Dyfed ca 480 AD (Celtic Myth/Camelot/Infinite Worlds)

[Tuk the Weekah]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I'm actually reading it now. So far, I really dislike every point of view character, as they all seem to have an uncanny way to twist whatever they claim to believe and stand for into a justification for doing whatever they already want to do, all the while condemning others for supposed sins and weaknesses that are either objectively identical to what they justify in their own case or seemingly much less serious.

I don't know whether the author has a really negative view of humanity as a whole or what, but because the reader is only aware of the inner monologuing of the female characters, the unfortunate result is that it's only possible to find sympathetic characters among the male ones.

I did, at first, find Morgause sympathetic in comparison to Igraine, Vivienne or Morgaine, but that was only while the character didn't get enough attention from the author to receive an inner monologue establishing her as equally narrow-minded, hypocritical, vindictive, petty, humourless, manipulative and easily manipulated as the others.

I quite disliked Mists for about 3/4ths of the way through the book*, until I realized that, perhaps subtilely, perhaps unwittingly, she was creating a case for the Christianization of Britain. All the pagan characters she invests time in spend their time using, then maliciously breaking, the people around them; and almost universally, once these human tools are broken, the Church quietly, gently, and protectively picks them up and tries to put their psyches back together, giving them a safe haven for their pain.

*I have the giant, excellent-killer-of-rats-by-falling-on-them omnibus edition.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Tuk the Weekah

I quite disliked Mists for about 3/4ths of the way through the book*, until I realized that, perhaps subtilely, perhaps unwittingly, she was creating a case for the Christianization of Britain. All the pagan characters she invests time in spend their time using, then maliciously breaking, the people around them; and almost universally, once these human tools are broken, the Church quietly, gently, and protectively picks them up and tries to put their psyches back together, giving them a safe haven for their pain.

From a religious point of view, the author was in the process of adopting a Gnostic Christianity in place of her earlier Neo-Pagan views, so it may not be surprising to see characters who argue a syncretic kind of Christianity treated sympathetically.

The problem is that such characters are exclusively male. Uther, Taliesin, Kevin, Uriens, Lancelet and Arthur all show, in their own ways, some willingness to allow people to be judges of their own consciences and religious convictions. All of them also demonstrate the ability to exist in a wordly context, as kings, counselors or warlords, while still retaining their faith, spirituality, morality and compassion for others.

Uther and Lancelet are the most flawed of these characters, whereas Taliesin and Kevin are holy figures representing religious tolerance and diversity, and both Arthur and Uriens are saintly rulers who might justly be held up as paragons of any religion their followers espouse.

For all that the story was held up as the story of the women around Arthur, making people like Igraine, Viviane, Morgaine and Guinevere the viewpoint characters didn't make them protagonists in any meaningful sense. It just made for a book where most of the interesting stuff takes place off-screen, most of the interesting characters are presented through the narration of other characters who hate them for having the audacity to show tolerance and rationality and most of the substance of the book is made up out of the self-justifications of the villains.

It is true that there were also male characters with negative qualities, but apart from Patricius (St. Patrick), those who appeared 'on screen' were unimportant petty clerics and a robber 'warlord' with almost no followers. And even Patricius and Meleagant were less objectionable than the female villains, in that each of them had a clear goal with his villainy and their evil acts were committed in pursuit of these goals.

The viewpoint characters, a group which is unfortunately synonymous with 'women' in this story, did not even have consistent goals and rarely, if ever, had any clear idea how their various brutalities would bring them any closer to their vague ideal for the future. Indeed, their most consistent motivations seemed to be body image issues and jealousy of other women. More or less every female character is written to be a caricature of what one imagines men who argued against female suffrage believed about women.

The only female character to demonstrate a glimmer of rationality about religious matters (or anything else) was Morgeuse. She was not exactly a convinced atheist for the entire story, but she was, at any rate, convinced that no gods had anything good in store for humanity. From the evidence presented in-universe, that is a very sensible view. Morgeuse declined to serve any gods, but she believed in magic and could use it without superstitous religions trappings, thus neatly demonstrating that the worldview of every religious character in the novel was at least incomplete, if not wrong.

But any flashes of sympathetic characterisation Morgeuse may have got are invalidated by having her murder a serving wench during a magical rite, for no reason at all, except, it seems, the author's conviction that women are universally petty and shallow, unbelievably shrewish, rabidly jealous and filled with the fury of a thousand suns toward all other women. It was utterly pointless. It had no plausible in-story justification. The small animal that had already been sacrificed provided quite enough power for the magic that she was using and there was no reason at all for Morgeuse to have any feelings, one way or another, about that servant girl.

It seemed that Morgeuse only sacrificed the servant girl because during the rite, the servant fell into the fire and was dying anyway. What Morgeuse had planned to do with her before was ambigious, but it certainly was not the sacrifice as it happened, as that was clearly established as being a spur-of-the-moment decision triggered by her realising that the burns already sustained would inevitably be fatal. Granted, those burns were sustained because she scuffled with the servant girl, in annoyance with her.

What annoyed Morgeuse about the servant girl wasn't clear, really. It just seemed that she really hated other women and was furious that the servant girl was acting like one. It's almost af if the author felt that she had accidentally made a female character somewhat sympathetic, so she hastily wrote in a pointless murder for her to commit for feminine and unscrutable reasons.

Until that, Morgeuse was unambigiously the most sympathetic female character. Granted, that was mostly because she was a cheerful rogue with actual human characteristics and she didn't seem to bother convincing herself that she was entirely without responsibility in everything she did, because Goddess and fate and prophecy and 'I don't make choices, I'm not a rational agent, it just so happens that my religion requires me to do exactly as I want to anyway, only without guilt'.

There was one moment during an internal monologue where she wished her husband was there, in order to make an unpleasant decision for her and ordering her to help him, showing that she had the same need as every other female character in the story to dodge responsibility, but she ended up being able to make up her own mind. Alone among the female characters in the story, she actually acknowledged her responsibility for her own actions.

And yes, choosing to foster the potential heir herself instead of letting her sister raise her own child might seem cold, but she used no force or coercion to do so. Morgaine gave up her own child of her own free will. And Morgeuse didn't even have her own advancement in mind, she was trying to prevent a possible future scenario where her own sons might be fighting each other for the crown of a small kingdom by trying to make sure that each of them would be able to gain lands elsewhere.

Morgeuse even actually had a loving and healthy relationship with her husband, one based on mutual respect and liking. It's true that both parties had sexual relations with other people, but as they seemed to have a mutual understanding about that, that only makes it a healthy and functioning open marriage. Furthermore, Morgeuse genuinely loved her children and was able to show them affection. She even had affection to spare for foster children, sisters and nieces. Finally, it seemed like she was fun at parties.

Of course, the other female characters consistently condemned her for all of these things. Igraine tells the reader that Morgeuse was born without the capacity for love and both Igraine and Viviane appear to condemn her out of hand for finding men physically attractive. Which is ironic, to say the least, considering that they are supposed to represent the religion that doesn't have irrational hangups, taboos and ritual shaming connected with female sexuality.

Not that this supposed liberal attitude toward women or female sexuality is ever manifested by any of the main characters. They constantly fetishise female virginity, utterly ignore any considerations of consent by the woman whose body it is, whether in regard to intercourse or abortion, and are quick to slut-shame any woman who doesn't have a hypocritical religious justification for having sexual relations or even sexual thoughts. In all the ways that matter, the priestesses of the Goddess represent the worst tyranny of the patriarchy, but wearing dresses.

If the author wasn't trying to argue that the bigoted priests of Christianity were perfectly right when they argued that woman was the source of Original Sin, therefore wicked and not fit to speak in public or make decisions, why couldn't she have even one ethical female character? One female character who shows religous tolerance? One female character who shows rationality?