Made marion series book how to#I didn’t even know how to process this information. I arrived ready to smash the patriarchy.Īnd then, in 2014, Moira Greyland, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s daughter, told the world that her mother had sexually abused her and many other children for more than a decade. I arrived ready to smash the patriarchy.īy the time I left home for a women’s college, I’d reread The Mists of Avalon several times. By the time I left home for a women’s college in 1989, I’d reread The Mists of Avalon several times. There is no happy ending for anyone at Camelot - there never has been - but Bradley shows us real people struggling against their destiny, and she shows us that it’s not just impersonal fortune to blame for their inevitable downfall. Doom hangs over Arthur’s glorious reign, just as fate rules many a legend and fable. She shows us Morgaine doing foolish, selfish things, and she shows us that Gwenhwyfar’s position is an impossible one. Even so, Bradley brings nuance to these characters. It’s the story of the smart girl who becomes a powerful woman. This isn’t a story about the pretty girl, the princess. The moment when Morgaine and Lancelet are, finally, about to become lovers - and then Gwenhwyfar, blonde and fair and lithe and helpless, stumbles into Avalon… No matter how many times I revisit this scene, it still crushes me. I sympathized with the girl Morgaine, and her adolescent experiences hinted at frustrations I was just beginning to feel. Like The Once and Future King, Bradley’s novel follows its protagonist from childhood into old age. The impact of this book lingers in my feminism, certainly, but it also influenced my scholarly interest in folklore, and it still informs my personal spirituality.īut my primary reaction to The Mists of Avalon, when I first read it, wasn’t intellectual it was emotional. In retrospect, I can see that it gave me ways of seeing that helped me find the feminine even within patriarchal systems while studying religion as an undergrad. The Mists of Avalon also gave me a glimpse of spiritual possibilities beyond male-dominated, male-defined religions. Encountering the vain, self-serving, diabolical Morgan le Fay transformed into the priestess Morgaine compelled me to question other received narratives in which women are to blame for the failures of men. Bradley opened my eyes to the idea that, when we look at the past, we are only ever seeing a small part of it - and usually, what we are seeing excludes the experiences of women. I still cannot imagine anything more perfectly aligned with my thirteen-year-old sensibilities than Marion Zimmer Bradley’s masterpiece. Bradley’s reference to the island where Arthur rests made me feel like an insider, while the marketing copy suggested something radically different than anything I’d encountered before: Arthurian legend, from the female perspective. I’d even muddled through La Morte d’Arthur. White’s The Once and Future King, which had led me to Howard Pyle’s take on Arthurian legend, as well as John Steinbeck’s. She looks determined, but serene, fully self-sufficient.Īnd that evocative title! The Mists of Avalon. She is sitting on a beautiful white horse and grasping a sword by its blade. Instead, she is wearing a voluminous robe, her long, dark hair bound by a simple coronet. She’s not naked, nor is she wearing an armored bikini or an approximation of medieval dress that allows for ample cleavage. The painting on the cover stopped me in my tracks, right there in the science fiction/fantasy section of Waldenbooks at Chapel Hill Mall in Akron, Ohio. This time, we asked : What book was your feminist awakening? Novel Gazing is Electric Literature’s personal essay series about the way reading shapes our lives. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.
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