Terry Prachett: Why Gandalf Never Married (1985)
ansible.co.uk
ansible.co.uk
To put it another way: all magic--all power, really--actually comes from men, and more specifically, from their "wands" (ahem.) A woman doing magic is just serving as an avatar or proxy for her boyfriend's "will." Further, because she is committing a carnal sin by not being married to this creature (by definition: you need a priest, and no priest will marry you to a devil), she starts off on the "evil" side of the line, even if she wants nothing to do with it.
Then there's the whole matter that she's "draining his willpower for her own purposes"--mythology tends to discretize single creatures into multiple over time, so "witch" and "succubus" were likely the same idea. Even if she was sleeping with a perfectly good Wiz, she'd still be a vile temptress.
That all seems more in line with medieval European folklore to me.
(Of course, the question of what happens when someone marries a wizard is left unanswered; it's usually assumed that wizards are too ingrained in their world of rites and formulae to go a-courting, but what if a girl were to just love them anyway--like I'm sure the wives of many mathematicians today do? Would she gain "legal" access to his magical energies, or is there some sort of biblical clause against that? In fact, would the wizard be allowed to marry at all? Would a priest condemn Merlin in his time, even in his role as the king's advisor?)
The fact that priests do not marry also adds to the case.
For example, at least one Eastern Orthodox church allows married priests. (IIRC, they have to get married before they get ordained.)
Rabbis are almost required to be married.
Theology, like programming, has edge cases. Here's an example: you're an Anglican. Anglicans have apostolic succession -- i.e. if you're a priest, you were admitted by a bishop, who was in turn once a priest admitted by a bishop, who was in turn ... by St. Peter who was chosen to lead the Church by Christ Himself. Despite the fact that Anglicans are not Catholics, and do things differently (such as permitting priests to marry), under Catholic theology their claim to holy orders is good if a little misguided.
But what if one who is married converts to Catholicism? They're still a priest until they forsake it. Their marriage was licit when they entered into it. We're famously touchy about dissolving marriages -- either it was illicit when it was entered into (perhaps due to reasons that were not discovered yet) and thus requiring an annulment, or its good and binding until death.
Which means married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism (slightly more complicated -- you need the bishop to sign off on it) are now married Catholic priests.
If you are correct, then by the same trick a woman can become a Catholic priests, but I don't think the rules of theology are quite as literal as that. While I don't doubt that such a person is married, and Catholic, and a priest, I doubt that he would be considered a Catholic priest. Either that, or God itself is trapped in a logical paradox and the universe explodes.
For the first time in my life I get to say "What do you want, signed authorization from the Pope?" and it is actually responsive!
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published in July 1980:
*[T]he Holy See has specified that this exception to the rule of celibacy is granted in favor of these individual persons, and should not be understood as implying any change in the Church's conviction of the value of priestly celibacy, which will remain the rule for future candidates for the priesthood from [persons converting from Anglicanism to Catholicism]."
It is strongly hinted that Gandalf took on the form of a Man, but was actually one of the lesser Valar, called Maiar.
The Silmarillion explains much of the background of all this.
In a time before Viagra, the significance of Gandalf appearing as an old, wise man would necessarily preclude sexual activity.
On the otherhand, I would have thought that LotR was the perfect refutation of Pratchett's thesis - I mean Galadriel was one of the bad-asses on the White Council, with ambition to boot! She was one of the holders of the three elven rings, marking her a peer of Gandalf's, and it was she that was tempted by the One Ring's power.
And then, in that other grand fantasy series, The Belgariad, there was of course Polgara, another strong female magic-using character, even though she ended up playing second fiddle to her father any time some direct application of power was required.
Overall, I can't help feeling that the speech was in response to Pratchett's own innate tendancy against female magic-users, as a close examination of most of the major series shows that many, if not most, had strong female magic-using characters, both good and evil. At least Pratchett was able to see that he had a bias, and apparently fought against it to create Granny Weatherwax - full marks to the man :-)
Granny Weatherwax (a witch) is easily one of Pratchett's best characters. (She shows up in Equal Rites, and then again in Wyrd Sisters, which is a sort of retelling of Macbeth...and in several books since.)
This is one of the many reasons that Harry Potter is so subversive. Witches and Wizards are just words for the same thing in different genders, and it's ingrained in every kid's head.
not to mention that about half of the problems in the series are caused by women scheming and interferring because they're all thus so convinced that men are incompetent.
I remember being dumbfounded when I read an intervew with Jordan and the interviewer asked how he wrote such strong women. ... yeah if you assume strong women are all horrible humans sure I can see thinking he writes strong women.
While the concept was good - in almost no place where the gender disparity was shown - does Jordan portray the women in a good light. (Perhaps only the Village Council / Womens Circle comparisons)
link: http://www.brandonsanderson.com/blog/599/WoT-Read-Through-EY... (running off to shadar logoth without telling anyone!)
But the arguement of "but they ARE reckless ignorant kids" only works for the first couple books. 8 books in women are still running around saying Rand/Mat/Perrin is a wool headed moron who will only make things worse if left to his own devices, despite each having shown their competence time and time and time again, while the women's meddling caused things to go pear shaped just as often.
The other two also do stupid stuff (well, Mat more than Perrin), but it's easy enough to argue they shouldn't be running around loose either, not this close to the end. They have no real protection.
I think it'll be interesting to observe how fantasy terminology evolves within the next 30 years, as leagues of Harry Potter readers start writing fantasy.
Female wizard (not witch): Herald-Mage Savil. That book was 1989, though.
Read "The Colour of Magic" if you get the chance, it's hilariously funny in spots, especially if you're a little bit of a fantasy geek.
It's like how programmers designing registration systems become obsessed with talking about registration forms and CAPTCHAs. It's just where their minds dwell as they work.
There's also the Hogfather, a book released later in the Discworld universe, that got turned into a double TV movie. It is a much more faithful reproduction as they had more time, which in the case of the Hogfather was truly necessary.
Still, interesting and entertaining.
Jordan was definitely trying to play with gender politics through his work. From the only female magic users (at the start of the story at least), to the Queens of Andor and entire city of Far Madding - he liked to shift some of the gender-balance on its head. The constant Village Council / Womens Circle examples also bring this up.
That being said - the hero is still the young male with a sword. And the bad guys: Fain / Moridin / Shaidar Haran are all male as well. So while it does play some havok with traditional magic use (at least for the first few books) - most of the male-centric fantasy genre is still intact.
She describes a world where there's no difference between men and women. There are heroes and villains on both sides. Furthermore, women aren't made out to be fundamentally superior or inferior in terms of emotion versus ration. She makes the difference apparent - you get dumb guy moments and giggly girl moments - but at the same time, every character has dumb blind emotional moments, and moments where a clear head prevails.
She does similar things with racism and libertarianism. (That's not to say Rowling is ultralibertarian, but she expresses certain views - like the fallibility of government and the acknowledgement that people aren't created entirely equal - that promote the agenda, while simultaneously being mature enough to acknowledge that government isn't inherently bad and that people are defined by more than just their talent.) The funny thing is that the one thing she's accused of - promoting witchcraft - is the least radical of the various things she tries to do. Combine that with a very adult understanding of death couched into a book series that, for the first few books, was considered fluff kid fantasy, and you realize that Rowling is very underrated as a kid's author. People ignore her merits for her popularity, which is a shame.
Eddings, from all I've heard, is a talented writer, but he's not good at reaching out to a wide audience. He's a niche writer. Rowling, meanwhile, has a talent for making people fall in love with her writing that I've rarely seen in any writer, and she combines that with surprisingly mature plot development.
Reminding us that if you want an escape from reality, fiction is your ticket.
For what it's worth, I've got quite a few female friends who don't get treated necessarily like stereotypical females because they quite clearly aren't. Maybe I'm just in a lucky part of the world, but I haven't seen females get discriminated against much unless they invited it on themselves.