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Sep. 26th, 2011 02:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo okay guys, let's talk about Equal Rites!
Actually though, before we do that, let me link tokate_nepveu's blog post about The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic. If anybody else is following along and making their own posts, let me know and I will link to them too - I want to stalk other discussions and here everyone's thoughts!
Okay, now let's talk about Equal Rites. I should start out by saying that I have kind of a different relationship with this book than I do with almost any other Discworld book, because it's the only one of the early ones that I couldn't find as an adolescent. So I didn't read it until much later, at which point, precisely none of it stuck in my head except I guess the existence of a girl named Esk. Many things were surprising to me! Perhaps most surprising of all: GRANNY WEATHERWAX. So here is the first scene in which the character who will later be revealed as Granny Weatherwax shows up:
SOME WIZARD: I am going to give this staff to your son! Have him brought down here.
GRANNY WEATHERWAX: But -
ESK'S DAD: Quiet! This is very important. What do we do now, sir?
SOME WIZARD: The child must hold it.
GRANNY WEATHERWAX: But -
ESK'S DAD: It's all right, Granny. I know what I'm about. She's a witch, don't mind her. (! !!!!)
We all know what happens from there - the son is a girl who is Esk who becomes the first female wizard - but the really startling thing is that somebody gets away with interrupting Granny Weatherwax. This would NEVER HAPPEN in a later Witches book.
As the book goes on, proto-Granny does get more and more Granny-ish, and in the end she even gets to have a confrontation with/flirtation with/total domination of a Chancellor of the Unseen University whom we may as well call proto-Ridcully. You can see where Granny's going to come from. But I do find myself wanting to fanwank that is, you know, a cousin who happens to have the same name.
Also, she Borrows a swarm of bees like it ain't no thing.
ANYWAY. The other clear thing about this book as a Witches book - and one of the reasons, I think, that the witches as a whole just don't come across as nearly as powerful in this book as they do elsewhere - is because Pratchett hasn't yet figured out that he's writing about witches as a community. Equal Rites is a first attempt at a feminist book by a guy writing in the eighties, and in my opinion it is not a bad effort (although I want to hear what everybody else thinks!) He actually does better than most by having proto-Granny be pretty gender essentialist and also still pretty badass in her mastery of traditional female stuff - he has already figured out that you don't have to put down what's there in order to complain about what isn't, which is a step that a lot of people, especially in the eighties, found hard to grasp. But I think the story of the witches of Ankh-Morpork gets a lot better, and better at being feminist, with the development of Granny in conjunction with Nanny Ogg and Magrat and Agnes. It's not that we don't need books about adolescent girls figuring out if they can be powerful, but it's so much rarer to find books about grown-up women who are powerful.
In other news: how weird is it to have creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions showing up as a plot point in a Witches book? So weird!
Actually though, before we do that, let me link to
kate_nepveu's blog post about The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic. If anybody else is following along and making their own posts, let me know and I will link to them too - I want to stalk other discussions and here everyone's thoughts! Okay, now let's talk about Equal Rites. I should start out by saying that I have kind of a different relationship with this book than I do with almost any other Discworld book, because it's the only one of the early ones that I couldn't find as an adolescent. So I didn't read it until much later, at which point, precisely none of it stuck in my head except I guess the existence of a girl named Esk. Many things were surprising to me! Perhaps most surprising of all: GRANNY WEATHERWAX. So here is the first scene in which the character who will later be revealed as Granny Weatherwax shows up:
SOME WIZARD: I am going to give this staff to your son! Have him brought down here.
GRANNY WEATHERWAX: But -
ESK'S DAD: Quiet! This is very important. What do we do now, sir?
SOME WIZARD: The child must hold it.
GRANNY WEATHERWAX: But -
ESK'S DAD: It's all right, Granny. I know what I'm about. She's a witch, don't mind her. (! !!!!)
We all know what happens from there - the son is a girl who is Esk who becomes the first female wizard - but the really startling thing is that somebody gets away with interrupting Granny Weatherwax. This would NEVER HAPPEN in a later Witches book.
As the book goes on, proto-Granny does get more and more Granny-ish, and in the end she even gets to have a confrontation with/flirtation with/total domination of a Chancellor of the Unseen University whom we may as well call proto-Ridcully. You can see where Granny's going to come from. But I do find myself wanting to fanwank that is, you know, a cousin who happens to have the same name.
Also, she Borrows a swarm of bees like it ain't no thing.
ANYWAY. The other clear thing about this book as a Witches book - and one of the reasons, I think, that the witches as a whole just don't come across as nearly as powerful in this book as they do elsewhere - is because Pratchett hasn't yet figured out that he's writing about witches as a community. Equal Rites is a first attempt at a feminist book by a guy writing in the eighties, and in my opinion it is not a bad effort (although I want to hear what everybody else thinks!) He actually does better than most by having proto-Granny be pretty gender essentialist and also still pretty badass in her mastery of traditional female stuff - he has already figured out that you don't have to put down what's there in order to complain about what isn't, which is a step that a lot of people, especially in the eighties, found hard to grasp. But I think the story of the witches of Ankh-Morpork gets a lot better, and better at being feminist, with the development of Granny in conjunction with Nanny Ogg and Magrat and Agnes. It's not that we don't need books about adolescent girls figuring out if they can be powerful, but it's so much rarer to find books about grown-up women who are powerful.
In other news: how weird is it to have creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions showing up as a plot point in a Witches book? So weird!
Re: Agreed on the Borrowing
Date: 2011-10-02 05:54 pm (UTC)Re: Agreed on the Borrowing
Date: 2011-10-02 07:10 pm (UTC)(Sample lyric:
She turned into a full dress ship and sailed across the sea
But he became a bold captain, and aboard of her went he)