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[skygiants]

My last foray into Andre Norton's non-speculative fiction was a SPECTACULAR success, but I am sad to report that the follow-up, Velvet Shadows, was an equally spectacular failure.

I was saving this one for last of the free Andre Norton Gothics I acquired last year because, well, here is the summary:

Tamaris Penfold was hired as a companion to Alain Sauvage's frail but lovely half-sister, Victorine. She would be a "friend" who would try to protect her from another scandalous involvement--like the one back in France.

Of course I was hoping it would be gay! Obviously I was hoping for this! Alas, not only was it not at all gay, it was also extremely racist.

The 'scandalous involvement' is that Victorine, who grew up in the West Indies a la Mrs. Rochester, was engaged to a man of color before her brother came and swept her away. Andre Norton wants everyone to understand that the panic about this is not because racism, it's because he was EVIL and also VOODOO. Why, Mr. Dreamy Love Interest Alain Sauvage can't be racist, he himself had a Native American grandmother! We're definitely not going to be at all weird about that in this book either!

The narrative's stance on ethics becomes especially hilarious when Victorine does finally run away with her secret boyfriend -- super consensually! it's very clear! -- and Tamaris gets some ZOMBIE POWDER to RENDER HER INCAPABLE OF PROTEST when she KIDNAPS HER BACK. What a plucky heroine!

It's okay though, after Tamaris spends the entire last third of the book going to superhuman efforts to thwart the dangers of a mixed-race marriage -- nearly getting human sacrificed to her pains, in a wildly exoticized scene that I cringed through the entire way -- Evil Voodooienne Victorine and her Evil Voodoo King Boyfriend run away together ANYWAY. So the entire thing was pointless, but I hope they're very happy.

That said, the book did have the bonus of featuring Mary Ellen Pleasant as a Historical Side Character. It is also very ambivalent about her -- 'she helped the Underground Railroad, that's cool, I guess, but also she was mean to some white people and HAS AN AGENDA, MAYBE SINISTER!!!' -- but I am not at all ambivalent and would like to know everything about her, immediately. Expect more on that in accordance with the will of the library!

Comments

[larryhammer]

.............

[sovay]

and Tamaris gets some ZOMBIE POWDER to RENDER HER INCAPABLE OF PROTEST when she KIDNAPS HER BACK. What a plucky heroine!

Yikes.

[genarti]

......HOO BOY. That sounds like, uh. A thing and a half. Geez.

[mific]

WAIT! Wikipedia says of Mary Ellen Pleasant The press called her "Mammy" Pleasant but she did not approve, stating "I don't like to be called mammy by everybody. Put. that. down. I am not mammy to everybody in California." So did she also invent the words-separated-by-periods writing style beloved of tumblr and other modern blogs?

[skygiants]

There's 'ends justify the means' and then there's 'I USED DATE RAPE DRUGS ON MY GOVERNEE.'

[skygiants]

The general pattern seems to be that Andre Norton's Ruritanians are a DELIGHT and her Gothics are ABSOLUTELY TO BE AVOIDED.

[skygiants]

I BELIEVE IT. An innovator deserving of recognition for that alone!

[skygiants]

ANDRE.

[ambyr]

Mary Ellen Pleasant also shows up in River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, and I had the same reaction of immediately being more interested in her than in the purported topic of the book. But I failed to read up about her further, so I await your library efforts with curiosity!

Here's what River of Shadows has on her, by the way:

“There were dozens more San Franciscans with a drowned past and an invented present. Mary Ellen Pleasant had been born a slave in Georgia, reputedly learned voodoo from New Orleans’s Marie Laveau herself, became a major figure in the Underground Railroad, sometimes visiting plantations dressed as a young male jockey to scout out slave escape routes. She started over again in San Francisco as an intriguer who by supplying servants and lovers to many of San Francisco’s powerful men became a much-feared power herself, but she also brought a successful lawsuit to integrate the streetcar service. It was not a standard conclusion to a female slave’s career, and it might not have been possible elsewhere. For those who came from the East, the West was a place without a past, and amnesia felt like freedom.”

[sovay]

There's 'ends justify the means' and then there's 'I USED DATE RAPE DRUGS ON MY GOVERNEE.'

This feels so out of character for Norton that I hope I can blame the conventions of the Gothic. I do not remember The White Jade Fox (1975) being this horrific.

[leaina]

Karen Joy Fowler's book Sister Noon features Mary Ellen Pleasant, but I read it so long ago that I don't remember anything else about it.

[genarti]

It sounds like she got the "many characters in Gothic novels make poor decisions and have shaky grasps on things like consent and decency!" memo, but missed... several other crucial memos...

[skygiants]

I saw that on Wikipedia and was intrigued! I really liked one book I read by Karen Joy Fowler (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves) and the other one of hers I read left me largely confused, so that's, you know, 50/50 odds of it being good.

[skygiants]

A TANTALIZINGLY BRIEF summary! I will make sure to share as soon as I turn up anything else.

[skygiants]

I mean, I'll give her this, it's a ... refreshing change ...? .... to have the heroine be more cavalier about consent than the hero ......??

[skygiants]

From my sample size of two, the conventions of the Gothic do seem to do something weird to Norton's sense of plotting and characterization; I didn't like the heroine of Snow Shadow at all either.