(The Lack of) Women in "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell"

I'd suggest that anyone doing a blind-reading test would have no idea whether this book was written by a man or a woman. In fact, I'd be willing to bet most people would assume it was written by a man, given that nearly all the major characters are men. As the title may suggest, there were, in fact, no female lead characters in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.  Indeed, author Susanna Clarke is quoted as saying:

I deliberately kept women to the domestic sphere in the interests of authenticity ... it was important that real and alternate history appeared to have converged. This meant that I needed to write the women and the servants, as far as possible, as they would have been written in a 19th-century novel.

Now, that quote is according to wikipedia -- so who knows about the accuracy (the citation is behind some kind of paywall), but regardless of authenticity, the quote is accurate. The female characters in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell were for the most part confined to the domestic sphere, and even moreso, were generally "damsels in distress" and/or "keeping the home fires burning." This is not to say that they were not fully formed characters or realistic humans with great strength, but only that they had little in the way of "agency" and their lives were largely dictated by powerful men. Realistic to the time period (the beginning of the 19th Century), but also intriguing to me through the lens of a year of reading women authors.

At the same time, part of the purpose of reading women authors for a year is to dispel the myths that there are perceptible differences. There are certainly none to be found here. Although this book may be a poor test case, since in everything from marketing to cover design, there seem to be none of the outward marks of the gender-based double standard. The cover design is iconic and bold without any stereotypically gendered colors, and features big text across the front cover (I've read that a big typeface cover design announces that "this book is an event").

So perhaps it's some food for thought that this book -- without any particularly prominent female characters or overt feminist themes, and with its doorstop size -- received the kind of marketing, buzz, and ancillary design that may more typically mark a big, bold debut novel by a man. I'd be curious if the leads were Jessica Strange and Ms Norrell how the reception, marketing, and popularity might have changed.

The fact remains, though, that this excellent work primarily about men and magic got a big push from a major publisher and was a big hit. And it just so happened it was written by a woman. Seems like a win-win to me.

Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a behemoth, people. Clocking in at over 1,000 pages, a thickness well over shoulder-bag-acceptable measurements, and a weight I estimate to be roughly equal to that of my 20-month-old daughter (who is admittedly only in the 25th percentile of her age group for weight), you have got to really be into this one to lug it around and haul it out on a commuter train. After more than a month of reading I had succumbed to some kind of literary Stockholm Syndrome and couldn't ever remember reading a normal-sized novel.

The point is, for all the hassle it entails, an epic like this better deliver the goods. Fortunately, it's a pleasure to read, through and through. Only perhaps twice did I feel impatient and wish that the damn thing would just get on with it already. (And I am an admittedly antsy reader, with a wandering eye, easily drawn over to a shelf of unread books.)

Set in a slightly askew version of England towards the start of the 19th century, the novel details the efforts of two very different magicians working to bring magic back into practice. As you might be able to imagine (or might not, I don't know!), the action takes place over the span of more than a decade and aside from the titular magicians, features a sturdy cast of well-drawn supporting characters. Realistically, one needs a vast swath of time and a dense cast of characters to keep any engine purring over the course of 1000+pgs.

I am also not enough of a book-nerd or a fantasy-fetishist that I want to study the scale of maps of fictional lands, nor am I compelled to have to memorize a set of impenetrable genealogical charts, nor am I filled with a pressing need to learn elvish. Yet, credit where it's due, Susanna Clarke succeeds in crafting so richly detailed a World that halfway through this book I googled "John Uskglass" to determine if he was a real historical figure, or at least a real character in folk-legend. (Pure invention, for the record.) But that kind of total immersion in a fictional world is rare for me, and supremely satisfying.

The reality with which Clarke grounds her fantasy makes the difference; you feel as if this is almost a comedy-of-manners or an adventure novel, and the existence of magic is basically commonplace. It's ALMOST not so much a fantasy novel as it is an adventure-romance set in a world almost exactly like our own, just with that one tiny difference. Think: Bronte meets Austen, twisted through the lookingglass just slightly.

It takes a pretty masterful work to engage my fractured attention span over such a prohibitive length. Clarke fills Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell with enough incident, mystery, tension, character, and humor that this is one of those rare epics that's actually FUN to read from beginning to end. (Plus, now I can cap my next three books at 300pgs, rip through them at light-speed, and not have a twinge of guilt about it!)

View all my reviews