And finally….we’re back on track! Thank you for your patience while I’ve thrashed and floundered in a world of plaster and sawdust. Ready to move on to the almost-conclusion of Ann Swinfen’s In Defence of Fantasy? Today we’re talking about critiques and visions of social and political ideals in fantasy, circa 1982.
This chapter and the last showcase Swinfen at her best. She’s a terrific reader and critic. If you ever want a master class on how to write a literary paper, read these two chapters because, after all the throat-clearing and prefacing, here she really shows her strengths as a writer and reader, and except for one small rant I’ll try to restrain myself. Because if she had written the whole book as she wrote these two chapters, and had she picked books that proved out to be more important to the fantasy cannon — less dabbling in children’s literature — (in other words, had she been less cautious a critic) this book would be a classic.
By 1982, Tolkien was the center of the fantasy-universe; the Silmarillion was in print, and The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings had been around for decades. She doesn’t touch Tolkien, and I don’t know why, except that maybe everyone else who talked about fantasy talked about Tolkien, and she wanted to stake out new territory. In comments in previous diaries in this miniseries, we’ve detailed some of the many books that are now considered canon and were in print when Swinfen researched and wrote, and yet she ignores them. I don’t understand why she did that, either: maybe requirements from the publisher, maybe Swinfen’s own predilections, maybe her desire to be taken as a serious critic that made her less willing to engage with newer works. Whatever the reason, it’s diminished the book and made it more a historic snapshot and curiosity than a serious and enduring work of literary criticism.
And that’s a pity, because when she’s on target and engaged with her subject, she’s really really good.
As I’m sure you know by now, the first part of a literary essay (and that’s what these chapters are — a series of literary essays collected under a single title) outlines a general theory of the case, a thesis. Then the writer moves into examples that support that thesis. The conclusion wraps the thesis up with a bow, and tells us why it’s important. A simple structure, but sooo difficult to do it well and make it interesting. It helps immensely when the writer’s interested; it makes it easier for the reader to catch the whiff of enthusiasm and get engaged in the subject. In this chapter, the writer is interested.
First off, she divides philosophic and religious idealism, covered in the previous chapter and last installment, from social and political idealism. In her reading, the former, which is “concerned with worlds beyond this world, with life in relation to death, with temporal existence in relation to eternity,” belongs mostly to secondary-world fantasy, while the latter, “[i]n order to remain relevant to the contemporary reader,” mostly belong to primary world fantasy, especially alternate-history, near-future fantasy, and beast tales (1, p190).
Yeah, I don’t agree with her, either, but that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead. We have to keep remembering that fantasy as an art form was in a different state of development at the time, and no one knew how or in which directions it would grow. So let’s let that pass, as Swinfen argues that, while politics and society are different things and react differently to pressures and stresses, they’re also closely related. You really can’t have one without the other; even as writers can choose to focus on one side of the relationship, the other side is always there.
Political idealisms have social implications, while social idealisms imply the development of certain desirable political institutions. While the two can never be fully disentangled, however, an individual writer may lay more stress on one or the other. (1, p.190)
Nowhere is the relationship between social and political systems more apparent than in dystopias and utopias, because both put polito-social systems under a magnifying glass. Here Swinfen mentions the classics Brave New World, 1984, and Animal Farm, but she doesn’t critique them. That could be because they’ve been analyzed before, or it could be because she didn’t want to, having found “the depths of despair and bitterness” in those novels to be too dark for her comfort. The books she picks for analysis have “darker moments ...relieved by heroism and stubborn hope” (1, p. 191). Even though most of us wouldn’t welcome touring Big Brother’s Britain, that she turns from adult fantasy to children’s and young adult works because they’re less grim is a flaw in a critic.
Now it’s a commonly-accepted assumption that fantasy comments on reality — that a disability or deformation in the primary reality becomes an asset or a mark of the god-touched in the secondary world; that Tolkien’s horror of Mordor and Angband were birthed in the trenches of Europe in World War I, etc. etc. — but when Swinfen wrote In Defence of Fantasy, it was a relatively new idea, so her assertion that
facts of the contemporary social scene colour the thinking of many writers of fantasy, not just those with a clear social or political message (1, p.191)
is pretty bold. She illustrates the point by referring to noting correlations between Mary Norton’s Borrowers series and persecutions of the Jews by Nazis in the years leading up to 1939 and culminating in the Holocaust.
In Swinfen’s analysis, postmodern culture has led to a reevaluation of political systems and the concurrent impact on society. Her list of “disillusioning events” of the 20th century by today’s standards seems downright quaint: the ebbing of religious faith, the loss of empire in Britain, McCarthyism and then loss of Vietnam in US, “when she could no longer deceive herself that she was an earthly utopia, pure and uncorrupted sanctuary of ideals in a corrupt world” (1, p. 192).
For this chapter, Swinfen focuses first on Russell Hoban’s The Mouse and His Child, and her discussion is so thorough and sensitive that she almost makes me want to find and read the book. She then moves to John Christopher’s Winchester Trilogy and The Guardians. Obviously, she likes the books, but her analysis is not as deep or thorough, which makes me conclude that Christopher has not yet found either his Mouse or Child. I’m passing lightly over all this in-depth discussion, mostly because all these books are, deservedly or not, obscure and few of us, if any, have likely ready them.
Main takes from Hoban and Christopher: both criticize social systems. Hoban offers a pretty savage critique of capitalism and the amorality of might-makes-right, with a side evaluation of Manny Rat, the brutal mob boss broken and brought low by events, and in time ennobled by what he has learned in his downfall. In the Winchester Trilogy, Christopher contrasts an urban tech-heavy and socially-programed way of life with a rural life in which technology has been banished, and explores the deficiencies in each system. Both examples are mildly dystopian, but mainly deal with social criticism, criticism of societies that drive individual behavior. Both The Winchester Trilogy and The Guardians examine the qualities of leadership in a flawed world, and question whether any leader can change the existing order or must adapt and compromise with the social pressures brought on by history, technology, stupidity, or the greed of other people. Although she writes specifically of The Winchester Trilogy, Swinfen’s observation that “the ways in which political tyranny and social prejudices can warp and stunt people” applies to all her examples in this chapter (1, p. 216).
Then she turns to Richard Adams’ Watership Down, which is obviously one of Swinfen’s favorite books, and here I’ll slow down a little — after all, most of us are probably familiar with Watership Down. Although the novels of Christopher and Hoban can be safely labeled as dystopian, Adams searches for a utopia, and tentatively finds one.
Adams depicts four main types of human political systems: a totalitarian state, a community of lotus-eaters, a once healthy social group sinking into stagnation and complacency, and an attempt to set up a utopia. (1, p. 217)
The novel starts at Sandleford warren, which is established, settled, and stagnant. Led by the Threarah, who is “growing older, secure in the complacent estimate of his own wisdom and foresight, and he ignores Fiver’s warning of impending disaster,” Sandleford is a median example between Efrafa and Strawberry’s warren, and a warning against social calcification (1, p. 222). Efrafa is a totalitarian state, born of Woundwort’s determination to keep his warren safe at all costs. It’s his vision of a utopia that’s grown twisted and deformed by his fear and his absolute control. Strawberry’s warren is outwardly idyllic, but is leaderless, culturally superficial, and ultimately, despairing.
In both of these communities, the inhabitants are protected from the outside world, from disease and from predatory animals, but instead become the victims of the politically powerful within the community: in Efrafa of Woundwort and the Council, in the other warren of ‘the man’, the farmer who is effectively the ruler of the community, protecting it, providing its food, and killing its inhabitants. (1, p. 224)
Leading us to Watership Down, which Swinfen calls a “modest utopia”:
It is a loose democracy with a popularly acclaimed leader or prince, which looks back to the traditional culture and faith which the inhabitants, like human colonists, have brought with them to their new home, and forward to the good life which is to be lived in their new and freer community. It is a society without bigotry, in which there is adequate accommodation for individual talents and eccentricities, and each member can be valued for his own qualities. Above all there is complete freedom of action, of thought, and of speech, within the limitation imposed by consideration for other members of the community. (1, p. 224)
She describes Watership Down as a utopia based on what it’s not: not oppressive, not hopeless, neither insulated from nor fraught with danger.
The positive qualities … are modest: a sense of personal and communal self-respect, faith and culture, security, and personal liberty. Modest riches to those who have always possessed them, but infinitely precious to those who have not. (1, p. 225)
Concurrently, Swinfen considers the qualities of leaders in politico-social fantasies, and the cultural significance of a shared tradition/faith, a sense of belonging that extends to all its members.
Wrapping up, she reprises the search for utopia in fantasy, the form’s use of satire in service of social commentary, the training of leaders for lives of “loneliness, responsibility, integrity and heroic stature,” and what qualities make desirable societies (1, p. 228). Moreover, and as an admittedly dated coda, she observes that generally fantasy authors dislike urbanization and mechanization, longing like Tolkien, for the countryside undisturbed by cars and trains and factories (and that is one of Swinfen’s few mentions of Tolkien).
When society becomes untenable, people tend to break out one of two ways, according to Harvey Cox: violence or withdrawal (qtd in 1, p. 229).
It is noteworthy that fantasy, which some might expect to be a literature of ‘withdrawal’, since it is so often carelessly dismissed as ‘escapist’, is in reality employed to condemn precisely those malaises towards which Cox directs our attention. The depiction of a pre-industrial society as desirable is not a withdrawal in the sense of a shirking of responsibility. Rather it is a revolt against precisely that indirect form of violence which has created a widespread need for release from a sense of imprisonment by regulations and data-banks, constant official prying into private life and a devaluation of personal dignity. (1, p. 229)
Fantasy, Swinfen asserts, offers a third way, a re-visioning the world that is into the world as it should be.
What can I say? When she’s on, she’s on. And while I have kvetched plenty about the datedness of her analysis, her choice of texts, and a hundred matters mostly small, her In Defence of Fantasy is still an early and important attempt to codify a definition of fantasy and subject the form to critical analysis. And that’s a worthy object of study.
Next week we finish Swinfen with a quick recap of what she accomplished. After that, as promised, I’ll write up some notes on world-building and what it entails. Also, next week expect photos of the finished bedroom, which still looks rather like a tornado hit it. But we survived Thanksgiving, no one threw food, so it was a success on all points.
See you in comments.
Previous Installments
Reference
1. Ann Swinfen, In Defence of Fantasy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.