I Read What?!

If you haven't noticed, I've been working on making Table of Contents for my completed reviews. Eventually I'll make ones for Dragonsong and Shapechangers too. Until then, the tags are the best way to navigate.

So last time we met Menolly and her parents, saw a Pernese funeral (at least for a coastal society) and encountered the really odd prejudice against "tuning".



We're told that it's easy enough "at first" for Menolly to keep from "tuning" while Teaching because she wants to do her mentor proud. She likes teaching more than her other chores like gutting fish, mending net, or baiting hooks. That's fair. I wouldn't enjoy those things either.

Apparently when the fishing fleet is in, Yanus stops by to scowl at her. Apparently he once caught himself tapping his foot to the beat, scowled and left. We're given a hint of the larger events of Dragonquest here, as apparently the Hold got a message from Igen Hold about Oldtimers which has made everyone go around "looking black". Maybe F'nor's accident? I can't remember what Hold that would have been.

Anyway, more notably, the Masterharper Robinton had sent a message "slate" to Petiron. I really would like to know specifically how the characters record messages. The Weyrs apparently use "skins", which are less permanent than they like. We saw Robinton using his rape-metaphor sand (he was creepy about it and I refuse to forget that) and clay set up. Some kind of chalk and slate thing would seem to make sense, but how does that work for a long distance message?

Anyway, they decide to keep the slate for the new Harper. This upsets Menolly because she thinks the slate might be about her (since Petiron had sent some of her songs to the Masterharper). She actually asks her mother why Yanus didn't open it. She's told that Harpers' letters are for Harpers and is accused of "getting above [herself]".

Menolly then worries that Mavi will make Yanus remove her as teacher, she doesn't, but she does find all the smelliest and most boring jobs for Menolly once her teaching duty was done. Yanus also drops in more.

Time passes. There's threadfall, which is interesting from the Hold's perspective. Menolly wants to see dragonriders burn Thread one day. She joins the clean up crew, which gives us a chance to glimpse the outer environment: marshes and bogs, barren rock palisades and no greenery. Menolly likes being outside in the rough air.

F'lar makes a cameo here to talk to Yanus, which gives Menolly a chance to get a nice close look at Mnementh and watch him take off. Hi Mnementh, I still love you. This sight, unfortunately, inspires Menolly. She still has a read pipe and she starts playing a little whistle in excitement, only to be caught by her older sister, Sella.

Now here things get a little inconsistent. Everyone's in a good mood. So they call on Menolly to play for them. So they don't seem to have an issue with Menolly being a musician. They just don't want her composing her own music? How in the world does that make sense?

I realize this probably sounds nitpicky. I'm actually really enjoying the story. I like that it's feminist without demonizing the ordinary "women's work" that Menolly is expected to do. She prefers something else, sure, but doesn't dismiss it as unnecessary or useless like some more clumsily written books do. I just don't think Ms. McCaffrey has really thought out the logic behind the patriarchal oppression.

People don't just forbid things for the Hell of it. They generally have some kind of rationale, even if it's bullshit. If the issue is that women aren't Harpers, okay, then Menolly should be discouraged from doing ANYTHING Harper-like that isn't 100% necessary. But they're not taking away her instruments. They're not forbidding her from playing IN PUBLIC.

Their prejudice seems to based entirely around original composition. And if that's the case, then I need to know more about why. Every kid I've known has made up a silly tune or two. It didn't make them professional musicians. So Menolly's are catchier than most. If they're not recorded or written down, they're going to get forgotten anyway.

This is a small complaint here, but it becomes more significant in the sequel Dragonsinger. Because unsurprising spoiler, that book deals more with Menolly becoming the first female Harper. For that kind of story to succeed, we need to have a very clear idea of what kinds of institutional and systemic oppression that the characters are dealing with. And I don't necessarily think we have that. But we'll see when we get there.

So Menolly plays some dragon songs, and some sea songs specifically meant for the men to sing along since her throat was tired. At one point she sees Yanus scowling at her, which, dude, you WANTED her to play! She notes that she'd played them often enough when Petiron was alive.

Which is yet another bit of oddness. Why would it have been okay while Petiron was alive?

She wonders what F'lar would have said if he knew the Hold was dependent on a girl for Harpering. Honestly, knowing F'lar as we do, I don't really think it'd register. It doesn't have anything to do with Thread after all. Also, he's going to get preoccupied with grubs, soon enough. Human foibles are not as interesting as invertebrates that eat Thread.

Menolly decides to sing some of the songs about F'lar and Lessa in honor of his visit, which cheers Yanus up. She ends up singing until her throat closes, and she wishes that someone else could give her a rest, but no one could play anything. This leads her to start teaching some of the children how to drum and pipe.

This of course gets her in trouble, since teaching someone to play is "Harper business". These people have the damnedest lines in the sand. I actually think that, as antagonists go, Mavi and Yanus seem to be a lot more two dimensional than the ones we've seen before like R'gul or T'ron. There does seem to be some complexity to them: Yanus seems to be a decent Lord Holder in general. Mavi does seem to care about her children. We do get to see multiple aspects. But we still fall into the same trap: Ms. McCaffrey simply does not seem to be interested in examining WHY her antagonists act the way they do. It is enough that they act, and the clever and logical protagonists have to deal with it.

It's especially notable when Menolly tries to reason out what her parents' problem is:

What seemed to worry Yanus and Mavi most, Menolly reasoned to herself, was the fact that the children, whom she was supposed to teach only the proper Ballads and Sagas, might think Menolly’s tunes were Harper-crafted. (If her tunes were that good in her parents’ ears, what was the harm of them?) Basically they didn’t want her to play her songs aloud where they would be heard and perhaps repeated at awkward times.

Look, it doesn't really help to lampshade the problem here. Having Menolly say she doesn't understand their motives only really works when the audience CAN understand their motives (even though we obviously wouldn't agree with them.) But there IS no easily comprehensible logic behind their motives.

I like that Menolly is facing challenges here. I just wish the challenges made a little more sense. We're told that Menolly sees no harm in writing down her new tunes,. She plays them softly in the hall once the children leave, before she does her chores, and then hides her notations among the Harper's records. That's clever, though I wonder how she gets the material to write given the relative scarcity.

Unfortunately, for Menolly, her mother is watching her closely, "having recognized the signs of rebellion in her". Mavi is worried that Menolly, "her head turned by Petiron's marked favor" isn't mature enough to discipline herself. We're told Sella tattled, vaguely, but Mavi had put it down to sisterly envy. She finally did intervene when Sella told her that Menolly had started to teach another person to play. She thinks there'd be real trouble if Yanus heard.

Okay, see, this is what I mean about them being more two-dimensional. We're actually getting something from Mavi's point of view! She's not a complete ogre! The thing is though, if you're worried about Menolly getting above herself STOP TELLING HER TO PERFORM. That's like the key Harper duty! And it's the most public! Folks may not ask who teaches the kids their history or sums or even music, but they're damn well going to notice a girl singing. And really, it's only logical to teach the kids something. Then you could have a BOY perform in public, as could be appropriate. And y'know, what if Menolly got injured and couldn't play at all?

So we get the passing of seasons. A spring day makes the kids exuberant, which makes Menolly careless, and she's caught strumming something original. Yanus catches her (and how exactly can he tell when something is original? Given that he didn't study with Petiron as far as we know, he probably wouldn't know the entire Harper repertoire by ear. And if he does, that's an unexpected talent). He pulls off his belt and beats her with it, leaving painful weals. He also takes her gitar.

Menolly thinks it's unjust, since she'd only played the first few bars. I also think it's unjust, as I'm supposed to as a reader. I also think it's nonsensical, which I'm not supposed to as a reader.

Afterward, Mavi comes in and calls her a fool. "With so much at state, and you had to tune..."

WHAT is at stake? WHAT is being risked by Menolly "tuning"? This is what we need to know, Ms. McCaffrey. WHY does "tuning" matter more than say performing?

Anne McCaffrey is a good writer. I may not like all of her characters, but she knows how to pace and she knows how to plot. I imagine that she does have some logic behind this prohibition as it relates to Pernese culture. But it's not coming across to me as a reader.

Anyway, Mavi does show some concern/distress for Menolly's wounds and rather curtly tells her that she'll need numbweed. Menolly thinks that Mavi doesn't really care, except that "a sound body works harder and longer and faster"

Menolly leaves the Hold to pick greens as ordered. We're told randomly that Menolly's heretofore unmentioned brother, Alemi (I feel like he shows up again in a later book, perhaps?) had told her that she could run as well as any of the boys, and outdistance half in a long race. Menolly wishes she had been a boy, since it wouldn't have mattered if Petiron had died, and Yanus wouldn't have beaten a boy for singing his own songs.

Poor Menolly.

So anyway, she notes the signs of some blackened vegetation where a Thread slipped through and got flamed by the queens' wing. Menolly tells herself that one day she'll open the shutters so she can watch. But she's wise enough to be wary, since she's seen her mother treat someone's Threadburn, and knows that it doesn't heal neatly.

Then Menolly gets to see something cool: a fire lizard mating flight! Apparently her brother had seen them before, which had set off some "lizard fever". (Kids trying to trap fire lizards.) Menolly doesn't intend to tell anyone, not even Petiron if he had been alive. She remembers discussing fire lizards with Petiron, as well as "Between" and Petiron's one experience dragonback. Unlike Robinton, Petiron wasn't a fan.

There's an interesting moment where Menolly wonders if Petiron had, essentially, gone Between. Just without his body. It makes me wonder about Pernese religion. She thinks about how he left her every song he'd known, every technique and instrument. She continues to observe the Fire Lizards. (We're also told that Menolly had once met Manora, "a very pleasant, gentle woman", and Menolly had liked her.)

Menolly makes herself a reed pipe and starts playing a new song, inspired by the fire lizards.

Thus ends the chapter. I complained a lot, but it's not bad. I generally like Menolly, and I like that she avoids the trap of being obnoxious or pointlessly disobedient that a lot of YA feminist heroines in this type of story tend to fall into. Her slip ups seem understandable. I sympathize with her struggle. I am glad she's clever enough to continue doing what she loves.

I just wish that Ms. McCaffrey put the same effort into the obstacles she's creating for Menolly. Ideally in this sort of story, there are layers to the patriarchal oppression. There's the personal level: what Menolly's immediate authority figures think, and the limits they oppose. And there's the societal level: the ideology that ultimately forms both the behavior and ideals of Menolly's authority figures, Menolly herself, and everyone else she might encounter.

Here I've got a clear idea of the personal level of the oppression: Yanus and Mavi don't want Menolly composing or teaching music, because they believe that's Harper work and as a girl, Menolly can't be a Harper. They're making an exception for teaching non-musical subjects (which I understand), and performing (which I really don't.)

I don't really understand the societal level of the oppression though: Why can't women be Harpers? Women not being Dragonriders makes some sense: Dragonriding is a risky occupation, and we know Pern's got population issues. Queens won't take anyone but a woman, so there'll always be a Weyrwoman, but it makes sense that they'd have gotten in the habit of offering up men when available for the other dragons. But is Harpering so dangerous?

Is the issue with Harpering that the subject matter is inappropriate and offends women's modesty? Is there a tradition of female entertainers selling sex as well as their music/art? Are women just thought to be too simple to remember the music and poetry, or lack the muscle, breath, or reach to play?

Why is "composing" more masculine than performing? Why is it okay to teach the histories but not a basic drum roll?

I know that the general point of these sorts of feminist stories (and I AM a feminist, in case that gets lost in my ranting) is that the oppression doesn't fundamentally make sense. But it makes sense to the people who practice it! They're usually wrong, but it makes sense to them! And generally, if we read from their perspective, it will make sense to us too (though obviously, we are meant to disagree). But we've had a bit from Mavi and Yanus's perspective now and I STILL don't understand. It's annoying, and it makes the book lose a bit of impact.