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Vorkosigan reread: Cordelia's Honor
... so, progressing merrily backwards, I've made it to the first two books in the series, Shards of Honor and Barrayar. (Which are collected in the omnibus Cordelia's Honor, but having been written several years apart, I think they deserve considering as separate books.)
It is completely fascinating to go read these two books with the later parts of the series fresh in my head. Discovering the younger versions of all the characters was such delight. Cordelia! Aral! Illyan! Everybody! Even if the series is meant to be read in chronological order, I think it really adds something to have already encountered the older versions of the characters, especially for Barrayar, which was written after she'd already written several of the Miles books. It was so weird and fascinating to see powerful, self-controlled Alys Vorpatril as a terrified, pregnant widow, or Kou and Drou as struggling, angsty young lovers. Tiny Gregor! ♥ And LOLOLOL forever at newborn Ivan being recognizably Ivan. (Literal LOL'ing occurred, in fact, at Alys's "Ow!" of surprise when tiny Ivan latched onto her breast "with a grip like a barracuda". Yep. Poor Alys.)
Even more fascinating, though, was reading Shards of Honor and knowing that it was Bujold's very first foray into original fiction, as well as her first venture into Miles' universe. It was so interesting seeing the characters start to be themselves; because in the beginning, they are and yet they aren't. In the early scenes I can really see the Star Trek influence, and while it's fun adventure fiction, there's something oddly generic about it. And then is a point about halfway through when it just clicks, and becomes Bujold -- Aral and Cordelia's first scenes after Cordelia was captured by Vorrutyer made me nod and go "Yep, that's Aral", and made me realize that it hadn't quite been Aral yet in the earlier scenes. (It was doubly interesting, then, to read Bujold's afterword, and realize that the point in the book where I had noticed a distinct tone-shift and increased Bujold-ness, between the first half of the book and the Escobar invasion, had actually been a turning point when she was writing it, too -- it was the point where she went from "Whee, I am writing a novel, I do not know what will happen next!" to actually figuring out the plot ... the point where she started figuring out what she wanted to write about, and you can see the same themes in that part of the book that she goes ahead and explores throughout her subsequent books as well.)
It is completely fascinating to go read these two books with the later parts of the series fresh in my head. Discovering the younger versions of all the characters was such delight. Cordelia! Aral! Illyan! Everybody! Even if the series is meant to be read in chronological order, I think it really adds something to have already encountered the older versions of the characters, especially for Barrayar, which was written after she'd already written several of the Miles books. It was so weird and fascinating to see powerful, self-controlled Alys Vorpatril as a terrified, pregnant widow, or Kou and Drou as struggling, angsty young lovers. Tiny Gregor! ♥ And LOLOLOL forever at newborn Ivan being recognizably Ivan. (Literal LOL'ing occurred, in fact, at Alys's "Ow!" of surprise when tiny Ivan latched onto her breast "with a grip like a barracuda". Yep. Poor Alys.)
Even more fascinating, though, was reading Shards of Honor and knowing that it was Bujold's very first foray into original fiction, as well as her first venture into Miles' universe. It was so interesting seeing the characters start to be themselves; because in the beginning, they are and yet they aren't. In the early scenes I can really see the Star Trek influence, and while it's fun adventure fiction, there's something oddly generic about it. And then is a point about halfway through when it just clicks, and becomes Bujold -- Aral and Cordelia's first scenes after Cordelia was captured by Vorrutyer made me nod and go "Yep, that's Aral", and made me realize that it hadn't quite been Aral yet in the earlier scenes. (It was doubly interesting, then, to read Bujold's afterword, and realize that the point in the book where I had noticed a distinct tone-shift and increased Bujold-ness, between the first half of the book and the Escobar invasion, had actually been a turning point when she was writing it, too -- it was the point where she went from "Whee, I am writing a novel, I do not know what will happen next!" to actually figuring out the plot ... the point where she started figuring out what she wanted to write about, and you can see the same themes in that part of the book that she goes ahead and explores throughout her subsequent books as well.)
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Actually, that was one thing I meant to say in the above post (I know I thought about it while I was reading) but forgot to mention -- what a really startling thing it was, after re-acquainting myself with their newer, better Barrayar, the one they built -- to go back to a broken, war-torn society, and a dysfunctional military full of spies in which Aral is an outsider. It was like emotional whiplash, actually, when I first encountered those aspects of the plot, because I'd completely forgotten how messed up it used to be, and how much better they made it. (Actually, that was one thing I kept consoling myself with, all throughout the Cordelia books -- everyone grows up, and 20 years from now, they'll all be safe and happy in a better world. Seeing them all broken and scattered and frightened was so hard!)
I really love going back to the beginning of a series I've enjoyed, especially when I'm reading it for the first time. :D It's so much fun, after getting to know the characters, to go back and see all their initial meetings, their first glimpses of each other and so forth.
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Yes! All through the first part of Shards of Honor I kept thinking, well, this is all very well, and it's even playing to some of my favourite tropes, and yet ... it all seems rather generic. And then it changed and became itself. *g*
I wish she'd gone back and Barrayarified the first part more!
I think you really can tell Barrayar was written much later - it's a lot fuller, if that makes sense. Full of little details and all the small things that make a setting real. (The first Miles book also reads a bit generic in parts, I found. YMMV.)
Of course, Barrayar is also the book with one of the most unfortunate lines in the whole series:
Here the author chose to accept unfortunate implications for the sake of giving her heroine a snappy comeback. I'm quite sure she doesn't actually mean to perpetuate unpleasant stereotypes and contribute to bisexual erasure (you still run into that so often, the idea that bisexuals somehow can't be monogamous!) - in Mirror Dance Cordelia explicitly describes present-day Aral as bisexual, after all - but that, alas, doesn't change the way that scene reads. It still makes me want to throw the book against the wall. (Very hard to do with an ebook!)
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Yeah, I got that, too. I haven't reread the first Miles book yet, but the generic-ness of the first Cordelia book was really fascinating to me -- I know exactly what you mean about the second one feeling fuller and richer and just a whole lot more there. And it makes me squint with a critical eye at my own writing, trying to figure out what it is about Shards of Honor that makes it feel that way, and how I can avoid that! There's nothing really wrong with the first half of Shards of Honor; it's not like you can point to any one specific thing and say "Oh, she should change that!" And the whole thing is interesting and moves you briskly right along. But there is also something very flat about it, something that makes it feel like she's drawing more on her creative influences (Star Trek, etc) rather than creating something of her own.
... oh wow, EPIPHANY. I have wondered for ages why I have trouble with serial-numbers-filed-off fanfic, when I love fanfic and I love original fiction, and yet the melding of the two can turn me off really, really easily. And I just realized that one of the big problems with trying to rework fanfic into original fiction (or writing original fiction that's heavily derivative of another series you've read or seen) is that the super-specific stuff, the aspects of the original setting and characters that are quirky and unique and identifiable, and the unique ways that you can comment upon them in fanfic -- those things are the first to go when you step into original fiction. They have to be! Otherwise you'd still be writing clearly identifiable fanfic! So what you're left with is the generic stuff -- the character types, the generic any-scifi trappings, and so forth. And generic and derivative is exactly how it feels. (Whereas if it remains fanfic, you can play with the individual traits that make the setting and characters unique -- as fanfic writers do, in good fic.)
Huh. I don't think I'd ever realized that before.
I'll be back to respond to the bisexuality issue in a new comment ...
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Ouch. And I have to shamefacedly admit that I completely missed the unfortunate implications of that scene when I read it. I think the way that I read Cordelia's comment was probably the way the author intended it -- that she doesn't care who Aral used to sleep with, because he's sleeping with her now -- but I absolutely agree with you that, yes, bisexual erasure ahoy! I suppose it also makes a difference that I'd just recently read the later books, so Cordelia's later comments about Aral being sort of ... soldier-sexual, and going for her because she was a tomboy in Barrayaran terms, were in the back of my head at the same time. But yes. Agreed.
In general, Bujold's books strike me now as a whole lot less ... hmm, diverse and forward-thinking than they did when I first read them in the mid-90s. I still want to give her credit, because they're a whole lot less dated than I'd expected them to be -- I get a really bad case of social whiplash these days when I read scifi from the '70s and '80s, and I was expecting to encounter a whole lot more "do not want" in Bujold's books than I've actually been getting. "Ethan of Athos" in particular -- I was braced for that one, and then ... very pleasantly surprised, and doubly so when I read her author's note and discovered that the book came about following a discussion with some of her guy friends as to whether men could raise children on their own. Whether they were even capable of it. Is THAT where we were in 1985? DDDD: Can you even imagine having a discussion like that with someone in 2011 ... at least someone who wasn't a gigantic reactionary clod?
But then, on the flip side, there is a lot in her books that I never noticed in 1996 that makes me uncomfortable now -- in 1996 I was very pleased that she had alternate sexualities and gender identities in her version of the future; in 2011 I'm deeply aware of how uncomfortable and othering her treatment of "Betan hermaphrodites" is. In 1996 I thought her version of the future seemed very cosmopolitan; in 2011 I'm acutely aware that the only group of people in the books who seem to draw upon non-Western cultural influences are the Cetagandans (who are also portrayed as socially repressive, aggressive and alien) ... though this is less true in the most recent books, with places like Kibou-daini, so she's obviously become aware of it.
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And the thing is, you can take a fannish story and successfully turn it into original fic - but you'll have to do so much rewriting and worldbuilding, it'll be an all-new thing by the end. You'll have rewritten it completely.
Or at least that's how it looks like to me.
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In general, Bujold's books strike me now as a whole lot less ... hmm, diverse and forward-thinking than they did when I first read them in the mid-90s.
Yeah, I can see that. They don't quite read dated (except technologically in the way that the universe has no equivalent of our smartphones and the like, with all the social consequences even our short acquaintance with those devices has already wrought), but not all that progressive either. As you say further down, not nearly as progressive as ... I want to say, as it likes to think of itself, but perhaps I should say, as its characters think? Politically, socially, with regard to gender politics ...
"Ethan of Athos" in particular -- I was braced for that one, and then ... very pleasantly surprised, and doubly so when I read her author's note and discovered that the book came about following a discussion with some of her guy friends as to whether men could raise children on their own. Whether they were even capable of it. Is THAT where we were in 1985? DDDD:
Wow! I managed to miss that author's note completely, but I've read it now, and OMG. Seriously? Was that really were we (for given values of "we") were in the 80s? It's not a discussion I can really wrap my brain around, now or then. *stares*
I admit I found Ethan of Athos rather dull as a book, and my reaction to Athos is basically, "ugh, religions extremists, GO AWAY", but that gives me new appreciation of the concept.
in 2011 I'm deeply aware of how uncomfortable and othering her treatment of "Betan hermaphrodites" is
Very true. And also - Aral may be bi, but the guy he actually was with? A sadistic rapist. Way to go.
Actually, I can't remember - is there any portrayal of a successful, long-term non-straight relationship in the series? I burned through it so quickly, some parts are a bit of a blur.
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God, no wonder you reacted that way. I mean, beyond just the frustration factor of having that stereotype rear its head in the book. *hugs*
They don't quite read dated (except technologically in the way that the universe has no equivalent of our smartphones and the like, with all the social consequences even our short acquaintance with those devices has already wrought), but not all that progressive either.
Exactly. It's interesting, because I was expecting them to feel more dated than they do -- and to me, at least, they don't really feel dated at all , to the point where (like you were talking about) I'd get thrown off by a technology issue, and then look at the copyright date and go "Oh wow, right, this book was written in 1989." And I think that's what makes them feel a lot less progressive now than they did a decade and a half ago -- because they read very contemporary, in a lot of ways, and they must have been quite progressive by 1980s standards, but they aren't really now.
I admit I found Ethan of Athos rather dull as a book, and my reaction to Athos is basically, "ugh, religions extremists, GO AWAY", but that gives me new appreciation of the concept.
Heh, and here's an interesting little example of culture influencing thought, because in the present day, I don't think anyone would even think of writing a book about a planet of gay religious extremists, especially one drawn along such obviously Christian lines. The very concept is completely LOLWHUT? ... and yet, it's the future, there's no reason not to, but I think the two ideas are such polar opposites in most people's minds that it wouldn't really happen.
I liked it, but I read it knowing what it was: a lightweight, cute, self-contained little adventure story. It had a bit of the Bujold touch with the fine-grained and clearly very well-thought-out details of station life, but it was also surprisingly clumsy as a detective novel; I got used to her more skilled touch on the later ones, and this one seemed very ham-handed by comparison.
Still, I was pleased that she didn't skirt around the gay issue. There was a chapter or two at the beginning when I wondered if she was going to, and then she doesn't at all. ... well, not really. At least she doesn't do the subtextual "maybe it is, maybe it isn't" thing that I was afraid she was going to. She's quite unapologetic that yes, Ethan is oriented to men, that he has a boyfriend in the beginning and is attracted to Terrence. And yet, this book definitely goes lighter on relationships than the ones with hetero couples (i.e. all the other ones) -- given how she handles romance in the other books, it's hard to imagine that she would have backgrounded the relationship so entirely if Ethan/Terrence had been an M/F pairing, if that makes any sense ...
(And yet, it's 1986, and she's trying to publish the book through Baen of all places, to a mostly-male audience of military SF fans ... it's impressive that it was published at all!)
(more in the next comment...)
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I suppose it depends on how you define non-straight. Dono and Olivia, for example -- he's transgender. And yet, the entire presentation of Donna/Dono was overwhelmingly heteronormative -- Donna, as a woman, has male lovers, and as soon as Donna becomes Dono, he falls for a woman and marries her. Right, because that's how it works! *eyeroll* (Which is not to say that it couldn't work that way for some people, obviously, but it's not really presented in a "Lady Donna was always bisexual" kind of way, let alone "Dono is marrying Olivia to put a socially acceptable face on his Vorship, while not being sexually attracted to her in the slightest" ...)
Actually, Barrayar in general ... okay, on the one hand, Barrayar is ridiculously patriarchal and repressive, and it's supposed to be, so the expectation is very overtly present that all of the characters will end up in monogamous, heterosexual marriages, and have children -- it's how their culture works. So on that hand, it's unsurprising that most of the main relationships in the series follow the general pattern of man + woman=marriage + kids, since it's on Barrayar and that's their cultural paradigm. It's not like you're going to see open gay relationships on Barrayar ...
But on the other hand -- and it's a big hand! -- where are all the gay Barrayarans, anyway? Or the polyamorous ones? Or the ones, in general, who want something other than husband/wife/kids? Or skirt around the sexual gray areas of their society? And that's something that has bothered me increasingly on the reread. Bujold does use characters like Ekaterin and Tien, or Aral's first wife, to address the point that in a society with arranged marriage, an overwhelming cultural expectation that both genders have a duty to marry and produce heirs, and no divorce, there would be a lot of people trapped in loveless, unhappy marriages. But every last one of them that we've ever seen deals with it by suffering along until their spouse dies, and then finding true love and happiness with a soulmate later. No one ever cheats on a spouse unless they're evil. Let alone having a long-term relationship outside the marriage. No Vor husbands seem to have kitchen-maid mistresses and by-blows ... or a furtive affair with the stableboy, for that matter. No Vor wives deal with their isolation and loneliness by seeking love in the arms of someone they aren't married to. There doesn't seem to be a gay Barrayaran underground, or Barrayarans seeking gender-reassignment surgery for non-political reasons. In a society that is only just letting go of arranged marriage, and requires parental approval for marriage, everyone somehow seems to have managed to fall in love and find happiness with a parentally-approved spouse ...
I think one reason why I loved Mark & Kareen so much -- an unconscious reaction the first time I read the books, but consciously on the reread -- is because they're so different from most of the couples in the series, and from the Barrayaran (and our) cultural norm. They're unmarried but in a committed life relationship. They're kinky. They don't have kids and don't plan to.
But ... you know, I'd never thought about how deep it runs. The books definitely pay lip service to the existence of all kinds of alternative sexualities "out there somewhere", in the greater galactic culture, but where we actually spend our time in the series (Barrayar, mostly, but also on Cetaganda, or among the Dendarii mercenaries) there is not only little to no non-straight sexuality, but their societies don't even seem to have the kind of flouting of the sexual rules that you get in actual analogous societies on Earth.
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Ooh, that's an excellent point! Maybe they'll, paradoxically, read more progressive again once they're noticeably dated?
I don't think anyone would even think of writing a book about a planet of gay religious extremists, especially one drawn along such obviously Christian lines
So very true! It is rather hilarious, and I wonder how non-fannish people who happen across it today react.
the fine-grained and clearly very well-thought-out details of station life
That was what I liked best about the book. But as you say, it's not exactly wildly successful as a detective novel, and I couldn't warm up to any of the characters. Basically, the only positive thing I have to say about the book apart from its setting (which could have been used for a much more interesting story!) is that it has gay people in them, and they're misogynistic religious extremists, so, not really that much of a yay, you know?
it's hard to imagine that she would have backgrounded the relationship so entirely if Ethan/Terrence had been an M/F pairing, if that makes any sense ...
Makes perfect sense. It's not that I don't see that it's progressive for 1986, but I'm reading it today after all. It matters, but it doesn't necessarily contribute to my enjoyment, if that makes sense.
and she's trying to publish the book through Baen of all places, to a mostly-male audience of military SF fans ...
I like that the series is published by Baen, and clearly successful there! Just goes to show how many of the common assumptions about what will or won't sell to certain audiences are just that, assumptions.
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Except that Dono never reads as transgender to me. The whole situation reads as someone undergoing a sex change and thereby automatically also undergoing a gender switch and a switch of sexual orientation, so that a hetero female becomes a hetero male. As if the body defined the mind - and therefore almost the opposite of anything trans. And that rather makes me twitch. (I don't know how LMB intended it, but that's how it reads to me; YMMV.)
Dono is marrying Olivia to put a socially acceptable face on his Vorship, while not being sexually attracted to her in the slightestActually, Barrayar in general ...
Everything you say in this section is so very true! All the Barrayarans seem conformist to an absurd degree. Where are all the dissenters, where are the people who defy social expectations, where are the subcultures? As you say:
there is not only little to no non-straight sexuality, but their societies don't even seem to have the kind of flouting of the sexual rules that you get in actual analogous societies on Earth.
And sexual orientation is one thing; how about gender roles? Where are the Barrayaran bluestockings? Other political reformists, beyond the still extremely conservative so-called "progressive" party? Why aren't certain segments of the population running away to Beta Colony in droves? With the whole of the Nexus out there as examples for how things can be run differently, why aren't people snapping up those ideas left and right? It's baffled me from the start. There's a huge amount of upheaval at the start, at the time Cordelia and Aral get together - but despite fundamental changes such as the uterine replicator, which seems to be generally available in later years, the society seems curiously stagnant. Perhaps that's because what we mostly get to see is the ruling classes, but even so ... there definitely seems to be something missing there.
I think one reason why I loved Mark & Kareen so much -- an unconscious reaction the first time I read the books, but consciously on the reread -- is because they're so different from most of the couples in the series, and from the Barrayaran (and our) cultural norm.
Yes, that's very true - they're the only unconventional Barrayaran relationship we get to see. It's bizarre! And becoming more and more bizarre the more I think about it ...
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*nods* Good point. Actually, situational sexuality (as opposed to inborn sexuality) seems to be kind of a norm in Bujold's universe (except when it's not, as when most people encounter Bel, say), so Donna/Dono's sexuality and body-concept shifting with the outward physical form is actually consistent with how Bujold seems to conceptualize sexuality, but doesn't match up with the lived experience of most transgender people in 2011 ...
And you know, she wouldn't have had to tweak it a whole lot to make Donna's transformation less problematic and more consistent with the experiences of actual transgender people -- either Donna having been uncomfortable in her female body (as opposed to just her female gender role), or Donna-as-Dono still thinking of herself as Donna, and having difficulty settling into the male role ... either one would have done! As opposed to the chameleonic transformation that actually happens.
And sexual orientation is one thing; how about gender roles? Where are the Barrayaran bluestockings? Other political reformists, beyond the still extremely conservative so-called "progressive" party? Why aren't certain segments of the population running away to Beta Colony in droves? With the whole of the Nexus out there as examples for how things can be run differently, why aren't people snapping up those ideas left and right? It's baffled me from the start.
Well, there are aspects of this that do work for me. Running away in droves doesn't actually seem to be what you get when a rigid, repressive, strongly family-oriented society runs into a radically more socially liberal society; the Barrayarans' wariness of the galactics and their corruptive influence actually rings quite true, there. People in general are suspicious of change, and people who grew up within a society tend to see their own society as the best way of doing things.. Especially if their main exposure to galactic culture was the Cetagandans ... I can see why the average Barrayaran-on-the-street isn't clamoring to immigrate.
... but none of that changes the fact that there ought to be significantly more social upheaval and more factions of society actively attempting to liberalize. You get little tossed-off comments -- there's a mention in Barrayar of one District taking advantage of the political chaos after Vordorian's death to attempt to declare independence as a republic, which was ruthlessly put down with Aral's blessing, and that's the last you hear of that. But like you said - where are the bluestockings? the reformers attempting to unionize the factories? the printers of underground newspapers? the Barrayaran gay scene? It's not even as if they have to re-invent the wheel; the information and ideas are already there. Even if the Vor exercise strict control over the flow of information to the planet (which they don't really seem to ... though it's hard to tell, with most of the characters belonging to the privileged class), those ideas must be trickling in.
... damn you comment limits, back in a moment ...
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I started my reread with the more galactic books, and it's only recently that I've moved on to the books that deal with Barrayar itself (A Civil Campaign and the first two Cordelia books), which is leaving me mildly boggled at the extent of Barrayar's medievalness. Non-Vor can't own weapons ... Divorce doesn't seem to be possible ... Women have next to no rights at all ... I still wouldn't expect mass uprisings -- cultural inertia and all of that -- but I'd expect someone other than Cordelia to notice that things are not exactly okay. The books seem to handwave it by allowing anyone who actually tries to move upwards in the class structure or get out of a bad situation, either because they just try hard enough!, or manage to attract the attention of a Vor-class patron (Cordelia/Aral/Miles/etc). So Drou gets to be a soldier, and Vorthys's wife gets to be a world-class engineer, and Cordelia gives her friends' daughters scholarships to Beta Colony ... and okay, yes, barriers are broken, society changes in small ways -- but there's still a notable lack of dissatisfaction among people who don't have those advantages, and don't have highly-placed Vor friends to help them. (Or, well, presumably ... we rarely even see those people, so who knows ...)
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My two cents on...well...a scattering of points. On the gender/non-heteronormative stuff. I do have to say I've been two minds about it. On the one hand, unlike some series, she does acknowledge it. On the otherhand, the lack of any happy endings/main focus for those characters/couples is a bit...annoying. On the other hand, I do think, looking at how things have slowly changed with the later books. I do wonder if not only has society changed but how much her own views have changed.
For example, I liked Miles' thought in Diplomatic Immunity about why he and Bel never actually did anything way back when and how he regrets it. I sorta read that as Bujold herself sort of speculating on how not only her characters have grown and their world views shifted, but her own as well.
Switching topics, as for the stuff happening on Barrayar, I do wonder if at least some of that is due to the focus of the narrator. The majority of stuff we see is from Miles' POV and he comes from a verrrry privileged place in his society. Civil Campaign is the first time we get present day Barrayar not from Miles' view point. And when we see Kareen, Mark's and Ekaterin's POV, I felt we did get a glimpse into some other aspects. The fact that Kareen does feel different coming back and resistant to marriage. She does buck society with her 'option' on Mark rather than a marriage. And you get the impression from Cryo-burn that she and Mark don't spend that much time on Barrayar. For that matter, once Elena got off she didn't want to come back. You have to wonder if there are quite a few Barrayars, the ones who did feel too outcast or suppressed, did just up and leave rather than pushing to change their own society. We know of three...well, 2 and a half, Elena, Baz and to some extent Kareen. And those are just the ones Miles knows personally. There are probably a lot more...but you have to suspect, in such a classed society, it's more the lower, even more suppressed class that would be more interested in going and thus Miles would probably know them less.
One of the things I really enjoyed in Memory was how Miles revists the chars from Mountain of Mourning. In the novella itself, Harra is taking it upon herself to try to fight society and yes, she then gets Miles as a benefactor, but it was her original initiative that led to his coming. And afterwards, in Memory, when he goes back, her and her husband and their village have obviously continued to push for changes in the years since Miles saw them.
It would be interesting to get a story set on Barrayar from a non-Vor POV as the main char because I do think the skewed view of the society we get is a lot due to having Miles as the main POV. He does not have full perspective of his position. Ekaterin even has that thought in CC when they're all meeting with Gregor and Miles has some line about Gregor taking some things for granted and she's thinking how much Miles does the same. And how she keeps being amazed by how casually Miles thinks about money and such.
Err...sorry to ramble, interesting discussion!
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Am curious to reread and see earlier-version Barrayar! also, re: your conversation below (which I haven't read all of, but skimming) - aahhh, that's something that's been striking me all the way through, how Barrayar is handled. Because it's a deeply problematic society (especially by modern 21st century values) - not just in the sexism, but in its very feudal nature, and how that's portrayed. Gregor is an Emperor but he's a *good* Emperor, and with him and Aral in control their feudal system is basically working for the society...which is deeply antithetical to any ideal of democracy, and if she were writing any kind of political tract Gregor would have to be portrayed as either evil or incompetent...but he's not, and the books aren't.
Really, for all that they have a lot of scifi elements, there's a sort of fantasy feel to them in that - hard scifi tends to be about advancing an author's agenda, and while that's true on certain social aspects (the presentation of sexuality and gender is definitely on the liberal end of the spectrum, even if more conservative to the point of being borderline offensive by the most progressive modern values) in a lot of other stuff Bujold puts story and characters ahead of politicizing. So Barrayar's feudalism is functional and non-oppressive (not-very-oppressive) because its leaders are awesome and incorruptible and lovable, same as in Lord of the Rings Aragorn taking the throne is a good thing leading to a golden age, not a dictatorial blow against possibility of democracy. I don't think Bujold's trying to say we should all be ruled by wise & just kings; more that wise & just kings can make for good stories!
Some of this is also narrator bias, of course; Miles loves Barrayar, and for all his exposure to Betan values he still doesn't see a lot of the flaws. Cordelia, obviously, sees a lot more - though at the same time she also sees problems in the Betan system as well, the different kinds of oppression that happen there.
...tbh, I rather like it myself, that there isn't a lot of judgment being passed, that mostly the societies are just presented as-is, all with their flaws and advantages. For that matter Cetaganda's society is all kinds of crazy and problematic, but it's also presented as working for (some of) them just about as well as anything else is.
Given the choices I'd prefer to live on Beta colony; seems like the best deal overall - but Cordelia walks away from Beta, and I like that it's not presented as the ultimate right or wrong answer that she does.
...and, um, I have no idea where I'm going with this so will just leave it at that! *ramble ramble*
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I hadn't thought of it that way before, but that's really true!
And, you know, I don't really have all that much of a problem with Dono adjusting so easily to being male, even if Donna showed no signs of being anything other than comfortable with her body - for some people, the body's sex isn't all that important. But then the sudden switch in sexual orientation doesn't fit. Why not just make Donna bi to start with? Not like it'd be unheard of in the universe or anything!
Or, alternatively, as you say, it would not have been hard at all to make Donna/Dono credibly transgendered ... but LMB chose neither, and so the whole thing sits there very weirdly, and I have no idea what to make of it.
Running away in droves doesn't actually seem to be what you get when a rigid, repressive, strongly family-oriented society runs into a radically more socially liberal society
I was exaggerating a bit. But, I mean, you do get people like Elena, who chafe at the restrictions and take the first ticket out - and that's when Miles is very young. Somehow this option doesn't seem to become any more common even decades later, although the situation for women doesn't seem to have changed all that much. Which just doesn't quite make sense for me, no matter how conservative and family-oriented Barrayar may be.
You get little tossed-off comments -- there's a mention in Barrayar of one District taking advantage of the political chaos after Vordorian's death to attempt to declare independence as a republic, which was ruthlessly put down with Aral's blessing, and that's the last you hear of that.
Yeah! It's like they went, "okay, that's out of the way, back to business as usual!" Same with the women, actually. Elena already got away; so now no one else has to do it!
Er. Sorry for the flippancy, but sometimes I think that's closer to LMB's approach than I'd like to believe. Of course, I also read somewhere that she doesn't like to give background characters names unless they actually matter to the story, and maybe it's the same with Barrayar's political diversity - she just doesn't care to address it unless she chooses to focus on it. To which I can say, little details that aren't actually ever focussed on are what makes a SF world feel real to me, so I always want more, even if it's just hints.
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Yes, this! There just should be more dissatisfaction all around. Even if Barrayar were much, much less oppressive than it actually is, there should be - no matter what the system is, you always have substantial numbers of people who are unhappy with it for personal reasons or just on general principle. On Barrayar, they either don't exist or are otherwise invisible, and I think that's a shame.
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On the other hand, I do think, looking at how things have slowly changed with the later books. I do wonder if not only has society changed but how much her own views have changed.
Yes, that makes sense! Or at least that she (like all of us) has become more aware of nuances and unfortunate implications and suchlike. The longer you spend on something, the deeper you dig, most of the time, so that alone probably accounts for much.
Switching topics, as for the stuff happening on Barrayar, I do wonder if at least some of that is due to the focus of the narrator.
We've definitely got a not-entirely-reliable narrator in Miles! He's very invested in imperial Barrayar, and will blithely accept and defend it wholesale, Betan mother or no. And I'd love a book or story with a strong non-Vor POV that gave us an insight into all the things Miles is blind to. That's an excellent idea. :)
Still. I liked Kareen's POV on her return to Barrayar, and her forging her own unique path. But I'm coming to feel that LMB focuses a bit too much on the exceptional individual who will make her way no matter what, while neglecting larger-scale social diversity. (Too much for my taste, that is.) For example, there's Drou and Elena and Kareen, who none of them are happy with the Barrayaran status quo - and yet we don't get the impression that there's any sort women's lib movement at all. It just feels unbalanced to me, Miles POV or no.
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And then, because of the aftermath of Escobar and then the Pretendership, Grishnov, Negri, and Ezar are all dead within a very short period of time, and power is now held by Aral Vorkosigan, who there is never any canon that he's held political office before this and has just spent most of the last five years in his disgraced-officer-post off planet, and by Simon Illyan, who was a lieutenant about five minutes ago.
If you'd started with that and then said, "and thirty years later, the non-Vor have less power and nothing substantial has changed in the social, political, and judicial systems and it looks like women's rights have in terms of child custody gone backwards", I'd assume this is a completely different series. Either Aral was one hell of a dictator, or... no, I think we're left with, Aral was one hell of a dictator. Which I'm not sure is supported that much by canon. We have pin-pointed social change (Komarrans in the military), but overall? It's still all built on corruption and despotism. This house of cards should have fallen a long time ago and it's weird that it hasn't.
This is something I find hard to resolve when trying to do fic, but I sort of feel like fic is the only way it's going to be resolved, since I doubt it will be in canon.
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As Tamim Ansary put it in her book "Destiny Disrupted," in most "developing" nations, especially Middle Eastern/North African countries, there is a deep divide between the popular culture and the educated elite. I see a similar disconnect between the Barrayaran aristocracy, who seem increasingly cosmopolitan as the series goes on, and the majority of Barrayaran peasantry, who obviously have a very low standard of living and couldn't hope to afford a ticket off-world if they wanted to go.
The very process of getting a modern education and high-paying job puts educated individuals outside of the mainstream of their culture. Just like in small-town America, really - when your cousin Sarah goes away to college and becomes a big-shot lawyer or whatever, you still love her, but her political opinions aren't going to be respected around the dinner table. (Ask me how we spent our Thanksgiving last year. ^_^) The problem is only exacerbated by systemic poverty and sexism, whether that's in Syria or on Barrayar.
That's also one reason why the benevolent dictator trope is less problematic for me than it might otherwise be. Compare, in 2007 when Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian parliament. There is a big divide in the Palestinian Territories between the goals and beliefs of the general population and the forces for moderation and modernization. Of course you can have a philosophical debate about whether it is right to force egalitarian democratic values on a group that isn't interested in them.
It took until this year, with the "Arab Spring," for North African people to come together and demand the rights and opportunities they can see across the Mediterranean. Conservatively speaking, that was maybe 150 years in the making? And we have yet to see how effective it will be.
Anyway. It makes perfect sense to me that in the third generation of Barrayaran contact with the wider galaxy, the social fabric is actually becoming less elastic in some ways, as the reactionaries dig in their heels even harder, and it takes strong leadership from the top to make any headway at all. Cordelia's scholarship girls will have a long and difficult time on the home front.
Sorry to jump in at random in the middle of your conversation, but it's very interesting!
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I don't think the latter is exactly the takeaway that Bujold wants us to have from this part of the series, but it certainly fits the evidence. I said in the comments somewhere (I can't remember if it was in this discussion or somewhere else) that it was really startling to me to go from the stable, safe Barrayar of the later books to the dysfunctional Barrayar of social upheaval and unrest a generation earlier -- my initial reaction to it was a sort of pleased relief that they actually managed to build the better world that they wanted to. Except ... the more I think about it, and especially in light of your comment here, and
I'm not sure if this is actually disagreement so much as trying to take the problems you pointed out and find a canon-compatible way of reconciling them with reality (reality in the sense of how people actually behave) ... anyway, I'm glad that you jumped in, because I'm finding this discussion completely fascinating, and you have some very good points!
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Yeah, exactly, and we've got Kou in Barrayar saying that Barrayarans don't like chaos: they've tried it and don't like it. So they'll put up with dictatorship because it's not anarchy.
But that seems like it should be a false choice by thirty years later, and we should be seeing *something*. If not an outright revolution, then a true civil campaign of activists.
There's some regression towards happy ending going on and some cop-outs as noted in the discussion already. :) You don't have the hard problems being dealt with because of things like murdering the hypotenuse in the love triangle and so on. By taking the easy way and getting the happy ending, it avoids dealing with the difficult problems, but that means they don't get dealt with.
And another issue that came up, oh god, somewhere else, is that all of this makes it very hard for me to write Cordelia. Every character has contradictions, which is what makes them interesting. But Cordelia's contradictions are hard for me to resolve. No, I don't expect her to be a panacea, but it's things like a Betan being blase and okay with the staggering power of judge/jury/executioner that Miles has in MOM. It's one of the reasons I've never read MOM start to finish and probably haven't read all of it in the ways I've gone through it piecemiel: I keep getting squicked by what Miles has the right to do *what*? Early 20s kid with no formal training in law... and he gets sent off to decide a death penalty case. And his mom's fine with this. Oh, Cordelia. You are complicated and I love complicated, but complicated isn't easy to write.
anyway, I'm glad that you jumped in, because I'm finding this discussion completely fascinating, and you have some very good points!,
Heh, I sort of feel like I keep having this conversation, or maybe it's because I keep digressing to it. Like, in someone else's journal, when nattering about what I would write for NaNoWriMo, I diverted into How Nothing Has Changed And That Is Glaringly Weird. (This was sort of relevant because it's f/f on Barrayar.) (I also tend to go into rants about the erasure of Aral's first wife, which I think is also a similar situtation to this: it comes up when it's necessary to the plot, so when it's not, it's like it never existed at all, even when the absence is notable (if she's buried in the Vorkosigan cemetary, Mark doesn't see her tombstone). Which can be seen as problematic, even though that wasn't the author's intention.)
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THIS. YES. I think that's the thing that bugs me the most, even beyond the lack of obvious discontented elements in Barrayaran society. It's the fact that when we do see those instances of discontent -- a member of the lower classes stymied in his/her career goals, a woman trapped in an untenable marriage by Barrayar's legal system and unable to get out of it -- it's always fixed up with a happy ending by authorial fiat. The abusive spouse conveniently dies; the frustrated non-Vor makes a powerful Vor friend who helps him/her; etc. And each individual instance of this isn't really a problem -- it's good drama, and the characters do have to fight for their happy endings -- but taken as a whole, it neatly sweeps the problems under the rug, because you never see an instance of Barrayar's darker side that doesn't get fixed by coincidence or luck or knowing the right people. It's clear that Bujold can't stand giving her characters unhappy endings, which is fine (I don't want to see characters I love end up with unhappy endings, either!) but given the existence of social forces which should, by all rights, result in unhappy endings for at least some of these people (and would certainly imply unhappy endings for lots of people in similar situations elsewhere on the planet), over the course of 10 or 12 books the pattern is a really uncomfortable one.
But Cordelia's contradictions are hard for me to resolve. No, I don't expect her to be a panacea, but it's things like a Betan being blase and okay with the staggering power of judge/jury/executioner that Miles has in MOM.
I hadn't specifically thought about it with regards to MoM, but I had been struggling with similar issues with Cordelia -- namely, her apparent comfort level in what must to her seem like being transplanted into the Middle Ages or worse. I get that she's Betan, and a particularly level-headed Betan at that, but I'm not sure how she manages to compartmentalize her own beliefs enough to tolerate, accept and respect the beliefs of the people around her, given how much of Barrayar society must seem total barbarism to her. It might just be that Cordelia's more level-headed and self-confident than I'll ever be. *g*
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Anyway, yes, I think you make excellent points, and one of the things I was trying to figure out while I was writing some of the above comments is exactly what you say here --
... you can have a philosophical debate about whether it is right to force egalitarian democratic values on a group that isn't interested in them.
This, yes. I think that I talked around it without ever getting close enough to talk about this point, but it's something that I was thinking about while I was writing some of my answers to
And Barrayar definitely seems to be more of a "my government, right or wrong" than a "throw the bastards out!" kind of place -- it's mentioned in some of the books, for example, that the common people feel proud of the Vor class in a "it's not perfect, but hey, they're our Vor" kind of way, which seems to fit with the general feel of the place.
And that's a really good point about education itself causing a rift between the educated people -- those who've been to the cities, or even offworld -- and the folks back home. It is going to be an interesting next generation, indeed ...
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And that's the whole damning nature of this sort of fiction. Sci-fi/fantasy, I mean. There's so much absolute monarchy/dictotorships and such that this is the norm. And it mostly focuses on the powerful people. (This is a different meta, but it's one reason that Sam Vimes is an *amazing character*, even with his unfortunate tendency to dismiss democracy as a laughable idea because who'd trust people to govern themselves? But the Vimes character is one I wish every fantasy series would have.) And you get this weird little view of the world, because it's all about the powerful people, because the non-powerful people (ie most of them) live terrible lives. You'll have heroes who come from nothing, but the focus there is on their journey away and on a quest, not on making where they came from any better. Because the people reading don't want to read about the poor people!
And there's even an assumption I've seen in meta about social issues, this unconscious assumption that, well, if I lived there, I'd be one of the important people, I'd be one of the rich. And, um, why do you assume that? Plus tl;dr stuff about that's a proven way to get people to vote against their interests, by framing it as saying that if you do this, you have a shot at becoming one of the rich, but, no, actually they won't and it's all a farce.
Uh, tl;dr: I believe in democracy, not oligarchy or dictatorship or monarchy, and sometimes I am at odds with my bookshelf over this. ;)
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*nods* I like this too -- and despite all of the discussion below (which has gotten quite a bit longer since you posted this ^^), I actually do really like that LMB's books aren't a polemic ... I wouldn't want them to become a treatise on the author's ideas on government, with the characters as mouthpieces to present those ideas!
At the same time, though ... I think they are more of a polemic than I had recognized at first -- the ideas that LMB is putting across may not be intentional, but they are still there, if unexamined: that benevolent dictatorship is a fine idea, say, or that it's okay if your society is not very upwardly mobile because all you have to do is find an upper-class patron to help you up! I don't think she means it to come across that way ... like I said in one of the comments below, I think that LMB hates giving her characters unhappy endings, and I am all on board with that *g*; I don't want characters I love to have unhappy endings, either! But a side effect of always trying to resolve their problems happily is that it means they don't end up becoming trapped by elements of their society (the patriarchy, the lack of class mobility) that would logically trap a lot of other people, and combining the lack of any visible sort of societal protest against those social factors with the fact that all of the main characters seem to escape them easily ... it tends to imply that everything is fine just the way it is, and nothing needs to change.
... erm, and I hope that none of this is negatively impacting your enjoyment of the books, which I would never want to do! I still love them just fine; I love Bujold's eclectic and vivid characters, and her sweeping space-opera universe. But what I keep thinking about, when I'm writing as well as when I'm reading, is that what we intend to put into our writing isn't the only thing in there -- and I think this is a good example of that, because I don't believe that LMB set out to make a political point (at least not that sort of political point), but her world is rich enough and there is enough politics tied up in it that she does kind of make a point anyway, just maybe not the one she intended to make.
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That's a good point! We do have our own bias there. *g*
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Either Aral was one hell of a dictator, or... no, I think we're left with, Aral was one hell of a dictator.
That sums it up perfectly! And like you say, it's rather hard to reconcile, but fic is the only place where these issues get dealt with at all. So I'm all for more fic trying to make it all fit somehow!
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OMG, yes, that's exactly it.
Btw, I was leafing through Mirror Dance yesterday and came across the bit where Mark swears in Elena as an armswoman. And they talk about how actually there's no law forbidding female armsmen, only no one's ever done that before. I admit I boggled a bit there. Another example for crazy conformist Barrayarans - all the normal breaking of social rules just doesn't seem to be happening there somehow.
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I love this sentence. So so true, for me as well. *g*
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And yet, until Mark needed to win over Elena, no one ever thought of it. Or rather, the author didn't think anyone would have thought of it ...