“However, more often than not, people will liberally share artists’ work without attribution. (Just ask any self-employed artist online about this.)“By doing this, they are making it more difficult for people interested in our work to find us, and therefore, losing chances of getting a job,” López explained.“For someone who lives [off] occasional commissions, it’s vital that every work we share has a proper credit.“In late October, López received an email from a Spanish editorial company asking if they’d be interested testing for a position as an illustrator.”
Aug 13 2017
After the racist, terrorist attack in Charlottesville, I wanted to remind everyone of Kindred, a wonderful book by an amazing author, Octavia Butler.
If you don’t know Octavia Butler, you should. A powerful sci fi book with a keen awareness of how science fiction provides a mirror to our own world’s best and worst.
If you don’t know Kindred, then read on, because I’m going to tell you why this book is the next one you should read. It’s available in every form, including graphic novel and audio, so no excuse. Keep reading for a review on why this book is important right now. Kindred is to race what The Handmaid’s Tale is to feminism.
We’re running our biggest ever special on our June program, the Debut Career Development Retreat. This retreat is designed for authors who will have/have had their first book debut in 2016, 2017, or 2018 and will focus on strategies for surviving and thriving in that challenging debut year and building a career that will last. We have lots of great guest teachers who will be sharing their wisdom with us, from literary publicist Julie Schoerke to NYT-bestselling author Carrie Ryan to author and bookseller Terra Elan McVoy and more.
We’ve wanted to do this retreat for a long time. We remember how hard that debut year was and how often we felt lost, and we want to give new authors the knowledge and tools we WISH we’d had!
To that end, we’ve slashed our prices to the bone in order to make it as easy as possible for new authors to attend. We literally can’t go any lower and still, like, feed you guys while you’re with us.
Should we have more authors sign up than we’re expecting, thus lowering our operating costs per person, we will actually REFUND you a portion of what you paid. We’re not looking to make money here. Publishing is hard, and we want to do everything we can for the next generation. We think this retreat will be incredibly valuable, both in what you’ll learn while you’re there and, maybe more importantly, in the relationships you’ll form.
Head over to our website to learn more or to sign up! We really hope to see you there!
YOU GUYS! We really want to make this happen because we really want to help. If you’re a debut, this is the bottom barrel price for a fantastic retreat where we will help career plan and more!
During January of our “Now What?” Months, we’re talking to Wrimos who’ve published their NaNoWriMo projects and asking them how they got there. Today, Beth Revis, best-selling author of the Across the Universe series and A World Without You, shares her story about the long, long process of getting published:
Ten.
Ten is an important number to me.
It took me ten novels before I wrote one worth publishing. Those ten novels took me ten years collectively to write. And there were rejections. More than ten. More than a thousand.
Here’s the most important thing I learned in that decade of trying—and failing—to be published:
Have a goal.
That sounds so trite. (Although not, perhaps, as trite as “Never give up!” which may have been the more obvious thing to write. But I’m not writing that. Because if you want to be an author, that’s a given.)
Some people have asked me what I meant by a statement in my postmortem – about WHY I needed Truthwitch to break out (because if it didn’t, my career was over). I’m not sure how in-depth I’ve been in my newsletter, so here’s an answer for you:
Basically, my first series tanked. I mean…tanked. We’re talking, Truthwitch sold more copies in its first two weeks than the entire SS&D series COMBINED.
Bad sales hurt an author – you’re way better off as an untested debut than an author with shitty sales. So I was at a crossroads in my career, where the plan was to change my name. That way, I could be a “debut” again. (Sadly, this happens a LOT in the industry. Which is why please do not pirate our books!)
But then Tor decided to take a chance on me. Because they’re a small (and amazing) house, they have more room to take on projects that they’re passionate about (instead of just commercially successful). HOWEVER, if Truthwitch didn’t sell well…. Then yeah. That was it. “Susan Dennard” would be dead, and I’d have to reinvent/start over my career.
There’s no shame in that. I was totally willing to reinvent! The problem was that I had this great audience for my writing advice – thousands upon thousands of people who were coming back for my blog and newsletter. Yet none of them were buying my books. Which is fine – I don’t give free writing help to sell copies. I do it because I love doing it.
BUT…if I reinvented myself, I would lose what little crossover I had between writing-advice-fans and book-readers – not to mention the handful of amazing fans who did like the SS&D trilogy (I will never ever forget my wonderful Misfits!).
So…I needed + desperately wanted Truthwitch to sell well. I wanted Tor to be happy. I wanted to keep my name. That led to me going “all in” on self-promo.
Full disclosure: I allocated $15,000 of my advance to promote Truthwitch. (Which, in case you’re wondering, was most of the advance.) I ended up going over that amount…by a lot. Costs ranged from travel to important events (this was really where the bulk got eaten up!) to running/maintaining my street team (swag, postage, hiring an assistant to help me keep it going) to learning how to + making my own book trailer.*
And like…I honestly don’t even know what kind of TIME I spent promoting. It was a lot more than I thought it would be. Literally most of 2015.
But…it paid off, right? At least in terms of “success.” I’m a New York Times Bestseller now!!
That said, I haven’t earned back the money I spent yet (“bestseller” doesn’t automatically mean “rich”), and I will never get back the time I spent. Plus, the nightmare that was 2016 as I tried to rush-create Windwitch…
It begs the question: were the costs worth the rewards? I don’t know. I think so since, hopefully, the rewards will continue to pay forward for a long time – and my career is definitely growing!
Best of all, though, I CAN KEEP MY NAME. Susan Dennard. C’est moi pour toujours. ❤️
*Note: I need to also mention that, once it was clear my own self-promotion was starting to pick up momentum, Tor really stepped in and helped me. This was not a solo journey, and it NEVER is. I had/have an amazing team, and we’ve forged a real partnership while getting the Witchlands into readers’ hands.
All of this needed to be said. If you want a career in writing, you should read this.
Welcome to another installment of author’s notes! (if you missed them for Servants of the Empire: Edge of the Galaxy, you can start here.)
WARNING: These notes will completely spoil The Weapon of a Jedi. If you haven’t read it, stop and go here.
The Weapon of a Jedi began with an email from Lucasfilm in August 2014. Did I want to tell the story of Luke Skywalker’s first lightsaber duel, and offer readers a little sneak peek at The Force Awakens?
That was an even easier “yes” than most invitations to tell a Star Wars story. The idea was that Luke and the droids would explore a ruined Jedi temple on a jungle planet, which immediately made me smile. Luke, C-3PO and R2-D2 were the first three Kenner action figures I’d bought as a nine-year-old on Long Island. How many times had I invented a similar story back in 1978, using those figures and terrain made out of couch cushions?
Still, I admit to being a bit nervous as we filled in the details for a book with the working title of Luke Skywalker and the Lost Temple. This was Luke Skywalker – one of the most iconic characters in Star Wars, and a tricky character to get right.
He also wasn’t a Star Wars character for whom I felt a natural affinity.
I’d always been a Han guy – as a kid, I thought Luke should have run off with Han and Chewie and become a space pirate, instead of worrying about a bunch of cosmic philosophy. (I would have been a terrible rebel.) It’s not that I disliked Luke – it was more that I felt I lacked a sense of the character despite decades of watching and reading his adventures. So I had to fix that, and quickly.
An amusing aside: I confessed the above at 2015’s New York Comic-Con while sharing a microphone with Greg Rucka, who wrote the Han Solo adventure Smuggler’s Run. No sooner had I said those words than Greg leaned over and admitted he’d always been a Luke guy.
(Amusing aside to the aside: Neither of us had shared this with our editor. Writers, man.)
Anyway, I enrolled myself in Luke Boot Camp. I started by watching the classic trilogy again, concentrating on Luke’s reactions – not just what he said but his body language. How did he respond when questioned by other characters? When learning from Obi-Wan and Yoda? When being pushed to do something he disagreed with?
Two things I read unlocked Luke for me. The first was in The Making of Star Wars, J.W. Rinzler’s terrific behind-the-scenes chronicle. Mark Hamill recalled shooting the scene where Luke and Threepio intercept Artoo. Hamill played the scene angrily, only to hear George Lucas call “cut.” His advice: “It’s not a big deal.” Disagreeing with his director, Hamill delivered a deliberately “small” take, figuring Lucas would see how wrong he was. The director thought it was perfect. After that, Hamill understood his character a lot better – and nearly 30 years later, so did I.
The other moment was a TheForce.net post written by a commenter named Jedi Princess: “Luke is gentle, in a way that so few action/adventure movie heroes are.” Yep – that’s it exactly. Luke destroys the Death Star by taking Obi-Wan Kenobi’s advice to “let go” and allow the Force to guide him. Two movies later, he defeats the Sith not by using his lightsaber, but by throwing it away and awakening his father’s love for him. It’s in Empire that Luke is most like a conventional action-movie hero, spurning his teachers’ advice and rushing off to confront Darth Vader. That turns out to be a disaster: he learns a terrible secret he isn’t ready for and the friends he tried to rescue must risk their lives to rescue him.
Those two lessons prepared me for the book. (Which was good, because I had about a month in which to write it.) I felt ready, but still knew Weapon would be a challenge. A big chunk of it would be introspective, with Luke limited to Force training and the droids acting as a Greek chorus. But the story’s the story. Thinking about how to approach that, I kept coming back to fairy tales.
But we’ll get to that.
Prologue
The frame story is set shortly before The Force Awakens, and features Jessika Pava, one of the pilots seen in the battle above Starkiller Base.
The basic beats of the frame story – a pilot, droid duty, Threepio as storyteller – came from Lucasfilm, including the funny bit about Threepio being persuaded not to tell a story everyone had heard before.
I started writing Weapon of a Jedi before the Easter eggs for The Force Awakens had been worked out with Story Group, so I left placeholders for them. I originally named the pilot Draupadi Pava, changing her first name when Story Group chose an on-screen character who’d already been named Jess because she was played by Game of Thrones veteran Jessica Henwick. (In the credits she’s Jess Testor, a detail that slipped through the cracks.)
A funny thing: I hadn’t read the script for The Force Awakens, so I assumed Artoo was busy elsewhere on the base, off in an X-wing, etc. After a couple of false starts I was told just to avoid our favorite astromech. As you might imagine, I wondered what that could possibly mean.
More bits from the prologue:
On D’Qar, Threepio mentions a long-ago diplomatic mission to Circarpous with Luke and Artoo. Hey, a reference to Splinter of the Mind’s Eye! Well, sort of – Alan Dean Foster’s ur-Legends 1978 novel starts off that way, but inferring that everything that happened in Splinter therefore “really happened” would be a continuity bridge too far.
I now think I overdid it with the Legends nods in Weapon of a Jedi – they don’t demand special knowledge or distract the reader, which is good, but less would have been more. In my defense, I knew from the start that I wanted to pay homage to two Legends tales that could plausibly claim to be Luke’s “first” lightsaber duel, so I included a nod to Splinter very early. We’ll get to the other tale later.
Note that Threepio has updated his Tranlang database and is now fluent in nearly seven million forms of communication. Who says you can’t teach old droids new tricks?
Part One
The original idea for Weapon of the Jedi hewed pretty closely to the final story: while on a mission for the Alliance, Luke senses something in the Force and is called to the planet Devaron. Dodging an Imperial patrol, he reaches the planet, discovers the Temple of Eedit and trains there. He’s interrupted by the Scavenger, who’s there to loot the temple and sees Luke as easy prey. Stormtroopers arrive soon after that, beginning a three-way game of cat and mouse. With the Imperials out of the way, Luke duels the Scavenger and defeats him.
I wanted to simplify the three-way running battle, which felt a little more like Indiana Jones than Luke Skywalker to me. And I was worried about the idea of a call to a distant planet. If the summons was vague, how would Luke know where to go? Yet specificity felt like supernatural exposition, risking letting the reader hear the gears of the plot whirring. (Let’s be honest: the ghost-in-a-blizzard scene in Empire is pretty clunky storytelling.)
My solution was to have Luke on or near Devaron in the first place. A little convenient, maybe, but it eliminated the Where to Go problem – the Force’s answer would essentially be, “Right here, dummy.” And that would let me get away with a bit more supernatural aid elsewhere – a dream or a vision of what Luke was being called to do.
I also felt it was important for Luke to reject the Force’s call at first. That’s a basic element of the heroic journey, and would also show that Luke was torn between responsibilities and identities. The destroyer of the Death Star would be an Alliance hero and recruiter, encouraged to continue along that path. But Luke would also hunger to learn about the Force as his father had – a far more difficult path considering he no longer had a teacher.
That yielded my first pass as the opening of the book: While on a mission for the Alliance, Luke refuels his Y-wing at Devaron, shakes off a funny feeling in the Force and continues on to Giju, where he meets with a resistance group of Herglics. A Herglic elder remembers the Jedi, and tells Luke he should wear his lightsaber with pride but keep in mind that having one is a death sentence under the Empire. Stormtroopers break up the meeting and Luke escapes, but feels a prickle in the Force and turns to catch sight of a mysterious figure watching him. He then delays his mission to return to Devaron, accepting that it’s where the Force wants him to go.
Not a bad start, but it would have featured a lot of standing around and unneeded exposition – neither Luke nor the reader needed a big speech about the Jedi’s value or the Empire’s drive to destroy them.
My editor, Michael Siglain, felt we needed to get Luke to Devaron a lot more quickly, and he was right – a basic principle of storytelling is to start as late as possible. So I scrapped the meeting on Giju and replaced it with Luke and Wedge in X-wings, battling TIEs above the planet. Luke’s trip to Devaron and his rejection of the Force’s call now came after the initial mission, instead of before it.
Now we started with an action beat, one that showed Luke as a starfighter ace. That was a more exciting way of showing him caught between being a rebel hero and a Jedi apprentice. To quote George, it was faster and more intense – as well as cleaner and better.
Some notes:
A few readers told me I’d screwed up by making Wedge Red Three and not Red Two. Nope – that was a deliberate switch based on the fact that he’s Rogue Three at Hoth.
Commander Narra first appeared in The Empire Strikes Back radio dramatization penned by Brian Daley – his death at Derra led to Luke taking command of Rogue Group. That’s a Legends nod I’d keep – from the beginning Mike and Story Group suggested using the radio dramas for background lore, which as a big Daley fan I was thrilled to do.
I introduced the idea of Alliance pilots using “scatter protocols” to avoid Imperial capture – and of Luke being assigned a more complicated pattern because of his value to the rebel cause. That was a compact, logical way to confront him with special treatment he dislikes.
I had to switch Luke from an X-wing to a Y-wing so Threepio had a ride to Devaron. The designation of the Y-wing as Y4 is a really obscure Legends reference – Y4 is the Y-wing Luke uses in the Holiday Special’s Boba Fett cartoon. Credit Pablo Hidalgo for the suggestion.
It isn’t all Legends references in this section – the prequels shape the story too. Luke’s prophetic dream about practicing in the temple was meant to echo Anakin’s dreams about Shmi and Padmé. An important part of the prequels that’s easily missed is that Anakin doesn’t have superhuman reflexes, but uses the Force to see things before they happen. That’s why his nightmares about his wife are so terrifying – he knows they’re not mere dreams but glimpses of the future.
Note also that Luke remembers advice from Obi-Wan which is word for word the counsel Qui-Gon gave Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace. I liked the idea of Obi-Wan and Luke sitting around a campfire on the way to Mos Eisley, with the older man telling his new student not to center on his anxieties.
I also wanted dreams and visions to guide Luke – though as discussed above, I knew I had to pick my spots. I imagine the Force often manifests itself in dreams, even for non-Jedi – people’s minds would be most open to the will of the Force while they sleep. Dreams and the tricky business of interpreting them are also common elements of fairy tales, which fit the tone I wanted during Luke’s time on Devaron.
An idea I dropped was to put Luke in a cantina on Devaron so I could show how much he’d grown since his wide-eyed trip to Mos Eisley. That was scotched to steer clear of Greg’s Han Solo book – and, I presume, the scenes in Maz’s castle. I replaced the idea with putting Luke in the depot in Tikaroo, which I depicted as more like a safari lodge than a dive bar.
Luke first used the alias “Korl Marcus” in Marvel #49, “The Last Jedi.” That’s one of my favorite tales from the old Marvel days, and was an appropriate Legends story to mine for a couple of reasons: a) it’s about Luke finding an unlikely source of Jedi wisdom and b) it also begins with a journey in a Y-wing.
Next: Visions of the Clone Wars! A mysterious guide! And a creature switcheroo!
I’m going to answer your second question first. Do I know what racism is?
Being called Paki, Sand N*****, Camel Jockey, etc. and hearing my family being called that since I was a small child, having people vandalize my parents’ motel; having them trash my brother’s car; my father getting assaulted and arrested for being brown in white town; my teachers telling my mother I didn’t belong in their classes when I was 5 years old because I didn’t speak English even though I was 100% fluent; having a checkout clerk tell my mother I was stealing when I was a 3yo because I ate a grape at a grocery store; a teacher attempting to sabotage my education by forcing me to spend a year in remedial classes in junior high to put me behind despite having high test scores; being harassed, insulted and attacked by a group of teenagers as a 7 year old walking with my brother in the desert; getting ordered out of a store in my hometown for ‘looking like a gangbanger’, getting pulled over and hassled with my best friend for driving around my home town because she was white and I was not; having a group of guys surround me on a bus in college and mock me for my appearance; being told over and over GO BACK, GO BACK, GO BACK; Even now, dealing with micro-aggressions and getting regular messages and anon asks (b/c I choose to keep an open line of communication with fans) telling me that I don’t deserve any of my success, that I am a ‘diversity case’ or that I am, somehow, inferior because I am brown.
Does that constitute as racism? If so, then yes, I know what racism is.
Now that that’s out of the way: I have had many people asking my thoughts on Carve the Mark, the book in question, or telling me my thoughts are wrong, so here’s what I have to say:
I read Carve the Mark critically and did not find the book to be racist or ableist (which was the other criticism leveled at it.) To be absolutely clear–I read the criticism thoroughly and found that I did not agree with what it was saying. I thought that there was plenty of evidence in the book that the exact opposite was true, and that the cultural groups represented were varied and nuanced and open to many different interpretations. (One example: I felt that the cultural group portrayed as more “violent” was comprised of many skin colors and reflected a hodgepodge of different societies, and that the main character was portrayed both critically and sympathetically. And I felt that the group portrayed as more “peaceful” also had an array of skin/hair types, and again, was portrayed as nuanced–both good and bad.)
(Re: the issue of ableism, more informed folks than I (see Leigh Bardugo and Kody Keplinger) have spoken about the issue. I direct you to them because they are more knowledgable about issues of ableism than I am.)
What is happening here is a difference in opinion. It is a normal thing in a free and fair society. For some reason, this upsets a few people, as they apparently think that people of color are some sort of Borg Uni-mind who all think exactly the same way. Here’s a tip: we don’t. POC can disagree with one another, guys. And we can discuss, and we can learn from such disagreements.
This is a case in which I disagree with the criticism that another POC has for this book. Not because I like the author of the book. Not because I haven’t read the book. But because I just don’t agree with the criticism. This, by the way, does not mean I don’t like or respect the people who have leveled the criticism. Quite the opposite. It. Is. A. DIfference. In. Opinion.
As the wise Somaiya Daud said, “there is no One Reading”, meaning that people can read the same book and have different takes on it.
Example: I read a book a couple years ago by a POC author that unintentionally denigrated my language and people. Other people read this book and did not see this at all. In fact, some of you might have read it and not noticed it or found it offensive. To me, that’s ok. You read and interpreted it differently than I did. I can inform you of how I feel, and discuss it with you (I actually did with the author, and the author was receptive) but if you read it, and hear my opinion and ultimately don’t agree with me, I’m going to respect your right as a free citizen to have your own opinion. I do not expect you to trash the book or not read it because I was hurt by it. In fact, I’d rather you read it, because then you’ll have an informed opinion about it and speak about it intelligently.
And that’s sort of what this comes down to: In dealing with other POC, not all POC opinions are immediately the ONLY opinion. We are not a monolith.
As a WOC who has dealt with racism, often violent, since I came to this country, and as a WOC who has spent much of her life being told to sit down and shut up, I find it very odd that some of the people who consider themselves allies are essentially telling me to sit down and shut up. (Not all of them. I’ve had many civil and intelligent conversations about this.) Essentially, they want me to revoke my opinion about the book.
So here’s the thing: You can criticize me. You can say “Sabaa, you are an idiot and I disagree with you.” That’s fine. You have that right and I absolutely support you being able to voice your opinion. But don’t tell me to undo my opinion. Because by doing so, you are, in effect, attempting to silence me, and I am sick of people trying to silence me.
The moon passed between NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory and the Earth, allowing the satellite to capture this rare image of the moon’s far side in full sunlight. As the moon is tidally locked to the Earth and doesn’t rotate, we only ever see the one face from the Earth. Awesome shot!
so basically this is the moon’s ass
if this is the moon’s ass could you say we’re getting
mooned
SIGH
Jan 06 2017
“
The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.
”
Women have more power and agency in Shakespeare’s comedies than in his tragedies, and usually there are more of them with more speaking time, so I’m pretty sure what Shakespeare’s saying is “men ruin everything” because everyone fucking dies when men are in charge but when women are in charge you get married and live happily ever after
I think you’re reading too far into things, kiddo. Take a break from your women’s studies major and get some fresh air.
Right. Well, I’m a historian, so allow me to elaborate.
One of the most important aspects of the Puritan/Protestant revolution (in the 1590’s in particular) was the foregrounding of marriage as the most appropriate way of life. It often comes as a surprise when people learn this, but Puritans took an absolutely positive view of sexuality within the context of marriage. Clergy were encouraged to lead by example and marry and have children, as opposed to Catholic clergy who prized virginity above all else.Through his comedies, Shakespeare was promoting this new way of life which had never been promoted before. The dogma, thanks to the church, had always been “durr hburr women are evil sex is bad celibacy is your ticket to salvation.” All that changed in Shakespeare’s time, and thanks to him we get a view of the world where marriage, women, and sexuality are in fact the key to salvation.
The difference between the structure of a comedy and a tragedy is that the former is cyclical, and the latter a downward curve. Comedies weren’t stupid fun about the lighter side of life. The definition of a comedy was not a funny play. They were plays that began in turmoil and ended in reconciliation and renewal. They showed the audience the path to salvation, with the comic ending of a happy marriage leaving the promise of societal regeneration intact. Meanwhile, in the tragedies, there is no such promise of regeneration or salvation. The characters destroy themselves. The world in which they live is not sustainable. It leads to a dead end, with no promise of new life.
And so, in comedies, the women are the movers and shakers. They get things done. They move the machinery of the plot along. In tragedies, though women have an important part to play, they are often morally bankrupt as compared to the women of comedies, or if they are morally sound, they are disenfranchised and ignored, and refused the chance to contribute to the society in which they live. Let’s look at some examples.
In Romeo and Juliet, the play ends in tragedy because no-one listens to Juliet. Her father and Paris both insist they know what’s right for her, and they refuse to listen to her pleas for clemency. Juliet begs them – screams, cries, manipulates, tells them outright I cannot marry, just wait a week before you make me marry Paris, just a week, please and they ignore her, and force her into increasingly desperate straits, until at last the two young lovers kill themselves. The message? This violent, hate-filled patriarchal world is unsustainable. The promise of regeneration is cut down with the deaths of these children. Compare to Othello. This is the most horrifying and intimate tragedy of all, with the climax taking place in a bedroom as a husband smothers his young wife. The tragedy here could easily have been averted if Othello had listened to Desdemona and Emilia instead of Iago. The message? This society, built on racism and misogyny and martial, masculine honour, is unsustainable, and cannot regenerate itself. The very horror of it lies in the murder of two wives.
How about Hamlet? Ophelia is a disempowered character, but if Hamlet had listened to her, and not mistreated her, and if her father hadn’t controlled every aspect of her life, then perhaps she wouldn’t have committed suicide. The final scene of carnage is prompted by Laertes and Hamlet furiously grappling over her corpse. When Ophelia dies, any chance of reconciliation dies with her. The world collapses in on itself. This society is unsustainable. King Lear – we all know that this is prompted by Cordelia’s silence, her unwillingness to bend the knee and flatter in the face of tyranny. It is Lear’s disproportionate response to this that sets off the tragedy, and we get a play that is about entropy, aging and the destruction of the social order.
There are exceptions to the rule. I’m sure a lot of you are crying out “but Lady Macbeth!” and it’s a good point. However, in terms of raw power, neither Lady Macbeth nor the witches are as powerful as they appear. The only power they possess is the ability to influence Macbeth; but ultimately it is Macbeth’s own ambition that prompts him to murder Duncan, and it is he who escalates the situation while Lady Macbeth suffers a breakdown. In this case you have women who are allowed to influence the play, but do so for the worse; they fail to be the good moral compasses needed. Goneril, Regan and Gertrude are similarly comparable; they possess a measure of power, but do not use it for good, and again society cannot renew itself.
Now we come to the comedies, where women do have the most control over the plot. The most powerful example is Rosalind in As You Like It. She pulls the strings in every avenue of the plot, and it is thanks to her control that reconciliation is achieved at the end, and all end up happily married. Much Ado About Nothing pivots around a woman’s anger over the abuse of her innocent cousin. If the men were left in charge in this play, no-one would be married at the end, and it would certainly end in tragedy. But Beatrice stands up and rails against men for their cruel conduct towards women and says that famous, spine-tingling line - oh God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace. And Benedick, her suitor, listens to her. He realises that his misogynistic view of the world is wrong and he takes steps to change it. He challenges his male friends for their conduct, parts company with the prince, and by doing this he wins his lady’s hand. The entire happy ending is dependent on the men realising that they must trust, love and respect women. Now it is a society that is worthy of being perpetuated. Regeneration and salvation lies in equality between the sexes and the love husbands and wives cherish for each other. The Merry Wives of Windsor - here we have men learning to trust and respect their wives, Flastaff learning his lesson for trying to seduce married women, and a daughter tricking everyone so she can marry the man she truly loves. A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The turmoil begins because three men are trying to force Hermia to marry someone she does not love, and Helena has been cruelly mistreated. At the end, happiness and harmony comes when the women are allowed to marry the men of their choosing, and it is these marriages that are blessed by the fairies.
What of the romances? In The Tempest, Prospero holds the power, but it is Miranda who is the key to salvation and a happy ending. Without his daughter, it is likely Prospero would have turned into a murderous revenger. The Winter’s Tale sees Leontes destroy himself through his own jealousy. The king becomes a vicious tyrant because he is cruel to his own wife and children, and this breach of faith in suspecting his wife of adultery almost brings ruin to his entire kingdom. Only by obeying the sensible Emilia does Leontes have a chance of achieving redemption, and the pure trust and love that exists between Perdita and Florizel redeems the mistakes of the old generation and leads to a happy ending. Cymbeline? Imogen is wronged, and it is through her love and forgiveness that redemption is achieved at the end. In all of these plays, without the influence of the women there is no happy ending.
The message is clear. Without a woman’s consent and co-operation in living together and bringing up a family, there is turmoil. Equality between the sexes and trust between husbands and wives alone will bring happiness and harmony, not only to the family unit, but to society as a whole. The Taming of the Shrew rears its ugly head as a counter-example, for here a happy ending is dependent on a woman’s absolute subservience and obedience even in the face of abuse. But this is one of Shakespeare’s early plays (and a rip-off of an older comedy called The Taming of a Shrew) and it is interesting to look at how the reception of this play changed as values evolved in this society.
As early as 1611 The Shrew was adapted by the writer John Fletcher in a play called The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed. It is both a sequel and an imitation, and it chronicles Petruchio’s search for a second wife after his disastrous marriage with Katherine (whose taming had been temporary) ended with her death. In Fletcher’s version, the men are outfoxed by the women and Petruchio is ‘tamed’ by his new wife. It ends with a rather uplifting epilogue that claims the play aimed:
To teach both sexes due equality
And as they stand bound, to love mutually.
The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed were staged back to back in 1633, and it was recorded that although Shakespeare’s Shrew was “liked”, Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed was “very well liked.” You heard it here folks; as early as 1633 audiences found Shakespeare’s message of total female submission uncomfortable, and they preferred John Fletcher’s interpretation and his message of equality between the sexes.
So yes. The message we can take away from Shakespeare is that a world in which women are powerless and cannot or do not contribute positively to society and family is unsustainable. Men, given the power and left to their own devices, will destroy themselves. But if men and women can work together and live in harmony, then the whole community has a chance at salvation, renewal and happiness.
In the immortal words of the bard himself: fucking annihilated.
Anonymous
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