- Title:
- Singer from the Sea
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Avon Books, 1999
- ISBN
- 0-380-97480-0
How it happened that feminism got itself hooked up with environmentalism and a sort of neopagan mysticism is a question that may well turn out to be a worthwhile line of investigation for a Women's Studies senior project. Maybe the answer lies in one of the many books written by Betty Friedan and her intellectual heirs, books that I haven't read so far. However that may be, I find it a peculiarly uncomfortable association.
I have tried at times to articulate that discomfort, but I'm never quite satisfied with my efforts. For example, mystical feminism, just like the mystical celebration of the male exemplified by Bly's Iron John, seems to me to diminish, not exhalt, everything that makes women, as a group, worthy of particular consideration in the scope of humanity. It begs to lead to sexist generalizations such as those used by John Gray in Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Mystical environmentalism, for example the Gaia religion, certainly brings with it the temptation to ignore the hardwon lessons of science in our struggle to bring humanity's effects on the Earth under control. Feminist environmentalism, or "eco feminism," must be a kind of chauvinism that is at least as dangerous as is/was the male chauvinism that Susan B. Anthony had to fight in her efforts to be taken seriously.
Sheri Tepper's Singer from the Sea is a fable, a lesson about mystical forces, and about feminist environmentalism. Genevieve, the story's heroine, is a young woman in her early twenties. Her mother taught her certain things, and she has special powers that she inherited from her mother's lineage. She is becoming acutely aware of her limited scope in her highly paternalistic and patriarchal society. and when she is taken from the shelter of her girls' school to live at court with her father, she suddenly finds herself surrounded by deadly danger.
As Tepper lays out one riddle after the next, she paints a picture of two societies that have totally enslaved women, and ever hints at the hideous evil that lies behind it all, and the male conspiracy of silence that makes it possible. Genevieve first attempts to avoid any involvement in the reality of her existence, but soon must learn to take an active part if she is to survive. Tepper lavishes generous color on her heroine at first, but as the story progresses, the fable takes over, and Genevieve flattens into the pawn of greater powers, only occasionally fleshing out again into someone human.
When the characters live in the story, they practically jump from the page and take over, almost as if they are dissatisfied with the role that Tepper had assigned to them. Genevieve becomes conscious of the absurdity of her situation, the major male characters surrounding her become less demonic and more human. Tepper must almost visibly struggle to stuff her characters back into the strait jackets she has assigned them, and to the last Genevieve's humanity manages to shine through the cracks to point out the problem of viewing her world in terms of sexes arrayed against each other.
In the end, of course, all is resolved to apparent satisfaction. The bad guys are killed, and only a few of the innocents have to perish - all of those who do are mere extras on the set. Tepper spends a few visciously joyful paragraphs on dispensing justice, and we are assured that all will be well with the world, now that humans no longer control events. In a final grotesquery of pseudo-Darwinian story telling, Tepper describes humanity as a species that has gone wrong, and now must take a road to redemption.
As a story, the book succeeds well: it is fun to read, entertaining, and interesting. Tepper makes use of Maori language, myths, and legends to lend an air of primitivism to her story. Actual Maori culture makes only a brief caricatured appearance; Genevieve, who is descended from Maori space farers is about as Maori as I am, no matter how much she agonized over her nose.
Tepper's description of the male conspiracy of silence is directly derived from the 1980s feminist view (in the USA, at least) that the political failures of feminism were the consequence of a male conspiracy, endemic in any male dominated culture. This view receives less credit these days, not necessarily because it is entirely wrong, but because new voices in feminism are demanding a more positive, less victimized role for themselves.
Where the fable doesn't flatten Tepper's characters into cardboard they are engaging and sympathetic. But the dogmatic demands of the fable soon swamp even Tepper's most competent efforts at story telling, finally leaving the story in tatters. I suppose that is a common danger of writing with a message. I wish Tepper hadn't been so focussed on the message, because underneath all that ideology was a wonderful story, with memorable characters.