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20/12/08 10:36![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyOkay. I want to write about "The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks." Okay? This is not a review. This is just a rant.
When I was working at the library in Garner, Christian romances were our most popular thing. I can tell you the plot of every Christian romance novel. It goes like this: there's a woman who doesn't have much religious faith, or perhaps lost it long ago as the result of a Terrible Tragedy. So she's now living far from her family in the Big City. She's an ambitious career woman, unlucky in love, possibly no kids or possibly a single/divorced mother of adorable kids. Then tragedy strikes in her life, or in the life of one of her family members, and she goes back to the quaintly-named small town where she was raised. And that's where she meets the policeman or fireman or construction worker she was sort of sweet on in high school -- oh, and he's a fundamentalist Christian. And the girl falls in love and finds God and gives up all her career ambitions.
So, I'm sure you're astonished that I'm annoyed by this repeated plotline. But when I started skimming these books, what struck me was how often we see disguised versions of this plot. There's an ambitious career woman. Things Happen, Life Gets Unexpected, and she realizes that she needs to loosen up, and stop caring so much about getting ahead, and make more room in her life for her family.
It's so hard to get angry about this. Who doesn't agree that family is more important than career? Who doesn't agree that the singleminded pursuit of power won't ultimately get you anywhere? And yet, and yet - cynical people joke that anyone who deserved to be president wouldn't want the job in the first place, but as long as people in positions of great power exist, as long as those people ARE wielding a lot of control over what happens in our lives, all of this adds up to a condescending, head-patting smile: "This? Why would you want THIS, it's so much more trouble than it's worth!"
And here comes this young adult novel, all of a sudden, that engages with this issue absolutely unflinchingly. This question of women, and power, and what you give up to gain power.
Frankie starts out at the beginning of the novel with her father calling her "Bunny." Bunny: small, soft, helpless, harmless (Monty Python nonwithstanding). Shortly after she has this Scarlett O'Hara moment: she will never be Bunny again. And for the rest of the book, she sees the world with a very narrow depth of field: she focuses in with razor precision on Power.
I love it when books give me a "You aren't ALLOWED to do that!" moment -- not about the character, or the situation, but about the way the book is playing out -- to joyously and brazenly violate the conventions of genre. I had a moment with "Frankie Landau-Banks" when I realized that it was between a rock and a hard place; the author couldn't say, "Yeah, ruthlessly pursuing power is awesome, you should try it." As smart and as ambitious and as sharp (in some ways) about the ways of the world as Frankie is, she's a total train wreck and she's no more immune against stupidity (especially the stupidity of love) than any other sophomore. But she also couldn't say that Frankie shouldn't have gone after power, shouldn't have tried to break out of her role as Bunny. And I didn't know how the author could navigate between those two.
Well, she's smarter than I am. Frankie ends up broken and broken-hearted, crashing on the rocks of her own self-righteousness, but beautiful in her failure and foolishness; I can picture her, a year later, convinced that she can't play by the rules of her prep school and the Basset Hounds... making up her own brilliant, crazy rules.
When I was working at the library in Garner, Christian romances were our most popular thing. I can tell you the plot of every Christian romance novel. It goes like this: there's a woman who doesn't have much religious faith, or perhaps lost it long ago as the result of a Terrible Tragedy. So she's now living far from her family in the Big City. She's an ambitious career woman, unlucky in love, possibly no kids or possibly a single/divorced mother of adorable kids. Then tragedy strikes in her life, or in the life of one of her family members, and she goes back to the quaintly-named small town where she was raised. And that's where she meets the policeman or fireman or construction worker she was sort of sweet on in high school -- oh, and he's a fundamentalist Christian. And the girl falls in love and finds God and gives up all her career ambitions.
So, I'm sure you're astonished that I'm annoyed by this repeated plotline. But when I started skimming these books, what struck me was how often we see disguised versions of this plot. There's an ambitious career woman. Things Happen, Life Gets Unexpected, and she realizes that she needs to loosen up, and stop caring so much about getting ahead, and make more room in her life for her family.
It's so hard to get angry about this. Who doesn't agree that family is more important than career? Who doesn't agree that the singleminded pursuit of power won't ultimately get you anywhere? And yet, and yet - cynical people joke that anyone who deserved to be president wouldn't want the job in the first place, but as long as people in positions of great power exist, as long as those people ARE wielding a lot of control over what happens in our lives, all of this adds up to a condescending, head-patting smile: "This? Why would you want THIS, it's so much more trouble than it's worth!"
And here comes this young adult novel, all of a sudden, that engages with this issue absolutely unflinchingly. This question of women, and power, and what you give up to gain power.
Frankie starts out at the beginning of the novel with her father calling her "Bunny." Bunny: small, soft, helpless, harmless (Monty Python nonwithstanding). Shortly after she has this Scarlett O'Hara moment: she will never be Bunny again. And for the rest of the book, she sees the world with a very narrow depth of field: she focuses in with razor precision on Power.
I love it when books give me a "You aren't ALLOWED to do that!" moment -- not about the character, or the situation, but about the way the book is playing out -- to joyously and brazenly violate the conventions of genre. I had a moment with "Frankie Landau-Banks" when I realized that it was between a rock and a hard place; the author couldn't say, "Yeah, ruthlessly pursuing power is awesome, you should try it." As smart and as ambitious and as sharp (in some ways) about the ways of the world as Frankie is, she's a total train wreck and she's no more immune against stupidity (especially the stupidity of love) than any other sophomore. But she also couldn't say that Frankie shouldn't have gone after power, shouldn't have tried to break out of her role as Bunny. And I didn't know how the author could navigate between those two.
Well, she's smarter than I am. Frankie ends up broken and broken-hearted, crashing on the rocks of her own self-righteousness, but beautiful in her failure and foolishness; I can picture her, a year later, convinced that she can't play by the rules of her prep school and the Basset Hounds... making up her own brilliant, crazy rules.
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(no subject)
20/12/08 22:04 (UTC)THAT'S HOW LIFE WORKS.
*suicide*
So, tell me why must books conjure up morals like this? I mean so this little piggy stayed home and that little piggy decides to lust after material wealth and power, so automatically that one fails. It can't just be story.
I don't believe you have to give up power for the things to come together like it does in people's media subconscious. Yes, of course there's a power exchange, a give an take, but if you're stripping yourself of achievements and responsibility for another person, that's not really happiness, and I'm thinking those people figure that out in time.
I should read more non-fiction.