The Blood Inside Maple Trees

[redbrunja]

zahrawithaz  has a post on the arthurian legends and how they developed over the centuries that is hugely helpful.

I find it especially timely because I've been trying to remember where I got my ideas about these legends. I remember liking Guinevere prior to reading The Mists of Avalon (one of the major reasons I hated that book was Bradley's treatment of her), although Bradley's novel is first I can recall reading about the arthurian legends; it was shortly followed by Child of the Northern Spring and Queen of the Summer Stars, though I did not read the third book of that trilogy; one of the thick, famous, books about Merlin( ETA: okay so I asked my mom about this, and I read The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills and I have never read ); and I Am Morgan Le Fay and I Am Mordred).

Basically, I do not recall a time when I didn't know the basis of these legends.

[ETA: From quizzing my mom, I am pretty sure that at least half but probably more of my early exposure to these legends was her telling them to me.]

Comments

[lady-tigerfish.livejournal.com]

It always seemed to me like Bradley sacrificed her feminism for her religious agenda with her treatment of Guinivere. She wanted to show so badly that the Church disempowered women that she was willing to suck the life out of a character who had the potential to be complex, compelling, and plenty interesting in her own right, just to make her point. And like you, that was one of the main reasons I disliked Mists.

You're also the first person I've run across who read the Springer books growing up! I went back to visit my parents' house and found the pair of them just last week, sitting on an old bookshelf, probably untouched for a good ten years. I decided to take them home with me; I certainly know Springer's Morgan affected me for years, and probably still does even to this day.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

She wanted to show so badly that the Church disempowered women that she was willing to suck the life out of a character who had the potential to be complex, compelling, and plenty interesting in her own right, just to make her point.

Agreed. And she also used a very beloved character to (try and) make that point, which was, imho, a tactical error on her part.

I decided to take them home with me; I certainly know Springer's Morgan affected me for years, and probably still does even to this day.

tbh, I can't remember what she did with Morgan. Did she have a positive or negative image or her? Or was it more complex?

[lady-tigerfish.livejournal.com]

Springer-Morgan was definitely the villainous version from the later stories, but she paid a lot of attention to making her psychologically complex, a selfish, strong-willed kid who also understandably balked at the roles set out before her--and just as she went with a mid-to-late medieval villainous interpretation of the character, she was very careful to give her all the same societal baggage she would have had being a woman at that time.

While I gave them a reread and the books don't hold up as well for me as they did back then, the notion that she could still be an antagonist while retaining her complexity stuck, and is something that obsesses me even today. I've noticed that generally speaking, books either go back to her original role (or at least something closer to it than, say, the romances) and make her a complex good guy, or they make her a two-dimensional antagonist. While I like her original role, I'd like to see more people tackle her in bad-guy mode while not giving her the short shrift character-development-wise.

Morgan icon just for you.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that generally speaking, books either go back to her original role (or at least something closer to it than, say, the romances) and make her a complex good guy, or they make her a two-dimensional antagonist. While I like her original role, I'd like to see more people tackle her in bad-guy mode while not giving her the short shrift character-development-wise.

There could be some awesome, awesome stories from that angle. And I'm thinking I may need to do a reread of some of these novels. (And read some of the ones I never got a chance to.)