Look! A non-scheduled post!!!!

[cerealjoe]

Let me tell you a story, a story about how one can go from totally loving a book to disliking it in about 50 pages. Before last night I didn't really have an opinion on Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, I was just reading it along because I generally like most Discworld books. Then last night I hit the part where Magrat, a character I generally don't care much about, finally finds a role model she can look up and prepares to take names and kick ass. This morning I finished the book and I am generally very upset with Pratchett because last night I believed that Magrat would finally be the strong female character I always look for in Discworld books, the one that kicks ass till the end and never lets others influence her… but like with Polly in Monstrous Regiment we were close but never quite got there. In the end, Magrat might have stood up the Queen of Elves but it's still the other two witches who were portrayed as the big heroes! I wanted Magrat to finally stand up to those two but she never did. For me that would have been the ultimate thing for her, the rare times she did do something that went against the older witches was when they weren't present… and that's a start but she should have been able to stand up them head on. By the end of the book it's clear that she will never be a "proper" witch, and therefore she'll never be on the same level as the two older witches because it's been made known since the start of the series that witches are above pretty much all others on the Discworld. And that bit really upset me. I also disliked the whole bit about the queen Magrat took for a role model being a "fake" and her being portrayed as a bit of a joke (her armour being made of pans and a bathtub). Of course one could argue that it was rather feminist of that king who asked for the portrait to be painted and for the armour to be made - he wanted a female others could look up to, but the way Pratchett wrote it, I read it as it being a kind of joke on the king's part. Once again I let a book get under my skin. I should know better by now, I really should, but why can't we get proper strong female characters in the Discworld books that aren't old annoying witches or dressed as dudes and talking about how it's the fake socks in their trousers that give them the extra courage to kick ass?

Comments

[tamar-lindsay.livejournal.com]

Magrat gets a better shake in Carpe Jugulum. The Tiffany Aching series has a strong female or two as well.