6 ms·

Terry Prachett: Why Gandalf Never Married (1985)

95 points by iamelgringo 18y ago

Silentio 18y ago
A well done feminist critique of fantasy, literature, and "real life," and he pulled it off with a sense of humor. Read "The Colour of Magic" if you get the chance, it's hilariously funny in spots, especially if you're a little bit of a fantasy geek.
- ensignavenger 18y ago
  I have read several Pratchett books- and I have found every one of them hilarious! The BBC movies aren't too bad, either.
- jimm 18y ago
  Equal Rites, which came after that book, deals with this topic more directly. A seventh son has a seventh son...no wait, a daughter. She has raw magical power, and with some help gets to the wizard university. I'm not going to say any more; I don't want to spoil anything.
  - ninguem2 18y ago
    But it's all jommetry.
  - keenerd 18y ago
    It is also worth noting that Equal Rites was published 1-2 years after this speech. Was Prachett trying to gauge the reaction to his satire by explicitly stating it?
    - unalone 18y ago
      I doubt he was thinking in those terms. More likely this was a concept that he'd already started to think of, and so the things he wrote about concerned things of that nature. It's like how programmers designing registration systems become obsessed with talking about registration forms and CAPTCHAs. It's just where their minds dwell as they work.
- electromagnetic 18y ago
  If you don't feel like reading The Colour of Magic & The Light Fantastic (the sequel that completes the story) then look for the DVD of The Colour of Magic (it originally ran as a double-bill made-for-tv movie, the first was CoM and the second part was LF). There's also the Hogfather, a book released later in the Discworld universe, that got turned into a double TV movie. It is a much more faithful reproduction as they had more time, which in the case of the Hogfather was truly necessary.
GavinB 18y ago
"Let's talk about wizards and witches. There is a tendency to talk of them in one breath, as though they were simply different sexual labels for the same job." This is one of the many reasons that Harry Potter is so subversive. Witches and Wizards are just words for the same thing in different genders, and it's ingrained in every kid's head.
- Rawsock 18y ago
  If you want real subversive fantasy, I recommend Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish and the other of books from the saga. It has everything: The main character is a male witch (or witcher), the female wizards have formed a secret society to take over the world and nonhumans (elves,dwarfs) are subjected to human racism and bigotry.
  - whatsreal 18y ago
    If you are just looking for fantasy that equalizes male and female practitioners of magic Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series levels the playing field. In fact, it is seriously tilted towards women for the first part of the series.
    - Avshalom 18y ago
      in the first part yes. unfortunatley in the second part all the men are just naturally more powerful and everytime a women is exposed to the male side of the onepower they freak out because oh it's so violent and hard to control, while the men have no problem dealing with the womens side. not to mention that about half of the problems in the series are caused by women scheming and interferring because they're all thus so convinced that men are incompetent. I remember being dumbfounded when I read an intervew with Jordan and the interviewer asked how he wrote such strong women. ... yeah if you assume strong women are all horrible humans sure I can see thinking he writes strong women.
      - whatusername 18y ago
        As I wrote a comment above, I was trying to rack through my mind to come up with examples of strongly written females from Jordan. I decided to ignore the forsaken and royalty (as perhaps Graendal, Morgase and Tuon might count) - and I managed to come up with Aludra and Tylee Khirgan. While the concept was good - in almost no place where the gender disparity was shown - does Jordan portray the women in a good light. (Perhaps only the Village Council / Womens Circle comparisons)
derefr 18y ago
The obvious, technical reason for all this was skirted by Prachett, but never addressed directly: a "witch" is, by the oldest definition, a woman who is "in communion with" or "consorting with" (sleeping with) a devil or demon, and that is wherefrom she takes any power she may possess. A wizard has no such requirement--his magic is actually of an internal nature. To put it another way: all magic--all power, really--actually comes from men, and more specifically, from their "wands" (ahem.) A woman doing magic is just serving as an avatar or proxy for her boyfriend's "will." Further, because she is committing a carnal sin by not being married to this creature (by definition: you need a priest, and no priest will marry you to a devil), she starts off on the "evil" side of the line, even if she wants nothing to do with it. Then there's the whole matter that she's "draining his willpower for her own purposes"--mythology tends to discretize single creatures into multiple over time, so "witch" and "succubus" were likely the same idea. Even if she was sleeping with a perfectly good Wiz, she'd still be a vile temptress. That all seems more in line with medieval European folklore to me. (Of course, the question of what happens when someone marries a wizard is left unanswered; it's usually assumed that wizards are too ingrained in their world of rites and formulae to go a-courting, but what if a girl were to just love them anyway--like I'm sure the wives of many mathematicians today do? Would she gain "legal" access to his magical energies, or is there some sort of biblical clause against that? In fact, would the wizard be allowed to marry at all? Would a priest condemn Merlin in his time, even in his role as the king's advisor?)
- jacoblyles 18y ago
  It seems to me that the character of the wizard borrows a bit from the clergy. If you sit through a Catholic or Episcopalian mass, with its incense, music, communion, and ritual incantations, it certainly has the feeling of a magical rite. Also, believers do think that these rites have the ability to effect the world in extraordinary ways outside the normal rules of cause and effect (heal the sick, cast out demons, etc.); so the rites could be said to be magical. The fact that priests do not marry also adds to the case.
  - anamax 18y ago
    Unmarried (and presumably celibate) priests isn't universal, even in the "older" churches. For example, at least one Eastern Orthodox church allows married priests. (IIRC, they have to get married before they get ordained.) Rabbis are almost required to be married.
endtime 18y ago
It's interesting to see how Pratchett thought about this over two decades ago, given that I have read most of his Discworld books. There is a sharp contrast between witches and wizards in his work. While in many ways his witches do the "dirty work" and the wizards sit in the university, the way it's presented is such that the witches are about helping people and getting things done, whereas the wizards are a bunch of doddering old windbags in slippers who don't really do anything at all...and when they do, they usually screw something up pretty badly. Granny Weatherwax (a witch) is easily one of Pratchett's best characters. (She shows up in Equal Rites, and then again in Wyrd Sisters, which is a sort of retelling of Macbeth...and in several books since.)
patrickg-zill 18y ago
Gandalf was one of the Istari, a race or order of Men sent by the Valar to serve as opponents to Sauron. It is strongly hinted that Gandalf took on the form of a Man, but was actually one of the lesser Valar, called Maiar. The Silmarillion explains much of the background of all this. In a time before Viagra, the significance of Gandalf appearing as an old, wise man would necessarily preclude sexual activity.
- demallien 18y ago
  Oh, Gandalf definately wasn't human - even the LotR itself was surprisingly clear on this point, considering how much magic was presented obscurely in the book. On the otherhand, I would have thought that LotR was the perfect refutation of Pratchett's thesis - I mean Galadriel was one of the bad-asses on the White Council, with ambition to boot! She was one of the holders of the three elven rings, marking her a peer of Gandalf's, and it was she that was tempted by the One Ring's power. And then, in that other grand fantasy series, The Belgariad, there was of course Polgara, another strong female magic-using character, even though she ended up playing second fiddle to her father any time some direct application of power was required. Overall, I can't help feeling that the speech was in response to Pratchett's own innate tendancy against female magic-users, as a close examination of most of the major series shows that many, if not most, had strong female magic-using characters, both good and evil. At least Pratchett was able to see that he had a bias, and apparently fought against it to create Granny Weatherwax - full marks to the man :-)
- talboito 18y ago
  Its tempting to counter with something snarky like a good "whoosh!", but maybe a better response would be to remember that human beings write science fiction and fantasy.
AndrewO 18y ago
I wonder how his same talk would be given today. In a post-Harry Potter, World of Warcraft world, the idea of a female wizard no longer raises eyebrows in the same way. Still, interesting and entertaining.
- jacoblyles 18y ago
  Not to mention Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time".
  - whatusername 18y ago
    I was thinking that as I read it.. I wonder if Jordan was influenced at all by this speech? (Eye of the world came out in 1990) Jordan was definitely trying to play with gender politics through his work. From the only female magic users (at the start of the story at least), to the Queens of Andor and entire city of Far Madding - he liked to shift some of the gender-balance on its head. The constant Village Council / Womens Circle examples also bring this up. That being said - the hero is still the young male with a sword. And the bad guys: Fain / Moridin / Shaidar Haran are all male as well. So while it does play some havok with traditional magic use (at least for the first few books) - most of the male-centric fantasy genre is still intact.
    - jacoblyles 18y ago
      Well, I would guess that his primary demographic is still young males, which would explain the male coming-of-age messiah/hero figure.
- donaq 18y ago
  Way before Harry Potter, there was Polgara the Sorceress and her mother Poledra. While both of them could be said to have played second fiddle to the preeminent Belgarath, there was no doubt that their power was of the same nature as that of his. There was also Sephrenia and her goddess Aphrael, but then I guess David Eddings wasn't as popular as J.K. Rowling is.
jodrellblank 18y ago
For more Wizardry / Hacker tales you could read Wizard's Bane (available online here: http://www.baen.com/library/rcook.htm http://www.baen.com/library/rcook.htm ) a tale of a programmer transported to a world where magic exists.
- sketerpot 18y ago
  I prefer Diane Duane's Young Wizards series. Wizardry is hacking. Oh, and teleportation spells can take you to other planets. It's excellently written, and as addictive as Harry Potter. More information: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YoungWizards http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YoungWizards
Eliezer 18y ago
University of the Island of Gont? FAIL. He is thinking of the school at Roke, not Gont. In Gont they herd goats, which is what Ged did as a kid. Boy, you sure can tell the old Pratchett beats the young Pratchett for domain knowledge. Female wizard (not witch): Herald-Mage Savil. That book was 1989, though.

95 points by iamelgringo 18y ago

A well done feminist critique of fantasy, literature, and "real life," and he pulled it off with a sense of humor. Read "The Colour of Magic" if you get the chance, it's hilariously funny in spots, especially if you're a little bit of a fantasy geek.

ensignavenger 18y ago
I have read several Pratchett books- and I have found every one of them hilarious! The BBC movies aren't too bad, either.
jimm 18y ago
Equal Rites, which came after that book, deals with this topic more directly. A seventh son has a seventh son...no wait, a daughter. She has raw magical power, and with some help gets to the wizard university. I'm not going to say any more; I don't want to spoil anything.
- ninguem2 18y ago
  But it's all jommetry.
- keenerd 18y ago
  It is also worth noting that Equal Rites was published 1-2 years after this speech. Was Prachett trying to gauge the reaction to his satire by explicitly stating it?
  - unalone 18y ago
    I doubt he was thinking in those terms. More likely this was a concept that he'd already started to think of, and so the things he wrote about concerned things of that nature. It's like how programmers designing registration systems become obsessed with talking about registration forms and CAPTCHAs. It's just where their minds dwell as they work.
electromagnetic 18y ago
If you don't feel like reading The Colour of Magic & The Light Fantastic (the sequel that completes the story) then look for the DVD of The Colour of Magic (it originally ran as a double-bill made-for-tv movie, the first was CoM and the second part was LF). There's also the Hogfather, a book released later in the Discworld universe, that got turned into a double TV movie. It is a much more faithful reproduction as they had more time, which in the case of the Hogfather was truly necessary.

GavinB 18y ago

"Let's talk about wizards and witches. There is a tendency to talk of them in one breath, as though they were simply different sexual labels for the same job." This is one of the many reasons that Harry Potter is so subversive. Witches and Wizards are just words for the same thing in different genders, and it's ingrained in every kid's head.

Rawsock 18y ago
If you want real subversive fantasy, I recommend Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish and the other of books from the saga. It has everything: The main character is a male witch (or witcher), the female wizards have formed a secret society to take over the world and nonhumans (elves,dwarfs) are subjected to human racism and bigotry.
- whatsreal 18y ago
  If you are just looking for fantasy that equalizes male and female practitioners of magic Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series levels the playing field. In fact, it is seriously tilted towards women for the first part of the series.
  - Avshalom 18y ago
    in the first part yes. unfortunatley in the second part all the men are just naturally more powerful and everytime a women is exposed to the male side of the onepower they freak out because oh it's so violent and hard to control, while the men have no problem dealing with the womens side. not to mention that about half of the problems in the series are caused by women scheming and interferring because they're all thus so convinced that men are incompetent. I remember being dumbfounded when I read an intervew with Jordan and the interviewer asked how he wrote such strong women. ... yeah if you assume strong women are all horrible humans sure I can see thinking he writes strong women.
    - whatusername 18y ago
      As I wrote a comment above, I was trying to rack through my mind to come up with examples of strongly written females from Jordan. I decided to ignore the forsaken and royalty (as perhaps Graendal, Morgase and Tuon might count) - and I managed to come up with Aludra and Tylee Khirgan. While the concept was good - in almost no place where the gender disparity was shown - does Jordan portray the women in a good light. (Perhaps only the Village Council / Womens Circle comparisons)

derefr 18y ago

The obvious, technical reason for all this was skirted by Prachett, but never addressed directly: a "witch" is, by the oldest definition, a woman who is "in communion with" or "consorting with" (sleeping with) a devil or demon, and that is wherefrom she takes any power she may possess. A wizard has no such requirement--his magic is actually of an internal nature. To put it another way: all magic--all power, really--actually comes from men, and more specifically, from their "wands" (ahem.) A woman doing magic is just serving as an avatar or proxy for her boyfriend's "will." Further, because she is committing a carnal sin by not being married to this creature (by definition: you need a priest, and no priest will marry you to a devil), she starts off on the "evil" side of the line, even if she wants nothing to do with it. Then there's the whole matter that she's "draining his willpower for her own purposes"--mythology tends to discretize single creatures into multiple over time, so "witch" and "succubus" were likely the same idea. Even if she was sleeping with a perfectly good Wiz, she'd still be a vile temptress. That all seems more in line with medieval European folklore to me. (Of course, the question of what happens when someone marries a wizard is left unanswered; it's usually assumed that wizards are too ingrained in their world of rites and formulae to go a-courting, but what if a girl were to just love them anyway--like I'm sure the wives of many mathematicians today do? Would she gain "legal" access to his magical energies, or is there some sort of biblical clause against that? In fact, would the wizard be allowed to marry at all? Would a priest condemn Merlin in his time, even in his role as the king's advisor?)

jacoblyles 18y ago
It seems to me that the character of the wizard borrows a bit from the clergy. If you sit through a Catholic or Episcopalian mass, with its incense, music, communion, and ritual incantations, it certainly has the feeling of a magical rite. Also, believers do think that these rites have the ability to effect the world in extraordinary ways outside the normal rules of cause and effect (heal the sick, cast out demons, etc.); so the rites could be said to be magical. The fact that priests do not marry also adds to the case.
- anamax 18y ago
  Unmarried (and presumably celibate) priests isn't universal, even in the "older" churches. For example, at least one Eastern Orthodox church allows married priests. (IIRC, they have to get married before they get ordained.) Rabbis are almost required to be married.

endtime 18y ago

It's interesting to see how Pratchett thought about this over two decades ago, given that I have read most of his Discworld books. There is a sharp contrast between witches and wizards in his work. While in many ways his witches do the "dirty work" and the wizards sit in the university, the way it's presented is such that the witches are about helping people and getting things done, whereas the wizards are a bunch of doddering old windbags in slippers who don't really do anything at all...and when they do, they usually screw something up pretty badly. Granny Weatherwax (a witch) is easily one of Pratchett's best characters. (She shows up in Equal Rites, and then again in Wyrd Sisters, which is a sort of retelling of Macbeth...and in several books since.)

patrickg-zill 18y ago

Gandalf was one of the Istari, a race or order of Men sent by the Valar to serve as opponents to Sauron. It is strongly hinted that Gandalf took on the form of a Man, but was actually one of the lesser Valar, called Maiar. The Silmarillion explains much of the background of all this. In a time before Viagra, the significance of Gandalf appearing as an old, wise man would necessarily preclude sexual activity.

demallien 18y ago
Oh, Gandalf definately wasn't human - even the LotR itself was surprisingly clear on this point, considering how much magic was presented obscurely in the book. On the otherhand, I would have thought that LotR was the perfect refutation of Pratchett's thesis - I mean Galadriel was one of the bad-asses on the White Council, with ambition to boot! She was one of the holders of the three elven rings, marking her a peer of Gandalf's, and it was she that was tempted by the One Ring's power. And then, in that other grand fantasy series, The Belgariad, there was of course Polgara, another strong female magic-using character, even though she ended up playing second fiddle to her father any time some direct application of power was required. Overall, I can't help feeling that the speech was in response to Pratchett's own innate tendancy against female magic-users, as a close examination of most of the major series shows that many, if not most, had strong female magic-using characters, both good and evil. At least Pratchett was able to see that he had a bias, and apparently fought against it to create Granny Weatherwax - full marks to the man :-)
talboito 18y ago
Its tempting to counter with something snarky like a good "whoosh!", but maybe a better response would be to remember that human beings write science fiction and fantasy.

AndrewO 18y ago

I wonder how his same talk would be given today. In a post-Harry Potter, World of Warcraft world, the idea of a female wizard no longer raises eyebrows in the same way. Still, interesting and entertaining.

jacoblyles 18y ago
Not to mention Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time".
- whatusername 18y ago
  I was thinking that as I read it.. I wonder if Jordan was influenced at all by this speech? (Eye of the world came out in 1990) Jordan was definitely trying to play with gender politics through his work. From the only female magic users (at the start of the story at least), to the Queens of Andor and entire city of Far Madding - he liked to shift some of the gender-balance on its head. The constant Village Council / Womens Circle examples also bring this up. That being said - the hero is still the young male with a sword. And the bad guys: Fain / Moridin / Shaidar Haran are all male as well. So while it does play some havok with traditional magic use (at least for the first few books) - most of the male-centric fantasy genre is still intact.
  - jacoblyles 18y ago
    Well, I would guess that his primary demographic is still young males, which would explain the male coming-of-age messiah/hero figure.
donaq 18y ago
Way before Harry Potter, there was Polgara the Sorceress and her mother Poledra. While both of them could be said to have played second fiddle to the preeminent Belgarath, there was no doubt that their power was of the same nature as that of his. There was also Sephrenia and her goddess Aphrael, but then I guess David Eddings wasn't as popular as J.K. Rowling is.

jodrellblank 18y ago

For more Wizardry / Hacker tales you could read Wizard's Bane (available online here: http://www.baen.com/library/rcook.htm http://www.baen.com/library/rcook.htm ) a tale of a programmer transported to a world where magic exists.

sketerpot 18y ago
I prefer Diane Duane's Young Wizards series. Wizardry is hacking. Oh, and teleportation spells can take you to other planets. It's excellently written, and as addictive as Harry Potter. More information: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YoungWizards http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YoungWizards

Eliezer 18y ago

University of the Island of Gont? FAIL. He is thinking of the school at Roke, not Gont. In Gont they herd goats, which is what Ged did as a kid. Boy, you sure can tell the old Pratchett beats the young Pratchett for domain knowledge. Female wizard (not witch): Herald-Mage Savil. That book was 1989, though.