An excursion to Dalemark
Aug. 22nd, 2019 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI started my reading for the Diana Wynne Jones conference with A Sudden Wild Magic: it had been mentioned at the earlier gathering in Newcastle as her book for adults, and I hadn't been able to place it. The subject matter - a group of women on a mission to disrupt a celibate male society - may justify that 'adult' descriptor, but there's a broadness to the humour which I initially found quite off-putting, and even when I adjusted to that, I didn't feel that I was reading something more grown-up than say, Hexwood, published the following year. Maybe that's why the two had become tangled in my mind. But when I took A Sudden Wild Magic from the shelf, I also dislodged Minor Arcana: one of the stories in this collection was described in the author's introduction as "one of the first adult stories I wrote", so I decided to take the hint and stay with that theme.
That story is The True State of Affairs, and it is quite unlike A Sudden Wild Magic. It is also quite unlike anything else in Minor Arcana. The Sage of Theare is a fun time paradox, featuring Chrestomanci, and a bunch of gods (if you wanted to consider DWJ's treatment of gods, this would be a useful data point). The pleasure of The Master is in the way the tale unfolds, which I wouldn't want to spoiler even if I had anything else to say about it. File The Girl who loved the Sun also under classicism, the Metamorphoses considered from the other side of the glass. Dragon Reserve, Home Eight is SF with dragons, and an interesting family structure - but also the standard fantasy trope of the outlawed talent. What the Cat told me is an equally familiar set-up, the wicked magician, his apprentice and the cat, but this time the cat gets to tell the story. nad and Dan adn Quaffy is widely anthologised; it always reminds me of Only You Can Save Mankind, which it pre-dates. I don't think that the short story is DWJ's medium, but none of these is less than entertaining.
And then there's The True State of Affairs, which is by far the longest story in the book, 130 pages to the 150 occupied by the other six stories; and this isn't because it is full of incident and plot: the contrast lies in the mood and pacing which are leisurely and introspective. Compare its origin, as explained in the introduction, to that of The Girl who loved the Sun: this time it is The Kingis Quair, a partly autobiographical poem by James I of Scotland, about falling in love with a girl he only ever sees from prison, that sets the author wondering what the woman in the story thought about it all. And she does indeed find an answer to that question with this rich and sympathetic portrait of a young woman who reciprocates the man's affections, and then realises that she has come to feel something real for one tiny corner of the personality of a man she otherwise does not know. This is beautifully done, and, for what it's worth, entirely adult.
But that's only part of what's going on in this story, the part you could achieve in a straight historical romance, if not a contemporary version of the situation. DWJ does not attempt to speculate about the actual, historical object of King James's courtly affections: her heroine (and narrator) comes from another world entirely. She comes, in fact, from our world, and from our time (or the time of publication): she was brought up in Kent, and she talks about motorways, autobahns and bus stops. Now she finds herself in Dalemark, in a period comparable to our late middle ages; she is bewildered by the social assumptions and the political situation, and although she understands the language, she stumbles over idiom and vocabulary. This outsider's viewpoint has the advantage of guiding the reader into the situation, but deterred the agent to whom DWJ sent the manuscript "in the mid-sixties", who told her that "no one wanted to read this fantasy sort of stuff." Yet there is no fantasy element to the narrative: we never learn what brought her here, or whether she returned to her home (there are hints that she has little to return to).
In other words, Diana Wynne Jones has picked up a true historical tale, and dropped it in Dalemark, because she wanted to. Which suggests that Dalemark isn't a framework which she made up to contain the story of Cart and Cwidder and the successive Dalemark novels, but a place (and a conflict) which was in her mind from ten years earlier, at least, as somewhere stories could happen. So I should stop thinking of the later books as 'sequels', and judge them as more or less successful on this basis. At the conference, Laura Cecil (DWJ's agent) clarified that Dalemark was originally intended to consist of five books. The first three were written quite rapidly (they were published in 1975, 1977 and 1979) but the final two had been shelved as "too difficult." Eventually the difficulties had been resolved - or evaded - by combining the final two into one. The Wikipedia entry on DWJ's bibliography says that "Diana Wynne Jones insisted she would not be able to write a sequel to The Crown of Dalemark, until she had worked out what became of Tanaqui (The Spellcoats) after the One had reshaped the land[citation needed]." For once, I agree with Wikipedia about the need for citation, but this supports the same theory, that The Crown of Dalemark was not an afterthought, but nor was it the book originally intended.
For the sake of completeness, I note that Everard's Ride, which I have not read, also seems to be set in Dalemark. The internet suggests that these two texts are unrelated to the characters who appear in the main Quartet, and this may well be true, but if you were piecing together a history of Dalemark, rather than a particular group of characters, then The True State of Affairs is absolutely relevant.
I can't deny that this was a facet of the story which had a great impact on me (yes, I had read it before, and noted this fact, but in the intervening decades I had contrived to forget it). But I was also deeply impressed by Emily's situation, and the way she gradually comes to understand the people around her, and their worldview which so completely differs from her own.
That story is The True State of Affairs, and it is quite unlike A Sudden Wild Magic. It is also quite unlike anything else in Minor Arcana. The Sage of Theare is a fun time paradox, featuring Chrestomanci, and a bunch of gods (if you wanted to consider DWJ's treatment of gods, this would be a useful data point). The pleasure of The Master is in the way the tale unfolds, which I wouldn't want to spoiler even if I had anything else to say about it. File The Girl who loved the Sun also under classicism, the Metamorphoses considered from the other side of the glass. Dragon Reserve, Home Eight is SF with dragons, and an interesting family structure - but also the standard fantasy trope of the outlawed talent. What the Cat told me is an equally familiar set-up, the wicked magician, his apprentice and the cat, but this time the cat gets to tell the story. nad and Dan adn Quaffy is widely anthologised; it always reminds me of Only You Can Save Mankind, which it pre-dates. I don't think that the short story is DWJ's medium, but none of these is less than entertaining.
And then there's The True State of Affairs, which is by far the longest story in the book, 130 pages to the 150 occupied by the other six stories; and this isn't because it is full of incident and plot: the contrast lies in the mood and pacing which are leisurely and introspective. Compare its origin, as explained in the introduction, to that of The Girl who loved the Sun: this time it is The Kingis Quair, a partly autobiographical poem by James I of Scotland, about falling in love with a girl he only ever sees from prison, that sets the author wondering what the woman in the story thought about it all. And she does indeed find an answer to that question with this rich and sympathetic portrait of a young woman who reciprocates the man's affections, and then realises that she has come to feel something real for one tiny corner of the personality of a man she otherwise does not know. This is beautifully done, and, for what it's worth, entirely adult.
But that's only part of what's going on in this story, the part you could achieve in a straight historical romance, if not a contemporary version of the situation. DWJ does not attempt to speculate about the actual, historical object of King James's courtly affections: her heroine (and narrator) comes from another world entirely. She comes, in fact, from our world, and from our time (or the time of publication): she was brought up in Kent, and she talks about motorways, autobahns and bus stops. Now she finds herself in Dalemark, in a period comparable to our late middle ages; she is bewildered by the social assumptions and the political situation, and although she understands the language, she stumbles over idiom and vocabulary. This outsider's viewpoint has the advantage of guiding the reader into the situation, but deterred the agent to whom DWJ sent the manuscript "in the mid-sixties", who told her that "no one wanted to read this fantasy sort of stuff." Yet there is no fantasy element to the narrative: we never learn what brought her here, or whether she returned to her home (there are hints that she has little to return to).
In other words, Diana Wynne Jones has picked up a true historical tale, and dropped it in Dalemark, because she wanted to. Which suggests that Dalemark isn't a framework which she made up to contain the story of Cart and Cwidder and the successive Dalemark novels, but a place (and a conflict) which was in her mind from ten years earlier, at least, as somewhere stories could happen. So I should stop thinking of the later books as 'sequels', and judge them as more or less successful on this basis. At the conference, Laura Cecil (DWJ's agent) clarified that Dalemark was originally intended to consist of five books. The first three were written quite rapidly (they were published in 1975, 1977 and 1979) but the final two had been shelved as "too difficult." Eventually the difficulties had been resolved - or evaded - by combining the final two into one. The Wikipedia entry on DWJ's bibliography says that "Diana Wynne Jones insisted she would not be able to write a sequel to The Crown of Dalemark, until she had worked out what became of Tanaqui (The Spellcoats) after the One had reshaped the land[citation needed]." For once, I agree with Wikipedia about the need for citation, but this supports the same theory, that The Crown of Dalemark was not an afterthought, but nor was it the book originally intended.
For the sake of completeness, I note that Everard's Ride, which I have not read, also seems to be set in Dalemark. The internet suggests that these two texts are unrelated to the characters who appear in the main Quartet, and this may well be true, but if you were piecing together a history of Dalemark, rather than a particular group of characters, then The True State of Affairs is absolutely relevant.
I can't deny that this was a facet of the story which had a great impact on me (yes, I had read it before, and noted this fact, but in the intervening decades I had contrived to forget it). But I was also deeply impressed by Emily's situation, and the way she gradually comes to understand the people around her, and their worldview which so completely differs from her own.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-22 10:12 pm (UTC)Interestingly, though, I discovered that most scholars (including no less than CS Lewis) believe that the woman James falls in love with in The Kingis Quaire is the woman whom he married. DWJ is wrong to say that the narrator abandons her at the end; he doesn't - they are reunited and he credits her with his survival.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-23 04:59 pm (UTC)And I'd read somewhere that KIng James's lady was quite likely to be Joan Beaufort, whom he married - at least, that's fits the conceit of the poem, which he is writing retrospecively! But that's not the story that DWJ wants to tell. She doesn't mention his early and unpleasant end, either.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-23 05:48 pm (UTC)I'm curious - I hadn't realized that Everard's Ride was also a Dalemark? I've only read it the once, just for completion, and hadn't remembered that.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-23 07:07 pm (UTC)Oh, I missed that! As you say, I'm so glad we shall see the papers.
And I didn't realise you were there! I did say to Farah that it was a sign of changing times that at Newcastle people did display LJ / DW handles, whereas now it's all about the Twitter tags...
no subject
Date: 2019-08-23 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-24 01:10 pm (UTC)Ah, then we have spoken, briefly - possibly about E. Nesbit? And I am doubly sorry to have missed it!