Master 1 Memoir

THE FEMINIST, THE WITCH, AND THE PRINCESS:
Female Characterisation in Orson Scott Card's Enchantment


Florent HEBERT
Research supervisor: Mrs Lesley LAWTON

Université Toulouse II - Le Mirail (France)
Mémoire de Master 1 LLCE Anglais
June 2008




Important notices:

1/Due to the limitations of a blog, the lay-out of my dissertation could not be preserved. This is a problem for footnote, long quotes, and book titles (which should be in italics). However, common sense should help.

2/ Ideally the audience should speak French as well as English, since a few quotations are in that language (and it seemed absurd to translate them since the people who are going to read it in my university are all fluent in French).

I would like to thank:

Mrs Lesley Lawton for her keen advice and her patience;

my grand-parents for their support throughout the year;

Gaëlle and Aurélien who helped me as sample readers;

and Tom Davidson from the Hatrack River forum, who checked the quotation
from Prentice Alvin for me.

“But from the top of that tower
the man had been able to look out upon the sea.”


J. R. R. Tolkien

Introduction:
Fantasy & the Critics
The State of the Research on Orson Scott Card

I) The Fairy Tale Legacy
a. The Legacy: “Wasn’t it Sleeping Beauty he had kissed?”
b. Beauty: “As the light upon the leaves of trees . . . such was her glory and her loveliness.”
c. The Mirror of the Soul: “But handsome is as handsome does we say.”

II) The Network of Oppositions
a. Matriarchs: “Battles are ugly when women fight.”
b. God(s): “Wilst thou not suffer a witch’s son to live?”
c. The Feminist and the Princess: “Ils dormirent peu, la princesse n’en avait pas grand besoin.”

III) The Individual
a. First Sketch: “In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.”
b. A Second Look: “I am not what I am.”
c. The Gist of the Art: “If she manipulated that, what else might she have plotted?”

Conclusion
Bibliography

Appendices
A. The Church of Latter-Day Saints
B. Tayana’s dream.
C. Covers of Foreign Editions of Enchantment.

Introduction

Fantasy and the Critics:

"Cardboard characters. Endless repetition of meaningless conventions. Hack writing. Childish oversimplification of good and evil. Obviously written for the adolescent mind. Wish-fulfillment. Bourgeois and fascist and sexist and racist. Pure trash." And ah! the most damning epithet of all: "Escapist"2

In these few well-chosen words, Orson Scott Card sarcastically summarises the established critics’ view of the Fantasy genre —though of course it is not always stated so bluntly. A harsh judgement on a genre that is widely but poorly known; old prejudices die hard. Readers may feel the above description is not true of the whole Fantasy genre, and scholars would certainly be ashamed to base their judgements on prejudices, therefore I will endeavour to study a subject touching some of these qualifiers —women. The study of this subject necessarily tackles the claim that Fantasy novels are sexist and contain only “cardboard characters”, but to a certain extent it deals with all the qualifiers given in Card’s description. Since one could not possibly study women characters in all Fantasy works, I shall restrain my corpus to one contemporary novel, Orson Scott Card’s Enchantment. The point of the study is to demonstrate through this example that a complex genre deserves more than arbitrary statements —just as would be the case for a more academic genre.
Before really tackling the subject though, the terms “Fantasy3 ” and “women” need to be clarified. Fantasy is often associated with science fiction since the two genres generally share the same readers, the same publishers, and as often as not the same writers. Moreover they are both concerned with the creation of a “Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter” 4, a world different from our own, filled with the wonders of science or magic —sometimes both, which makes it hard to differentiate the two genres. To define Fantasy and distinguish it from science fiction, I shall use the definition of fairy-stories given by an Oxford teacher who contributed greatly to the popularity of the genre.5 Though this may seem like intellectual legerdemain, at the time when Tolkien delivered his lecture6 the word “Fantasy” was not as commonly used as it is nowadays, therefore it is not strange that he used another term even though his definition of fairy-stories fits the contemporary use of the word “Fantasy.” Thus, a Fantasy story “touches on or uses Faerie, whatever its own main purpose may be [...] Faerie itself may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic —but it is magic of peculiar mood and power, and at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific magician.”7
According to the Oxford Dictionary, a woman is “an adult human female” —the definition is barely helpful in a Fantasy context. Even in our world, “adult” really depends on the society where it is used, and for a woman it corresponds roughly to the age when it is normal for her to get married or to have children. In Enchantment, there are two different societies, the end-of-the-twentieth century USA and ninth-century Ukraine, the adult age being younger in the latter. Furthermore, “human” seems over-restrictive in a Fantasy context; indeed it would be strange to exclude female elves (for instance) from a study on women characters. Therefore it is more accurate to say “being of a sentient species that is anthropomorphised to some extent (i.e. physically and/or mentally)”, thus the definition includes elves but not giant speaking spiders. As far as possible this definition has to apply to all Fantasy works, but the case is not so complex in Enchantment since there is no attempt at drawing clear lines between species; witches and goddesses are “women” according to my definition, and it is not important to know if they are human, partly human or from a different species altogether. “Female” is fairly obvious in most cases, but for the sake of exhaustiveness I shall specify “or taking a female form as its normal or most common form.”
This definition of “woman” is based mainly on biological criteria, and as far as the difference with “man” is concerned it is based solely on biological criteria, which is not quite satisfactory because “on ne naît pas femme, on le devient.”8 But then, if one is not born a woman, how, in a Fantasy novel, does one become a woman? More than the barren question of whether Enchantment is a sexist novel, that is the question that I shall try and answer; or to put it another way: what literary processes does the author use to build his female characters? However, the prerequisite to answering this question is to understand where they are built. The text is not the place where the characters exist but rather the tool that creates them in the reader’s mind. This means that I shall be primarily concerned with the implied reader’s reception of the text and the way in which the writer tries to control it in advance; in this respect, this study is greatly indebted to Umberto Eco’s Lector in Fabula.9 Since characteri-sation depends heavily on the reader’s vicarious experience of and in the “Secondary World,” it might not be pointless to explain exactly what this term means. Umberto Eco defines and opposes the real world (“Wo”),10 the narrative world (“WN”), the possible worlds built either by the characters (“WNc”) or by the implied reader (“WR”), the possible worlds that the reader thinks a character builds (“WRc”) and the possible worlds that the reader thinks a character thinks another character builds (“WRcc”). WN and WR make up what, following Tolkien’s terminology, I have called the “Secondary World”. As for WRc and WRcc, they are closely linked with characterisation,11 since they touch on the reader’s perception of the characters.
I shall focus on the four female protagonists —Katerina, Baba Yaga, Ruth, and Esther. Starting with the way Card deals with the fairy tale legacy of his story and plays with stereotypes, I shall follow an inward movement leading to the study of the network of oppositions at work within the novel, which emphasises each woman’s characteristics. Finally I shall analyse the characters in isolation and show how their contradictions give them an intricacy going deeper than the mere list of their good and bad points.
However, before even starting the study of the novel itself, I shall briefly survey the different books and articles that have been published on Orson Scott Card to this day.


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The State of the Research on O. S. Card:

Orson Scott Card is a prolific writer who won two Hugo and Nebula Awards12 early in his career. He is relatively well known among science fiction readers but not among a mainstream audience and though he is cited in many anthologies, very few works of literary criticism have been published about him. Actually, beside reader’s guides and biographies, only three books deal with his work: Edith Tyson’s Writer of the Terrible Choice, Alain Pelosato’s Fantastique : Des Auteurs et des Thèmes, and Michael Collings’s In the Image of God.
Edith Tyson’s book is the only one that was published after Enchantment, but the amount of pages devoted to this novel is fairly small. After commenting on the parallel with Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,13 she writes about the belief systems in the novel. She devotes at least a third of her book to summarising Card’s novels and short stories, which is very useful if one has not read them but obviously not otherwise. As hinted at in the title, she deals a lot with Card’s characters’ “terrible choices” (wiping out a sentient species to save mankind, deceiving one’s blind husband, etc.) from a Christian perspective. Moreover her attempt at exhaustiveness also leads her to write about gender relations in some of Card’s novels: “Card seems to take male-female equality of brains, purpose, judgement, and leadership ability so much for granted that he sees no need to defend this concept.”14
Pelosato devotes a chapter of his book to Card’s work, under the title “Orson Scott Card : L’écologie et la Foi”. It is mainly concerned with what Pelosato —following the French publisher’s example— calls the Ender trilogy, i.e. Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide.15 He relevantly notices the importance of children in Card’s overall work (115), but after a rather unconvincing argument about “l’éternel retour” he concludes that “le thème principal de la science-fiction de Card dans le cycle d’Ender est la conquête du cosmos, donc, la rencontre avec d’autres espèces” (123). That is definitely not the main theme of the Ender Saga, it is only the pretext of the Speaker Trilogy. Collings understands the story much better when he says that Card’s “primary concern is to discover definitions of family and community that lead to the ultimate question of what it is to be essentially human.”16 This concern about family and community is also very present in Enchantment.
Of the three books, Collings’s is probably the most interesting, or at least the one which goes most deeply into Card’s work. He studies thoroughly the influence of Card’s Mormon17 faith on his fictional writings showing clearly how, while there is no trace of proselytism in his books, understanding Card’s faith is key to understanding his work. Collings also explains the advantages of a Fantasy or Science Fiction setting which allows an author to present “old issues in new guises [and to] make anew the decisions fundamental to human identity” (29). Furthermore, he deals with characterisation (one of the features of Card’s novels that his readers appreciate most) and so with the differences between male and female characters. Like Edith Tyson, he is convinced of the anti-sexism of Card’s stories.
In addition to these critical books, Card’s own non-fictional works have to be mentioned, especially his two books aimed at would-be writers, How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy18 and Characters and Viewpoints.19 Both of them give valuable advice to their audience but, as far as Card’s own stories are concerned, neither of them provides much information that the critics would not find through mere observation of his novels. His other articles also give a useful insight into his own way of writing stories. In “Fantasy and the Believing Reader” in particular, he insists on the importance for literary critics to be first and foremost what has been called participatory readers. “It is the idea that one must make sense of stories at all that is harmful” he argues. “Stories are sense, and do not need to have anything made of them at all.”20 This does not point out all criticism as futile but does warn critics against any attempt at decoding stories ; it would never explain why they are true or powerful, nor why people like them.

Part 1: The Fairy Tale Legacy

When Ivan’s father declares: “Sleeping Beauty, I thought it was a French fairy tale” (272), even the most culturally illiterate reader understands that Enchantment is a rewriting of a fairy tale called “Sleeping Beauty.” The implied reader, however, is culturally aware and has at least a general knowledge of common western fairy tales, which means that when s/he reads Enchantment there is a strong inter-textual pressure at work, pre-conditioning her/his opinion of what the characters should be like. I shall now have a look at the way in which that pressure —and more generally, all kind of extra-textual pressure— helps or interferes with characterisation.


a. The Legacy: “Wasn’t it Sleeping Beauty he had kissed?”1

At the end of the book, Card acknowledges the use of Jewish and Russian folktale motifs2 in addition to the well-known plot of “Sleeping Beauty.” In this collection of folklore motifs, having a hero studying Propp is a nice ironical and meta-textual touch, and it would be highly interesting to track down all those references. Nevertheless, and however edifying this task might be, the implied reader has a very sketchy knowledge of these motifs (and more likely, no knowledge of them at all) which means that the writer cannot and will not use them to build his characters. Obviously I do not mean he cannot use them as a source of inspiration, but the only place where literary characters exist is the reader’s mind, therefore whatever s/he does not know cannot partake of the characterisation process. That is the reason why I shall focus entirely on common western folktale motifs. For the same reason, I shall not comment on Pushkin, though the novel itself contains several direct references to Eugene Onegin3 , climaxing with Katerina’s reaction to the poem: “The stanza’s of Tatyana’s dream had disturbed her greatly—the girl being chased through the snow by a bear” (294).4
In the passage before Ivan kisses Katerina awake, his thoughts are saturated with allusions to fairy tales and with heroic motifs, starting with “the unattainable sleeping woman” (46) and culminating on page 58 with “he knew her as an icon, as the princess of fairy tales” and “Had her finger been pricked by the sharp point of a spindle?” Those allusions are not as dense in the rest of the story, but, right before introducing his star character, the narrator needs to condition the reader’s state of mind in order to control the subsequent associations s/he will make. Thus by reaffirming the fairy tale legacy instead of trying to deny it, the narrator makes sure that he and the reader are both walking on the same ground.
However, once that step secured, he is free to remodel the motifs. For instance, being a princess is a key element in Katerina’s definition of her self,5 but the narrator shows and tells us that “in Taina there had been no sense of princesses as fragile creatures that had to be waited on hand and foot” (267). Likewise, when Ruth first sees her —not knowing who she is— she thinks of her using the word princess four times in as many pages; but the word takes on derogatory connotations in this context: “shiksa princess” (254) or “goyishe princess” (255). This being said, it is interesting —and amusing— to notice that according to Katerina, “Ruthie felt herself to be a princess as surely as [she] did” (246). Thus Ruth appears as the modern equivalent of the princess stereotype6: she would be the heroine of the story if no time-travel were involved. Actually, even Baba Yaga was once “a hopeful young princess in a lovely kingdom” (70).
In addition to the mere motifs of the tale, the actual words “Sleeping Beauty” are used many times, either as a name7 or in a slight variation such as “[her son was able to] kiss the sleeping beauty” (296).8 This is very important because these two words incite the reader to superimpose Katerina on the image of Sleeping Beauty that s/he has. For some, it will be a recollection of an illustrated story book, for most readers however the first image to come to mind will be Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty9 or some other animated feature princess.10 That is not to say that the two representations will be identical, nevertheless previous readings (or viewings) have a strong influence on the way a reader imagines the characters of a novel, and in this case it would be a mistake to underestimate the influence of Walt Disney Pictures on our modern representation of fairy tales characters (note that the effect would be quite weakened if the narrator said “Briar Rose” instead of “Sleeping Beauty”). Actually, Card specifically evokes Disney as a cultural influence for Ivan, since despite his expectations as a scholar of ancient Slavonic he has to “wrestle with a completely different set of expectations, courtesy of Walt Disney” (90).
When Ivan arrives in Taina, Disney is blamed for his disappointment at “seeing—and hearing and smelling—such a coarse reality instead of a magical dream11” (90). Indeed Card has no qualms about debunking the rosiest aspects of fairy tales; the distinguished ladies of Taina eat “with as much gusto—and as much splashing and dripping and dropping—as the men” (97), Esther snores (325), and Katerina herself “[can] be cold, wet, humiliated, and smell like vomit” (244). The reason the writer allows Katerina to reach such peaks of glamour is because it actually gives her depth compared to a fairy tale character: in her stead Cinderella would be cold, wet, meek and pretty. Card’s characters are heroes but, as Collings put it, they are “also simply people,”12 whom he is willing to describe even in their crude everyday life, and though it is true that only men are seen urinating, women too get down from their pedestal as the narrator mentions menstrual periods. It is relevant that in these cases the narrator uses an internal focalization on a male character (Sergei or Ivan):
What woman who spoke proto-Slavonic would be able to instruct her on how to unwrap it and insert it and... If he had to explain it, she was going to learn about sanitary napkins. (211)
Throughout most of the novel, the narrator uses Ivan as the focalizing character, and, as has already been pointed out, when he first sees Katerina the description is saturated with fairy tale elements, therefore that he rather than she should raise the issue of menstruation is a much stronger sign addressed to the reader, stating that she really is a full person, not an ethereal icon, and that even besotted Ivan considers her to be so.13
In our world, the criteria for movie rating are language, sex, violence and “others” (the latter category typically includes bereavement themes, drug use, and such). In Enchantment as in traditional fairy tales, violence is both present and detached; when Baba Yaga tells a merchant to hold still as she extracts his eye and he answers “Sorry” the effect is more comic than cruel (66). Bad language and sex, however, are absent from literary fairy tales, or at most they are hinted at in metaphors. This is not the case in Card’s novel, the process of debunking the too rosy picture handed down to us by fairy tales is furthered on by the ribald jokes made during the wedding festivities14 and by the derogatory terms used by Baba Yaga and Ruth (whom I called the “modern princess”) to designate Katerina; “he’ll forget the bitch and love me?” (282) is only one of the seven occurrences when she is called a bitch.15 The narrator clearly puts some distance between his tone and the sweetened language of traditional fairy tales and their animated adaptation. Katerina herself does not call Ruth names (but then again, she has not been jilted for a “shiksa”), yet her language is not quite what we expect of Sleeping Beauty:
‘I don’t imagine you could even lie down straight in a regular house. Not without sticking your head out the door and your ass in the fire.’
‘You have such a pretty way of talking,’ [Ivan replied]. ‘Like a princess.’ (86)
Debunking fairy tales also means filling a certain number of ellipses. In “Some day my Prince will come”, Marcia Lieberman points out that though marriage is a central element in most folktales it is seldom shown, and she adds that “after marriage [the young woman] ceases to be wooed, her consent is no longer sought, she derives her status from her husband, and her personal identity is thus snuffed out.”16 Fortunately for my study, this is not true of Katerina’s case. This is the society she lives in though, after the wedding “the female remains childlike — subjected to masculine supervision and denied any true independence.”17 But Katerina cannot surrender her will to someone else; she has been taught to and she tries to but she cannot: “Where was the respect she owed to her husband?” (140) she wonders when she refuses to listen to Ivan. This is highly relevant for my study since her attitude to marriage is an important part of her characterisation.
Another ellipsis filled is Katerina’s clear knowledge of the implications of marriage, as soon as she meets Ivan she sizes him up: “It was possible to imagine him touching her, his clean young body possessing hers, yes, even with that strange maiming of a Jew” (83). Before the wedding night, the women of Taina overwhelm her with further advice,18 and though sex is not used as an enticement in Enchantment (or any of Card’s novels)19 , it should be obvious there is no taboo surrounding it; it is wholly a part of the characters’ lives and shall be commented on in due time.
As Ivan rightly observes, “where in the fairy tales did it ever say that Cinderella had to like being queen, or that Jack got to choose whether to marry the king’s daughter?” (144). Folklore characters do not really have a free will, especially concerning marriage, and Ivan and Katerina are no exception. Yet they are no “cardboard characters” repeating “endless conventions”; under Card’s pen, the hero and princess stereotypes described in Propp20 take on unwonted attributes, and the reader finds out why they bend to those obligations and how they react to them. Marriage is not a reward and the end of the tale, it is the beginning of the story and a pretext to unveil the characters’ personality.

Now that the fairy tale legacy has been clearly identified, I shall have a closer look at how it interacts with the way characters are described.


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b. Beauty: “As the light upon the leaves of trees . . . such was her glory and her loveliness.”21

Physical appearance is the first thing that one notices when meeting someone, and one’s first opinion about that person depends heavily on it —the fact that one knows one should not judge on appearances generally interferes very little with this first impression. In a book however, it is up to the narrator to describe a character or not when the reader first encounters them (and of course how to describe them). In no way would it be a narrative mistake not to describe a character —even a protagonist. Indeed Orson Scott Card explains in Characters and Viewpoints22 that it can be a means to increase the reader’s identification with a character of the same sex.23 However, that is not the choice he made in Enchantment. As far as appearance is concerned readers know very little about Esther, but the other three female protagonists are described. It can even be noticed that all three of them look beautiful (“look” as opposed to what they are).
However, the description of these characters still relies a lot on the active participation of the implied reader. When the boy Ivan first finds Katerina bewitched in the woods, he sees her indistinctly and is only half convinced it is a woman (“If that was a woman lying there...” 11), but when he comes back to Ukraine as a grown-up he wonders why he invented “a woman so beautiful” (43). Her beauty seems to be an element he added to his real memories, however the implied reader does not remember how clearly (or rather how unclearly) Ivan saw her when he was a child, therefore s/he is ready to take his word for it, all the more so as the pressure of inter-textual scenarios (most preeminently fairy tales, since the narrator talks of a monster watching over the woman) leads her/him to expect that when a hero finds a woman sleeping in the wood she is beautiful. When Ivan finally sees her clearly it is still from afar so that the only thing the narrator using a deep internal focalization can describe is her position, and yet her beauty is still mentioned:
...there was indeed a young woman lying on a low wooden bed, her hands clasped across her waist, her eyes closed. From this distance, in this light, she seemed ethereal, at peace, an icon of beauty. How many tales had he read that recounted this moment? (50)
The question is a clear incitement for the reader to call on inter-textual scenarios and imagine an “ideal” woman —Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. At this point the internal focalization on Ivan is very strong and the narrator describes not so much what the woman looks like as how Ivan feels when looking at her; here, the reader’s participation is at its highest, s/he is still free to picture the princess the way s/he wishes. Of course, what s/he “wishes” is strongly influenced by para-textual elements such as the cover of the book24 and, as has been explained at the beginning of this study, by the reader’s previous encounters with fairy tales: illustrated story books and animated features.
This stage in the descriptive process highlights the importance of subjectivity in such matters as beauty: the scene could be seen differently. Actually the third person narrative allows the reader to see it from another point of view, that of Bear, and the poetry is of a very different kind: “He fell in love like any dog when he saw her, lying there giving off her love smell like a bitch in permanent heat” (70). This sentence is a “participatory knot”25 , it is pivotal in the characterisation process of Ivan, Katerina, and Bear. As far as the latter is concerned, it states that though he is a god he feels closer to animals than to humans and thus has a different worldview. The sense of smell is typical of the animal kingdom whereas humans live in a world dominated by sight; even when scientists tell us that we still perceive pheromones and that they weigh heavily on our attractions, we rarely construe ourselves around that sense. Moreover, by implying that Ivan might have fallen in love at first smell the narrator completely debunks all notions of traditional fairy tale love: “she was young and beautiful ergo he fell in love”. Bear attracts the reader’s attention to the fact that whether smell or sight is involved (or both), the act of falling in love without knowing the “beloved” places the hero as a robot and the princess as an object. The reference to a female dog, which is a common insult, may emphasise the reader’s commitment, s/he wants Bear to be proven wrong and from there on s/he will expect Katerina’s character to show some proof that Ivan’s first impulse was right.
It is only once the predominance of subjectivity has been asserted that the narrator gives some details about what Katerina really looks like:
She had the high-cheeked features of a Slav; but he was not so American that this looked alien to him. Indeed, he could see that by any standard of beauty she was a lovely woman, young and smooth-skinned, her hair a lustrous brown with many lighter hairs that caught the waning sun of afternoon and shone like fine gold wires. Love poems had been written with less provocation (57-8).
Of course, subjectivity and cultural conditioning are still very much present, but before this passage, the narrator had not even told the colour of her hair (whereas it was something Ivan could see). Later on, the reader also learns that she does not “even come up to [Ivan’s] shoulder” (87). One should be really careful before jumping to conclusions and saying that thus she is the archetype of the girl-wife, for actually everyone in ninth-century Ukraine is much shorter than Ivan, and the same sentence also states that Katerina is “uncommonly tall for a woman” (according to the standards of her kingdom of course).
The character of Ruth, the jilted fiancé, is not described as abundantly and lyrically as Katerina, yet the processes at work are very similar. Ivan says in a piece of dialogue that she is beautiful, and that is the sole element that the reader actually knows about her appearance before chapter 12. It really is up to the implied reader to imagine her, however s/he is still guided, or at least orientated by the text. Ruth is Jewish, she is not introduced as such, of course, but as soon as Ivan talks about her to his parents he drops a sentence about Ruth’s synagogue.26 Later on, it becomes obvious that her Jewishness is an important part of her identity, especially in opposition to Katerina the “shiksa”, but in the very first sentence where she is introduced it is as “the daughter of a doctor” (17), and besides, her name is taken from the Old Testament. Since these two elements are consistent with common stereotypes about Jews, and, most importantly, since no other characteristics of Ruth’s contradict these stereotypes, the implied reader is incited to fill the gap in her/his knowledge about Ruth’s appearance by drawing on them: typically she is pictured with dark hair.27
The reader’s participation is further exemplified when Ruth asks a question “shaking her head, laughing.” Because of the extra-textual pressure of common scenarios where women wave their hair as a means of seduction, the implied reader pictures her hair moving. Yet, for all s/he knows Ruth could have very short hair, it is only on page 281 that a woman in a beauty parlour tells her she has “gorgeous long hair”. The reader learns later that the woman is in fact one of Baba Yaga’s illusions and that the words are taken from Ruth’s own unconscious (286), therefore “gorgeous” cannot be taken at face value; yet “long” seems objective. It is interesting to notice that as far as appearance is concerned, all the reader knows about Ruth concerns her long hair and that is in keeping with the standard of traditional beauty. The very absence of other details tells the reader that though she is beautiful she is ordinary.
Although it still relies heavily on the reader’s participation in its early stage, the case of Baba Yaga is rather different. For five pages after she is introduced, the reader is free to imagine her as a stereotypical witch —old, wizened, and ugly— but then she claims that she does not “look like a grandmother” (70), to which her husband answers that she does. This ambivalence is due to her illusions, “people [see] her as she [chooses] to be seen” (235), and naturally she chooses to be seen as young and beautiful (though people with magical power, such as Katerina and Bear, can see through her enchantments). The reader is given more information about what kind of beauty Baba Yaga values when Bear taunts her on the points she is most sensitive about:
‘Do you have any idea how sad it is, to see you comb those few scraggly grey hairs of yours as if they were long luscious tresses? (...)’
She sighed. ‘I’m combing thick reddish hair tonight. Sorry if you don’t love me enough to see that.’
‘And your dugs hang down to you knees.’
‘Only when I’m sitting and leaning forward to see into my mirror.’
‘I don’t have eyes enough to waste them looking at lies.’ (150)
The process of description is quite different from that of Katerina’s description and puts its emphasis on divergent assets. For seven pages, all Ivan thinks about is Katerina’s “luminous face” (50), it is only later that any reference to her hair and lips is made, whereas on the other hand, the very first description of Baba Yaga mentions her hair and her breasts. Moreover she has no qualms about acting the clichés of female seduction, she chooses to be a young woman, combing her long thick hair and leaning forward. The contrast between her artificial, deceiving beauty28 and Katerina’s natural loveliness is even more emphasised by the fact that, while she is perfectly aware of the effect she has on men,29 Katerina never consciously uses her beauty as a means to win them to her cause. Baba Yaga, on the other hand, though she is the first target of her deceptions, chooses to appear as a good-looking woman when she comes to the warrior Dimitri to convince him to betray his king (151-2). And as if to make even more explicit the fact that in her hands beauty is a weapon, the narrator gives the reader a private access to her thoughts: “Don’t laugh at what my mirror shows, Bear, until you understand just how and when I do the showing” (152).

It is not enough to explain the way beauty is described, for a comprehensive study of the role it plays in characterisation it is also necessary to see how it cooperates with the actions of the characters.


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c. The Mirror of the Soul: “But handsome is as handsome does we say.”30

In “ ‘Some Day my Prince will Come’: Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale”31, Marcia K. Lieberman comments on the correlation between being beautiful and being chosen in fairy tales, and the statement seems to apply fairly well to Enchantment. Indeed, there is a sort of “beauty contest”32 between Katerina and Ruth. In Taina, Ivan compares them (to the advantage of his wife), and though he can hardly be expected to be objective, the reader tends to agree with him because of the extensive use of internal focalization. Yet he is not the sole member of jury, and on seeing Katerina at the airport Ruth thinks “I can definitely outdress you, you poor thing” (255).33 Here it is Ruth’s own frivolity that alienates the readers. Moreover, the very way events are set up and the way they are told conspire against her: after Baba Yaga has cursed her with baldness, she tries to make do with a wig, but during the picnic the writer has every character notice it; whether the reader feels sorry for her or finds her ridiculous, s/he is left in no doubt about who the fairest in the States is. Many fairy tale critics have also commented on the link between on the one hand being pretty and being the heroine, and on the other hand being ugly and being the villainess;34 and from what has been said so far, this statement too seems to apply to Enchantment. However —while there is a clear link between inner and outer beauty— both those statements are only true to a certain extent in this novel.
The first nuance that has to be brought regards the claim that the princess, Katerina, is kind and good. She is good and can be kind, but she is very far from the absolute meekness of her traditional counterparts to whom fairy tale critics refer. When Ivan arrives in Taina she constantly shows her contempt for him, and as late as their stay in contemporary Ukraine she is regularly mean to him (for instance on page 221: “she laughed rather nastily”). Therefore the difference between her and Baba Yaga is not that she never harms anyone, but when she puts Ivan in a miserable situation for what she thinks of as a greater good and has him stay in that situation, she feels for him —that might not be of much relief to him but it is an important distinction. Likewise, Ruth blurs the easy fairy tale categorisation, since though she is not chosen she is not a bad person either (she lies about the picnic but never harms anyone purposefully and her tongue is definitely not as sharp as Katerina’s).35
The second nuance —and this is fundamental to understand— is that the above mentioned link between inner and outer beauty is not arbitrary. Two opposite examples should illustrate my point; about Katerina, it is said: “Her expression softened. She was beautiful again” (82); and about Baba Yaga: “She was hideous—not just old but her face deformed by the malice that had driven her for years” (385). These examples clearly show that a character’s appearance reflects their feelings36 (at least if they do not use any illusion).
It may be argued that Katerina’s “natural state” is to be beautiful, even though her face can be distorted by anger and other ugly feelings, but actually as the story unfolds, it becomes more and more obvious that beauty is not a passive characteristic but an active quality —even for the princess. It is true Katerina first appears sleeping, like an “eternally beautiful, inanimate objet d’art,” 37 yet the story does not end when she awakes, and unless sleep is our natural state it cannot be said that she is “naturally” beautiful. The passive, expressionless loveliness of sleep or of a photograph seems singularly irrelevant compared to the new kind of animate beauty that emerges in Katerina as Ivan sees her talking and living again:
[Ivan] remembered how she had looked to him before he kissed her, the ethereal beauty, the perfection of her. Well, that was gone. But there was a different kind of beauty now. Or perhaps it wasn’t beauty at all. Nobility.” (81)
Ivan is no fool, whenever he reflects on Katerina’s loveliness in the course of the novel it is always in relation to what she does. Only once does he reminisce on her sleeping beauty, at the beginning of his stay in Taina, and the thought is not opposed to her actions as something more desirable but associated with them: “he remembered Katerina’s beauty as she lay asleep on the pedestal. And again, later, when she entered Taina with a bold, regal bearing. [Then the narrator describes her attitude as a ruler]” (122). Thus it should be obvious that Katerina is not beautiful —not in the way a painting can be beautiful— she becomes beautiful, every second, through her every action.
Having insisted on the importance of the link between body and mind, it would be being blind indeed to fail to notice the importance of intelligence in the characterisation of the women in Enchantment. Ivan himself systematically associates Ruth’s intelligence and her beauty; she is a “beautiful, intelligent girl” (20) or “beautiful and wise” (17). As much as information on her mental capacities, it is a sign that the intellect is important to Ivan as a criterion in the choice of his fiancé. However it is important to notice that though the latter goes unchallenged, Ivan’s parents do not seem to value Ruth’s brains too highly38, therefore Ivan’s assessment —which is not sustained by any proof— is quite weakened in the reader’s mind. Since after his return from Taina he does not mention either her beauty or her intelligence, his parents’ assessment —which comes after his and is more developed in terms of lines— is the one that sticks in the reader’s memory.
The association of brains and beauty is not as systematic with Katerina, yet her intellectual capacities are regularly praised by various characters, from her father (“you’re smarter than ten sons” 105) to her enemy (“she was a clever and lucky woman” 236), which gives it more weigh than Ivan’s sole judgement. Moreover it is sustained by the events described; actually her achievements stretch the line of historical verisimilitude39 : “In the ninth century it was not yet shocking for a woman to read—it was shocking for anyone to read.” (181). And yet she can. Though she has difficulties understanding Ivan’s struggle to cope with the customs of her kingdom, it is because there is no way she can imagine a different culture; what is an easy intellectual game in our society, where we have history classes and where the rest of the world is a mouse-click away, would have been akin to madness in the Middle Ages; it would be poor characterisation for the writer to forget her cultural limits.
Baba Yaga is a perfect example of that contrast between cultural conditioning and mere intelligence. When she arrives in the twentieth century, she is stunningly quick at understanding it —especially the way things work in airports! — but she still thinks within her cultural frame: planes are “houses-that-fly” (260) created by a wizard who uses ordinary people to serve him. This is most important in the characterisation process, because if the characters crossed the boundaries of their cultural conditioning without justification, then all the characteristics coming from their culture would not be believable any longer.
The case of Ivan’s mother is different from that of the other three women, since she is first presented in contrast to what the implied reader is used to recognize as the social proofs of intelligence: she has no degrees, barely speaks English (after more than ten years in the USA!) and Ivan himself loses at one point his first admiration for his mother:
All these years he had thought that Mother’s amused smile was because she was secretly smarter than Ivan or Father. But now it turned out that she was superstitious, troubled by dreams and folktales. (21)
However the reader is forced to change her/his first opinion when she is first shown practising magic (102). Umberto Eco has conceptualised this process in the following terms: the implied reader has a store of knowledge or “encyclopaedia” that provides her/him with information about the different properties that an entity (in this case a woman) can be linked with; the relevant properties are “activated” while the ones deemed (or felt to be) irrelevant are said to be “narcotised”.40 In Esther’s case, when she is shown practising magic, the properties of common scenarios relating to foreign housewives are narcotised while the reader activates properties from inter-textual scenarios about witches.

The characters are not built only in relation to other texts or to clichés, they are more than stereotypes or anti-stereotypes, and I shall now explain the way they respond to and reflect each other within the novel itself.

Part 2: The Network of Oppositions

All characters in a novel —or in any kind of story— are set against a background of “average people”, blending in or contrasting with them. Indeed Ivan’s opposition to the average male (both in Taina and in the USA) is a fundamental component of his character. As for women however, comparisons between the four female protagonists themselves are more important than between them and female walk-ons1 . These comparisons actually weave a network of oppositions between the characters under scrutiny, thus playing an important role in Card’s strategy of characterisation.

a. Matriarchs: “Battles are ugly when women fight.”2

Katerina and Ivan’s love story on the one hand, and the power struggle between the princess and the witch on the other hand are the two main threads of the story, but it is the latter which is at the origin of the plot —without Baba Yaga’s curse the protagonists would never have met. In “The Queen’s Looking-Glass”3 , Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar study the opposition between “contempla-tive purity”, which is the lot of good women, and “significant action”, which is exclusive to witches —and men. This distinction does not apply to Enchantment. Baba Yaga’s curse has been thwarted by Katerina’s aunts and once the terms of the enchantment are fulfilled —that is once she is “wedded and bedded” (151)— it becomes obvious that there is going to be a “showdown” (389) between the witch and the princess and that Ivan has to be replaced by his wife in the role of the knight in shining armour:
Neither Vanya nor Katerina expected him to be the one to stand against the witch. (...) it was Katerina who was princess, Katerina who was bound around with the enchantments her aunts had created for her. (...) It might be Katerina who faced the witch and beat her, perhaps in battle, perhaps simply by surviving and having babies. Endurance, after all, was a kind of victory; a kind of heroism, too. (297)
Yet, even though Katerina and Baba Yaga pursue opposite goals, their dedication is the same. Nevertheless, while the witch’s determination is shown through her main actions with just an occasional reminder,4 Card has to insist on Katerina’s strength of character. Up to the “showdown”, the comparison with Baba Yaga does not work to her advantage, and because her situation is weaker she has to make up in determination what she lacks in brute power. Thus the reader learns that she is ready to kill for her cause, whether it is an enemy (“‘[Dimitri] hurt you?’ Yes. ‘I’ll kill him,’ said Katerina simply.” 299) or innocent collaterals (on page 397 she threatens to burn Baba Yaga’s house even with the prisoners still inside). The fact that she never actually enforces these threats does not diminish the effect they have on the reader, since Dimitri is spared as much for strategic reasons as out of charity, and the prisoners are set free when the binding of Bear is broken. Moreover, Katerina’s dedication to her goal is reflected even in the details of her daily life; though she has no appetite and finds American food strange, “she [eats her dinner] anyway, chewing methodically. When one is at war with Baba Yaga, it’s good to do it on a full stomach” (319). This emphasis on details is the only way for the writer to convey her strength of character despite her running away and the overshadowing power of Baba Yaga.
Thus it is obvious that even if Ivan too has a role in the power struggle, women rule the show. Michael Collings writes:
[Card] does not consciously refute arguments of sexism; nor does he create female-oriented worlds that illustrate (...) a simplistic, reverse sexism. Instead, he envisions worlds in which gender is, in certain critical ways, at best immaterial, at the least subordinate to strength of character, will, commitment, and vision.5
With the exception of “at best immaterial,”6 this sentence is a good description of Card’s fiction in general and of Enchantment in particular. Indeed gender is “subordinate to strength of character,” yet Katerina and Baba Yaga live in a very patriarchal society not in a matriarchy, and they have to take that fact into account. The princess needs a husband and a male heir (this is the pretext for the curse), and Baba Yaga herself, for all her power, has “to have some husband with the title of king, or no one would take her seriously” (69). However, even in the patriarchal society they live in, Katerina and Baba Yaga are hardly desperate housewives; because of their social status neither has any practical knowledge of house chores. One may compare:
“I never interfere with my wife in the kitchen.”
“Very funny,” said Baba Yaga. “As if I cooked.” (200)
with
[Katerina] was involved in the complicated business of cooking, which was pretty unfamiliar to her even without the modern conveniences. (221)
Despite their social position, the prescriptions of the patriarchal society are one more hurdle that Katerina and Baba Yaga have to jump, making their achievements all the more praiseworthy, but while Baba Yaga’s rebellion comes from her greediness alone and is achieved by fear and coercion, Katerina’s choice to rule is concomitant with Ivan’s complete lack of aptitude to be king of Taina, and she takes over without bloodshed. Though her leadership abilities are praised throughout, it is not thinkable at first for the people of Taina to be ruled by a woman: “She was very, very good at leading people. A shame she had to have a husband at all” (170) thinks Father Lukas. The decision to take over is gradually forced upon her, but at first it seems that only an alpha male can truly rule:
“I can govern, I can hold the kingdom together and give justice to the people, but who would follow me into battle?”
“Put Dimitri in charge, in your name—”
“Then Dimitri would be king,” said Katerina. “The king is the war leader. The war leader is the king.” (105)
Later in the novel, her father comes to the conclusion that she can rule through Ivan, yet in the end it is in her own name that she rules, and Ivan is “king and counselor to her” (411). Though her motivations and her means are very different from Baba Yaga’s, it is important to stress the similarity of their situations: both are women ruling in a world normally ruled by men and both use magic to consolidate their power. In Le Deuxième Sexe, Simone de Beauvoir notes:
Parce qu’elle est vouée à la passivité et que pourtant elle souhaite le pouvoir, il faut que l’adolescente croie à la magie : à celle de son corps qui réduira les hommes sous son joug, à celle de la destinée en générale qui la comblera sans qu’elle ait rien à faire.7
It is highly interesting that though Simone de Beauvoir writes in a world where reality and magic are opposed, what she says is still relevant in the secondary world of Enchantment. This is only surprising at first glance; indeed, the original reason why the young woman is “vouée à la passivité” is the same in the 1950’s in Europe as in ninth century Ukraine: she lacks physical strength (of course even in the Middle-Ages the pretext was already only half relevant since political power was not merely about warfare). Thus magic is a necessary condition to break the rules and rival men’s power on the battlefield8 —and therefore on the political stage too. Indeed, though it is not Katerina’s sole asset, her ability to wield magic is a strong and recurrent argument when she tries to convince people that she is a suitable leader: “It takes a woman of power to stand against the wicked one” (363).
Presented in this way, the witch and the princess seem oddly similar, but to the implied reader they definitely do not feel similar, and indeed the analysis of the source of their magical powers reveals deep discrepancies. Both of them have power of their own, of course —and Baba Yaga’s is huge— but they also draw on greater sources. Baba Yaga has bewitched Bear, the Winter God, and harnessed his power to her: “The spells that bound him assured that his love for Yaga would be unflagging” (67).9 Thus her magic comes from coercion or to be exact from unwilling “love,” whereas Katerina’s comes from the free love of her people for their rightful leader:
“I’m the princess,” said Katerina. “The hearts of the people are gathered in me. When a king has the love of the people, then whatever he does has the power of the people in it. My spells will have that.” (321)
Baba Yaga does not rely on this source since, as Ivan points out, her people “[cannot] possibly love her” (336), but speaking her name aloud gives her additional power.10 But when it finally comes to a showdown between the witch and the princess, Baba Yaga is flattened because Katerina is wearing the charm “Little One” that gives tremendous power to a pregnant woman. Since the reader knows from Baba Yaga’s own memories that she murdered her first born,11 the means of Katerina’s victory is most significant. The two women have been established as champions of their respective causes and the reader has been promised a showdown, therefore s/he would rightfully feel cheated if the witch lost not because of any faults of hers but only because of an invisible hand manipulating Ivan into freeing Bear. Is Baba Yaga’s fault that of not being pregnant? No, her fault is intrinsic to her character: like so many villains, she cannot understand love12 —whether it be the love of a mother for her child or the true love of a free husband for his wife— and cannot understand the power that comes from it. This is the book’s conclusion to the constant oppositions between the two women, and puts the final touch to Katerina’s character by showing the reader that her kindness is not a weakness.
These constant oppositions, which mutually highlight each other, are seen mainly through Baba Yaga and Katerina’s attitude towards power: the witch’s cruelty contrasts with the princess’s gentle ways and selfless care for her people. Actually, the feeling conveyed is that before Ivan’s coming Katerina only lives for and through her people: “She had been happy many times. (...) But it was always joy in others, the happiness of a princess glad that her people are happy” (279). Baba Yaga on the other hand sees everyone has a tool.
The similarities that have already been cited do not diminish these discrepancies but rather highlight them in the way a mirror would: like a reflection and its original, Katerina and Baba Yaga are exact opposites, and yet they are very similar. It is even hinted during their showdown that the princess has some aspects of a witch: “Her words stung Katerina to the heart. For she had been gloating. In that, at least, she was no different from Baba Yaga. It was an unbearable thought” (403). If she were not careful, if she started to enjoy power over the vanquished, she would already be halfway on the path to become a witch herself. Thus the comparison of Katerina with Baba Yaga gives additional depth to Katerina; instead of being eternally good she is a fallible woman who has to watch her every step not to become what she is fighting.

All in all, the polarity between two fairy-tale characters, the witch and the princess, is a clear-cut case, but other opposition patterns are not so forthright.

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b. God(s): “Wilt thou not suffer a witch’s son to live?”13

Baba Yaga is “the evil witch” (266), but other female characters wield magic too, whether they define themselves as witches or not. Among these, only Katerina and Esther are major characters, and both have strong associations with religion. The mere fact that two protagonists have a common preoccupation is enough to point it out as an important theme. Moreover the two women have different ways to construe their identity around magic and religion, opposing or associating them; therefore —just as the opposition of Katerina to Baba Yaga emphasised the importance of the issue of political power— the contrast between Esther and Katerina magnifies the momentousness of their preoccupations.
Edith Tyson argues that “Judaism, for the Smetski family, is more a family tradition or ethnic sentiment than a belief,”14 and though this might be true of Ivan and his father, there are ample reasons to think that the ethnic component is not the prominent part of Esther’s Judaism. For one thing she does not give much importance to food restrictions —“I never made you eat kosher” (320) she reminds her husband15 — and she does not seem to fit in with other Jewish families, either in the USA where she constantly speaks of the other Jewish women as a distinct group,16 or even in Ukraine where she “seem[s] more amused than involved in the lives of these [Jewish] homes” (7). More significantly yet, she is shown praying to God (and not as a routine restricted to specific times either): “Indeed, over the past three days, when might it have happened that would not have been within an hour of a prayer?” (219). Of course her Jewishness is still part of her cultural identity, but it is not restrained to mere culture and ethnicity.
Similarly, Katerina defines herself as a Christian and shows the outward signs of a religion that is clearly set in a cultural and historical context: she quotes the Old Testament, says grace17 and her first reaction to Ivan’s Judaism is rather anti-Semite.18 In that respect, her revulsion when Ivan wears her hoose is most typical, since what she sees as a religious sin is only considered as an amusing cultural taboo by the implied reader. Since her cultural roots are asserted much more strongly than Esther’s (and this, as soon as she is introduced), in order to convince the reader that religion means more to her than just a part of her culture, the narrator needs to provide more intimate details about her faith. To show her praying would clearly not be enough, therefore information are given about the feelings aroused in her by the sacraments,19 and throughout the novel she expresses the desire to become a better person by making her acts match her faith to a greater extent:
How could she, a Christian, have failed to see such Christlike attributes in this stranger? Jesus said to judge not, lest ye be judged. How unjustly have I judged him, again and again? (207)
Besides, despite her ardent faith, Katerina is still quite aware of the political factor that religion represents, and while she ostensibly associates Father Lukas with her victory over Dimitri’s rebellion and chooses to make it a victory “in the holy name of Christ” (371), she first demands a pledge of obedience from her priest.
It is fundamental to assess clearly the importance of faith for Katerina and Esther —the importance of both its cultural and intimate components— before studying their attitude to magic. Indeed in the secondary world of Enchantment the power sustaining magic comes from pagan gods, thus linking religion and magic intrinsically. Since Judaism and Christianity both reject witchcraft,20 the two women find themselves in a predicament which they deal with in different ways.
Esther feels the religious ban on witchcraft most sharply and sees herself as excluded from God’s good grace because between the uncertainty of God’s favour and the certainty of magic, she chose the latter:
There’s no point in praying. I long since chose another road, consigned myself to Sheol, there’s no looking back from that, Baba Tila was plain about it, you can have what your grandmother had, but only if you choose what your grandmother chose. (219)
However because her own powers are limited and because she acknowledges God’s omnipotence, she clings to the hope “that God cares not at all whether [she does] spells or not, that the rabbis are all wrong about it” (219). Logic gives her a reason to hope: she is not doing black magic and only uses her power for the good of her family, so why is it forbidden?
O God of Israel, wilt thou not suffer a witch’s son to live? (...) I’ve sought to use this power for the good of good people, and if it’s a sin, then let the sin be upon my head, but not my child, not my son. (219)
Esther knowingly lives a paradox, although she thinks praying is useless because she is alienated from God, she keeps praying because she still believes in Him. But however paradoxical this is, there is no actual contradiction. More or less consciously, she sees herself as a sacrifice —she takes the sin upon herself (and thus is ready to forfeit God’s favour) so that her husband and son, who are not sorcerers, can benefit from both God’s help and hers.21 This sacrifice is fully embedded in the Judaeo-Christian tradition and illustrates the way Card likes to deal with faith in his literary works: “Faith exists in actions, not in emotions; I speak more about my characters and to my audience in what I make my characters do than in what I have them say or think.”22 Indeed what is important is not that Esther is praying, but that she chooses to take the guilt on herself.
It has already been explained how the narrator goes to great length to present Katerina as a religious character (both culturally and intimately), however —and despite the firm disapproval of her priest— she has no qualms whatsoever about using magic. It is something that she uses as naturally as she would use a tool or her physical abilities, and she does not consider calling on pagan gods or drawing on their power as idolatry.
She had prayed, O Mikola, O Tetka Tila, O Lord Jesus, O Holy Mother (...) Then she realized that she had prayed Jesus third, not first, and when she spoke of the Holy Mother, it was not so much the Blessed Virgin as her own dead mother to whom she prayed. (...) Lord Jesus, did I offend thee with my prayer? (142)
This example shows clearly that Katerina construes the relation of pagan gods, such as Mikola Mozhaiski, to the Christian God not as an opposition but as a hierarchy. She does not try to suppress her habit of praying to Mikola Mozhaiski, instead she is just worried about acknowledging the superiority of Christ in her prayer by invoking him first. Likewise, it is not the presence of mortals (her mother and her aunt Tila) in her prayer that disturbs Katerina but the absence of the Virgin Mary.
In many ways, Katerina and Esther are very similar —though from a different religion, they are monotheist23 and practise both their faith and magic— moreover they are “good characters” closely linked to the hero. The differences in the way they deal with the religious ban on witchcraft are more a contrast than an opposition because the result of their attitude is the same —they reject neither religion nor magic. An obvious effect of this contrast is to draw attention to the issue, for the reader discovers its different facets, but it has more interesting effects on characterisation.
It has been noticed that both women are part of the “good people”, but the obviousness of the remark should not eclipse its significance; it means there is no prejudice on the reader’s part. Unless the writer is pursuing a very specific and unusual goal, the implied reader naturally sides with the hero against the villain, but in the case of a contrast between two “good” characters, the reader is free to make her/his own mind. Obviously, actual objectivity does not exist in reading any more than anywhere else, but when the writer keeps the manipulation to its lowest degree, then s/he can reduce subjectivity to the factors outside her/his reach. This is why it is so important that Katerina and Esther be similar and that both deserve the reader’s esteem. If there were a strong opposition between them, s/he would be forced to take sides (consciously or not), but since there is but a contrast between the two women, the reader understands that it is all right for her/him to disagree with either —or both— characters. Of course a reader is always free to disagree with the novel but s/he generally enjoys it more when s/he is closest to the implied reader, and here the message conveyed is that the story does not require her/his agreement on this particular point to be enjoyed. Whereas some features of the characters cannot be rejected by the reader without damaging her/his emotional commitment, here the possible rejection is part of the narrative strategy.
If Katerina and Esther had exactly the same attitude to the problem they face (a dogmatic contradiction between magic and their religion), that effect would be ruined. Indeed a mere repetition would feel like a lecture from the writer, and the reader would assume that the position is Card’s not the character’s. On the contrary, in addition to the right to disagree, the mild contrast between the two women is a sign that their positions are truly theirs —they are not empty shells used to make a point in the writer’s argument. Moreover it is also a means to show what other opinions they could have, and therefore to show that their viewpoints are not self-evident. So the contrast makes them more personal and complex than if they were alone.
A clear-cut example should help to illustrate and conclude on this point. The characters feel they are manipulated or at least guided by some unknown but benevolent force, and Katerina suggests to Ivan: “Maybe it’s Christ who has been helping us all along, for unless we defeat the Pretender, Christianity is lost in this part of the world.” (359). Such a sentence could feel like an intentional clue left by the writer; then it might bother non-Christians among the readers, and even Christians would resent the heaviness of the process. However, the reader understands rightly that it is just Katerina’s own opinion (which is fully consistent with her character), for Esther already proposed other answers to the same question: “But who was doing all this directing? Was it a god? More to the point, was it God? (...) Or was there a fate greater than all gods (...)?” (296).

Up to this point, the examples taken from the network of oppositions have been fairly simple, but the comparison of Ruth and Katerina reveals something more subtle: irony.

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c. The Feminist and the Princess: “Ils dormirent peu : la princesse n’en avait pas grand besoin.”24

As has already been noted, traditional literary fairy tales do not mention sex explicitly25 —the hero marries the princess, and then they live happily ever after with their many children. On the other hand, Card, without falling into the other extreme, does not tiptoe around the subject. Actually, sexuality plays a very important role in the building of the characters since the male protagonist, Ivan, has an attitude which is radically opposed to the standards of his generation and to male stereotypes in general:
It was so embarrassing to tell the girls at college that no, they hadn’t slept together, Ivan believed in waiting—the whooping and laughing! ‘He’s gay!’ they all said at once. (...) They treated her like she was in love with a cripple. (252)
His stance forces Ruth and Katerina to (re)define clearly their own position. Even though Ruth is supposedly a virgin too, it is clearly a state that she sees no reason to prolong up to their wedding: “Here’s a news flash, Ivan. The reason I wanted to sleep with you was not because I thought we were going to run out of time later!” (253). As for Katerina, her cultural conditioning and social situation require that she keep her virginity until she gets a husband, after that “it [is] his right to use her body as he [sees] fit” (204). But because he thinks she does not love him, Ivan does not sleep with her even after their wedding.
It is important to bear in mind Katerina and Ruth’s opposite stances on virginity, but what is most interesting here is the respective ways in which they deal with Ivan’s reluctance. According to her own recollections, Ruth “had done everything but strip naked and hide in his bed” (253). “Everything but.” And what does Katerina do when she decides it is high time they consummate their marriage? She does strip naked and hide in Ivan’s bed.26 Of course, their sexual intercourse is endorsed by marriage, but it is ironic that she deals with Ivan’s reluctance in precisely the way that Ruth mentions as her own limit. The fact that Katerina’s cultural conditioning predisposes her more than Ruth to sexual passivity (and to less sexual consideration from men) only adds to the irony. Esther provides the reader with a similar case which has the accrued advantage of being made up of two parts closer in terms of pages. During Ruth’s picnic, she tells Katerina: “[Ruthie] couldn’t get him into bed with her before he married you, so now she wants to do it with a potion” (310), which is an accurate statement. Since Ivan already loves her, it would seem that Katerina needs no potion, and that is what the reader believes until they sleep together, but shortly afterwards s/he learns that things are not what they seem:
Piotr looked at [Esther] suspiciously. “So now I’m not supposed to think you cast some spell on them? To help them get past their... shyness or whatever it was?” (333)
Then she acknowledges to having cast a “spell of Truth”, “to say what’s in their hearts, regardless of shame.” (333). The effect is somewhat weakened because the information is given only after the consummation and because Katerina herself did not cast the spell, however the irony of the contrast between what Ruth wants to do (but fails) and what is actually done for her rival remains.
One should be careful not to forget Ruth’s special status, she is not one of the heroes and has not done anything particular to deserve the reader’s esteem, but she never does anything really bad either, not purposefully anyway. Therefore the irony of her fate can have various effects on the reader (depending on how soft her/his heart is), and it is hard to distinguish what Card’s purpose really is. This of course does not matter in the least. He might not even be actually aware of what he is doing, the only certainty is that, because of the abundance of material, the reader unconsciously27 registers this peculiar mood or attitude that the implied writer has when it comes to Ruth.
The use of abundance is not idle, the two women’s first encounter with Ivan is yet another typical instance:
“Say something to me in Old Russian,” [Ruth] said.
(...) In Old Church Slavonic, he said, “You are beautiful and wise and I intend to marry you.”
She closed her eyes, as if in ecstasy. “I love it that you speak a language to me that no other woman will ever hear from you.” (17)
This is a nice scene, except that another woman does hear this language from Ivan, and he says almost the same thing, “will you marry me?” ; but instead of “turning on the charm”, Katerina simply answers: “Ei, posagnõ!” (60). The ironic contrast between what Ruth says or wants on the one hand and what Katerina does on the other hand is not the only way for the implied writer to harass Ruth, the form of the narrative can be used to juxtapose two events that are normally separated in space and time. On her first night in the Smetski’s house, Katerina cries:
And that, too, was joy, for there are tears of joy, and tears of peace as well.
***
Ruth cried bitterly about the broken engagement. (280)
This is about as close as the narrator ever comes to eliciting pity for Ruth,28 but perhaps more than pity, what the symmetrical opposition of the two women triggers is the feeling that Ruth is Katerina’s dark version, a failed princess. The impression of failure is carried to extremes by the overall structure of the novel. Indeed Ruth construes herself as a feminist, but is merely a “college feminist” (37); except for her speeches, the reader never finds any practical example of her feminism. On the other hand Katerina first appears as a feminist’s nightmare: she is the enchanted princess waiting for a knight in shining armour to kiss her awake and whose part in saving the kingdom is only to provide male heirs.29 However, this is not the part she actually plays, since she eventually takes over her patriarchal kingdom, and after her queenship it becomes thinkable to have another female ruler30 (even though Baba Yaga’s threat is gone and the supposed future king will not be as weak as Ivan). Fate could not be more ironic.
There is no need to comment on the importance of Ruth’s Jewish identity and the subsequent additional shock of losing her fiancé to a Christian, a “shiksa”; however her love story with Ivan deserves some attention. Though it is never confirmed, it is hinted that their meeting was not pure chance and that Ruth actually manoeuvred to meet him,31 which is much more common place than Ivan being manipulated by a greater fate and led to Katerina. But even if she did not set him up, their meeting is ordinary:
They reached for the same hors d’oeuvre on a plate, and within a few minutes stood outside on the porch of the house, watching a thunderstorm come in from the southwest. By the time the rain came they were holding hands. (17)
The scene is sweet and romantic, but actually rather banal —this is only high school movie romanticism— it cannot compare in any way to fighting a bear to rescue an enchanted princess asleep in the wood. Katerina’s story is the quintessence of romanticism, and Ruth is but a mock-Katerina. At no stage does she have any chance of winning the confrontation; this is unfair, but even in a Fantasy novel life is unfair.

As the heroine, Katerina is at the centre of the network of oppositions, but this should not make the reader forget that the network is larger than what has been described here. Ruth, Esther, and Baba Yaga are directly opposed to each other in some ways, and sometimes they are even opposed to Ivan. The three cases explained above were chosen as the most striking and most typical, but do not pretend to exhaustiveness.
After studying the characters’ interactions with other women both inside and outside the novel, it is now time to study their construction in isolation.

Part 3: The Individual

Even studied in isolation the four female protagonists are very complex. Indeed, in addition to a fully-rounded first sketch of the characters, the reader is also shown the women from a second point of view. Moreover, Card’s manipulation of his audience’s feelings has still to be studied.

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a. First Sketch: “In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.”1

Appearance has already been studied, but it is not the only feature involved in our first impression of a person or a character. Actually, because of the very essence of a written story it is easily overshadowed by other characteristics if these are given any importance by the narrator. In Enchantment, the reader’s first impression of a given character is built around one of her traits that is strongly highlighted and works almost as a summary of her identity. In the case of Baba Yaga for instance, there is an emphasis on her cruelty (or more generally on her being the villainess), and though the perception of her character does evolve toward more subtlety and depth, cruelty remains her preeminent characteristic throughout the story.2 On the contrary, at the beginning Esther’s most noticeable trait is her “wry smile” (18) that puzzles Ivan so much, but after his return to America it is never mentioned again and is replaced by her witchcraft and dedication to protect her family (and both traits are intrinsically linked in her mind).
The first impression made by Ruth works in a slightly different way since it is designed to work in two stages. Before Ivan’s departure to Ukraine, she has absolutely no prominent trait. The implied reader definitely recognises her as a “good catch”, but none of her features sticks out, none is developed; at this stage she is merely an icon. It is only when she is shown with Ivan’s parents during his absence that it is revealed she fancies herself a feminist: “My class in Feminist Judaism this semester really opened my eyes” (36). It is not clear whether the information was delayed or whether Ruth evolved,3 nevertheless it is interesting that she is the only character to make a first impression which is both very positive and completely bland.
Obviously, the characterisation of Katerina is much more complex than that of the other women, and the first impression she makes as soon as she stops being a sleeping beauty is made up of two components, not one. Her scorn for Ivan is a key element in many respects: it is a sign of her cultural difference and gives much of its taste to the love story, but even more importantly maybe, it clearly separates her from her first role of the damsel in distress. If she were thankful and admired Ivan for his victory over Bear (which would be after all natural), it would pose her as the weaker one which would be patronising and therefore not suitable for a character of her stature. Thus it can be said that her scorn is a very useful feature. On the other hand, her second highlighted trait has no other purpose than to give information about who she really is. What makes her different from other liberated princesses4 —what makes her Katerina— is the importance she grants to duty; her duty to her people, but also the duty of a wife to her husband and of peasants to their sovereign. Though her scorn for Ivan gradually fades when she arrives in the twentieth century, her sense of duty and honour remains her main motivation: she does not fight Baba Yaga for power but because it is her duty as sovereign of Taina. The combination of those two characteristics makes her a very balanced and believable character instead of the caricature that she could have been.
As the story unfolds, the narrator exposes new aspects of the characters and adds small qualities and faults to the prominent feature that was first shown to the reader. This is true of all four women —even if once again the process is more developed with Katerina— but the balance of good and bad points is different for each of them. Predictably, Ruth’s qualities are rather scarce (but not absent, for one thing she has a keen “feminine intuition”5) whereas there is an insistence on her venial faults, especially on her triviality: “Time that’s what was supposed to heal this kind of injury. Plus keeping busy so the time would pass. A flurry of shopping” (281). Not so predictably however, Baba Yaga’s great abilities are highlighted (even though she uses them badly), and Katerina’s bad points are carefully acknowledged.6 This is very important as far as verisimilitude is concerned, since as Card himself explains “if [your character] is too perfect, your audience will stop believing in him.”7 In that respect, it can be noticed that her qualities are not absolute either:
Katerina tried her best to remain as calm and brave as Ivan had when he came to Taina. She would not be ashamed in front of him by showing cowardice. (...) But now in the cacophony of the station and the train (...) she was nauseated with fear. (242)
The purpose of a passage such as this one is not only to show the fallibility of Katerina but also —paradoxically— to show the true nature of her courage: she is not brave because she does not know fear, on the contrary she knows it but contains it; which makes her all the more admirable.
Fortunately for the reader, the first sketch of the characters is not limited to a list of their good and bad points, because real people are not limited to that either. Like real people, Card’s characters have a life outside the narrow scope of what is actually told in the story. Even Ruth’s parents are mentioned, and so are her friends in several instances.8 Without those references she would appear as barely more than a foil for Katerina. Moreover, mentioning her friends is a way to teach the implied reader how to read this particular story. It is a way to make him/her understand that it is not an omission if there is no mention of Katerina’s and Esther’s relationships, it is an absence: they do not have any friends. Of course this is unconscious on the reader’s part, it is felt not deduced. If the only characters ever mentioned were the ones important to the story, the implied reader, drawing on common scenarios, would simply assume that the protagonists have a normal network of relationships. But because of the references to Ruth’s, Ivan’s and even Piotr’s friends, s/he expects Katerina’s and Esther’s to be explicitly mentioned if they exist at all; it would be unnatural to give more details about a character who is less important, the degree of participation expected from the reader must be coherent.
Similarly, the characters’ cultural background contributes to deepen the richness of the secondary world. Since Baba Yaga and Katerina come from a different time and place, this is more striking with them: “A man taken away for rape?” Katerina wonders. “Either he married the woman or was killed for it by the woman’s family” (204). However, Ruth and Esther (who is also Russian) were raised in Jewish families and it means that their cultural references are slightly different from that of the average American, and it has to be shown distinctly by the narrator:
“So we make bricks without straw,” she said. (...) Only now [Ivan] was reading Exodus and he got the reference and realized: Mother really is a Jew! (6)
The cultural background accounts for some of the characters’ attitudes to the world surrounding them (such as Katerina’s refusal to wear a man’s shirt) but not all of them. In Characters and Viewpoints, Card argues that “one of the surest signs of an amateur story is when strange or important events happen around the narrator or point-of-view character, and he doesn’t have an attitude toward them” (107). The statement is especially true of the time travellers in Enchantment, but Card goes further than showing his characters’ attitude to what is obviously strange (such as a moving car): by describing how they react to details of our modern world he increases verisimilitude, of course, but also gives additional information on them. In that respect, Baba Yaga’s reaction to the surface of a plane is typical: “Hard, like the blade of the sword. Cold and smooth. She loved the feel of it” (260). She could have though “hard like an anvil”, but her first association is to a weapon, and though “hard” and “cold” usually have pejorative connotations, her reaction is very positive which shows her love for harsh power. Attitude is such a great tool for characterisation that the narrator also shows the characters’ attitudes to trivial events of their lives:
It was disgusting, the way [Bear] let blood drool onto his fur, making a mess of everything. On the other hand, the ligaments and tendons and veins stretched and popped in interesting ways. (...) Still, it annoyed Yaga that he was so untidy. (147-8)
Thus the characters feel truer to the reader, because our daily life is made up as much of attitudes as of actions. So far, only reactions to things or events have been analysed, but the four women’s attitude to their man (husband or fiancé) plays a huge role in the characterisation process. To analyse the love relationships in Enchantment would be highly interesting but would take us far beyond the scope of this study —especially as regards Katerina— therefore it will be avoided. However, and although a few elements have already been commented on in the course of this study, the role of couple relationships is so important for characterisation that it cannot be completely omitted.
Although Ruth is a comparatively secondary character (or because of that), the nature of her relation to Ivan is proportionally more important in the building of her character. Considering the small amount of text devoted to her, her attitude to Ivan’s “belief in waiting”, to his absence and to his betrayal takes a lot of space. On the other hand, Esther’s relation to her husband is not so showy because her role as a witch is more important to the plot. However the fact that the narrator still takes time to develop their relationship9 contributes to widen her character. Similarly, Baba Yaga’s attitude to Bear and their very complex relationship is one of the key elements that make her a fully-rounded character, since it shows their intimacy (and witches usually do not have any). She is the one in whom coexist such contradictory feelings as those expressed in the following excerpts:
“I love you too,” she said. If only she knew some way to break down the last barrier and take his magic whole, so she didn’t need him at all. (71-2)
and:
She cackled with delight at the deftness of his answer. “Oh Bear, the best thing I ever did was give you speech! Only you are worthy of me!” (373)

It is not surprising that the study of all the features making a character believable should mention contradictions. Indeed the characters in Enchantment are not complete once the first sketch is drawn, other characters and the reader him/herself give the final touch to it by contradicting it or showing it from another point of view.

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b. Second Opinion: “I am not what I am.”10
In real life, truth is elusive. A given event will be analysed differently by different people, and even scientific hypotheses change with time. In a novel, it is up to the writer to strike a balance between a plain and an evasive truth. Most facts in the secondary world have to be taken at face value, but usually at least some of the events or feelings described are intentionally blurry or contradictory, so that they require the participation of the reader.11 It makes part of what Umberto Eco calls the building of possible worlds by the implied reader, and a whole narrative strategy can be based on it. Though this is not exactly the case in Enchantment, the process is used extensively for various purposes.
Ruth’s character is built on the contradiction between what she says or thinks about herself, and the second opinion provided by Ivan’s parents. For instance, she construes herself as a feminist, but for Esther it is not really her choice but merely an expression of the magical —or divine— law according to which a marriage is barren when the couple are not meant to marry:
“You must think I’m some kind of radical or apostate or something,” said Ruthie.
No, Esther thought. I just think you’re a girl who has seized upon the philosophy that will allow you not to bear children to my son, whom you’re not supposed to marry. (36)
Even her love for Ivan is put into doubt by Piotr on the ground that she is “too public about it for it to be real” (275, the emphasis is not mine). However, before the end of the same chapter, the reader gains access to Ruth’s private thoughts and s/he does not have any means to decide whom to believe because her pain seems real enough: “She wouldn’t trust him, but she would take him back. Because she really did love him” (281).
Baba Yaga’s claims that it is unfair for someone to beat her12 are not taken seriously by the implied reader (even if it is possible to imagine she believes it), yet there is a discrepancy between some more rational claims about herself and the legend surrounding her. What Katerina tells Ivan about the “Wicked Widow” partakes of the mythic: according to her, Baba Yaga used a spell of binding to get her first husband, and all her children were “born monsters who died at once” (337). It would be taken at face value by the reader if much earlier in the story there had not been another version of Baba Yaga’s first marriage: according to her own recollections she was married at twelve, raped, and she choked her first-born to death. Once the two versions of the story are told, it is entirely up to the reader to conciliate them13 or to believe only one of them. In addition to an impression of verisimilitude, it enhances the reader’s commitment by integrating him even more deeply in the narrative strategy.
As always, Katerina’s case is slightly different. There is such an emphasis on her cultural conditioning that even without Ivan’s comments, the reader him/herself would provide a second opinion on those of her actions that are triggered by it. However, due to the many changes of point of view and focalization, there is a constant duality about her motives and feelings. Card makes an extensive use of deep internal focalization, and though Ivan is the main focalizer, the narrator often switches to another character —and as often as not the character is Katerina. Thus Card shows the reader the contradiction that exists between a character’s limited point of view on the one hand, and the general picture which is only visible to the reader on the other hand. Katerina wonders: “What had [Ivan] seen in her face? All she felt was fear, uncertainty. She was wearing a shameful thing and trying not to act ashamed. Was that what made him turn away?” (207). Knowing Ivan and his cultural background, the reader knows that he did not turn away because he thought wearing a man’s shirt shamed her, but to her, truth is elusive.
This touches the core of Card’s narrative strategy and is what gives much of its taste to the love story, therefore the point is well worth developing. When there is a contradiction between two characters’ thoughts about one of them, the reader generally sides with the authority on the matter —the one that is most concerned. However this is not always the case, as shown by the following excerpt:
His ironic nastiness was because he thought that she scorned him.
Well, he wasn’t a fighter. She couldn’t help that, could she?
And she didn’t scorn him. She needed him. Taina needed him. (231)
Though Katerina’s opinion on Ivan is already beginning to change, the reader has ample reasons to think that it has not completely changed yet,14 all the more so since with the excep-tion of her brief admiration of his “priestlike gentleness” (207) she has never shown any esteem for him. It is only when they leave Mikola Mozhaiski’s house that she starts to really understand the width of the cultural gap between them, and subsequently what he had to endure. The impression left by that passage is not that Katerina is lying to herself, but rather that her contempt for Ivan’s failure to measure up to the standards of her time is rooted so deeply in her that she is not really aware of it. To express it in so many words would be much more awkward than showing it.
Since the narration of the love story relies heavily on the switch between two focalizers, it is logical that in the climatic chapter “Fireworks” a couple of passages are described twice. It emphasises the gap of the misunderstanding between Ivan and Katerina just before they are united. When Ivan declares “You can be sure of me” (322), Katerina’s thoughts are transcribed first, and she expresses both her love and her keen awareness of his lack of aptitude to be king. However since she delays her spoken answer, Ivan interprets her silence as pity and it feeds his anguish. The direct juxtaposition of their thoughts heightens the tension and thus enhances the reader’s empathy with the characters.
Shortly afterwards, Katerina and Ivan consummate their marriage. Describing the scene twice15 serves several purposes. First, it is the only way to treat them equally while unveiling their intimate thoughts and feelings. This is more important than may appear. The assumption is that some readers identify more with Ivan and others with Katerina,16 therefore they would feel frustrated if the climatic scene were told only from the “other one’s” point of view. Secondly, since Ivan does not thinks she has come to him out of love, the dual description shows the isolation of the protagonists even in the moment of their physical union. Thus the opposition between Ivan’s thoughts and Katerina’s feelings prepares her anguish: “It devastated her to know what he thought of her” (331). Without both descriptions, that sentence would have no weight on the reader’s feelings.
Sometimes, the internal focalization reveals a contradiction between a character’s vision of the world and its actuality. When it is written that Ruth “hadn’t realized that Ivan was such a patriarchalist until after he betrayed her” (307), for instance, the implied reader tends to doubt her objectivity. However, the aim of the narrator is not to depreciate her, but to show a realistic reaction to a betrayal: all kinds of new faults are found in the former lover. Still, there is an element of the comic, and it does not work in Ruth favour. It is important to notice, nevertheless, that positive characters are not spared. Indeed, the paradox of Esther praying while saying it is useless has already been studied, and Katerina is not a rational woman either. After Ivan awakes her, she is particularly disdainful: page 86 is saturated with depreciatory terms: “she said scornfully”, or “How stupid was he?”, and again “asked the oaf.” And yet, faced with Ivan’s mockery she asks: “What right did he have to be so hateful?” (86-7). There is an obvious logical contradiction in her question, but since human beings are not logical, her character is more believable for that.
This kind of details in the building of characters makes them closer to the reader and therefore help him/her identify or at least empathise with them.

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c. The Gist of the Art: “If she manipulated that, what else might she have plotted?”17
In the course of this study, the reader’s feelings towards the characters have been alluded to several times. The manipulation of these feelings is one of the main issues the implied writer is faced with. To some extent, it can be said that it is his primary goal, since the reader will not care about the story if s/he is not made to care for the characters. To study the way the reader’s feelings are manipulated, two opposite examples will be used: Katerina and Baba Yaga.
As the heroine, Katerina benefits from a favourable prejudice on the reader’s part; s/he knows that s/he is expected to like her. However, this alone would be far from enough. Actually, considering that one needs to know a character in order to care about him or her, and considering that once one knows him or her one’s opinion ceases to be a prejudice, then it can be said prejudice and care are antithetical. Thus, a favourable prejudice can be no more than a starting point, and it is negligible compared to the other literary tools at the writer’s disposition. What are these? In Characters and Viewpoints, Card writes that “once we’re caught up in a character’s plans and dreams, we’re on her side almost without limit.”18 It has been noted that Katerina’s prominent feature is her sense of duty, especially towards her people. The insistence on this quality and the importance it is granted is a way to emotionally involve the reader in her plans for the protection of her kingdom. Moreover, her wedding to Ivan is repeatedly described as a willing sacrifice for her people’s sake,19 almost as a sacrifice to her people: “A woman’s nakedness was a precious thing, to be protected until it was given as a gift to her husband. Or in this case, to her people” (202). On the other hand, it can be noticed that other characters’ plans are not emphasised as much —except for Baba Yaga’s but they are rather shown as the obstacles that Katerina must overcome.
Furthermore, Card is careful to remove all the elements that could make the reader dislike her. As has already been said, she is not perfect: she is proud and contemptuous of Ivan. Actually her scorn of the hero and main focalizer could antagonise the audience if she did not show any guilt for it, but as it is, it serves the double purpose of catching the reader’s attention and distinguishing her clearly from her traditional counterpart. Besides, her contempt is at least partly excused because of her cultural conditioning. During her final showdown against Baba Yaga, she almost loses some of the reader’s sympathy by gloating over her enemy20 but her renewed humility prevents it. In the second part of this study, it has been noted that Katerina is forced to become ruler of Taina in her husband’s stead. Though she would probably not be disliked if she wanted power, it would certainly decrease the sympathy for her sacrifice and her trials.
In chapter 8 of Characters and Viewpoints (which deals with the reader’s feelings for the characters), Card mentions that “the American audience resents any character who is smarter and better educated than other people” (90). Bearing this in mind, it is interesting to point out that though Katerina is very smart, she is not educated (not according to modern western standards anyway); after one of her smart answers, Ivan even insists on it: “And to think you never even went to college” (346).21
However what makes Katerina endearing are the details of her character, the facets of her soul that the internal focalization briefly unveils from time to time.
Why does he have such power over me? I should despise him for being a weakling when I need a kingly man. But instead I’m angry because he doesn’t... because he doesn’t love Taina as much as I do. Because he doesn’t want to be king. Because he doesn’t want to be my husband. Because I want him to love me and respect me, and all he wants is to get away from me and my kingdom. (140)
Katerina has been raised thinking that she would marry a strong warrior who would be full of greed for her body and her kingdom; and being a woman of duty, she was ready to accept it. But this description does not apply at all to Ivan, he is a weakling who desires neither the crown nor her.22 His stance makes her realise that she was wrong to take her respected position for granted and forces her to acknowledge her own suppressed desire to be loved. It is this acknowledgement —especially combined with her dedication to her duties— that endears her to the reader. The conflict between her pride and her shame has a similar effect on the implied reader: “No, she was not going to hide from him, as if she had cause for shame. She turned to face him, though she could not stop herself from covering her breasts with her arms” (202).
As a villainess, Baba Yaga suffers from the negative prejudice of the audience, but she is rather quick to live up to it. Her vanity is even worse than that of Snow-White’s stepmother since she uses spells to look beautiful, and she is as cruel as any other witch. Several examples of her sadism have already been given, but not the most gruesome:
The last survivor [was sent back] to give his own genitals to King Mal in a little box as her answer to his words of love. (126)
That would probably be enough to antagonise most readers, but Card insists on her inhumanity by directing her threats at children, which makes her even crueller: “If there’s a baby inside her, I’ll show it to her before she dies” (386).23 Nevertheless, Enchantment is defi-nitely not a horror story, and Card is not merely trying to make the reader hate Baba Yaga, so there is no actual occurrence of her attacking a child (except her own).
Although it is easier to make the audience dislike a character than to make them care about him/her, Card does not rely solely on Baba Yaga’s cruelty. A different kind of line is crossed when the narrator mentions the “vile little curses she always left on any house that let her in or gave her anything to eat or a place to sleep” (249). These people became her target only because they were good, and somehow it is even more revolting than choosing her victims at random.
However, despite her undeniable cruelty, Baba Yaga is not a totally negative character. Without going as far as speaking of redeeming aspects, it would be a mistake to neglect the comic tone that is often associated with her. Some of her actions are downright surprising from a wicked witch: “She paid using the prettiest credit card, and then left it with the ticket seller as a gift” (263). In this excerpt she is almost... girly; that is a rather striking contrast with her cruelty to anyone in her power. And the text goes on: “Along with a minor curse (...) just because she was Baba Yaga, and certain things were expected” (263). In a way, it is as if she were playing her own part, she does not enjoy power only, she also enjoys being the evil Baba Yaga, she rejoices in her ill fame and would be loath to lose it.
The expression “comic relief” is not appropriate in her case, because the comic aspects of her character are so integrated in its structure. Whereas slapstick elements would be at odds with it, her irony24 and the other humorous elements associated with her cannot be dissociated from the rest of her character for they are part of a coherent whole. This because Baba Yaga is not designed as a loathsome villainess. She has enough detestable aspects that the implied reader wants her downfall, but s/he does not hate her.
So far, the role of the characters’ past has not been studied whereas it is of great significance to the characterisation process and to the reader’s feelings. The reader is given an idea of Baba Yaga’s past through several short analepses that are usually fully integrated in a character’s thoughts: “Well, she showed all those suitors who pursued her after Brat died. They thought they could get her and her late husband’s kingdom, too” (69). The reader is given information on a period of Baba Yaga’s life, but the matter is not pushed further, it is not even an anecdote.25 Other allusions to her past interfere even less with the natural flow of the narrative:
If she had to leave the gloriously beautiful coastland of her childhood and then the bustling traders’ town of Kiev to live in this crude woodland, at least she would control all the kingdoms around her and run things her way. (69)
The longest and most explicit analepsis on Baba Yaga’s past is introduced by her own reaction on her name:
How she hated that nickname! (...) Her late husband King Brat had given her the name when he brought her to Kiev as his twelve-year-old bride. That was the pet name he murmured to her tenderly as he raped her immature body, and again as she pretended to weep over the grave of the first baby he sired on her. (69)
The other flashes of her past are meant to make the character more complete and therefore more believable, but here it places Baba Yaga in a position of victim contrasting with her role as a villainess. However, this is more than a psychological short-cut —all criminals have a trauma in their childhood— or than a cheap call on the reader’s sympathy. On the contrary, it is part of the inner workings of the story. Indeed it has been explained that Baba Yaga’s downfall is due to her failure to understand love; but her perversion (exemplified by the murder of her baby) grew out of the perverted way in which she was introduced to love. Therefore her rape does not explain why she became an evil witch, but rather sows the seeds of her final downfall. Even if the reader will not excuse her, Baba Yaga does earn some sympathy, and thus the analepsis contributes to making the reader’s attitude to her more ambivalent.
The importance of Katerina’s past is more difficult to assess because there is not one traumatic experience but rather a myriad of allusions to it that make up her “implied past.”26 Yet, by giving her a full life, they help the reader feel closer to her. When Katerina arrives in the Smetskis’ house, for instance, she contrasts her feelings with her past life: “And for the first time in her life, (...) Katerina felt utterly safe and at peace” (279). A simple inference tells the implied reader that Katerina has felt insecure all her life, and thus contributes to his/her sympathy for the princess; her misfortunes (and the fact that she does not whine about them) make her endearing.

Throughout the novel, Card uses similar devices to control (or at least orient) his readers’ feelings towards each character. These devices are present at every stage of the characterisation process; the first sketch of a character is entirely determined by the feelings the writer wants to arise, and whatever second opinion is given on her (or him) serves to readjust them.

Conclusion: “Even dragons have their ending!”1

Throughout the novel, and at every stage of the characterisation process, the reader’s active participation is expected and anticipated. The different levels of this participation have been studied. On the extra-textual level, the writer plays with stereotypes and common scenarios to trigger the creation of a mental picture of the characters without even describing them in details. Moreover, since Enchantment is a rewriting of Sleeping Beauty, it is clearly set within a tradition. Yet the fairy tale legacy is only acknowledged to direct more accurately the reader’s impressions, and while Card keeps fairy tale motifs for his plot, he mercilessly debunks all their rosiest aspects —from “love at first smell” to the delicateness of the princess— all but the eucatastrophe.
On the inter-textual level, the presence of a network of oppositions between the four women has been revealed. The bilateral oppositions between Katerina and the others are more striking, but though the network is centred on the princess, contrasts and discrepancies exist between the three other female protagonists too. This network plays a major role in characterisation: in addition to highlighting each woman’s characteristics, the oppositions also show they could have made different choices, and therefore they emphasise the significance of the choices actually made.
It is probably when the individual is studied in isolation that the writer’s manipulation is most striking. The four women are built around one prominent trait each and are then completed by the opinion of the other characters and by their own attitudes to others or to the things surrounding them. The implied reader is meticulously manipulated into caring about the characters and they are minutely designed, because it is care, not suspense, that keeps him/her turning the page. In this respect, a character’s past is very important since it serves the double purpose of making the character more believable and more intimate to the reader.
In the introduction to this study, the question whether Enchantment is a sexist novel was called “barren.” Those who deem it interesting have found in this dissertation plenty of materials to make up their minds, but it is not about to be answered. What can be pointed out, however, is the equal care with which Card builds male and female characters. The devices described in part III apply to men as well as women, but since traditional fairy tales treat genders very differently, it is only normal that the writer’s handling of the inter-textual pressure be more careful when it touches on women. However, there is no equivalent to the network of oppositions as regards men in Enchantment; probably because of Ivan’s own peculiarity.
So far, very little has been said about him. Yet he is a major protagonist and in ninth-century Taina he appears unmanly, therefore it might seem old-fashioned to exclude him from a study on the characterisation of women on the sole ground that he is biologically a male. Nevertheless this is not the only reason: the specificity of the devices described in parts I and II —from which he is shut out— justifies his exclusion from this study.

The aim of this dissertation —which was consistent with the limitations of a Master 1 memoir— was to study Enchantment like a novel from an academic genre to show that it deserved more than prejudices. However, examining it as if it were from an academic genre means that the specificity of Fantasy has not been approached. This would require a wider scope, therefore the singular aptitude of Fantasy for metaphysical questioning still has to be studied. So does its enchantment.

*******


Selected Bibliography

Primary sources:
Card, Orson Scott. Saints. 1984. Rpt. of A Woman of Destiny. New York: Tor, 1988.
---. Ender’s Game. New York: Tor, 1985.
---. Speaker for the Dead. New York: Tor, 1986.
---. Prentice Alvin. London: Orbit, 1989.
---. Xenocide. New York: Tor, 1991.
---. The Memory of Earth. Homecoming 1. 1992. London: Orbit, 2003.
---. The Call of Earth. Homecoming 2. 1993. London: Orbit, 2003.
---. The Ships of Earth. Homecoming 3. 1994. London: Orbit, 2003.
---. Children of the Mind. New York: Tor, 1996.
---. Enchantment. 1999. New York: Del Rey Book, 2000.
---. Ender’s Shadow. London: Orbit, 1999.
---. Shadow of the Hegemon. London: Orbit, 2001.
---. Shadow Puppets. London: Orbit, 2002.
---. Shadow of the Giant. London: Orbit, 2005.
Lewis, Clive Staples. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Chronicles of Narnia 2. 1950. London: HarperCollins, 1998.
Mousnier-Lompré, trans. Enchantement. 1999. Paris: Points, 2007.
Perrault, Charles. “La Belle au Bois Dormant”. Les Contes de Perrault. Paris: Editions G.P., 1971. 11-36.
---. “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge”. Les Contes de Perrault. Paris: Editions G.P., 1971. 37-44.
Pushkin, Alexander Sergeevich. Eugene Onegin. 1833. Trans. Charles Johnston. New York: Viking Press, 1978.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. 1997. London: Bloomsbury, 2000.
---. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. 1998. London: Bloomsbury, 2000.
---. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. London: Bloomsbury, 1999.
---. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000.
---. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.
---. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. London: Bloomsbury, 2005.
---. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. London: Bloomsbury, 2007.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. Ed. Norman Sanders. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit . 1937. London: HarperCollins, 1995.
---. The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings. 1954. London: HarperCollins, 1999.
---. The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings. 1954. London: HarperCollins, 1999.
---. The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings. 1955. London: HarperCollins, 2001.
---. The Silmarillion. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. 1977. London: HarperCollins, 2004.
---. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. 1981. London: HarperCollins, 1995.
Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. 1889. New York: Reader’s Digest Association, 1984.
Williams, Jay. Petronella. 1973. North Kingstown: Moon Mountain Publishing, 2001.

Secondary sources:
Beauvoir, Simone de. Le Deuxième Sexe 1. 1949, Paris: Gallimard, 1968.
---. Le Deuxième Sexe 2. 1949, Paris: Gallimard, 1968.
Card, Orson Scott. “Fantasy and the Believing Reader.” Science Fiction Review. Aug. 1982: 45-50.
---. Characters and Viewpoint. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1988.
---. How to write Science Ficiton and Fantasy. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1990.
---. “How Tolkien Means”. Meditations on Middle-Earth. Ed. Karen Haber. London: Earthlight, 2002. 153-173.
Collings, Michael R. In the Image of God: Theme, Characterization, and Landscape in the Fiction of Orson Scott Card. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.
Dupouey-Delezay, Aurélien. Le Monothéisme Juif au Regard des Anciens. Diss. Dir. Pierre Cordier. Toulouse: Université Toulouse II - Le Mirail, 2005.
Eco, Umberto. Lector in Fabula : Le Rôle du Lecteur ou la Coopération Interprétative dans les Textes Narratifs. 1979. Trans. Myriem Bouzaher. Paris: Librairie générale française, 1989.
Friesner, Esther M. “If you Give a Girl a Hobbit”. Meditations on Middle-Earth. Ed. Karen Haber. London: Earthlight, 2002. 47-59.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. “The Queen’s Looking-Glass”. 1979. Rept in Don’t Bet on the Prince. Ed. Jack Zipes. New York: Routledge, 1989. 201-208.
Goldstein, Lisa. “The Myth-Maker”. Meditations on Middle-Earth. Ed. Karen Haber. London: Earthlight, 2002. 185-197.
Lieberman, Marcia K. “ ‘Some Day my Prince will Come’ : Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale”. 1972. Rpt. in Don’t Bet on the Prince. Ed. Jack Zipes. New York: Routledge, 1989. 185-200.
Marret, Sophie. “Image d’Alice : Je de Miroirs”. L’Image de la Femme dans la Littérature de Langue Anglaise : Actes du Colloque du 5 Février 1988. Reims: Presses Universitaires de Reims, 1988. 47-60.
Neville, Jennifer. “Women”. Reading The Lord of the Rings: New Writings on Tolkien’s Classic. Ed. Robert Eaglestone. London: Continuum, 2005. 101-110.
Pelosato, Alain. “Orson Scott Card : l’Ecologie et la Foi”. Fantastique : Des Auteurs et des Thèmes. Pantin: Naturellement, 1998. 103-128.
Poumarat, Annabelle. Creating a Universe in Foundation by Isaac Assimov and Les Guerriers du Silence by Pierre Bordage. Diss. Dir. René Alladaye. Toulouse: Université Toulouse II - Le Mirail, 2006.
Propp, Vladimir. Morphologie du Conte. 1928, trans. Marguerite Derrida. Paris: Seuil, 1970.
Rabkin, Eric S. The Fantastic in Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Richter, Anne. Le Fantastique Féminin, un Art Sauvage. Tournai: La Renaissance du Livre, 2002.
Rowe, Karen E. “Feminism and Fairy Tales”. 1979. Rpt. in Don’t Bet on the Prince. Ed. Jack Zipes. New York: Routledge, 1989. 209-226.
Tolkien, J. R. R. “Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics.” 1936. Ed Christopher Tolkien. Rpt. in The Monster and the Critics and Other Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983. 5-47.
---. “On Fairy-Stories.” 1947. Rpt in Tree and Leaf including the Poem Mythopoeia, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001. 1-81.
Tyson, Edith S. Orson Scott Card: Writer of the Terrible Choice. Lanham, Md.: The Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Verut-Plichon, Annie. “Images de la Femme dans l’Oeuvre Romanesque de G. Orwell”. L’Image de la Femme dans la Littérature de Langue Anglaise : Actes du Colloque du 5 Février 1988. Reims: Presses Universitaires de Reims, 1988. 77-84.
Windling, Terri. “On Tolkien and Fairy-stories”. Meditations on Middle-Earth. Ed. Karen Haber. London: Earthlight, 2002. 215-229.
Zipes, Jack. “A Second Gaze at Little Red Riding Hood’s Trials and Tribulations”. 1984. Rpt. in Don’t Bet on the Prince. Ed. Jack Zipes. New York: Routledge, 1989. 227-260.
References:
The Bible: Authorized King James Version. Ed. Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.
Bible de Jérusalem. Trans. Ecole Biblique de Jérusalem. Paris: Pocket, 1998.
Bible Osty. Trans. Emile Osty et Joseph Trinquet. Paris: Seuil, 1969.
Le Livre de Mormon : Un autre Témoignage de Jésus-Christ. 1830, Salt Lake City: Eglise de Jésus-Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours, 1998.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 7th edition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005.
Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia Foundation Inc.

Movies and Animated Features:
Anastasia. Dir. Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. 20th Century Fox, 1997.
Ever After: A Cinderella Story. Dir. Andy Tennant. Starring Drew Barrymore as Danielle. 20th Century Fox, 1998.
King Arthur. Dir. Antoine Fuqua. Starring Keira Knightley as Guinevere. Touchstone Pictures, 2004.
Mulan. Dir. Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook. Walt Disney Pictures, 1998.
Sleeping Beauty. Dir. Geronimi Clyde. Walt Disney Pictures, 1959.

Articles from the Internet:
Card, Orson Scott. “Fantasy and the Believing Reader.” Published in Science Fiction Review. Aug. 1982: 45-50. Hatra