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I’ve been actively reading and reviewing books for a year and a half
now. In that time, my criteria for rating a book on the one to five stars scale
has changed a couple of times. A few things still hold true. The book has to be
exceptional and leave an indelible impression to get a five star rating from
me. Three stars remains my meh-rating. It’s a book that I can objectively call
a good one, something I might have even enjoyed reading, but it’s also
something I can easily forget and move on.
My one star rating however, that’s changed the most. At first it was
anything and everything I simply didn’t like. If the offences added up to a
certain point I’d give it a one star rating no matter what redeemable qualities
I’d find in it. But as I read more and actually started thinking about it, I
realised there are books that aren’t even worthy of that single star, books
that are, to me, beneath contempt. To compensate, I adjusted my personal rating
scale and now one star is reserved to books that induce burning white rage in
me.
I’ve given good ratings to books with characters I’ve hated when I
enjoyed the story, and I’ve given good ratings to books with stories I’ve hated
even when I loved a character or two. For me, the style matters little, but dammit,
it matters.
And I’m not talking about the clunky language that in a way fits the
subject and the legend, but takes a while to get used to.
Ms. Bradley set out to write a retelling of the Arthurian legend from
the female perspective, and in that she succeeded. She managed to put together
a logical and a somewhat coherent version of the events that put King Arthur on
his throne in Camelot and brought him down from it, and she managed to tell it
with female voices. Igraine, Viviane, Morgaine, Gwenhwyfar, Morgause, all these
women claw their way from the footnotes of myth and become three dimensional
people—not just characters, but people—with worries and joys of their own.
Admittedly those joys were short-lived, but that’s partly why I loved
the story. It’s why I love the legend as I do all things heart-rending.
However, as wonderfully flawed all these people were with their virtues
and their unbridled ambitions, none of them really had a choice in the matter.
Ms. Bradley didn’t write people, women or men, who made the best of their
unfortunate circumstances. She wrote people thrown about by the fates and whims
of their deities. Morgaine’s last defence is that she never had a choice and
that she was merely the Goddess’ instrument.
And that’s why I hate this book.
All the characters, as Ms. Bradley paints them, are passive. None are
active. None make choices and then take responsibility for their actions.
They’re all thrown into untenable situations where something must break and
either give them that what they most wish or take it all away from them.
Igraine marries because she doesn’t have a choice. She goes to convent,
because she can’t bear to face the sister who forced her hand.
Gwenhwyfar also marries, because she doesn’t have a choice. She first
surrenders to her lover because she doesn’t have a choice. The only stupid
choice she makes is so that the author has an excuse to make the pious lady
into an adulteress without making her choose it.
Morgaine, the worst offender, chooses nothing. The closest she comes to
making up her own mind is when she flees Avalon, but after that she promptly
becomes the meekest of them all. She, who should be the fearsome Lady of the
Lake and High Priestess of the Goddess, how can she be a vehicle of her Goddess’
will when she does nothing but allows others act around her?
Catalyst, you say? This isn’t a chemical reaction where one substance
remains unchanged. People change, people make choices that change them and
others around them. Unless, of course, you’re a character in The Mists
of Avalon.
But times were different then and women nothing but chattel, you say?
There’s difference in being victimised and being a victim. All Morgaine and the
others had to do to win me over, was not to see themselves as victims. All they
had to do was to endure what was thrown at them and choose to make the best of
it. All they had to do was to choose.
Only Morgause and Viviane come close to choosing anything, and how are
their choices rewarded? Why of course, they are the great
villainesses whose actions lead to a family tragedy after a family tragedy.
Their actions bring an end to all those things they love and they don’t live to
see the aftermath or acknowledge their responsibility.
Telling a story from the female perspective doesn’t make it feminist;
writing capable women doing things, being active, and making choices does. This
book is something worse; it’s a pretender.
There are many things I appreciate in this book, one thing I don’t is
how it all was told. That matters. Dammit.
Series: Avalon #1
Chronological order #7
Pages: 912
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 0345441184
Published: 2000 (orig. 1983)
Source: Library
