a non-post about agency

[tempestsarekind]

I keep wanting to make some kind of (totally uninformed) post about agency, and how it's this word that gets brought in so often to dismiss or reject, to shut down discussions--and this is both an academic move and a fandom one, I think: one of the worst things you can say about a character, Shakespearean or sci-fi, is that she doesn't have agency.

Comments

[lareinenoire]

(My students--not this batch in particular, just "students" en masse--do this relatively often, with characters like Desdemona or any woman in a Victorian novel who seems to fall in line with Victorian ideas.) You would be modern and autonomous, and every story would be completely and totally about you.

My students were generally quite dismissive of Desdemona until I pointed out to them that, as a woman in the early seventeenth century who had just turned her back on the society where she was born to marry a man her father did not approve of, had absolutely no other option than to hope Othello got over whatever was troubling him.

What's amusing, though, is that presenting Juliet and Desdemona as comic heroines trapped in tragic situations seemed to help my students make sense of how they do break boundaries and transcend the limits normally allowed to women primarily through speech acts. They think their words have the power to change things for the better, and do not realise that that power is constrained

[tempestsarekind]

Interesting! I've always sort of wondered what my students are expecting Desdemona to do, really: what action is she failing to take that would win their approval? (Well, except for that time when half the class was all, "She should have known Othello was jealous and shouldn't have lost the handkerchief." All I could do was boggle, then.) Because you're right: what other options does she have? She's thrown her lot in absolutely with Othello, and she's physically removed from her family in any case.

And yes, "agency" is such a problematic word! I've started using it in face-to-face descriptions of my dissertation because "comedy as an act of will" tends to get blank stares until I elaborate...but I don't actually use the word in the dissertation! I'm hoping that the focus on modals will cover the requisite ground.

And, ugh, I hate when people (not just students) try to apply modern standards to earlier texts.Yes! That doesn't mean that our only possible response is a historicist one, but it's silly to expect, say, a woman in a 19th

[litlover12]

I love this non-post. It's so true.

You are so much wiser than you give yourself credit for being.

[viomisehunt]

Ditto on tempestsarekind's She had me scrambling for definitions--haven't been to school in twenty years, and one forgets all those terms of study.

What's amusing, though, is that presenting Juliet and Desdemona as comic heroines trapped in tragic situations seemed to help my students make sense of how they do break boundaries and transcend the limits normally allowed to women primarily through speech acts. They think their words have the power to change things for the better, and do not realise that that power is constrained. Juliet appears as one of Shakespeare's man powerful women. Consider that from her parent's point of view, as a good and obedient daughter, her main function is to be pretty and sweet natured, and expected to use her intelligent and any craft to attract and keep the wealthy husband of her parent's choice

[tempestsarekind]

Yes--Juliet definitely has the upper hand in the balcony scene, for all that she's surprised by Romeo's presence; she sets the terms of the relationship. And I've always adored her frankness in that scene: "But farewell, compliment."

I'm not really clear on the argument about Amy, but it seems to center on the idea that "Amy's Choice" really isn't, that she's being manipulated somehow. Which is on some level true, but it's not more true for her than it is for Rory or the Doctor; they're all forced to play by the "Dream Lord's" rules. And that manipulation doesn't negate the fact that they all make choices within that scheme. So part of what's weird about discussions of agency is that it seems like it's a lot easier for a female character to lose agency than for a male one, even if they are working under fairly similar circumstances.

[tempestsarekind]

Aw, thank you! That's very nice of you to say.

[owlfish]

This is a rather wonderful post for me, to contrast with what I am having my students do: spend a week talking about agency. More specifically, a week of warning to practice discussing technologies *without* giving them agency, and remembering that it is usually people who have that, not things. So while I am going on about taking away agency, it is in a rather different context, and my students do struggle with it.

[tempestsarekind]

That's so interesting--I'd never really thought about it, but I suspect that I attribute agency to technology all the time! And I remember a commercial for a Windows phone (I think) that suggested that our only possible relationship to technology is to have technology that works faster, so we have to spend less time on Facebook, etc.: it's not possible for us to decide not to check Facebook during our son's soccer game; we need the new phone so that we can do it quickly.

[viomisehunt]

Are we prepared as a reading/viewing audience to "like" women with agency in some situations, especially if the woman in question does not make the choice her audience feels is the desired one? While it is not necessary that everyone like the same character, it is interesting that many people don't like certain characters because of choices and outcomes. Classically when a male is rejected by a woman he desires, he will employ skill, manipulation, war, and at times forceful seduction to get what he wants. But then there is the Prince in Much Ado About Nothing, who graciously steps away from his pursuit of Beatrice when he realizes she loves Benedict, and turns to match-making. What is our emotional reaction to women in the same situations

[tempestsarekind]

I have really mixed feelings about both Rose's and Donna's endings, but I think RTD displays a tendency with both characters to have them make choices and then make sure they don't get to keep the results of those choices. In "Doomsday" Rose chooses to stay with the Doctor, and it's the height of tragedy that she's ripped away from him by the void--even though ten minutes earlier, the Doctor tried to make that same decision for her. (Ten is weird that way. He likes to have his tragedy cake and eat it too.) And Donna has the same thing happen.

The thing that really always bothers me about them, though, is the fact that it's never indicated that they have a sense of what the outcomes of their actions might be. Rose wants to get back to Nine, so she tries to get the TARDIS to take her back to him--but does she actually sign up for absorbing the energy of the Time Vortex and becoming the Bad Wolf? Does Donna actually agree to that human-Time Lord metacrisis when she touches the Doctor's severed hand? I don't feel convinced that the