Reading is what I do when I’m upset. I’ve been re-reading Tamora Pierce’s ‘The Song of the Lioness’ and ‘The Immortals’ series this last few days. These books were my first introduction to feminism, although I didn’t know what that was at the time and all I was interested in was the fun girl characters in a fantasy. These girls rescued themselves.
I first read them 24 years ago, and my original ‘The Immortals’ books are falling apart. I don’t know what happened to my paperback ‘Lioness’ books but I’ve still got my first ever, Hardback ex-libris, copy of ‘In the hand of the Goddess’ (Lioness book 2).
My sister bought me the first ‘The Song of the Lioness’ book for Christmas so I bought myself the second. It and the first ‘Immortals’ book arrived on Friday. I finished them both by Saturday so my sister ordered the third ‘Lioness’ book. It arrived yesterday. I read it yesterday. I found the second ‘Immortals’ book in the Grimsby branch of Waterstones this afternoon after I’d visited the Adult Autism Service about my PIP Mandatory Reconsideration notice. (The DWP upheld the assessor decision, apparently I don’t have any overwhelming psychological distress so all’s well. Ignorant twerps. I’ve got to go to tribunal now and I haven’t a clue where to start. But my psychologist is going to help me and I have am appointment next week.)
I was in such a state about that, that I bought ‘Wolf Speaker’ (Immortals 2) because books make me happy. I was considering trying to get by on what’s in the cupboard and freezer, and buying the other three books so I complete both series, but my sisters will tell me off if I do that.
While I was in Waterstones, I was tallying up all the books I’m going to buy when the DWP gets its arse handed to it by the tribunal panel and they have to pay me back pay. So many books! There’s a fiftieth anniversary edition of LOTR that I want, and different editions of Discworld books and then there’s all the new books that I’ve only read as ebook ARCs. So many indie publishers and bookshops will be benefitting from my celebratory book buying spree.
I just have to get to Tribunal and have it go in my favour.
I find comfort in Tamora Pierce’s books. I remember how much comfort I found in them as a frightened, confused early teenager (12 – 14). I liked her heroines and their adventures. Especially Daine, she was so much fun and I identified with her love of animals and feeling out of place among humans. I totally understood being so much around animals that I forgot how to be human. Mainly because humans are scary and complex, and terrible at telling you exactly what they mean. Animals are complex but they’re always direct.
These were the first books where I properly identified with the characters. I loved the ‘Swallows and Amazons’ books but never entirely identified with any of the characters, except possibly tomboyish Nancy Blackett, but even then not really. She was too posh. They were aspirational books my Gramps read as a child and wanted me to read. So I did.
I read ‘The Famous Five’ series and enjoyed them, and identified with George Kirren (another tomboy character). But again I read them because an adult told me they were good books.
I think I liked George and Nancy because they weren’t girly-girls, and neither was I. The difference is neither of them ever grew up and integrated their dislike of gender norms with the reality of their girl-ness, they both didn’t like being girls because of the social norms of their times but they did nothing about it. They rebelled by acting like boys rather than by just being themselves and/or trying to change social convention.
Both series ignored the changes taking place in society at the time, the social developments that were giving women more freedoms, while presenting an idealised version of 1930s and 1950s middle-class Britain. I don’t know why Arthur Ransome ignored things but in Enid Blyton’s case it was because she was emotionally stuck at the age of 11 when her parents divorced. The tomboy girl characters never accepted that they were girls, they were always in conflict between how they were told they should be, how they were, and who they wanted to be.
I don’t think that was a healthy lesson for me. It told me that if I didn’t want to conform to social conventions of ‘girlness’, which I didn’t, it’s all so much pink nonsense, I had to be a boy analogue instead and deny anything about me that was ‘girly’ or perceived as a feminine interest or attribute. It told me to despise girls for being girls, especially if they did conform to social expectations and gender conventions.
Alanna (the Lioness) showed me something else. She makes the journey from the ‘girl stuff is bad/girls are weak’ tomboy/boy analogue to a woman who accepts that there are traditionally feminine things she enjoys (like learning to weave among the Bazhir, falling in love, wearing clothes that aren’t purely practical, marrying and having children), they aren’t weaknesses, accepts and acknowledges that she’s a woman and she can do things traditionally coded masculine/for men and boys. And she broke all the social conventions for her class and gender. While maintaining dignity, changing attitudes and being a role model.
She crafts her own identity, follows her own road, rather than being pushed into one box or another by social expectations and gender norms.
It’s not being a woman that’s the issue, it’s the social conventions that limit what being a woman means that are the problem. The books tell us ‘be yourself, even if it puts the world’s ideas on their ears’, because once someone breaks out of the boxes we’re put in based on what’s between out legs at birth, and where we’re born, others will follow. They’ve just been waiting for someone to knock a hole in the wall so they can escape too.
Well, this went in longer than expected.
To sumnerise: I love Tamora Pierce’s books.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 