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Magic, Ecology and Sexual Violence in Contemporary Australian Fantasy Fiction

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Magic, Ecology and Sexual Violence in Contemporary Australian Fantasy Fiction Negotiating Genre: Magic, Ecology and Sexual Violence in Contemporary Australian Fantasy Fiction Laurie Anne Ormond 10227480 BA (Hons), University of Western Australia Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Western Australia School of Social and Cultural Studies Department of English and Cultural Studies 2011 2 3 4 Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………. 7 Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………... 9 Chapter One: Negotiating the Genre of Fantasy Fiction……………………….. 11 Chapter Two: Reading Fantasy Fiction………………………………………….. 87 Chapter Three: Nature, Magic and Denied Dependency in Australian Fantasy Fiction……………………………………………………………………... 137 Chapter Four: Magic, Women and Violence in Fantasy Fiction by Sara Douglass and Fiona McIntosh…………………………………………… 185 Chapter Five: Sexual Violence in Contemporary Fantasy Fiction……………… 235 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….. 291 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………. 303 5 6 Abstract This thesis considers the ways in which contemporary fantasy fiction involves genre-specific reading strategies in complex negotiations between a privileged originality and an authorising tradition of mythic narrative which is re-imagined, without historical context, as “Story”. Fantasy fiction draws upon notions of what is appropriate to its genre in order to negotiate the roles of non-human nature and the role of magically empowered female protagonists in the fantasy narrative. The text’s sense of what is appropriate and specific to genre often masks the more powerful and insidious expectations of contemporary popular culture. The thesis applies its analysis of the operations of genre to a critique of the didactic and ideological practices of contemporary Australian fantasy fiction. It considers, in separate chapters, how the theme of magical power is deployed in representations of non-human nature and in representations of sexual violence. Magical power is a convention of the genre that changes over time and yet remains a recognisable marker of genre, offering a site for critical examination of generic practices of writing and reading. This inquiry into the ideology of magical power in fantasy fiction is also organised around a critical investigation of the genre’s representations of ecology and sexual violence. The thesis examines representations of the relationship between humans and non-human nature in Alison Croggon’s four-part The Books of Pellinor (2002-2008). It also examines Sara Douglass’s Wayfarer Redemption sextet (1995– 1999) and its accompanying trilogy DarkGlass Mountain (2007–2010). Douglass’s work both offers and simultaneously retreats from a critique of the way in which the epic fantasy narrative depends upon the victimisation of its female protagonists. Fiona McIntosh’s Trinity, The Quickening, Percheron and Valisar series (2001-2010), complement my study of Douglass and allow me to analyse further connections between women’s experiences of magic and sexual violence in contemporary fantasy. Although fantasy publications have flourished in the period from 1995–2010 in Australia, those authors who write and publish at the heart of the popular genre of high fantasy remain under-studied. Critical readings are unusual in the context of fantasy studies, which usually treat popular high fantasy fiction as both demeaned and adequately explained by its situation in the contemporary mass market. In response to such critical neglect, this thesis is 7 concerned to develop a new theoretical framework for the study of popular fantasy fiction. It departs from previous studies of fantasy in that it is not concerned with the effect of the fantastic or impossible in fantasy fiction. Although the participation of these novels in a popular genre is a theoretical concern of the thesis, it is not involved in listing, categorising, or evaluating the generic conventions of fantasy fiction. Instead it draws upon critical studies of popular genre, and in particular upon Jonathan Culler’s discussion of cultural competence and the text’s imagined reader to integrate an analysis of how fantasy novels negotiate genre. The aim of the thesis is to invigorate fantasy studies by a shift away from the current re-articulation of fantasy’s own themes. The deployment of eco-critical and feminist literary theory and criticism is designed to allow a newly relevant approach to the field of fantasy fiction, and to situate analysis within a broader field of critical and cultural commentary. 8 Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to those whose assistance, encouragement and support have allowed me to complete this research. Warm thanks to my supervisors, Professor Andrew Lynch and Professor Van Ikin, for listening to ideas take shape through many long monologues, and for teaching me how to write, through their perfectly-chosen moments of intervention. Special thanks also to Professor Judy Johnston for her patient assistance and advice. I was able to complete this research through the assistance of an Australian Postgraduate Award and a Jean Rogerson Postgraduate Scholarship. I have received funding from the Graduate Research School, the School of Social and Cultural Studies, and the ARC Network for Early European Research (NEER), which provided with access to brilliant new Australian scholarship; thanks especially to Stephanie Trigg and Louise D’Arcens for their generous interest in my research, and thanks to Pam Bond for her tireless efforts for NEER. I am grateful to Penguin/Viking Books Australia for the advanced copy of The Singing and to HarperCollins Voyager Australia for the early copy of The Infinity Gate. A special thanks to Stephanie Smith at Voyager for her time and insight. My students and my fellow editors at LIMINA have taught me invaluable lessons about the practice and enjoyment of criticism and writing. The convivial and supportive atmosphere of the Department of English, and of my network of fellow postgrads, has allowed me to participate in much-needed conversations about research. I would like especially to acknowledge the generous assistance of Hila Shachar and Alison Jaquet. Thanks to Erin Hobbs, Sylvia Kershaw and Lenise Prater for being kind and incisive readers. For their encouragement, insight, loving support, and my home café, I owe a debt of gratitude to Sylvia Kershaw, Tristan Bergin, Annette Tyler, Dani Barrington, Erin Hobbs, Sanna Peden, Michelle Dutton, and Madeline McCreanor. To all my friends and family, I lift the ban, you are now free to ask how my thesis is going. Peter, Chris, and Casey, you are my support, and knowing you are always there with lifts and love and music to listen to has made all the difference. Jason, you are my life beyond the PhD. If I have opened your eyes to the theory of feminism, then you have opened mine to the scope of it. 9 10 Chapter One: Negotiating the Genre of Fantasy Fiction Transported, through a magic portal, into a fantasy world, a scholar with the training of a literary critic would find it difficult to ply her trade. In fantasy fiction, scholars tend to Know the Truth, and offstage must spend hours learning and reading and memorising for retelling to naïve world-saviours the history and myths of the lands of which they belong. Scholars in fantasy do not question, critique, or consider in context the store of words of which they are the guardians. The Bards, Magicians, Wizards, Record-Keepers, etc., of fantasy are in the text to bring to light lost and dusty fragments (of a poem, prophecy, ancient object) that serve to illuminate and to confirm the whole master-narrative of the world’s history. Farah Mendlesohn makes a comparable point about “the fixedness of history and of learning” in fantasy, noting firstly that learning and scholarship are almost solely represented by history, and secondly that history in fantasy is “unarguable”.1 Although Mendlesohn does refer to the ideological implications of a single, fixed and reliable historical narrative in fantasy,2 her critical strategy in addressing this issue is to draw examples from many texts, comparing and contrasting fantasy texts that deploy a notion of a “fixed” historical master narrative, and then comparing these works, which make up one kind of fantasy (“portal-quest fantasy”) with other kinds of fantasy in which history might be represented as more contingent. Mendlesohn is typical of scholars of fantasy in focusing her analysis upon the variation and deviation of works of fantasy from a particular set of themes or generic conventions provided by the books themselves. She is also typical of critics of fantasy fiction in that she is interested in identifying the conventions of fantasy and in teasing out the various ways in which these conventions are deployed, updated and transformed, usually privileging works that are seen as impressively original. Such a strategy is unlikely to open out the closed “unarguability” deployed by fantasy novels into broader critical discourse. Scholars in fantasy provide transparent windows into the past and the events of the book’s present. Scholars of fantasy have, to date, followed a little too closely their fictional 1 Farah Mendlesohn, Rhetorics of Fantasy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), p. 16. 2 Mendlesohn, Rhetorics, p. 14; see also p. 7. 11 counterparts’ footsteps, writing primarily to confirm the nature and meaning of fantasy fiction worlds overtly stated within the texts themselves. In this chapter, I give a brief account of the ways in which the scholarship of fantasy fiction has attached its analysis to some of modern fantasy’s major themes, reflecting and amplifying many of the literature’s own terms and imagery. Current work on contemporary fantasy is dominated by a re-articulation of the fantasy novel’s primary concerns, such as the presentation of an imagined world that proves itself to have depth or layers of detail; the tangibility of magic; and the transcendental power of an imaginary world and its traditional narrative and stock of images. The deep themes of fantasy literature are often re-presented to the scholarly reader as the scholar’s own critical justification for the artistic or moral value of the genre.
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