made me happy because I love it when the kind of women I admire, the kind of women I want to be, are celebrated. I did a picspam of the promo images because it made me so happy to see her with all her books or casting a circle of fire.
So, on a completely subjective level, thank you for (a) being an awesome sorcerer woman and (b) articulating a defense of the right of images of women in that role to exist without being demeaned.
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I have a couple thoughts I put in my own space, but that particular post of Le Guin's mostly made me flail and go "but but but" and Athena (and Rose in comments) have very much clarified why.
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As a young teen, the very first fanfic I envisioned, the first Mary Sue I can remember creating, was a female wizard who went to Roke and badgered them into accepting her.
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Well, there's some wishful thinking.
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(Better, I'd say, to change more, drop Shakespeare's text except for allusions, and make it a new, revisionist story inspired by Shakespeare's. That's not treating Shakespeare as sacrosanct, and it achieves its new insights without mucking with actual Shakespeare.)
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(The comment has been removed)
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Every time I get stalled 'round about the third graph by either a "...before I discuss/describe the ideas I'm about to disagree with, allow me to point out that the person expounding them is a poopy-head" or some blatant bulverism.
Which is a pity, because the opening graphs always start out sounding as if she might have some interesting writing to follow...
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Athena, aka Helivoy
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Because I'm a 25 year old undergrad who wants to get a Ph.D in History and part of that is that I want to be that kind of sorcerer and have very deeply for a long time. And Helen Mirren's Prospero made me happy because I love it when the kind of women I admire, the kind of women I want to be, are celebrated. I did a picspam of the promo images because it made me so happy to see her with all her books or casting a circle of fire.
So, on a completely subjective level, thank you for (a) being an awesome sorcerer woman and (b) articulating a defense of the right of images of women in that role to exist without being demeaned.
Reply
Athena, aka Helivoy
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