Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman

by Tara Prescott

  In Doctor Who’s long history, the TARDIS has been changing steadily. When the third doctor called her “old girl” for the first time, it marked the beginning of a move away from just a set piece and a ship to a sentient being that takes an active role in the story. The development of just-ship TARDIS to sentient-being TARDIS only strengthens what Gaiman has done with the Doctor/TARDIS relationship in “The Doctor’s Wife.” The TARDIS has been given a traditional voice for the episode, allowing her to speak frankly with the Doctor and establish a way for the Doctor and TARDIS to communicate freely, even when she once again becomes voiceless. The episode constructs a relationship in which the TARDIS is a sexual being and an equal to the Doctor within their relationship, which is not something that can be stated by the Doctor’s previous companions. Thus, she is the “one irreplaceable partner.” In this way, Gaiman confronts and overturns several long-standing tropes that portray violent or disastrous results in response to an attempt to rewrite gender roles or attempts to act outside of socially acceptable behaviors. Perhaps the most compelling feature of “The Doctor’s Wife” is not how Gaiman grapples and ultimately succeeds in rearranging these roles in science fiction and within the already established Doctor Who canon, but that he makes the changing of them look easy.

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  Unmasking M(other)hood

  Third-Wave Mothering in Gaiman’s Coraline and MirrorMask

  BY DANIELLE RUSSELL

  “I swear it,” said the other mother. “I swear it on my own mother’s grave.”

  “Does she have a grave?” asked Coraline.

  “Oh yes,” said the other mother. “I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back.”—Coraline, p. 93

  Delightfully dark humor aside, the exchange between the other mother and the eponymous heroine of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is quite revealing: Coraline’s instincts are sharp, and her adversary’s desire for control knows no boundaries. Issues of identity, particularly for female characters, often hinge on the experiences of mothering. The mother-daughter motif, so common in Western literature, appears in an extreme form in Coraline. The mother as psychological adversary, the obstacle to the daughter’s maturation, becomes a literal and potentially lethal adversary. The need to break from the mother seems clear-cut in this narrative. The complication, however, is that Coraline is not battling her real mother; her opponent is the other mother, the dominant force in an alternative world Coraline discovers connected to her home. The other world parallels Coraline’s life with eerie differences; it is both familiar and disturbing. On the surface, it offers everything that Coraline desires: “wonderful” food, a “more interesting” bedroom, and very attentive parents who will “just wait here for you to come back” (28, 30, and 33). Coraline is the center of this world. Indeed, it was created for her. It appears to be a case of wish fulfillment, the common childhood desire to find a “better” family. Of course, that wish is tinged with the equally common childhood fear that your parents may have the same desire. In Other Mother’s world, Coraline will discover, children are also replaceable.

  A similar pattern emerges in Gaiman’s film (and adapted graphic novella), MirrorMask, as the central figure Helena Campbell also enters an alternative realm and encounters a “new” mother. The texts differ in that Helena is the writer and illustrator of what she deems her “weird dream” but insists “this isn’t a made-up story” (1). Coraline is told from the titular character’s perspective, but not by her, and there is no indication that it is a dream. Like Coraline, Helena discovers the dangers of the possessive love of a maternal figure. In the other realm, Helena will have two alternative mothers: the queen of the “city of light” and the queen of the “land of shadows” (22). As their locations suggest, the White Queen will be a positive force (albeit a largely passive one since she is suffering from a curse Helena must break) while the Dark Queen will be a source of suffering and the ostensible antagonist of the adventure. The Dark Queen and other mother pursue their obsessive desires for a daughter with no concern for the damage they are inflicting. MirrorMask introduces an additional destructive force: unlike Coraline, Helena encounters another daughter in the alternate world. She sees a “wanted poster with my face on it. It was me, but it wasn’t me” (38). This “other Helena” steps into Helena’s life in order to escape her own (47). The double wreaks havoc in Helena’s life—“she wasn’t wearing the kind of clothes I’d wear. And screaming at my dad” and kissing a “dodgy” boy—but she also recognizes that “there was some level on which she was me” (35, 43, and 56). Helena’s quest is more complex than Coraline’s, in part, because she is older (although Coraline’s age is not stated), but also because her conflict with her real mother is more intensive. The narrative opens with her Mum’s illness following a heated argument in which her Mum says, “You’ll be the death of me” and Helena responds, “I wish I was” (3). It is one of a series of arguments notes Hel
ena, “I don’t know what it is with me and Mum. We never mean to fight, but suddenly we’re yelling at each other and it’s all stupid” (3). The interaction takes a new significance when Joanne Campbell is hospitalized. Helena clearly connects the two events and spends the next nine days saying sorry “for what I said” (7). Guilt is a strong factor in Helena’s quest.

  Mother/daughter relationships, such as those explored in Coraline and MirrorMask, are central to many feminist debates. The excerpt which opens this essay can be read as emblematic of the tensions between second and third wave feminist theories. While it may seem to be an odd shift, Coraline and MirrorMask do embody the struggle to defuse the “trap” of motherhood (common in the second wave’s fear of the institution of motherhood and in its tendency to “bury” first wave feminist theories) and instead embrace the potentially empowering aspects of motherhood. The two texts are clearly matrilineal narratives pitting “smother mothers,” who would keep their daughters in perpetual childhood, against “genuine” mothers, who would empower them to stand on their own. Coraline Jones and Helena Campbell have mothers who defy traditional expectations. Both of Coraline’s parents work at home and share household duties; their relationship seems to be an egalitarian one. Joanne Campbell is also a career woman; Helena describes her as “the brains behind the outfit” (2). Neither mother is described as particularly skilled in domestic affairs, nor are they solely focused on their daughters’ needs. Significantly, each woman has a life that extends beyond her role as mother. As Andrea O’Reilly asserts, “only an empowered mother can empower children” (Mother Outlaws 13). And yet, at crucial points in the narratives, it is precisely the words of their “genuine” mothers which will enable Coraline and Helena to overcome their “smothering” adversaries. In the case of Coraline, she will hear her mother’s voice during her crisis. Helena will be guided by the final page in the Really Useful Book: “REMEMBER WHAT YOUR MOTHER TOLD YOU” (58).

  In adopting, or more accurately adapting, the genre of the domestic story, Gaiman engages in an examination of gender roles. In foregrounding the mother-daughter dynamic, however, Gaiman’s work can be read as explicitly engaging in a debate that continues to challenge feminist theorists: what is the relationship between feminism and motherhood? At first glance, the domestic story may seem like a strange vehicle for a critique of the family—after all, the family is at the heart of the story—but perhaps because of that narrow focus it can afford considerable scope for scrutiny, particularly in the hands of master storytellers like Gaiman. Whether labeled the family story (in Great Britain) or domestic fiction (in North America), these texts have the potential to be very claustrophobic. “Domestic fictions,” assert the editors of The Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature, “are ‘inside’ stories. Unlike narratives of adventure, fantasy, and school life, in which the child character’s maturation often occurs outside the home and away from the familiar, in domestic fiction the home and family remain central to the narrative” (Zipes et al. 2067). In terms of geography and ideology there is generally little room for the (typically female) characters to negotiate. Gaiman expands the boundaries of the domestic story by blending it with fantasy, but the home remains the pivotal setting in both Coraline and MirrorMask. Coraline moves between her actual home, the “other” home, and the grounds around each dwelling. Helena, however, seems to leave her home for a much wider world, but it is a forced relocation to a rapidly shrinking space, and she discovers she must return home to re-establish order.

  Coraline’s efforts to rescue her parents from her Other Mother is constructed more as an act of bravery than one induced by guilt. It is a continuation of her interest in exploration. Coraline’s self-proclaimed role is that of an intrepid explorer. In the first twelve pages alone, “explore/d” is used six times and “exploring” four. A thirst for knowledge lies at the heart of any exploration; Coraline examines her world in order to make sense of it. It is a process supported by her real mother. Mrs. Jones does not obstruct Coraline’s activities, but she does place boundaries on them: be home for meals, dress appropriately. She strikes a balance between independence and familial expectations. Coraline’s taste of absolute freedom—the initial absence of her parents before she realizes they have been kidnapped—is flavored with chocolate cake and limeade, but it quickly turns sour, leaving her crying herself to sleep in her parents’ bed (51, 52). What she needs is freedom with the reassurance that her family is nearby—a kind of contained freedom.

  Helena Campbell is also an explorer, but her exploration is through drawing. She has the privacy and creative freedom she needs in the form of a camper. It “wasn’t big but it was mine. It had my drawings all over the walls. I love drawing places, imaginary cities with bits of all the towns the circus goes through put in them” (2). Helena’s explorations mingle imaginary and real world geographies; her drawings counter the seemingly claustrophobic world of the circus. For each girl, exploration is a means of expanding her own life, a vehicle for self-discovery. The real mothers in the stories offer their daughters more complex lives than those imposed by the Dark Queen and the other mother. The latter pair demands passivity, absolute obedience, mute acceptance, and good manners. The real mothers encourage the girls to use their powers of reasoning, to take initiative, to exert their own agency. They seek to empower their daughters. Female agency is not the problem in Coraline or MirrorMask. The real problem is the limited and limiting vision of motherhood the other mother and Dark Queen represent and, by extension, the limited and limiting vision of femininity they impose on their “daughters.”

  Another key aspect of the domestic story that Gaiman retains, but modifies, is the didactic impulse behind many of the original tales. While it is no longer necessary to be overtly didactic, “domestic fiction is especially concerned with communicating life lessons that the child character learns from, or with the assistance of, family members—lessons that will help him or her become a happy and well-adjusted person” (Zipes et al. 2068). Coraline and Helena undergo personal growth and attain a greater understanding of the world around them. The key guides for each girl are mothers—real and fantastic—and—aside from the otherworldly element—Gaiman sticks with tradition, for the “center of the domestic world was acknowledged as female” (Zipes et al. 2070). The twist, however—and it is a big one—is that the traditionally domestic female is not the role model either girl embraces. Both Coraline and Helena refuse to play “Happy Families” (Coraline 77), opting instead to remain in their own “real, wonderful, maddening, infuriating, glorious” families with all their “ups and downs” (Coraline 134, MirrorMask 76).

  Gaiman has identified the impetus for Coraline as being his then four-year-old daughter’s imaginative narratives. She would “dictate nightmarish stories where her mother would be replaced by an evil witch and tied up in a basement” (Ouzounian E3). Unable to find similar stories for his daughter, Gaiman began writing Coraline. A feminist analysis of Coraline and MirrorMask invites the question: has Gaiman left the mother tied up—relegated to the periphery and ultimately powerless? Yes, argue the authors of “The Other Mother: Neil Gaiman’s Postfeminist Fairytales”: The “too-powerful (phallic) mother’s dominance must be overthrown, and, as the happy resolution attests, it is only through a psychoanalytic journey that represses the fantasy of feminine power and agency that the ‘normative’ position for Gaiman’s female protagonists are attained” (Parsons, Sawers, and McInally 371). Because the other mother and Dark Queen are defeated at the end of the narrative—or at least removed as immediate threats—they conclude feminine power is denied leading to the assertion that “Gaiman’s recipes for postfeminist power appear as unwholesome as frozen pizza in the final feminist analysis of mothers” (Parsons, Sawers, and McInally 387). A psychoanalytical reading of literature can be fraught with its own traps, as the trio recognizes in their conclusion: “our approach begs questions about how far any earlier or currently fashionable brands of feminism have been able to rais
e themselves from Freud’s couch” (387). Leaving aside the liability/viability of such a reading, I would offer an alternative to their use of “postfeminism” as a theoretical framework and, in the process, bring the mother up from the “basement” where she has been relegated. In point of fact, “feminine power” is not denied in Coraline or MirrorMask: the power of the real mothers may be muted in comparison with the over-the-top actions of their fantastic counterparts, but it is not negated. The assertion that “in both narratives the girls need to destroy the power of the malevolent mother whose agenda is to encase daughters in an eternal childhood bond that, these stories tell readers, is destructive and dangerous” overlooks the fact that there are examples of benevolent mothering in both narratives (Parsons, Sawers, and McInally 375). The danger lies not in the bond, but in the eternal childhood. Feminine power and agency can be found in both the mothers and the daughters through their connection, not the separation that Freud and subsequent psychoanalytical theorists insist must occur.