Week 5: If He can be a Hero, so can She (Black Maria/ Redlands)

           

For this week’s reading, I read Black Maria by Diana Wynne Jones and the first two comics of Redlands by Jordie Bellaire and Vanesa Del Rey.

I enjoyed most of the book except for the end when things started to wrap up. Maybe it’s ironic because Mig loves happy endings. But I felt like some of it was too predictable and too coincidentally perfect. When Mig’s mom and Antony Green got married it just seemed awkward and unnecessary. It felt motivated simply by making everything absolutely cheerful. Although, after all she had been through, Mig’s mom probably deserved at least that much.

There were moments where I could hardly stand to read what Aunt Maria put Betty through. Throughout my life, I’ve experienced some powerful female relatives mistreat other family members in a way that resembled aunt Maria’s rule over Cranbury. This made the story seem very real to me at times, and thus, very painful. I think it’s interesting that I was more interested in reading this portion of the book.

It made me question why I enjoy darker stories. There’s a natural pessimism that I generally hold to. The book highlighted this to me through a couple of its lines. “I asked Chris why something should be truer just because it’s unhappy. He couldn’t answer.” (p. 4) I generally find it easier to believe negative things or I assume things will go poorly. I was prompted to question why I think this way.

When I lived in England, one of my favorite places that I visited was Canterbury. When Cranbury was first mentioned, I misread it as “Canterbury”. Even though I assume this wasn’t intentional, the extreme let down that I experienced when I realized it wasn’t the amazing place I thought it was seemed to perfectly reflect the atmosphere of Cranbury.

The society of Cranbury is matriarchal. This leads to discrimination against men where they are treated as tools instead of people. However, I found it interesting that a lot of old-fashioned ideas about women/ girls were maintained. Mig was expected to be clean and indoors. Betty was expected to do housework and cook without the assistance of her son due to his sex. The story put many characters within the restraints of sexist ideals for both sexes.

Mig constantly fought against aunt Maria trying to shape her into a docile and disciplined little girl. But I felt that she never rose to the level of heroine that she had the potential for. I think the story lost a lot by bringing in a male figure to save the day when they brought back Antony Green. I wanted Mig to save herself and those around her. She wasn’t fully passive but she still needed to be saved by her mother from the orphanage and she couldn’t have taken control away from her aunt or saved her brother without the male power that came from Mr. Green. This seemed counterintuitive to me. It hindered Mig’s character arch.

Outside of this, I do feel that the story encouraged the idea of a balance between genders. Neither was presented as completely in the right or wrong. Neither gender should rule over the other. In a society that is believed to be run by men, and to a degree is, I think it’s important to see that the solution isn’t just women taking over but developing an equal relationship between men and women. Some modern women develop dangerous ideas that females are inherently superior or simply a sense of complete hatred towards the opposite sex that only results in relationships being harmed between the sexes.

Maintaining a balance between the roles of the sexes could be part of why men did play such a big role in resolving the obstacles throughout the book. I just think that as the protagonist Migs should have played a more active role.

I didn’t care much for Redlands. I didn’t really get the idea of “I’d rather have a town run by monsters instead of murderers.” I only read a couple of the comics so maybe I just didn’t get enough of the story to see the “good” side of the witches. I felt there was a toxic hatred towards the men, although I don’t deny that some of the men were evil in the story. The first comic showed the witches killing several people, which I find hard to fully justify. In the second book they even sacrificed a young and innocent girl. I didn’t feel compelled to route for them simply because they were girls. And I found it hard to find any other redeeming characteristics.

Literature needs examples of strong women. This is especially true in the horror genre. But these strong women need to be role models especially if the stories are directed at younger audiences. But that doesn’t inherently require a battle between the sexes.