There’s an interesting discussion in the latest Coode Street Podcast in which Gary tosses out the idea that Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley is something of an ur text as regards feminist fantasy. I’ve been dredging my memory of books I read in the 1980s. Patricia McKillip and Elizabeth A. Lynn were both writing at the time, but I suspect that Gary is right in suggesting that Mists of Avalon had an enormous influence on the field. I also suspect that Dungeons & Dragons played its part, because the book was dropped into a market full of women role-players desperate for something to show how they might participate more fully in cod-medieval societies.
As with Gary and Jonathan, I have put no great thought into this. Feel free to tell us how wrong we are in comments.
How influential were Norton’s Witch World books back in the day [1]?
1: “The Day” being 1960s and 1970s. There were later sequels with collaborators; I take this as evidence the books were loved by someone.
Crapola.
Not only was there McCaffrey, there was Tanith Lee. Feminist text is such a reductive term, especially when applied to Bradley.
She may have followed, but she never led. And Avalon was cute, not ground breaking. Even at the time I was bamboozled with the hype.
I think it’s regarded as a feminist fantasy classic, which is odd, as the novel is all about women betraying other women and there’s not a lot of implicit comment, as far as I can see, that this is a Bad Thing. It’s had a massive impact on modern feminist paganism, however.
I’d not say massive impact. I’d say significant in certain quarters. Just as many of us fell off the chair laughing.
I think it was part of a larger movement, and the argument as to whether or not it started a trend, as opposed to led it, or simply rode out the energies really successfully, would depend entirely on where you were at the time.
It is a successful book, and it did draw a lot of people to it. But it was hardly a feminist classic. Again, it is only a feminist text if you apply its own rules to itself.
I enjoyed it at the time, but it was not a brainstorming genesis. If you want fantasy feminist classic, you don’t have to look further than Tanith Lee. Birthgrave rathers predates Mists. And then there’s Vonda McIntyre’s Dreamsnake, which had far more impact at the time, I’d say.
I suspect we’re seeing Mists on terms in the huge rise in Arthurian myth and the feminist pagan ride that came off it, in a different direction. And over reading the part Mists played. I’d see it as a focus point, not a genesis. Perhaps the spark that lit the carefully built bonfire…
Well, that’s my tuppence worth. 🙂
I can offer anecdotal evidence for “in certain quarters” at least. I’m a little too young to really speak to it, but certainly I know older female fans to whom it was a big deal. That and organized Star Trek fandom. (Which, lest we forget, was almost exclusively female at first.)
Speaking only from my own personal experience I found McCaffrey’s work influenced me far more than the Mists of Avalon. I have trouble understanding that as a useful model for Feminism
I am prepared to be argued out of that particular theory – I’m not deeply attached to it. It might depend where one is – I’m in Glastonbury, which is about to host several hundred women who are coming over for this year’s Goddess Conference. Whatever you think about this, they spend thousands and it’s normal to see people with blue moons tattooed on their foreheads. Also, despite protestations of the women who set it up, the whole phenomenon inspired the establishment of the goddess temple here, and also across Europe (Bulgaria, Spain, Italy). It’s a big movement in modern paganism, like it or not. I have issues with some of it, not so much with other aspects.