A Fan's Playground

I've always known that Sutcliff is subject to some internalised misogyny. Nearly all her books feature male main characters, with relationships between men generally being the most important relationships in the books, and women being relegated to support roles and "women's work" and love interests, with some occasional rapey aspects to her understanding of historical marriage. So I was concerned going into this book, which is advertised as focusing on a woman -- it's retelling the story of the failed British uprising against Roman rule, which was led by Boudicca, and my understanding of the book going in was that it would be focused on Boudicca specifically.

But..........Boudicca is not the viewpoint character. Is Sutcliff incapable of imagining the interiority of a woman, or is she just not interested in it? But this book is from the perspective of a (male) harper in Boudicca's court, with occasional excerpts of perspective from a (male) Roman of the invading force. This and other choices in how to portray Boudicca result in a clear distancing effect, where she feels to me almost more like a symbol than a person.

Oh, this is still a good and effective story, being told the way it is; I actually love the idea of the story being told by the harper, whose job it is to maintain the history of the tribe, to be a contrast to the way the Romans tell the history of Boudicca and the uprising. It's just in the context of everything else I know about how Sutcliff writes women that I struggle. Even in this case, when it's clear from the author's note that Sutcliff is deliberately and specifically inspired to tell the story of a woman, that woman's feelings and experiences don't get to be centred. She's the figure around whom the story revolves, but it's not her story.

And there isn't really anyone whose story it is. The harper may be the viewpoint character but he's not the protagonist, and I don't really feel like I got to know any of the characters personally particularly well. It reminds me more of her short stories in The Capricorn Bracelet, where it's interesting for the things it says about the changes that took place over time in Roman Britain, but the characters don't get enough attention to really have any depth. But this is a novel! She had the space! And she just didn't use it for that.

Ah well. A pretty good book nonetheless, and I'm glad I read it, but I will not be counting it among Sutcliff's greatest works.

To talk about this book I need to start by talking about a different author altogether!

Jean Little was a famous Canadian children's author, and she was blind. When she was a young adult (this would have been in the late 50's/early 60's), she had a job for a while as a teacher to a class of disabled children, and as you do as a teacher, she would read books to her students. But she and her students started noticing that in every book with a disabled character, that character ended the story either cured or dead. Little and her students thought this was unacceptable, and so Little started writing a story for her students, a book that eventually became her first published novel, Mine For Keeps, about a girl with cerebral palsy.

But there was ONE extant book that Little had been able to find to read to her students which featured a disabled protagonist who remained alive and disabled, and that book was Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff. Her students initially struggled with the prose style of the book (fair, it takes some getting used to), but soon were totally captivated, and loved it. The book's hero, Drem, was like them! And he ended the book triumphant, despite all the challenges he faced!

Little talks about this in one of her autobiographies. When I was a kid I loved her autobiographies, and reread them over and over again. But somehow, despite this story having an impact on me, I never considered at the time that I could seek out and read for myself that book that Little talked about!!

Anyway then I eventually fell into Sutcliff fandom, and then (uh, years later) made the connection that Rosemary Sutcliff was that author Jean Little admired, and finally I have gotten round to reading this book.

It's interesting to read with this context, the knowledge that Warrior Scarlet was actually pretty dang unique for its time in its portrayal of disability, and something that disabled kids really connected to. Is it perfect about its representation, looking at it from 63 years on? Of course not. But it does a lot of things really right nonetheless, and it was there for kids who desperately needed to see themselves reflected in the books they read.

Warrior Scarlet is historical fiction, set in bronze-age Britain, and tells the story of a boy who was born with one non-functioning arm but nonetheless wants to be a warrior of his people. Drem is a great character, and believably written. You get to see him grow and mature over the course of the book while still remaining himself, in both his strengths and his flaws.

I also love the mentorship Drem gets from an older disabled man; he's not alone, and although their disabilities are not the same it means Drem gets to see a way of living a fulfilling life in his future, and be encouraged in that, when there are so many voices telling him he can't.

As usual in her fiction, Sutcliff does a good job of place-setting, with lots of nature descriptions, and making clear how the culture she's depicting influences the characters. I love her writing a lot.

Of course, she's inventing some things about this bronze-age culture whole-cloth, since we have less information about that era than about the Roman-era Britain she more usually writes about. She also draws upon some theories that are now outdated and discredited; the Little Dark People as the indigenous inhabitants of Britain who got outcompeted by the incoming Celts, and lived as a dwindling and separate population, is a major theme, and I feel weird about it.

( small spoiler for the ending )

The way women/girls get handled in this book is not great, as is fairly common for Sutcliff. Her lead characters are always male, and are generally dismissive of women's work and women's lives, which tend to exist totally separate from the masculine world the lead characters live in.

The one female character in this book who gets some narrative attention, Blai, is actually really interesting and I wish we'd gotten more of a look at her interiority! ( spoiler for a different aspect of the ending )

Anyway, I'm not sure if the above all comes together into a coherent review, but I guess the long and short of it is that this is an excellent book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading, which is doing some important things, and also it's a product of its time and its imperfect creator.

Back in the days after I'd started keeping a list of all the books I read each year but BEFORE I started posting reviews of them, I kept desultory personal notes (ranging from a single word to quite a few paragraphs) on some of the books. And I always vaguely forget I have, and forget where exactly to find them, and I'd like to just have them on my dw so they're FINDABLE again for me. And also some of you might find these interesting/amusing? (N.B. some of these contain what I would now classify as INCORRECT OPINIONS.)

SO HERE'S THREE YEARS' WORTH OF BOOKS IN ONE POST, OKAY GO.

( expand this cut to see nested cuts listing all the books )

Okay now for other books! I just needed to get my The Secret Countess feels out first, because I had a lot of feels!

( Treason's Harbour, by Patrick O'Brian )

( Freckles, by Gene Stratton Porter )

( The Star of Kazan, by Eva Ibbotson )

( The Silver Branch, by Rosemary Sutcliff )

( The Dragonfly Pool, by Eva Ibbotson )

( Laddie: A True Blue Story, by Gene Stratton Porter )

SLKDHFSLDKKFSDKF whyyyyyy am I reading more Sutcliff? Especially Sutcliff I have been WARNED is not optimistic? Yeahhhhhhhhh whoops.

Anyways today I finished reading Mark of the Horse Lord, by Rosemary Sutcliff! It was a thoroughly enjoyable book, if you enjoy the sort of book that begins with ( SPOILERS )