The Blog of Roon

I’m noodling on a little in-betweener fluff. It started out long ago in my head, a little story about Renate’s desire to show her pride in her country origins through dress, and her ensuing discovery of an immensely rich and lovely cultural history that she had had no part of because she had disdained “girly stuff” too long.

It’s still going to be about that, a little bit. But mostly it’s going to be about Clara von Adler, Renate’s mother. We don’t as yet know much about her. We know she was a noted beauty in the city of Atlantis before she married Renate’s father. We know she is a stickler for etiquette (though, as the story will probably show, perhaps not for the strictest construction of propriety). We know she isn’t openly responsible for anything much in the political or economic management of the barony.

And we know that she doesn’t seem to have had much impact on her middle child. Why not? And what the heck does this woman do all day? Is she a total trophy fluffhead, a lazy do-nothing, or what?

I’ll let the story answer these questions rather than answering them here; I’ve just finished some rather long expository paragraphs about the first one. I do know Clara rather better now, however—and damn it, she’s Tamasi without the fish-tail. (Tamasi? See Passions of the Tide archives.)

No, no, she can’t fight like Tamasi. But she’s Tamasi. Intelligent, capable, responsible—and at the core, a seethe of helpless frustration locked behind steely restraint.

Why do I keep coming up with this character? I never meant to come up with Tamasi, I didn’t sort out what Clara had to be like until I started writing her this morning, and I didn’t realize that Clara was Tamasi until I stopped to reread. Who are these women? Why do they keep clawing out of my subconscious?

Partly they’re my mother. Partly they’re me, though less so these days as I claw my own way out of frustration toward work I want to do. But it’s telling that they only come up in game cultures that are explicitly patriarchal, sometimes not even working toward egalitarian. (Dragonhunt-world is working slowly toward gender equality, but it’s far from there yet, and it’s been explicitly made clear that the country is a wee bit behind.) Mostly, I think, they’re my appalled fascination at the work women must have had to do to stay sane under garden-variety patriarchy.

I mean, hell’s bells, how did they do it? Tamasi and Clara are my answer, seemingly the only answer I can envision of myself. No rebellion either overt or covert. No repining. No re-imagining their situations; both Tamasi and Clara could have used a good old-fashioned 1970s consciousness-raising. They never admit even to themselves that they are bored, frustrated, and lonely. They rarely show temper, and never uncontrolled temper, though they are easily offended or hurt.

They do whatever they are allowed to do, whatever meaningful tasks they can sneak out from under the noses of the men; Tamasi ran her estate, and Clara is an avid gardener who despite her urban origins probably knows more about some strains of agriculture than her country-bred husband by now. Otherwise, they efface themselves, in all likelihood afraid that if they are noticed, the activities that keep them sane will be taken from them.

Etiquette is their shield, their means of establishing themselves as proper women, how they keep prying eyes at a distance. The people who live with Tamasi and Clara do not know them very well, as a rule, because all they ever see is the rigidly polite exterior. Even wise, insightful Sabine doesn’t know her mother as well as she thinks she does.

Clara offers a question childless Tamasi couldn’t: how does this woman respond to a daughter who breaks the mold? The answer so far: first with offense and a desire to control, to bring the errant daughter back in line; later with distasteful acceptance; eventually, perhaps, with real pride. Regret? I don’t know. I don’t know if Clara can re-imagine her own life in the light of Renate’s enough to reach regret.

I do know that this story is about Clara and Renate reaching a rapprochement at last, learning to appreciate each other despite being entirely different women. Renate will at last understand the role of women in maintaining and transmitting culture; Clara will realize that Renate is just as committed to that culture as she is, though Renate’s expression of that committedness is of necessity very different.

And I’m learning why Tamasi fascinated me so.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 20th, 2004 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Dragonhunt, Gaming and Gender. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.