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Malinda Lo, Ash
Feb. 5th, 2010 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanguinity24. Malinda Lo, Ash.
People kept saying lesbian Cinderella[1] about this, which made me reluctant to pick it up: it'd be fair to say that I have some serious loathing for the central theme of Cinderella. Be a good girl, be a nice girl, be a sweet girl, submissively martyr yourself to unjust authority figures. And if you sufficiently martyr yourself into sweet, sublime, submissive perfection, the supernatural powers of the world will rally around to shower you with rank and riches. To not put too fine a point on it, I consider Cinderella to be class-and-gender-targeted don't-buck-the-system propaganda, with strongly Christian overtones to its "submit with a pure heart now, and you'll be rewarded beyond your dreams later" moral.
I wish someone had said of Ash that it's an anti-Cinderella, that it takes the Cinderella shell and uses it tell a truer story, that it features dangerous fairies who want things and makes no virtue out of sweet submission, because then I would have been less reluctant about reading it. (And if someone did make all that clear, I am sorry I missed it!)[2] This is not "a Cinderella story", per se. This is a story about the Cinderella story.
Ash, our Cinderella, is angry. She talks back (until she decides it's not worth getting hit for), she breaks rules, she runs away, she keeps secrets from her step-family-cum-employers. She is not good and obedient and sweet (although she puts on that guise to survive); she's a girl who resents what her life has become, and is desperately trying to claim space for a life that she can stand living. This is a hard thing to read, because at times her despair is so thick that her recklessness blurs into suicidal ideation: she knows that some of the things she is doing could get her killed, or as-good-as-killed, but she can't quite bring herself to see that as a bad thing. Even after she starts to have things she might want to live for, she has a hard time giving up the recklessness and its attendant belief that she has nothing worth showing care for, nothing worth being careful for.
And the supernatural forces of the world, the ones that are supposed to raise up and shower Cinderella with rank and riches? Traditionally, these forces are either a fairy or the spirit of Cinderella's dead mother; Ash includes both. The spirit of Ash's mother is close to who who we expect her to be, but the fairies are not benevolent wish-granters, there only to provide a convenient mechanism for the fated rank and riches. No, these are the old fairies. The enchanters, the seducers, the kidnappers. The fairies who draw you in with their glamours, for purposes they will not reveal, into enchantments that only the legendary can escape. These are the fairies who expect a price. Yes, they can grant you your wishes. But only the foolish or the reckless would ask.
So, yes, our Cinderella goes to the ball; yes, there is a fine dress, a carriage, and enchanted slippers. But do not think that there will not be a price to be paid. There is always a price to be paid.
I mentioned in the opening that the traditional Cinderella story is classist -- after all, the principal "injustice" that Cinderella suffers is being pushed below her "rightful" class, while her principal reward is being bucked straight to the top of the social heirarchy.[3] Malinda Lo doesn't really fix the class issues in Cinderella -- there is a segment of Ash where the Cinderella origins of Sara Crewe are unmistakable -- but Malinda Lo does at least explicitly point out the squicky class problems.
In all, this is a satisfying entry in the subgenre of modern retellings of European fairy stories, re-envisioning Cinderella as one of the dark fairy ballads, a la Tam Lin.
Also, it has lesbians. :-)
---
[1] Except for when they said Asian lesbian Cinderella. To be clear: all the folklore in here is English/Scottish. Ash appears to be roughly set during the period when Celtic Christianity was spreading into Britain, but there are references to silks and porcelains as expensive-but-unsurprising furnishings, which I associate with a millennium later, so... Idunno. Let's call it Mythic Fantasy Medieval-to-Rennaissance England With Lesbians In, and leave it at that.
[2] Also, the cover art? Seriously did not help my misperception that this was a straight-up Cinderella story. She is so passive and tiny and helpless and in-need-of-rescue on that cover.
[3] Well, almost to the top. We assume that the prince and the sovereign both still outrank Cinderella, and perhaps a few assorted others. But still, as rank-based prizes go, it's about as high as you can jump without a magic sword or sovereign birthright at your disposal.
People kept saying lesbian Cinderella[1] about this, which made me reluctant to pick it up: it'd be fair to say that I have some serious loathing for the central theme of Cinderella. Be a good girl, be a nice girl, be a sweet girl, submissively martyr yourself to unjust authority figures. And if you sufficiently martyr yourself into sweet, sublime, submissive perfection, the supernatural powers of the world will rally around to shower you with rank and riches. To not put too fine a point on it, I consider Cinderella to be class-and-gender-targeted don't-buck-the-system propaganda, with strongly Christian overtones to its "submit with a pure heart now, and you'll be rewarded beyond your dreams later" moral.
I wish someone had said of Ash that it's an anti-Cinderella, that it takes the Cinderella shell and uses it tell a truer story, that it features dangerous fairies who want things and makes no virtue out of sweet submission, because then I would have been less reluctant about reading it. (And if someone did make all that clear, I am sorry I missed it!)[2] This is not "a Cinderella story", per se. This is a story about the Cinderella story.
Ash, our Cinderella, is angry. She talks back (until she decides it's not worth getting hit for), she breaks rules, she runs away, she keeps secrets from her step-family-cum-employers. She is not good and obedient and sweet (although she puts on that guise to survive); she's a girl who resents what her life has become, and is desperately trying to claim space for a life that she can stand living. This is a hard thing to read, because at times her despair is so thick that her recklessness blurs into suicidal ideation: she knows that some of the things she is doing could get her killed, or as-good-as-killed, but she can't quite bring herself to see that as a bad thing. Even after she starts to have things she might want to live for, she has a hard time giving up the recklessness and its attendant belief that she has nothing worth showing care for, nothing worth being careful for.
And the supernatural forces of the world, the ones that are supposed to raise up and shower Cinderella with rank and riches? Traditionally, these forces are either a fairy or the spirit of Cinderella's dead mother; Ash includes both. The spirit of Ash's mother is close to who who we expect her to be, but the fairies are not benevolent wish-granters, there only to provide a convenient mechanism for the fated rank and riches. No, these are the old fairies. The enchanters, the seducers, the kidnappers. The fairies who draw you in with their glamours, for purposes they will not reveal, into enchantments that only the legendary can escape. These are the fairies who expect a price. Yes, they can grant you your wishes. But only the foolish or the reckless would ask.
So, yes, our Cinderella goes to the ball; yes, there is a fine dress, a carriage, and enchanted slippers. But do not think that there will not be a price to be paid. There is always a price to be paid.
I mentioned in the opening that the traditional Cinderella story is classist -- after all, the principal "injustice" that Cinderella suffers is being pushed below her "rightful" class, while her principal reward is being bucked straight to the top of the social heirarchy.[3] Malinda Lo doesn't really fix the class issues in Cinderella -- there is a segment of Ash where the Cinderella origins of Sara Crewe are unmistakable -- but Malinda Lo does at least explicitly point out the squicky class problems.
In all, this is a satisfying entry in the subgenre of modern retellings of European fairy stories, re-envisioning Cinderella as one of the dark fairy ballads, a la Tam Lin.
Also, it has lesbians. :-)
---
[1] Except for when they said Asian lesbian Cinderella. To be clear: all the folklore in here is English/Scottish. Ash appears to be roughly set during the period when Celtic Christianity was spreading into Britain, but there are references to silks and porcelains as expensive-but-unsurprising furnishings, which I associate with a millennium later, so... Idunno. Let's call it Mythic Fantasy Medieval-to-Rennaissance England With Lesbians In, and leave it at that.
[2] Also, the cover art? Seriously did not help my misperception that this was a straight-up Cinderella story. She is so passive and tiny and helpless and in-need-of-rescue on that cover.
[3] Well, almost to the top. We assume that the prince and the sovereign both still outrank Cinderella, and perhaps a few assorted others. But still, as rank-based prizes go, it's about as high as you can jump without a magic sword or sovereign birthright at your disposal.
