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Jan. 6th, 2015 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI reread Robin McKinley's Outlaws of Sherwood because I had a dream of writing a Yuletide treat for it, but then I grabbed two pinch-hits instead so this did not happen. However, it still meant I got to reread Outlaws of Sherwood!
Outlaws of Sherwood wasn't my formative Robin Hood story -- that was actually Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men In Tights -- but after that DEEPLY ICONIC film, it's probably my favorite variation. Robin McKinley basically sticks to the classic Robin Hood plot as outlined in Howard Pyle's Merry Adventures, but very consciously lays it onto sturdy realist bones by making her Robin a gloomy pragmatist who has zero illusions about the long-term feasibility of lurking in the forest stealing other people's money.
ROBIN: Crap, I accidentally murdered a king's forester!
MARIAN AND MUCH: OK, it's cool, it's fine, you can go live in the woods with a band of outlaws and strike a dashing political blow against the Normans!
ROBIN: .... why would you think this is a good plan. This is a terrible plan.
MARIAN AND MUCH: Well, buddy, right now it is your only plan. And hey, it'll be symbolic!
ROBIN: OK, fine, I will go live in the woods and be an outlaw, but please don't tell people to come live in the forest with me ---
MARIAN AND MUCH: Hey who wants to come live in the forest with Robin and be symbolic! Come on guys it'll be fun!
ROBIN: *FACEPALM*
(Robin McKinley is grounded in realism when it comes to the details of living in a forest but really does not care about the historical verisimilitude of the Saxon/Norman conflict. Norman oppressors are plot-conveniently oppressive and that is fine.)
Anyway, it turns out Robin is also not a very good archer -- Marian is significantly better than he is -- and is not very good at or interested in being dramatic and dashing, but he is extremely good at developing forest infrastructure! And when various oppressed persons come to seek him in the forest he is also very good at finding them other places to go and be less oppressed, unless they have really good reasons to stay. I appreciate all of this a lot.
I also appreciate how McKinley handles the women in her story. There are three main female characters: Marian, Cecily and Marjorie. Marian is, of course, Marian, who spends most of her time juggling her role as noble lady with her desire to run off and be nobly dashing (which she is rather better at than Robin is). Despite the fact that she is better at most things than he is, Robin, who feels gloomily guilty about all the time she's spending in Sherwood Forest, spends a lot of time telling her to stay away, it's too dangerous, she shouldn't be there.
Then Cecily turns up, because Robin McKinley felt very strongly that it was necessary to add a cross-dressing girl OC to her cast list (AND I AGREE, well done that woman, always needs more cross-dressing girls.) Cecily is a lot of the reason I imprinted on this book when I was a teenager. In a reread now, I still love Cecily for all the reasons I loved her when I was fourteen, but what I love most is the truth bombs she launches at Robin & Co. when her cunning disguise is revealed and they all ask her why she felt the need to disguise her gender. "What, we've got girls! Look, Marian comes and it's fine!" At which point Cecily requests that they all take a hard look at all the ways in which Marian and the few other women in the band are treated differently, and the underlying assumptions they've all got about what, exactly, she might have expected had she turned up under her own name.
(I also find it continually hilarious that she hides from her brother for like months, despite being in the same band of TWENTY PEOPLE, just by conveniently ducking behind a tree every time he shows up. ACE STEALTH, CECILY.)
And then there is Marjorie, a lovely and delicate flower whose equally delicate minstrel boyfriend asks Robin to help him rescue her from an unwanted marriage. Suddenly, Marjorie is hanging out in a forest! with outlaws! under a tree! GREAT. And Robin & Co. are all like "GREAT, yeah, this ... this will go awesome. >.< Man, she is NOTHING like Marian." And then ... Marjorie copes. She copes and she copes and she copes, and it's obviously not the life she imagined or expected, and whether she's happy or not is an open question, but she's determined to live it, all the same. I love Marjorie. Marjorie is wonderful.
And then there is the ending. The ending is not cheerful, because Robin McKinley agrees with her protagonist that this zany outlaw life is just not sustainable! There's a big battle with Guy of Gisborne and several people die, and then King Richard returns, and is like "....well y'all are charming but you're also SUPER breaking the law, like, SO MANY laws," and orders everyone off to the Crusades, which as we all know is not exactly fun times.
...ok there is a moment of hilarity in there when the question arises of what to do with Marian and Cecily and Richard's like 'eh, it's fine, there's cross-dressing girls under like EVERY ROCK in the army of the Crusades, it might as well be Monstrous Regiment out there.' Which, OK! Sure! If you say so, King Richard!
But mostly, it is not hilarity. It's a dark and uncertain future -- and hopeful, in that they do get to stay together, and, you know, the Third Crusade was terrible but it only lasted three years, they might outlast it. Or they might not. When I was younger I did not like this ending at ALL. Now ... I don't know. I mean, I get why people don't like it, and I get why Younger Me did not like it. But I have a lot of respect for it.
Outlaws of Sherwood wasn't my formative Robin Hood story -- that was actually Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men In Tights -- but after that DEEPLY ICONIC film, it's probably my favorite variation. Robin McKinley basically sticks to the classic Robin Hood plot as outlined in Howard Pyle's Merry Adventures, but very consciously lays it onto sturdy realist bones by making her Robin a gloomy pragmatist who has zero illusions about the long-term feasibility of lurking in the forest stealing other people's money.
ROBIN: Crap, I accidentally murdered a king's forester!
MARIAN AND MUCH: OK, it's cool, it's fine, you can go live in the woods with a band of outlaws and strike a dashing political blow against the Normans!
ROBIN: .... why would you think this is a good plan. This is a terrible plan.
MARIAN AND MUCH: Well, buddy, right now it is your only plan. And hey, it'll be symbolic!
ROBIN: OK, fine, I will go live in the woods and be an outlaw, but please don't tell people to come live in the forest with me ---
MARIAN AND MUCH: Hey who wants to come live in the forest with Robin and be symbolic! Come on guys it'll be fun!
ROBIN: *FACEPALM*
(Robin McKinley is grounded in realism when it comes to the details of living in a forest but really does not care about the historical verisimilitude of the Saxon/Norman conflict. Norman oppressors are plot-conveniently oppressive and that is fine.)
Anyway, it turns out Robin is also not a very good archer -- Marian is significantly better than he is -- and is not very good at or interested in being dramatic and dashing, but he is extremely good at developing forest infrastructure! And when various oppressed persons come to seek him in the forest he is also very good at finding them other places to go and be less oppressed, unless they have really good reasons to stay. I appreciate all of this a lot.
I also appreciate how McKinley handles the women in her story. There are three main female characters: Marian, Cecily and Marjorie. Marian is, of course, Marian, who spends most of her time juggling her role as noble lady with her desire to run off and be nobly dashing (which she is rather better at than Robin is). Despite the fact that she is better at most things than he is, Robin, who feels gloomily guilty about all the time she's spending in Sherwood Forest, spends a lot of time telling her to stay away, it's too dangerous, she shouldn't be there.
Then Cecily turns up, because Robin McKinley felt very strongly that it was necessary to add a cross-dressing girl OC to her cast list (AND I AGREE, well done that woman, always needs more cross-dressing girls.) Cecily is a lot of the reason I imprinted on this book when I was a teenager. In a reread now, I still love Cecily for all the reasons I loved her when I was fourteen, but what I love most is the truth bombs she launches at Robin & Co. when her cunning disguise is revealed and they all ask her why she felt the need to disguise her gender. "What, we've got girls! Look, Marian comes and it's fine!" At which point Cecily requests that they all take a hard look at all the ways in which Marian and the few other women in the band are treated differently, and the underlying assumptions they've all got about what, exactly, she might have expected had she turned up under her own name.
(I also find it continually hilarious that she hides from her brother for like months, despite being in the same band of TWENTY PEOPLE, just by conveniently ducking behind a tree every time he shows up. ACE STEALTH, CECILY.)
And then there is Marjorie, a lovely and delicate flower whose equally delicate minstrel boyfriend asks Robin to help him rescue her from an unwanted marriage. Suddenly, Marjorie is hanging out in a forest! with outlaws! under a tree! GREAT. And Robin & Co. are all like "GREAT, yeah, this ... this will go awesome. >.< Man, she is NOTHING like Marian." And then ... Marjorie copes. She copes and she copes and she copes, and it's obviously not the life she imagined or expected, and whether she's happy or not is an open question, but she's determined to live it, all the same. I love Marjorie. Marjorie is wonderful.
And then there is the ending. The ending is not cheerful, because Robin McKinley agrees with her protagonist that this zany outlaw life is just not sustainable! There's a big battle with Guy of Gisborne and several people die, and then King Richard returns, and is like "....well y'all are charming but you're also SUPER breaking the law, like, SO MANY laws," and orders everyone off to the Crusades, which as we all know is not exactly fun times.
...ok there is a moment of hilarity in there when the question arises of what to do with Marian and Cecily and Richard's like 'eh, it's fine, there's cross-dressing girls under like EVERY ROCK in the army of the Crusades, it might as well be Monstrous Regiment out there.' Which, OK! Sure! If you say so, King Richard!
But mostly, it is not hilarity. It's a dark and uncertain future -- and hopeful, in that they do get to stay together, and, you know, the Third Crusade was terrible but it only lasted three years, they might outlast it. Or they might not. When I was younger I did not like this ending at ALL. Now ... I don't know. I mean, I get why people don't like it, and I get why Younger Me did not like it. But I have a lot of respect for it.
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Date: 2015-01-08 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-08 05:38 am (UTC)Agreed. Even if Sherwood didn't click with me, I can recognize it as being part of the same generation.
I like Sunshine, but it's hard for me somehow to associate it with The McKinley Of My Childhood -- it feels so different in tone -- and then Chalice didn't stick in my head at all, and I've not read anything of hers since.
Sunshine is very recognizable to me on a prose level and in the way she conceptualizes the world's magic, although I agree that it contains many more tropes of paranormal romance than her early novels. (Initially I wrote "baking and sex," but I don't think that's actually true.) It frustrated me that she never wrote a sequel when it seemed to demand one—not just in terms of narrative what-happens-next, but structurally; it was like half the book got left in her head somewhere. Chalice I really, really liked until the ending, when I just wanted to punt it. That was frustrating in a completely different way!
My mother liked the premise of Pegasus, but was increasingly annoyed by the handling of it, and even more annoyed that the book ended on a pure cliffhanger. I think of her as being a much more tolerant reader than I am, so, argh.