We’re looking at the first book in the bestselling Gemma Doyle series, A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. The cover features the sexy shoulders of a young white woman wearing a lacy blouse and a corset. I’m guessing this is a historical fantasy romance.
I know nothing about it, but commenter Tifa asked me to have a look, so let’s just peek at the first lines of the first chapter.
June 21, 1895
Bombay, India
Oh no.
That’s colonial India. This means the white main character is among the British people engaging in the occupation, exploitation, and oppression of the Indian population. During the roughly 200 years that the British occupied India, they:
- Demolished the Indian economy, reducing it from 27% of global GDP to 3% of global GDP.
- Exacerbated famines, leading to the starvation of about 35 million Indians.
- Played Hindus and Muslims against each other to maintain control, leading to the partition of India and Pakistan.
Whenever I’ve seen stories about the British elite who’ve lived in colonial India, it’s always in service of portraying them as put-upon because they’ve been stranded so far from “civilization.” Oh, you poor oppressors, however will you fit into London society?
Is it possible for this portrayal to be sensitive? Since the main character is white, the chance is maybe .01%. Even if she opposes colonialism, her experience is being prioritized over the Indians being exploited. She’ll just be a white savior.
All right, Bray, you made this bed. Let’s see how you lie in it.
Novelty Can Lead to Exoticism
“Please tell me that’s not going to be part of my birthday dinner this evening.”
This is the kind of opening hook writers create when they don’t have anything interesting happening. They find something insignificant to turn into a one-liner. I guess someone might be curious over what “that” is. Two out of five stars.
I am staring into the hissing face of a cobra. A surprisingly pink tongue slithers in and out of a cruel mouth while an Indian man whose eyes are the blue of blindness inclines his head toward my mother and explains in Hindi that cobras make very good eating.
And racism in the second paragraph. Bray, we’re going to have a talk.
But backing up, the protagonist is staring right into a hissing cobra. That’s pretty serious. Is that cobra about to bite her in the face, thereby killing her? Bray wants us to be a little concerned about this. That’s why she put it up front; it’s a hook. But then the cobra doesn’t kill the protagonist, and there’s no explanation for why. Has it been defanged? Is it in a cage? I don’t know how cobras are usually kept at marketplaces. Maybe the protagonist isn’t actually close to it. Whatever the case, the hook is essentially a lie.
Also, that second sentence is loooooong. Sometimes super long sentences are appropriate, but look at how much the subject matter of this one changes. It goes from the snake, to the Indian man, to his conversation with the mother. I would break that monster up.
So what’s racist? To start, this segment about eating cobras is clearly designed to make a white Western audience recoil. Presuming that what other cultures eat is somehow grosser than the stuff we eat is a way of casting them as an exotic and savage other. And it has a real effect on marginalized people. In particular, Asian people who bring a homemade lunch to work or school in Western countries are likely to face ridicule for what they’re eating.
Do Indians even eat cobra that often? I did some brief research but wasn’t able to find much. India is home to a huge diversity of cultures, so maybe some of them do. But if Bray decided to feature cobra simply because it’s sensational and not because it’s a common dish, that’s straight-up Orientalism.
Update 7/30/22: Two commenters from India say they’ve never heard of anyone eating cobras. Don’t make up stuff about other cultures!
Finally, I am extremely suspicious of this description of the Indian merchant whose “eyes are the blue of blindness.” A blind character would be fine, but the context strongly suggests that his description is intended to make him exotic. That makes it both racist and ableist, since blindness is being used to make a character seem strange.
My mother reaches out a white-gloved finger to stroke the snake’s back. “What do you think, Gemma? Now that you’re sixteen, will you be dining on cobra?”
The slithery thing makes me shudder. “I think not, thank you.”
The old, blind Indian man smiles toothlessly and brings the cobra closer. It’s enough to send me reeling back where I bump into a wooden stand filled with little statues of Indian deities. One of the statues, a woman who is all arms with a face bent on terror, falls to the ground. Kali, the destroyer. Lately, Mother has accused me of keeping her as my unofficial patron saint.
Oh, you poor wealthy white girl, having to deal with those pesky people you’re oppressing!
I make fun, but at some level this is actually how Bray wants us to react. The book will be much more engaging if we sympathize with Gemma for being out of her element.
And all the issues I mentioned about the previous excerpt have solidified. The blind man is also toothless and brings the cobra close enough to freak the protagonist out. As I suspected, earlier Gemma was looking at the cobra from a distance. That’s not what “staring in the face” implies.
Then Bray brings Hindu religion into this. Oh dear. I don’t know much about Kali or how she should be portrayed; however, even a five-minute internet search reveals that she’s a great deal more complex than simply being a destroyer. And making references to her like this in service to a story about a white girl in colonial India is just a bad idea. Those beliefs are sacred to people less powerful than you. Leave them alone.
Lately, Mother and I haven’t been getting on very well. She claims it’s because I’ve reached an impossible age. I state emphatically to anyone who will listen that it’s all because she refuses to take me to London.
“I hear in London, you don’t have to defang your meals first,” I say.
eGRui;wbvgUD B6IargH:VrNuisp
Sorry, that was me banging my head on the keyboard.
Gemma’s line shows pretty clearly that she considers London to be more “civilized.” So our protagonist is racist and spoiled. Wonderful.
We’re moving past the cobra man and into the throng of people crowding every inch of Bombay’s frenzied marketplace. Mother doesn’t answer but waves away an organ-grinder and his monkey. It’s unbearably hot. Beneath my cotton dress and crinolines, sweat streaks down my body. The flies—my most ardent admirers—dart about my face. I swat at one of the little winged beasts, but it escapes and I can almost swear I hear it mocking me. My misery is reaching epidemic proportions.
Overhead, the clouds are thick and dark, giving warning that this is monsoon season, when floods of rain could fall from the sky in a matter of minutes. In the dusty bazaar the turbaned men chatter and squawk and bargain, lifting brightly colored silks toward us with brown, sunbaked hands. Everywhere there are carts lined with straw baskets offering every sort of ware and edible—thin, coppery vases; wooden boxes carved into intricate flower designs; and mangos ripening in the heat.
Okay, I’ll say something nice. I like this little battle between Gemma and the flies. However, Gemma has probably been living in India for many years, and this “unbearably hot” description makes it seem like the climate is new to her. Does she have air conditioning at home in 1895?
Bray spends two whole paragraphs describing the Indian marketplace. It’s not just for scene setting; she’s using her setting for novelty. The problem is that people are never novel to themselves, nor is their own culture novel to them. So using another culture for novelty means twisting the depiction for the purposes of entertaining outsiders. The result is exoticism.
I will admit, however, that her wordcraft is pretty strong and she’s good at using evocative details. Instead of just saying there are baskets with a variety of stuff in them, she gives specific examples so we can imagine it better. She has sights, sounds, tactile sensations… I just wish I knew what the place smelled like.
From a scene-setting perspective, Bray should have mentioned the clouds are thick and dark earlier. If you say the temperature is hot, it’s easy to assume that means it’s sunny out. When I got to the dark clouds, I had to go back and revise my mental image of the scene.
Protagonists Shouldn’t Be All Flaws
Next, we find out they’re on their way to visit another wealthy British woman for lunch. Gemma complains that they’re walking there instead of riding in a carriage.
Sarita, our long-suffering housekeeper, offers pomegranates in her leathery hand. “Memsahib, these are very nice. Perhaps we will take them to your father, yes?”
If I were a good daughter, I’d bring some to my father, watch his blue eyes twinkle as he slices open the rich, red fruit, then eats the tiny seeds with a silver spoon just like a proper British gentleman.
“He’ll only stain his white suit,” I grumble. My mother starts to say something to me, thinks better of it, sighs—as usual. We used to go everywhere together, my mother and I—visiting ancient temples, exploring local customs, watching Hindu festivals, staying up late to see the streets bloom with candlelight. Now, she barely takes me on social calls. It’s as if I’m a leper without a colony.
“He will stain his suit. He always does,” I mumble in my defense, though no one is paying me a bit of attention except for the organ-grinder and his monkey.
Of course they have an Indian housekeeper who has to put up with them regardless of how racist they are.
We’re also starting to see signs that Bray fully intends Gemma to be immature and petty. Gemma admits that she’s not being a good daughter and gets defensive after only a sigh from her mother. Like many privileged people who are called out on their behavior, Gemma is also comparing herself to people who are genuinely facing great hardship. While these details tells me where the story may be going, it doesn’t make this depiction a good idea.
At least there seems to be some depth to Gemma’s relationship with her mother. Maybe that will develop into something interesting.
Next, Bray spends a few paragraphs with an organ-grinder and his monkey, because of course she wants to bring out the novelty of being in India. Gemma continues to constantly complain about everything. Since she’s rude to the monkey, her mother gives the organ-grinder some money.
Bray gives us this interesting paragraph.
“Yes, I am sixteen. Sixteen. An age at which most decent girls have been sent for schooling in London.” I give the word decent an extra push, hoping to appeal to some maternal sense of shame and propriety.
Giving a word an “extra push” is what italics are for. But instead of just italicizing “decent,” Bray decides to describe later how it’s been emphasized, forcing readers to go back and imagine the line differently from how they already perceived it. My best guess is that she thought italicizing both “sixteen” and “decent” in the same line of dialogue was too much, but this solution is really awkward.
Next, we briefly learn that her older brother did get to go to London because he’s a boy. At least that’s a little sympathetic.
“It’s not fair. I’ll never have a season. I’ll end up a spinster with hundreds of cats who all drink milk from china bowls.” I’m whining. It’s unattractive, but I find I’m powerless to stop.
“I see,” Mother says, finally. “Would you like to be paraded around the ballrooms of London society like some prize horse there to have its breeding capabilities evaluated? Would you still think London was so charming when you were the subject of cruel gossip for the slightest infraction of the rules? London’s not as idyllic as your grandmother’s letters make it out to be.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen it.”
“Gemma . . .” Mother’s tone is all warning even as her smile is constant for the Indians. Mustn’t let them think we British ladies are so petty as to indulge in arguments on the streets. We only discuss the weather, and when the weather is bad, we pretend not to notice.
We get another comment from Gemma acknowledging that she’s being an ass. Increasingly, it looks clear that authorial endorsement is with Gemma’s mother, not Gemma. In contrast to Gemma, her mother thinks London society is sexist and cruel, and her mother’s “smile is constant” for the Indians. A white Western audience is supposed to think that because of this, she’s super gracious.
Think about this: If we claim being polite to Indians is gracious, what behaviors are simply okay for the white elite in India?
These kinds of portrayals are a way of lowering the bar for privileged people. We’re supposed to ignore that Gemma’s mother is participating in the occupation and exploitation of India because she smiles at people and gives the organ-grinder a few coins. But being polite doesn’t make someone a saint; it’s just basic human decency.
In another context, I would instead conclude that Gemma’s mother is putting on a polite show because as a woman, she is required to. But here Bray is specifically mentioning that she smiles at Indians of a lower socioeconomic class.
Sarita chuckles nervously. “How is it that memsahib is now a young lady? It seems only yesterday you were in the nursery. Oh, look, dates! Your favorite.” She breaks into a gap-toothed smile that makes every deeply etched wrinkle in her face come alive. It’s hot and I suddenly want to scream, to run away from everything and everyone I’ve ever known.
“Those dates are probably rotting on the inside. Just like India.”
Dear god. This is supposed to be a childish comeback, but for one thing, Gemma is sixteen. For another, there is a rot inside India – the British Empire. It actively dismantled Indian industry so that the British could process raw materials from India instead, sucking the value from the Indian economy. In that context, some British brat insulting the country they’re occupying this way is gross.
It’s looking very likely that Bray is intending Gemma’s racism to be the start of a character arc. This means she’ll learn to be less racist during the story. Mythcreants strongly recommends against real-world bigotry arcs, and I hope A Great and Terrible Beauty helps to demonstrate why.
The protagonist is supposed to be a magnet for reader emotional investment. What kind of reader would get invested in Gemma? Most likely a white woman who is relatively unbothered by Gemma’s racism, not necessarily out of maliciousness, but at least out of obliviousness to the power dynamics here.
Even discounting the racism, Bray isn’t giving us any reason to root for Gemma. In one of my articles on likability, I mention that when a character is disliked, “it’s often because the storyteller is so focused on the character’s flaws that the rest of the character is neglected.” This is exactly what I’m talking about. At every opportunity, Bray is hitting the “racist and spoiled” button as hard as she can. She doesn’t need to go that far to make an impression.
Being spoiled could make an okay character arc, but Gemma desperately needs another side to her personality. We know what’s bad about her; now what’s good about her?
Audit Your Character Description
Let me compile all the description Bray has written about Indians so far.
- an Indian man whose eyes are the blue of blindness
- The old, blind Indian man smiles toothlessly
- turbaned men chatter and squawk and bargain, lifting brightly colored silks toward us with brown, sunbaked hands
- Sarita, our long-suffering housekeeper, offers pomegranates in her leathery hand
- She breaks into a gap-toothed smile that makes every deeply etched wrinkle in her face come alive
Their skin is not just brown, but sunbaked, leathery, and wrinkled. They are missing teeth. And the guy at the market happens to be blind. Again, disabilities or physical characteristics like wrinkles are fine things for characters to have. But this pattern suggests Bray is using these physical characteristics to portray Indians as exotic and unattractive. Using disabilities for this purpose casts disability in a negative light as well.
Now let’s look at how Bray describes Gemma’s mother.
“Gemma, that will be quite enough.” Mother fixes me with her glass-green eyes. Penetrating and wise, people call them. I have the same large, upturned green eyes. The Indians say they are unsettling, disturbing. Like being watched by a ghost.
In comparison to wrinkled brown skin and missing teeth, Gemma and her mother have penetrating and wise green eyes. Just to throw in an extra bit of racism, Indians are superstitious and afraid of these green eyes. At this point, I have to guess that Gemma will be “a great and terrible beauty” to the Indians.
Remember that a protagonist who is feared is still getting candy. This is a way of using Indians for white wish fulfillment. It reminds me of the racist trope of island cultures assuming white visitors are gods. It surmises both that people of color are so “primitive” that they are easily impressed and that white people somehow seem impressive or even superior to them.
Let’s finish the paragraph.
Sarita smiles down at her feet, keeps her hands busy adjusting her brown sari. I feel a tinge of guilt for saying such a nasty thing about her home. Our home, though I don’t really feel at home anywhere these days.
That’s nice, Gemma, but I still hate you. And I don’t believe for a second that you consider India your home. I don’t even believe you’ve lived here your whole life. You would have gotten over the cobra at the market when you were eight.
A train comes nearby, attracting the pensive attention of Gemma’s mother.
[Gemma’s mother] places a hand on her throat, fingers the necklace hanging there, a small silver medallion of an all-seeing eye atop a crescent moon. A gift from a villager, Mother said. Her good-luck charm. I’ve never seen her without it.
So Gemma’s mother has a magic medallion that an Indian gave to her. Why aren’t Indian villagers using their own magic medallions? Why give one to a white woman from an empire that is occupying their land?
Need a Fight? Let Both Characters Be a Little Wrong
Hey, guess what? After having nothing to do but put up with Gemma so far, we finally get some plot!
Mother pulls her gaze away from the train, drops her hand from her necklace. “Yes. Come. We’ll have a lovely time at Mrs. Talbot’s. I’m sure she’ll have lovely cakes just for your birthday—”
A man in a white turban and thick black traveling cloak stumbles into her from behind, bumping her hard.
“A thousand pardons, honorable lady.” He smiles, offers a deep bow to excuse his rudeness. When he does, he reveals a young man behind him wearing the same sort of strange cloak. For a moment, the young man and I lock eyes. He isn’t much older than I am, probably seventeen if a day, with brown skin, a full mouth, and the longest eyelashes I have ever seen. I know I’m not supposed to find Indian men attractive, but I don’t see many young men and I find I’m blushing in spite of myself. He breaks our gaze and cranes his neck to see over the hordes.
A wild love interest appears! And he’s so sexy he can overcome Gemma’s racism. Or maybe it’s because there are apparently no young men in the marketplace; all the men are old, toothless, and have wrinkled skin. No doubt he will patiently teach Gemma that Indians and their culture have value rather than date someone who isn’t racist.
Also, I’m itching to add a paragraph break before “For a moment.” It’s weird to have a whole paragraph about the love interest that starts with a dialogue line by someone else. It’s long and could use splitting anyway.
“You should be more careful,” Sarita barks at the older man, threatening him with a blow from her arm. “You better not be a thief or you will be punished.”
“No, no, memsahib, only I am terribly clumsy.” He drops his smile and with it the cheerful simpleton routine. He whispers low to my mother in perfectly accented English. “Circe is near.”
It makes no sense to me, just the ramblings of a very clever thief said to distract us. I start to say as much to my mother but the look of sheer panic on her face stops me cold. Her eyes are wild as she whips around and scans the crowded streets like she’s looking for a lost child.
On one hand, I like that Sarita’s a badass. Since she’s threatening a guy who’s probably pretty well off, there’s not that much to be concerned about here. But on the other hand, this follows a pattern in many stories of depicting powerful people as kind, clueless, and not responsible for the behavior of people under them. Gemma’s mother isn’t admonishing Sarita, so that means she approves of threatening to hit people. Does Sarita ever threaten to hit people who are more vulnerable?
But it looks like the newcomer probably works for or with Gemma’s mother, because he’s warning her that an antagonist is near. Thankfully, adding a mysterious and nearby antagonist that Gemma’s mother is clearly afraid of raises the tension of this scene.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” I ask.
The men are suddenly gone. They’ve disappeared into the moving crowd, leaving only their footprints in the dust. “What did that man say to you?”
My mother’s voice is edged in steel. “It’s nothing. He was obviously deranged. The streets are not safe these days.” I have never heard my mother sound this way. So hard. So afraid. “Gemma, I think it’s best if I go to Mrs. Talbot’s alone.”
“But—but what about the cake?” It’s a ridiculous thing to say, but it’s my birthday and while I don’t want to spend it in Mrs. Talbot’s sitting room, I certainly don’t want to waste the day alone at home, all because some black-cloaked madman and his cohort have spooked my mother.
This excerpt has some more awkward paragraph breaking. Gemma asks a question, there’s a break, and then the next paragraph describes the mysterious men plus another line from Gemma. Some readers might be confused by the way she speaks two paragraphs in a row without marking the second line as hers. And the second line just doesn’t fit with the comment on the men.
I would do something like this:
Example
“What is it? What’s the matter?” I ask.
The men are suddenly gone. They’ve disappeared into the moving crowd, leaving only their footprints in the dust.
I frown at my mother. “What did that man say to you?”
Using body language for the second line keeps the dialogue tags from getting repetitive.
It’s also strange that Gemma is asking what the man said when she already heard every word. Bray wants the audience to know more than Gemma does, but we’re pretty deep in Gemma’s head. So we have this awkward song and dance where Gemma is not taking this situation seriously despite perceiving it as something very serious.
Unfortunately, it makes her feel even more petty, because she’s now complaining in the midst of a crisis. She should know her mother is afraid for a reason, but she dismisses it.
Naturally, Gemma and her mother start bickering over Gemma going home. Gemma’s mother tries to offer a few olive branches to console her. Gemma reacts in a predictable manner.
Mother’s green eyes find mine. There is something there I’ve never seen before. A vast and terrifying anger that stops my breath. Quick as it comes on her, it’s gone and she is Mother again. “You’re overtired and need some rest. Tonight, we’ll celebrate and I’ll let you drink some champagne.”
I’ll let you drink some champagne. It’s not a promise—it’s an excuse to get rid of me.
And then…
“Here, I’ll let you wear my necklace, hmmm? Go on, wear it. I know you’ve always admired it.”
I stand, mute, allowing her to adorn me in a necklace I have indeed always wanted, but now it weighs me down, a shiny, hateful thing. A bribe. Mother gives another quick glance to the dusty marketplace before letting her green eyes settle on mine.
Now we know this is serious, because Gemma’s mother just passed on her magic necklace. For some reason, Gemma now hates it because it’s being offered as a concession for making her go home.
Altogether, it feels like Bray is trying really hard to keep Gemma mad at her mother while simultaneously refusing to let Gemma’s mother do anything wrong. Bray, if you like the mother that much, maybe she should be your main character?
Wait, it gets better.
“There. You look . . . all grown up.” She presses her gloved hand to my cheek, holds it there as if to memorize it with her fingers. “I’ll see you at home.”
I don’t want anyone to notice the tears that are pooling in my eyes, so I try to think of the wickedest thing I can say and then it’s on my lips as I bolt from the marketplace.
“I don’t care if you come home at all.”
It’s easy to miss in all this text, but Gemma literally just runs off here. Sure, why not? It’s hard to make her worse at this point.
Unfortunately, this kind of pettiness is a common symptom of forced character drama. If you want to make your characters fight, but you aren’t sure how, you can end up with this kind of thing. Instead of genuine conflict, the characters look like jerks that snap at people for no reason.
Looking at the Big Picture
After that last line, can you guess what happens next? Obviously, her mother is getting the axe. After all, we can’t have her returning to take the magic necklace back from Gemma.
This means Bray made Gemma despicable not just to give her a character arc about being less spoiled and racist, but also to make her feel guilty about her mother’s death or disappearance. But in doing this, Bray’s hand was too heavy, and she took Gemma’s likability for granted.
She could have used some of this space to show Gemma’s strengths and then built up an argument where Gemma’s mother actually said something wrong. We can sympathize with Gemma’s guilt over her mother without that mother being 100% perfect. Bray could have even gotten us to sympathize a little more with Gemma’s desire to be in London, but tearing down India was not the way to do it.
Of course, none of that would fix the story’s use of the culture of an occupied country as wish fulfillment for one of the occupiers. This depiction of India is designed for consumption by white people.
That means:
- Ignoring the harm white people are doing in this place and time
- Exotifying and mystifying Indians and their culture so they offer more entertainment to white people
- Making everything revolve around the white character
This is cultural appropriation. It is the use of a marginalized culture for the benefit of a privileged one, and it’s more than just an insult. With lots of depictions like these, the stories of marginalized people are quickly drowned out, and the white view becomes the dominant narrative. Tales by white people can easily push marginalized people’s own stories out of the market.
It’s unlikely that Bray is doing harm intentionally. But bigotry doesn’t require malice; it only requires ignorance. It only requires doing what’s good for you, and people like you, without listening to the other side of the story. That’s why we all have to educate ourselves and continually improve our work. Writing one appropriative story doesn’t make you a terrible person, but it does mean you should do better next time.
As for this story, I’m happy to say it leaves India in a chapter or two. Most of the story actually takes place at a finishing school in London. So while Bray made a pretty terrible first impression, it’s possible this problem only affects the opening. If only Bray hadn’t opened her story in India in the first place.
Do you want us to look at your story? Our content editors are at your service.
She could also have opened the story in India, but while Gemma is sent off to school and doesn’t want to go because India is her home and she doesn’t want to be half the world away.
One story set in a colonialized setting I’ve read a while ago did it much better, I feel. “The Society of Paranormals” is a series of books around Beatrice Knight. She’s widowed, but her husband didn’t leave her any income (nor did he leave her – paranormals are already in the series title), so she lives with her aunt, uncle, and cousin. When her uncle loses all his money in an unwise investion, they’re forced to move to Nairobi (which is barely more than a railroad construction camp at that time). Yet, Beatrice doesn’t complain about it (unlike her aunt and cousin, but her cousin grows used to it quickly and her aunt complains about basically everything, it’s not just the ‘uncivilized country’ she’s now forced to live in) and quickly gets used to the new surroundings.
There are a lot of different characters in there, from several African gods written with respect to a Goan doctor who rides a zebra (that part is actually historically correct, there was a doctor from Goa in Nairobi at that time who rode a zebra – it’s unclear whether he was a good zebra tamer or whether he happened upon a zebra less averse to being ridden). The regular Africans aren’t subservient on principle and not written as ‘lesser.’ If anything, it’s often clear that the British and other white people are being stupid or cruel.
It might help that the author is from Nairobi herself and is clearly doing a lot of research with a little ‘Facts and Fiction’ section at the end of each book, breaking down things from the story into ‘historically correct’ and ‘I invented that.’
Huh, Facts and Fiction actually sounds pretty good! When you’re writing historical fantasy, it sometimes becomes hard to differentiate between well, facts and fiction. Setting things straight is really nice
It’s also pretty interesting and informative. Since Nairobi is hardly more than a railroad construction camp at that time, there’s a lot of early history involved which isn’t discussed that often. A lot of side characters (like the owner of the only hotel in town) are historical figures, even if in some cases, as with the local governor, the dates have been bent a bit to fit the story (he, if I remember it right, was actually there a few years later than the books claim).
I also love the fact that a lot of the central characers are not white and British. Some are white, some are even white and British, but a lot are also African or Indian (a lot of workers at that time came from India – so, yes, technically they’re British, but they’re not white British upper class).
There’s a lot of women in the stories, too, who are anything but passive. One of my personal favourites is Koki the Praying Mantis, a real goddess from Western African mythology. She and Beatrice Knight are enemies at first, but they end the last book as close friends, having set aside their problems (and traded a hand for a leg…) and begun to trust each other.
I found the mother more sympathetic than Gemma
You done posts before about stories w/ the wrong main character. I think this might be one
I suppose this proves you don’t need to be a man to be a mediocre protagonist.
Granted, Gemma’s flaws aren’t exactly excused(or at least not that I know of), but undeserving she certainly is.
What I found particularly annoying is that even though on some – but not all – occasions, Gemma is self-aware that she said or did something mean or immature, she never even tries to do better or apologise or change the slightest thing.
On the contrary, she even sets out to intentionally say the cruelest thing she can think of, just because she didn’t get taken to tea with Mrs. Talbot’s. Never mind that her mother is seriously shaken up and scared. Who cares about little things like that?
From Gemma’s attitude, I got the impression she’d have hated to go to Mrs. Talbot’s anyway and would just have complained about everything, been hurtful to the servants and embarrassed her mother…
There is no attempt to make her more sympathetic by giving a reason why she behaves this way except being a spoiled brat and also India is horrible I guess. But her mother doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d raise her like this so where did she get her attitude? From her grandmother’s letters? Sure…
If she’d at least had some internal conflict or actual hardship making her lash out, it’d be more relatable.
Starting a character arc can start with the character trying but failing to overcome their flaws. Gemma isn’t even trying here and that makes it so aggravating, because she is being particularly unlikeable whithout even a reason given. Now instead of cheering for her, or relating to her, I just look down on her. Not to brag but I was more mature by the age of 6 if we count “try not to be mean for no reason” as a sign of maturity. She doesn’t even have bad role models!
I’m also more interested in this secret society her mother and those cloaked guys belong to, and what’s the backstory there.
It’s actually way less interesting than it seems. [Major spoilers] Gemma’s mother is operating on her own, fleeing from her mysterious backstory that’s more than a little overly foreshadowed. The ‘secret society’ is a group who want Gemma dead because they fear the magic realms, and reality-warping magic therein, which she has access to. The ‘wild love interest’, Kartik, is sent to kill her. I seem to recall that he decides to spare her basically because she’s not like other girls [tm].
You’re right, that’s not very interesting.
“A wild love interest appears!”
Ahaha! I love your critiques.
So, yeah, unfortunately this trilogy has continuing problems with racism [moving on from India to the Roma people, with stereotypes abound], protagonist entitlement, and it tries to make a big statement on societal/class elitism and feminism, but really falls flat, among other things. Oh, and the third book is about 850 pages and it just….draaaaaaags.
I’m more than a little ashamed that I used to like it, somewhat, when I was younger.
This is so over the top! I mean Gemma’s racism and entitlement and how unlikeable it makes her.
But the real problem is that it’s not just Gemma, but the narration itself that’s racist. How come she’s not used to the heat when she grew up there and spent her entire life in India? Or did she used to live in a cooler part of India? Lol, jk, I doubt the author thinks of this subcontinent as the huge and varied country it is, instead she only serves us simplistic stereotypes. Sigh.
So many wasted opportunities, from depicting actually interesting Indian characters and settings that might be new to western readers, to having Gemma have a realistic relationship to the place she grew up in, to commenting on the injustices that lead to poor health-care and harsh working conditions for most lower-class Indians (making them leathery, wrinkled, toothless and blind) to snarking about snobbish and impractical british clothing customs.
But no, all we get is racist whining by a girl who doesn’t seem real because she constantly compares her familiar surroundings to a place she never went to as though the strange place (London) where the Normal and what she knew all her life where strange and weird. There’s just no realistic way she could end up like this.
I spent only a few months backpacking through India in my youth (as a white privileged tourist clutching my travel guide) and even I know more about it than “hot, monsoon, brown skin, turban, hectic market and… cobra!”
Honestly, the book might have started with more novelty and attachment if we’d started off with her disembarking a ship in London, thinking she finally got what she always wanted, only to be out of place and homesick for India and missing Masala Dosas (they’re delicious and I still miss them so it seems relatable if Gemma also did).
Sure, there would still be lots of pitfalls to navigate, but the main charcter would start off more sympathetic and deep. She’d have an internal conflict over getting what she wished for and questioning if she even still wants it, rather than just being a brat and putting down the people her people oppress.
She might even develop a view on London society as a partial insider, partial outsider that could help her critique it and iys colonialism better. But I guess that’s just wishful thinking…
Honestly, the book might have started with more novelty and attachment if we’d started off with her disembarking a ship in London, thinking she finally got what she always wanted, only to be out of place and homesick for India and missing Masala Dosas (they’re delicious and I still miss them so it seems relatable if Gemma also did).
It would be a lot more research, but imagine if she was recently in Bombay, and missing Madras, where she grew up. The market feels alien because everyone is speaking Hindi and Marathi instead of Tamil.
Also a good alternative!
So, Indians and Roma? I probably should have guessed.
I had a sarcastic comment on the matter, but it probably wouldn’t be appropriate to say out loud, so I’ll just get straight to the point.
It’s not actually that strange to like some work as a youth, only to discover later how offensive or otherwise inappropriate it actually is.
There was in fact a Simpsons episode (No good read goes unpunished) dealing with the subject. Marge takes her family to the library and discovers a book she loved in her childhood. Said book is an obvious pastiche of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s works, namely A Little Princess and The Secret Garden. The shock is great when Marge, deciding to read the book together with Lisa, and discover how much more offensive it is than she remembered (granted, said offensiveness is turned up to eleven, but details). Eventually Marge ends up writing a new version where the MC is a young SJW fighting for Net Neutrality, though unfortunately the character arc was lost.
Take it as you will.
Come to think of it, it is possible that Bray wrote Gemma Doyle as a salute to Burnett’s works. Which might explain a thing or two.
She’s building up the mother like that just to kill her off? That woman touched the hissing, threatening cobra. Stroked its back with her ridiculous white-gloved hand. She could actually be pretty badass in a different setting.
It seems like Bray is trying to put Gemma in some weird no-man’s land. A girl like her, probably even a grown woman like her mother wouldn’t have much say in what happened in their lives, if they wanted to retain social standing, at least. I haven’t read the books, so I have no idea what the point is in making them part of the oppressing class here. But it’s all offputting.
An organ grinder? In Victorian era-ish India? My cursory research indicates organ grinders were confined to big European and North American cities. It’s not absolutely impossible, but it smacks of an author who didn’t do the research throwing in another “exotic” element.
It’s puzzling how the author put in eating a cobra (something Europeans wouldn’t do even if it’s a thing in India at all, which is very doubtful) and an organ grinder (very out of place) when they could have just passed a sapera playing a pungi to “charm” a cobra in the marketplace. Sure it would be obvious and cliche, but it would be something you’d actually see in an Indian marketplace.
This is also a good chance to ask two questions.
1. What does the protagonist WANT?
2. What does the protagonist DO about it?
So for Star Wars: A New Hope at the beginning, Luke WANTS to get off Tatooine, the middle of nowhere. What he DOES about it is apply to the Academy and argue with his uncle about moving the time frame forward. It works.
Gemma WANTS everything around her (which she sees as alien and threatening even though she’s lived here all her life) to just go away. Later, she expresses the desire to go to London, but after being in her head, it’s pretty obvious that the virtue of London is that it’s not exotic, foreign, gross India.
What Gemma DOES about it is whine. Endlessly whine about every single thing without a pause. Whining is the surest way to make your character unlikable and insufferable.
(Indian living in India here) This book is more overtly racist than some books by actual Victorians set in India. Which is. A choice.
I have never heard of anyone eating cobras in North India (where I’m assuming this is set based on the names and climate; it certainly isn’t the Himalayas). Cobras especially are revered in (some sects of) Hinduism and uh people don’t eat sacred animals.
It’s also kind of funny that the protagonist is freaked out by the goddess Kali who is “all arms” (Kali usually has 4 arms which is standard for most Hindu deities; Durga, on the other hand, has 10) instead of Kali’s necklace of human heads. Like. You’re right that Kali is more complicated than just the destroyer but it’s funny that the the author picked a “scary” goddess and then picked the one trait of Kali that is NOT distinctive or scary.
If Gemma actually saw a statue’s necklace of human heads, we can only assume she would spontaneously combust.
I’m a white American but I go to a school that is 50% Indian and know a bit more about India than the average white teenager. But even if I didn’t I would know the cobra-eating thing is racist. I didn’t know cobras were sacred but eating animals that aren’t pigs, sheep, cows, or chickens is a sure sign of Scary Foreign People ™.
Re:Kali: Kali is the most mentioned Hindu goddess because when a white writer wants to write Scary Foreign Indians ™ they look to Kali. Or Shiva. Why couldn’t they use, say, Jyestha or Dhumavati? (Just googling, found that they are associated with darkness & evil. If that’s not true please correct me)
My Indian-American friend is currently in India for summer vacation. As soon as I get back to school I’ll forward this article to him.
Kali and Shiva are names you can learn by pop-culture osmosis, that’s probably why bad writers always use them.
Even just from a craft perspective, this book does not know what the word “and” is. Bizarre.
Gemma sucks.
Once again this has got me thinking about how best to write a more sensitive, authentic version of such a story. Here are my guesses as to how that would actually end up being:
1) Obviously, no Prior Achievement turning points could be used for an important white POV character in colonial India. That would give the wrong impression and be very racist.
2) Also, any sympathetic white POV characters shouldn’t be there by CHOICE. It should be clear that they are FORCED to be in India, and would not be direct participants in colonization if they had the choice.
3) That, and the rest of the POV characters should be Indian by default. This is a given.
4) The white colonizers in GENERAL should not be portrayed in a good or sympathetic light. They should be portrayed as just that: colonizers. Their regime and treatment of the Indian people should be portrayed exactly as it how it was in real life: as avaricious and brutal.
5) India itself should not be portrayed as an exotic, mysterious setting that we exploit for novelty. There should especially be no lying in service of that. Accuracy in everything about Indian culture and the continent as a whole should be strived for.
6) Sympathetic White POV should not be a white savior. Nor should Sympathetic White POV be nauseatingly racist either. Have racist misconceptions that get corrected, sure. But they shouldn’t have the level of racism Gemma is shown to have.
Please note: I am not Indian so obviously that limits how much I can advise.
That’s a good point. Someone from India should be allowed to tell that sort of story instead.
Not sure if that’s you throwing shade or a genuine point but you’re right either way.
These advices are pretty good, and I definitely agree that an Indian PoV character would work better.
However, I’m a bit iffy on number 4. I’m not saying Colonization should be whitewashed or anything, but the people behind it shouldn’t be portrayed as always chaotic evil.
We have an entire article on the problems of bigotry brought by antagonistic groups, evil non-humans and especially evil human races.
I mean, it obviously wouldn’t be okay for me to have heroes of my story slaughter orcs, if I based them on Chinese or Black people. But would it be a different matter, if I based them on the British Empire?
I think what #4 is about is that you shouldn’t make the actual colonizers, those who actively make the colonies work as their country wants, look good. Someone who is not ready to enforce the rules with violence, if necessary, doesn’t get appointed as a governor or sent to the colonies to command the soldiers over there. That doesn’t mean that all British people in India were brutal colonizers who committed genocide and ripped people from their regular life to make them work in mines to the death. It means that those who represented the Crown were ready to do that and few, if any, of the others would speak out against it.
From the point of view of the colonizer, it’s not ‘chaotic evil.’ It’s enforcing the ‘superior culture and decisions’ of their government in the colonies so all runs as it should. It has order, it has rules, yet if you happen to be a native of the colonies, it is often also brutal and deadly.
I also wonder whom you would base your heroes’ ancestry on when you portray them as capable of bringing down and dominating the most powerful colonizing power of that era.
Yes! That is it EXACTLY, Cay Reet. Those who actively CHOOSE to participate the colonization, even in a less governmental and more minor sense, would fundamentally not be a good people. Not necessarily orcs, but not people we should root for either. And of course, the actual officials of the Crown would be the worst of the lot.
As to who the hero is ethnically, I don’t know. I am not at all Indian and 100% white (as you can probs guess from my very Irish name), so as others have said, an Indian person should write this story instead.
But the person who brings down the government, or at the very least, wins a major victory against it, would absolutely NOT be the Sympathetic White POV. They would be Indian, obviously.
I personally would go for multiple POVs here, so you could get different looks at the colonial period from different angles, the better for immersion and accuracy. Most of which, save for exactly ONE sympathetic white POV, are Indian.
Fair enough. I can accept the idea of colonizers being the nasty ones, when it’s a question of “what you become” rather than “what you were born as”
As for the PoVs, I’m not Indian, either, but I have a decent knowledge of history and civil rights, so maybe I can come up with something sensible.
Now, at least one of the PoVs should be someone that could be considered privileged. Twisted as it may sound, people, even those who are blue-collar, are more likely to self-identify with knights and nobles than commoners, whether during a history lesson or reading a story.
Now, if we go by the “token white PoV” rule, then said privileged PoV character should be someone who can be considered a privileged Indian, heir to a Princely State or similar.
Naturally there’s going to be PoV’s from lower strata. Those that show the darkness through their eyes.
As for that one sympathetic white PoV, they should definitely be an ally to the Indian cause. One important thing to know of civil rights movements is that though the marginalized led, organized and populated the movements, but convincing sympathetic privileged was an important part of gaining the power to change things. Whites marched with Martin Luther King, men marched with Suffragettes, and so on.
I started reading this to learn more about what not to do, and was shocked to learn when I checked it out that it has a starred review on PW. Which is confusing. I’ve always been told a starred review on PW means a lot as far as the quality of a book. I think you’re right that the wordcraft here is good. It flows well, but there are no characters I really want to read about yet, and I still can’t get over the first chapter. I know it was a different time, and all, but I think we’ve reached a point where we can talk about the shameful past without glorifying it or using it as a plot device.
I finished it. Wow, and yikes. It’s a pretty blatant mashup of The Craft and Mean Girls. Gemma doesn’t join the outcasts at her fancy finishing school, but the bullies, and spends most of her time making excuses why the bullies are just so very mean.
Right after she gets to her school, the India stereotypes are shunted for Romani stereotypes, and there’s a headmistress plucked from every other era-appropriate story of its kind.
I get what the author is trying to do—the whole thing is a metaphor. Magic and fear of magic and trying to oppress Gemma’s magic = the plight of women. But it’s sloppy and heavy handed, and I have no idea why the author thought it was ok to punch down so many times.
The writing was easy to read, and I had no trouble envisioning the characters and settings. The pacing was great. But…I didn’t like the story, and I didn’t like a single character. The good reviews are, as a result, confusing.
The overall themes, such as they are, of this trilogy, mostly seem to be something like ‘struggling against conformity and patriarchal oppression’, but…kind of trips and falls flat on its face, constantly.
Also, did I mention that Gemma befriends the local bullies at the finishing school she ends up at, and at the end of the first book, one of them gorily murders a deer while drunk on magic?
Yeah. That was a thing that happened.
[…and it’s never mentioned again!]
Oh but that’s ok since at least they’re not talking about eating cobras! So they’re far more civilised you see. [end sarcasm]
Wow, this is the highest concentration of orientalism I’ve seen since Kill Bill.
This is pure distilled 300-proof orientalism.
Hello, I am an Indian and this is actually, literally making my skin crawl. No matter the actual intent of the author, it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t hurt any less. Thanks for calling bullshit on it.
Same thing. Like I said, my school is half Indian so I know a bit more about India than the average white American teenager, but even if I didn’t I have a functioning nose to smell this kind of crap.
I’m kind of sad that this is by Libba Bray. I loved her book Beauty Queens (Lord of the Flies with teenage beauty queens) and I am sad that she has stooped to this kind of racism. Hatsune Miku wrote Beauty Queens guys! (And Harry Potter, and Minecraft…)
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Sorry, that was me banging my head on the keyboard.
LOL! I absolutely cannot blame you one little bit, mate. ☺
As an Indian and From Mumbai (Bombay) too, I can say with some Authority that that the opening was all made up. Snake particularly Cobras are seen as Guarding Deities in India. Even though not as revered as Cows and people often kill them but eating them is just made up.
In Maharashtra (state which bombay is capital of) I don’t remember any Tribe or Community that were Snake eater. Yes there are certain Community or Tribes in India but they are Minority out of Maharashtra. As Bomaby was major Port in British era, Many communities settled down in Bombay. It might be possible that some of Snake eaters might have settled down too but it’s all theory on my part.
Thanks for the info, it’s good to know what flavor of racism we’re dealing with here.
I hope this doesn’t fall into Law #2, because it’s not my intention to be offensive, but in response to the multiple people who commented or implied that one shouldn’t write from the perspective of one of the oppressor class . . . I find that ridiculous. Colonization was done throughout history, by multiple countries. It was a fact of life. A rule that one shouldn’t write about an oppressor class doesn’t make sense, especially as it’s also criticized to write an oppressed class when you aren’t of that class. Additionally, the benefactors of this oppression were the entire English people, not just those living in India. So by this logic, it seems you shouldn’t write English citizens at this period at all.
Moreover, some have commented that you shouldn’t have a sympathetic character living as part of an oppressor class in an oppressed country. Isn’t it simplistic to say “this class is bad and should act badly” and “this class is good and should act nicely”? Yes, such people are complicit and would be very likely to fall into bigoted behavior, but they can’t control the society they are born into, and in large part would not be capable of a great degree of divergence from the prevalent mindset of their class. However, that doesn’t make them bad people. It makes them people.
This is not said to excuse the racism evident here. The sensationalized, caricatured, ill-researched description of India is UNFORGIVABLE. The use of the Indian setting for pure novelty is DISGUSTING, considering what I remember of the book is that the rest of it is set in a boarding school of some kind (not in India if memory serves, but I don’t remember well enough to say with certainty). The lack of significant Indian characters is probably due to the above fact, but still INEXCUSABLE considering the protagonist has lived her whole life there, supposedly. The inconsistency, as pointed out by the article’s writer, of Gemma being thrown off by a culture she has been submersed in her entire life is BIZARRE.
If you’re not going to write from the perspective of oppressor classes, don’t write from an American perspective. Apparently it’s been forgotten, but they oppressed multiple Native cultures. Spain also engaged in colonization, so that’s out too. Romans and Greeks were big on it too. Based on this logic, you shouldn’t even write from the perspective of someone who’s rich, and arguably complicit in an economic system that keeps poverty-level people (the majority of whom are black and Hispanic in America) at poverty-level. Stories have to be from SOMEONE’S perspective, and that someone is either going to be from an oppressor class or an oppressed class, in most situations.
I would like to put that ‘don’t write from the perspective of the oppressor classes’ into a bit more perspective.
Yes, basically all of Europe has managed to colonize some place somewhere at some time. There has been colonisation done by several African cultures, there has been colonisation by Asian cultures, such as China and Japan. The Aztecs in Mexico have colonized other people in the area before in turn being colonized by the Spanish.
Yet, how you present a class of oppressors right there in a country which is being oppressed can make a huge difference. The way it’s done in this book is by ignorance (like that ‘snake eating’ thing which isn’t real) and by using the country’s populace and setting merely for novelty. You can very well also have a British person who has grown up in India and who understands, at least to a degree, the place they’re in. They don’t have to be fast friends with twenty Indian people around them, but they would have a good understanding of the area they live in, would probably understand a bit of the local Indian dialect (India is a subcontinent, it has more than one language), and would not look at the busy local market like a tourist on their first time there. If you want for them to be someone the readers can emphasize with, they should not act like the viewpoint character of this example does.
I was still teaching middle school when this book came out. It is tailored to appeal to a certain type of young female reader who is exactly like Gemma: mom is SUCH a bore who can’t do anything right, they are too special to have to follow rules, and everyone who isn’t like them is gross, dumb, and they are entitled to make fun of them.
I wish I was kidding, but I made a point of reading what my students were reading and I see exactly why they loved Gemma. She’s doing what THEY would do in that situation and enforcing stereotypes they believe.
That would certainly explain a thing or two.
I originally thought Gemma Doyle was a fan of Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (the style resembles Victorian childrens’ fiction) and wanted to emulate her works. But her having a specific audience she sought to cater to does make sense.
Both. I had to read The Secret Garden for school once and it also opens in occupied India. The MC Mary is also racist to her Indian servant Aya. Aya dies in the first chapter and is never seen again.
So basically she’s copy-pasting from The Secret Garden.
I showed this book to a friend who lives and India and he told me that the only people who would even consider eating cobra would be the tribal people. I. E. people that Gemma probably would not interact with on the regular.
Sacredness aside, cobras are not an easy meal.