[ SECRET POST #2837 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2837 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 014 secrets from Secret Submission Post #405.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. http://i.imgur.com/KRI1rlK.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, very good point. I loved this book as a teen, but as an adult I see more of the flaws. Morgaine's jealousy of Gwenhwyfar colors all her future encounters with her, so we see Gwenhwyfar as weak and shrewish, etc. No other women but Morgaine seems to have any humanity. And yeah, sadly it does make more sense in light of MZB's cover up for her husband's sexual abuse of children. :(

[(Anonymous)]

And the fact that she raped her daughter from the age of three until the age of twelve.

[(Anonymous)]

But Morgaine's jealous of Gwenhwyfar isn't exactly subtle. I got that when I first read the book when I was like, eleven. Morgaine's supposed to be flawed. Though I disagree that no other woman has humanity - Vivienne does, her mother does, the other priestesses do, Gwenhwyfar even does. The main characters just all had bad traits as well.

I just don't get how this is criticism that characters have flaws, and that seems to be a theme with OP's criticism.

[saunteringdownwards]

Slightly OT: This has been lurking on a dusty bookshelf for months now. I love Arthurian mythology, so I kept edging closer to it... and then never quite picked it up.

Then the whole abuse scandal broke, and it's gone from my "maybe someday" list to my "hell no, never" list - not because it's necessarily a bad book, but because I doubt I'll be able to separate the work from the authorial context, which makes me nauseous.

[quirkytizzy]

Same. I'm saddened that it is a book I'll never read, even having wanted to read it for years, but I just can't now.

[chardmonster]

So can you qualify this? Because a hell of a lot of people seem to think any book depicting female characters in a bad light is womanhating regardless of whose perspective the book is being written from.

I mean if what you took from this book is "Morgaine is jealous of Gwenhwyfar and that's terrible!" and not "hey the orgy scene is hella creepy" it's a little suspect.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not womanhating when female characters do bad things. It IS womanhating when your protagonist hates on nearly every other woman in the book for doing the same shit she does, and we're supposed to root for her anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

It's been a long time since I've read this book, but I have vivid memories of pretty much all the characters being flawed. Excuse me for the failed spellings, but Morgaine was extremely flawed, too. Male or female, none of the leading characters were even close to perfect - except perhaps Arthur himself, who I remember being likable in how he cared for people and tried to please them, but his lack of backbone toward Guinevere (whatever the hell that spelling was) was his fatal flaw as far as I'm concerned.

I guess I don't really get this criticism. Having books with perfect and "likable" female characters doesn't make it feminist. Having characters with flaws and agency does make for a good story, though. Do you actually think the male characters were better? Or that the flaws of the female characters makes the book anti-women?

[(Anonymous)]

It's not the flaws of the female characters that makes the book anti-woman, but the specific flaws they have and the way they're treated. The narrative has a very distinct "The Protagonist is Better Than Those Women" cast to it, and that is extremely anti-woman. Like the secret said, it hates women from a woman's perspective.

[(Anonymous)]

OT but 'horrifying' is becoming such an overused word in some circles that even if the situation warrants it, I tend to side eye the user. Perhaps it's brush tarring but there it is. Same with the word 'vile'.

TW RAPE.

[the_missing_y]

I may have been misinformed, or might be thinking of someone else, but IIRC, and the scuttlebutt is not lying to me then this author Raped her own daughter as a chid, and fucked a bunch of other girls irl.

Horrifying and Vile might have a place when talking about this llady and her works.

[(Anonymous)]

Hope she and her husband are burning in the deepest levels of hell.

[(Anonymous)]

I've attempted to read this twice and failed twice. Just couldn't get into it, even though Arthurian legend from a feminist's POV sounds like just my thing. Then I heard about the scandal and I'm never touching it again.

[(Anonymous)]

This is my exact experience. Well, not exact. I think I tried three times, but yeah.

[(Anonymous)]

Same here on every point.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I've come to dislike this book, and that before I knew anything about MZB herself.

The portrayal of Gwenhwyfar really annoyed me. She was written as a stereotypical Christian woman with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. She seemed to portray everything that MZB did not like. Having flawed characters is one thing, but one who is projected as everything the author hates is something else.

[(Anonymous)]

Seconded. And consequently, Gwen was the most traditionally feminine woman in the story as well. And I'm really sick of "feminine" qualities getting shat upon. Like the secret said, it's the same misogyny wearing a cloche instead pf a trilby.

[(Anonymous)]

YES. Gwenhwyfar was such a straw villain, as was the analog to St. Patrick.

[(Anonymous)]

I think she had some sympathetic moments, and she was fascinating as a villain. Naive, desperate and weak - while still not being a fundamentally horrible or sadistic person - are interesting traits for "the bad guy". In fact, I never got the sense that she was "the bad guy" even though she's clearly an antagonist. The book spends more time in her head than any other characters sans the protagonist, after all.

[ex_mek82]

I recall my mother had me read this book for a literature assignment several years ago, and I HATED this book. There was nothing redeemable about it, and it was one of the very few times where I just wanted all the characters to DIAF because they were just flat-out horrible people -Morgaine included-. Plus, something about it just didn't sit well with me, but I couldn't quite place what it was.

Then I read about the whole scandal regarding MZB and her husband within the last couple years, and suddenly everything made sense.

I hate using this word because it's been so overused, but... Gross. That's the only thing I can think of to describe this book and the person who wrote it.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes. I think the part where I up and threw the damn book across the room was when Gorlois' shade appeared to Igraine, and she suddenly realized that he "loved her in his own way."

After he raped her on their wedding night, beat the shit out of her, accused her of cheating on him, called her names, and threatened to take her daughter away.

And yes, after reading about MZB's daughter, it all makes perfect sense in the worst way possible.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes. So much agreement. This book is fucking awful for so many reasons that you can apply Death of the Author and still come up with ways to hate it.

I agree with whoever said Morgaine hates every other woman in the book. Sometimes she hates them for good reasons (looking at you, Viviane), but ultimately the woman she hates the most is Gwen, and she hates her for such petty, shrewish reasons that it's hard to take her seriously at all.

The only character who was likeable in any way was Igraine. She got out of an abusive marriage and engineered her own happiness. But then Uther died and she became the same spineless husk of a self-loathing Good Christian Woman that Gwen was, for absolutely no good reason (Uther wasn't even down with Christianity all that much). Because somehow she reasoned that Gorlois "loved her in his own way" (what the actual blue-blooded fuck?) and she felt guilty for getting the crazy son of a bitch killed.

The main problem is that while Morgaine is flawed as hell, she's never treated like it. Everything she does and thinks somehow ends up getting justified. She can do no wrong, even when what she's doing is beyond fucked up.

[(Anonymous)]

Marion Zimmer Bradley! It's been so long. I remember I loved Fall of Atlantis and I still love the storyline she wrote in Black Trillium. Never read that one because I don't really care for arthurian mythology.

[dantesspirit]

Bonus Secret- It rather does, doesn't it?

Finding out about what she and her husband did, sickened me. I will never buy or read another of her books or any endorsed by her Estate as a result.