beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2009-01-09 07:25 pm
beccaelizabeth) wrote2009-01-09 07:25 pm
Diana Wynne Jones: House of Many Ways
I was somewhere between disappointed and really creeped out by this book.
Good things first: I like how the house in the title works. I like the central character. Well, she's a girl who likes books and doesn't know how to do cleaning, I can relate. I like the magic and the trouble they get into and the way they get out of it.
Not so good: I don't know why but the ending felt rather unsatisfying, like I was expecting a meal and got a sandwich. But that could have been because of the
Very Bad Thing: The Lubbock and Lubbockin.
In all the other DWJ books I've read the bad guys are bad because they do bad things, and they do bad things because they make bad choices, and that's the whole of it. The idea that you can be born bad is explored several times and always discarded as one of the problems, the thing the hero has to realise is a bad idea and show others. That's proper, that's the right shape for things.
In this one the Lubbock is a Bad Thing because it is a Bad Thing. You can tell from looking, because it looks creepy and insectoid. This is disappointing because usually things that scare characters early on turn out to be good later and things that look tempting turn out to be bad later and that's a useful pattern. Something that looks like a fly turning out to be inherently evil and needing burning to death is just wrong. And I keep remembering the bit from Witch Week when it's all about "it hurts to be burnt". In that book it's all about sympathy for the people that get burnt to death for being born different. In this book burning people is what the 'heroes' do. That's not right.
But I don't have a word for the depths of wrong attached to the idea of lubbockin. That's the children of the lubbock. They're born to humans, and they look human apart from purple eyes or maybe purple skin, and according to this book the proper response is that midwives kill them at birth. I thought that would be shown to be part of the problem, but no, they get to the end of the book and all the way through lubbockin are evil because they're born that way, and their ancestors were born that way, and their children will be born that way, and the only thing to do is kill them. So that's what the 'heroes' do.
Thinking about it makes me feel sick.
This is a wrong idea on a scale of wrongness that goes off the end somewhere. It's a really poisonous kind of wrong. It recommends killing babies at birth if they look purple or a bit lumpy. That's just foul. And it isn't the abstract kind of SF foul, it's the kind of thing that has happened in history (with slightly different definitions of what deformities bring death) and probably does still happen somewhere, and in a slightly more technological way is in the papers about maybe still happening with screening for assorted traits. There's a bunch of ways babies can end up killed for being Not Right. Inventing one for a story and then leaving it at the end as the appropriate and proper course of action is foul. And as for the purple skin thing... killing because of skin color is in no way shape or form acceptable just because that color is purple and not some variety of brown. Never ever. Skin is no reason to judge someone, and that's important.
The way the lubbock puts eggs in people against their will makes it read like rape, but then it would mean children born from rape are evil for lots of generations, which is very much a wrong idea.
I feel like I must have read the book wrong, these ideas seem so obviously a wrong.
But the big reveal of evil isn't which characters have been stealing, it's that they have purple eyes and purple skin and no real hair. So they're lubbockin, and so they're evil. And it says lubbockin have no real feelings. And the cute dog everyone likes kills them even after they've been turned into rabbits, when you would imagine it would be difficult for them to cause further damage. But I was forgetting the evil is inherited, so I supposed they'd make lots of evil rabbits if they weren't killed. So, foul and ridiculous.
I'll quote the bit about the midwives.
Quote: p207-208
Charmain took a large breath and asked "Anything interesting in that diary, Sire?"
"Well," said the King, "it's rather nasty really. This is the diary of one of my great-grandmother's ladies-in-waiting. Full of gossip. Just now, she's dreadfully shocked because the King's sister died giving birth to a son and the midwife seems to have killed the baby. Said it was purple and it frightened her. They're going to put the poor silly soul on trial for murder."
Charmain's mind flew to herself and Peter looking up 'lubbock' in Great Uncle Willian's encyclopedia. She said, "I suppose she thought the baby was a lubbockin."
"Yes, very supersitious and ignorant," the King said. "No one believes in lubbockins these days." He went back to reading.
Charmain wondered whether to say that that long-ago midwife may have been quite right. Lubbocks existed. Why not lubbockins too?
/quote
The King says killing babies is nasty, superstitious and ignorant, which is the obviously correct thought. But the King also says there's no lubbockins, which is proven to be wrong. Does the book really want to prove him wrong about the nasty/ignorant bit as well?
I was sure at that point that existing wouldn't be the point. It should be 'no one believes lubbockins are all evil' and that turn out to be true. It could even be one of the protagonists turns out to be descended from such a person, disproving the whole born-evil idea. But no, the point turns out to be proving lubbockin exist, and killing them.
And it feels contradictory because there's another bit about Elves that seems to be saying that it isn't the blood that matters at all:
p211
"Some of my ancestors were not nice people," he said. "I bet this one bullied poor Nicholas horribly. They tell me it can be like that when elf blood goes sour, but I think it's just people, really."
/quote
So the King, saying it's just people, gets proven wrong, and Charmain, saying it's how they're born, gets proven right.
The bit where they look up Lubbockin in the magician's encyclopedia is on p86-87
"LUBBOCKIN: the offspring of a LUBBOCK and a human female. These creatures normally have the appearance of a human child except that they invariably have purple eyes. Some will have purple skin, and a few may even be born with vestigial wings. A midwife will destroy an obvious lubbockin on sight, but in many cases lubbockins have been mistakenly reared as if they were human children. They are almost invariably evil, and since lubbockins can breed with humans, the evil nature does not disappear until several generations have passed. It is rumoured that many of the inhabitants of remote areas such as High Norland and Montalbino owe their origins to a lubbockin ancestor."
/quote
I read that bit and I felt sure that would turn out to be twaddle. It sounded so much like in Magicians of Caprona when they're telling tales about how Those Bad People Over There have terrible habits because of who their family are. It's obviously the kind of misinformed nonsense that gets dispelled by the hero working together with someone who decides to do different.
Except in this book it isn't.
In this book it turns out to be true, and a clue, and the lubbockin are evil, and that's that.
And I hate it really rather a lot.
And I feel vastly disappointed and a little bit confused, because it's so much a contradiction of all the other books, the pattern is all wrong. That's not how the story is meant to go.
So I keep on turning it around in my head to see if I've missed something.
Good things first: I like how the house in the title works. I like the central character. Well, she's a girl who likes books and doesn't know how to do cleaning, I can relate. I like the magic and the trouble they get into and the way they get out of it.
Not so good: I don't know why but the ending felt rather unsatisfying, like I was expecting a meal and got a sandwich. But that could have been because of the
Very Bad Thing: The Lubbock and Lubbockin.
In all the other DWJ books I've read the bad guys are bad because they do bad things, and they do bad things because they make bad choices, and that's the whole of it. The idea that you can be born bad is explored several times and always discarded as one of the problems, the thing the hero has to realise is a bad idea and show others. That's proper, that's the right shape for things.
In this one the Lubbock is a Bad Thing because it is a Bad Thing. You can tell from looking, because it looks creepy and insectoid. This is disappointing because usually things that scare characters early on turn out to be good later and things that look tempting turn out to be bad later and that's a useful pattern. Something that looks like a fly turning out to be inherently evil and needing burning to death is just wrong. And I keep remembering the bit from Witch Week when it's all about "it hurts to be burnt". In that book it's all about sympathy for the people that get burnt to death for being born different. In this book burning people is what the 'heroes' do. That's not right.
But I don't have a word for the depths of wrong attached to the idea of lubbockin. That's the children of the lubbock. They're born to humans, and they look human apart from purple eyes or maybe purple skin, and according to this book the proper response is that midwives kill them at birth. I thought that would be shown to be part of the problem, but no, they get to the end of the book and all the way through lubbockin are evil because they're born that way, and their ancestors were born that way, and their children will be born that way, and the only thing to do is kill them. So that's what the 'heroes' do.
Thinking about it makes me feel sick.
This is a wrong idea on a scale of wrongness that goes off the end somewhere. It's a really poisonous kind of wrong. It recommends killing babies at birth if they look purple or a bit lumpy. That's just foul. And it isn't the abstract kind of SF foul, it's the kind of thing that has happened in history (with slightly different definitions of what deformities bring death) and probably does still happen somewhere, and in a slightly more technological way is in the papers about maybe still happening with screening for assorted traits. There's a bunch of ways babies can end up killed for being Not Right. Inventing one for a story and then leaving it at the end as the appropriate and proper course of action is foul. And as for the purple skin thing... killing because of skin color is in no way shape or form acceptable just because that color is purple and not some variety of brown. Never ever. Skin is no reason to judge someone, and that's important.
The way the lubbock puts eggs in people against their will makes it read like rape, but then it would mean children born from rape are evil for lots of generations, which is very much a wrong idea.
I feel like I must have read the book wrong, these ideas seem so obviously a wrong.
But the big reveal of evil isn't which characters have been stealing, it's that they have purple eyes and purple skin and no real hair. So they're lubbockin, and so they're evil. And it says lubbockin have no real feelings. And the cute dog everyone likes kills them even after they've been turned into rabbits, when you would imagine it would be difficult for them to cause further damage. But I was forgetting the evil is inherited, so I supposed they'd make lots of evil rabbits if they weren't killed. So, foul and ridiculous.
I'll quote the bit about the midwives.
Quote: p207-208
Charmain took a large breath and asked "Anything interesting in that diary, Sire?"
"Well," said the King, "it's rather nasty really. This is the diary of one of my great-grandmother's ladies-in-waiting. Full of gossip. Just now, she's dreadfully shocked because the King's sister died giving birth to a son and the midwife seems to have killed the baby. Said it was purple and it frightened her. They're going to put the poor silly soul on trial for murder."
Charmain's mind flew to herself and Peter looking up 'lubbock' in Great Uncle Willian's encyclopedia. She said, "I suppose she thought the baby was a lubbockin."
"Yes, very supersitious and ignorant," the King said. "No one believes in lubbockins these days." He went back to reading.
Charmain wondered whether to say that that long-ago midwife may have been quite right. Lubbocks existed. Why not lubbockins too?
/quote
The King says killing babies is nasty, superstitious and ignorant, which is the obviously correct thought. But the King also says there's no lubbockins, which is proven to be wrong. Does the book really want to prove him wrong about the nasty/ignorant bit as well?
I was sure at that point that existing wouldn't be the point. It should be 'no one believes lubbockins are all evil' and that turn out to be true. It could even be one of the protagonists turns out to be descended from such a person, disproving the whole born-evil idea. But no, the point turns out to be proving lubbockin exist, and killing them.
And it feels contradictory because there's another bit about Elves that seems to be saying that it isn't the blood that matters at all:
p211
"Some of my ancestors were not nice people," he said. "I bet this one bullied poor Nicholas horribly. They tell me it can be like that when elf blood goes sour, but I think it's just people, really."
/quote
So the King, saying it's just people, gets proven wrong, and Charmain, saying it's how they're born, gets proven right.
The bit where they look up Lubbockin in the magician's encyclopedia is on p86-87
"LUBBOCKIN: the offspring of a LUBBOCK and a human female. These creatures normally have the appearance of a human child except that they invariably have purple eyes. Some will have purple skin, and a few may even be born with vestigial wings. A midwife will destroy an obvious lubbockin on sight, but in many cases lubbockins have been mistakenly reared as if they were human children. They are almost invariably evil, and since lubbockins can breed with humans, the evil nature does not disappear until several generations have passed. It is rumoured that many of the inhabitants of remote areas such as High Norland and Montalbino owe their origins to a lubbockin ancestor."
/quote
I read that bit and I felt sure that would turn out to be twaddle. It sounded so much like in Magicians of Caprona when they're telling tales about how Those Bad People Over There have terrible habits because of who their family are. It's obviously the kind of misinformed nonsense that gets dispelled by the hero working together with someone who decides to do different.
Except in this book it isn't.
In this book it turns out to be true, and a clue, and the lubbockin are evil, and that's that.
And I hate it really rather a lot.
And I feel vastly disappointed and a little bit confused, because it's so much a contradiction of all the other books, the pattern is all wrong. That's not how the story is meant to go.
So I keep on turning it around in my head to see if I've missed something.