It's all about power

[unfeathered]

I had a Thought today. (I don’t get many of those any more because my head’s too full of household and toddler stuff, so this was quite exciting.)

 

I’ve been re-reading two of my favourite books ever: The Moonspinners and My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart. They are two of the first adult books I ever read aged about 12 and there was a lot I didn’t really understand in them at that age, but I thought I’d discovered everything I could in them in subsequent re-readings. I have probably read each of them at least a dozen times, but it’s been a few years since the last time so I thought I’d give them another go, because they both have absolutely gorgeous heroes, the kind of man I have always fancied for myself (even though my real life husband is nothing like them and I love him to bits): extremely self-confident, casually cool, and very protective of their women.

 

Anyway, boy was I wrong when I thought I had nothing left to discover in these books. Not only do I now actually understand a lot of the (1960s) slang in The Moonspinners due to having watched a lot more tv in recent years, but I also understood a lot more of the heroines’ feelings about their menfolk. MS actually writes quite understatedly about girls falling in love and because I was so very young and inexperienced in that area for the first several formative readings of the books, I really didn’t realise what she was writing about. It’s quite a shock to realise how much of these stories I was missing out on!

 

But my main discovery was this: both these books have a lot of what I’ve always termed “good bits”. A somewhat loose term, I’ll admit, but then I never could tie down what common factor the “good bits” in these and other books (and on tv).  Some “good bits” are the sections where exciting or terrifying things happen to the characters – getting kidnapped, or tied-up, or threatened etc. (are we seeing the theme here?). However, other bits were less easy to define. But today I got it. They’re bits where the hero (usually the hero) shows his dominant side.  I'm talking about the subtle demonstrations of power, here: just the odd comment in a conversation, or when he's just being incredibly cool.

 

I always knew I enjoyed the obvious descriptions of sub/dom behaviour, long before I knew what on earth that was. But even in the last few years when I’ve been reading more and more fanfic – which does tend to concentrate on this area! – I never thought of applying knowledge of that kind of behaviour to stories not overtly written about it, if you see what I mean. Mary Stewart’s heroines really do tend to go for dominant heroes – in fact, I suppose a lot of fictional heroes are dominant types, because that’s what’s exciting to the reader – I just never realised it before! And I’m so glad because now I finally know why I like those bits so much, and I’m going to have great fun re-reading stuff in the light of my new knowledge!

 

OK, that was really rambling and probably didn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s my head for you.

Comments

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

I love Mary Stewart's books! The earlier ones more and I'm not wild about the Arthurian ones but those romantic thrillers were books I grew up reading and still reread every so often.

Love Airs Above the Ground and Wildfire at Midnight - oh, all of them!

[unfeathered]

That is so cool! Not that I'm surprised, because you are a woman of taste :-)

Moonspinners & My Brother Michael are definitely my faves, but Touch Not The Cat and The Ivy Tree come close behind, for the really sinister but sexy male cousin characters in both! (That makes me sound really shallow, but you know what I mean)

The Arthurian ones were the first ones I read because I'd got into Arthurian stuff after reading The Dark Is Rising series, and because my Mum owned them. And I do still like them (again, lots of "good bits"!) but they do go on a bit. And nothing she's written since then is anywhere as good as the earlier ones, I agree.

[t-verano.livejournal.com]

Just had to comment, seeing this. I found Mary Stewart at about the same age and was head-over-heels, myself. I loved everything I could find of hers at that time, but The Moonspinners was just *it* -- I still have a battered copy around, somewhere. I was a goner over the Cretan landscape she described, partly. But it was mostly Mark (and his little brother, who turned out to be charmingly protective too, I remember), and the relationship between the heroine (Nichola? is that right?) and Mark.

I don't tend to think of relationships in terms of roles - which is dumb, because there are a lot of roles involved, quite a bit of the time. (Who knows what my brain is thinking - or why - at any given moment... ::sighs::) But I was completely smitten with protective!Mark. And reading fanfic has made *me* read differently, too, for a lot of reasons - and definitely has broadened my perspective. Hmmm. I've been so focused on trying to catch up with my backlogged and utterly essential TS fanfic reading that I haven't been doing much RL reading for a while. Sounds like I'll be bringing a new 'tude, too, when I get back to it, though. Hmmm.

(Hey, I loved Stewart's Merlin books, too. The atmosphere was just haunting, and I loved the characters and the overall angst. I did tend to skip over the historical bits in favor of the good emotional stuff. :-))

[unfeathered]

Hi - thanks for visiting! (My second visitor already, very exciting!) (Not that I'm expecting many visitors yet because I haven't written very much yet!)

Yes, it's Nicola in the Moonspinners, and yes Colin (the brother) is very protective too - I think at 13 or however old I was when I first read it, I would have loved for 15 year-old Colin to come and whisk me away!

Tbh, I think (now I've actually thought about it) there are pretty much always roles in relationships. Someone is usually more dominant than the other. Sometimes not very much, but sometimes there's a real d/s vibe.

I've been re-reading some of my Dick Francis books too, which have a definite d/s and even s/m vibe to them which I knew was the reason I really liked them, but even there I'm now discovering why I enjoy more than just the obvious capture/threatening etc. scenes: there are so many bits of great dialogue with massive d/s overtones.

[t-verano.livejournal.com]

Colin - *so* glad you told me his name, it was bugging me to the point I was thinking about trying to find my copy of the book.

It's good for me to think outside my own box about this; and fanfic reading is teaching me to be a more observant reader overall. Hmmm, Dick Francis, too?

LJ is *so* cool - I hope you grow to love it here as much as I do! I only know some TS people, so far, but they're a totally lovely bunch of folks. And there's so much to explore here, and it's all very addictive... :-)