I just finished a wonderful book called Graceling, by Kristin Cashore. I’ll wait on the review, because the book doesn’t come out until October, and I don’t want you to forget about it because you can’t read it right now. (I don’t have a lending copy, unfortunately.) But I was talking with Rebecca (who lent me Graceling) tonight, and we wondered aloud about fantasy birth control methods. And that? Is clearly a subject worth discussing with the internet immediately.
In every fantasy novel that we could think of in which characters have sex and don’t get KID (as my boyfriend so charmingly puts it), they either a) ignore birth control entirely, or b) have some herb or spell that magically eliminates pregnancy as a possibility. 100% effective, easily obtained, no side effects. Wouldn’t we all love to have birth control like that?
As a plot device, it’s invaluable: you can be responsible by bringing up the issue of pregnancy, and then sweep it off the table easily, leaving the characters to grapple with the more emotionally interesting reasons to have sex or not. But I would love to see a fantasy novel deal with the modern (and age-old) fact that sex isn’t just an emotional risk, it’s also a physical risk.
(The only counter-example I can think of is Pamela Dean’s Tam-Lin. I read it a decade ago and don’t remember the details, but as I recall, Janet’s magical birth control fails (does Thomas make it fail on purpose? I forget). In the end, though, she’s happy about the pregnancy, despite being in college. Correct me if I’m wrong here, people who are more into this book than I am.)
Most fantasy (and historical) novels, of course, eventually get around this by having the heroine decide that she wants kids after all. She meets the right man and decides to slow down from her adventuring days. Alanna does it, Sabriel does it, Catherine-called-Birdy does it. In Sean Stewart’s Nobody’s Son, Gail’s decision to have a child is the happy ending on the very last page (and in that world, there is no magical birth control, so Gail has been denying poor Mark not just sons, but booty). These are all totally reasonable decisions for the characters to make. Often the woman is heir to something and has little choice, so you’re just glad she’s found a way to be happy with her destiny. As a woman who doesn’t want kids and (at almost-30) has yet to change her mind, though, I’m invested in seeing more characters choose to remain childless. Even if that does limit the possibility for multi-generational sequels.
7 responses so far ↓
1 bloodstones // Aug 19, 2008 at 1:32 am
In the Kushiel books the women can’t get pregnant until they perform some religious rite to open their womb. What’s interesting to me is that the female lead from the first three books ends up adopting, but never chooses to get pregnant. She also never marries her consort and continues to practice her profession despite his occasional discomfort with that.
I also find it frustrating that these books tend to ignore the possibility of STDs even more thoroughly than they do the possibility of pregnancy. To me that’s always been the bigger, scarier risk because I know what I would do if I inadvertantly got pregnant.
2 bloodstones // Aug 19, 2008 at 1:33 am
By these books I mean the genre in general, not just the Kushiel books. Are there any that consider the threat of STDs?
3 deborah // Aug 19, 2008 at 8:36 am
Yes, the decision to remain childless was one of the things that really caught my eye about Graceling — it wasn’t an accident, she really made a choice, and insisted upon it. But she still likes children, or at least certain children, so it’s not buying into the myth that everybody who doesn’t want children doesn’t want them because they think children are icky. In fact, she still goes out of her way to help children, and to base a life around service to them, in some sense. (It was fairly difficult writing that so it would be effectively spoiler-free.)
I’m trying to remember how Anne McCaffrey’s Menolly avoids children, but she might just wave her hands and not become pregnant. In Nancy Werlin’s forthcoming Impossible, there is a specific failure of birth control.
4 Sam // Aug 19, 2008 at 8:57 am
bloodstones:
Yeah, it’s a good question. I can’t think of any off the top of my head (with the exception of Charles DeLint, I think, but gritty urban fantasy has to deal with that sort of thing almost by definition). We’re usually shown the woman’s first time, but there’s no way George (for example) was a virgin by the time Alanna got to him. STDs were definitely a problem in the pseudo-medieval societies fantasies are usually set in. And yet you’re right, they never address that.
Although it’s not especially responsible, I can see why it’s never addressed in YA fantasy — part of the point of reading *fantasy* is to get away from heavy-handed problem novels, and it’s tough to talk about STDs for teens without getting a bit heavy-handed. Can anybody think of an adult fantasy in which it comes up? Even just to announce the presence of a magical anti-syphilis herb?
5 Sam // Aug 19, 2008 at 9:13 am
deborah:
Heh. Yeah, thanks for bringing it up delicately as regards Graceling. I was so careful about spoilers, I just realized I didn’t even relate Graceling to the subject of my post, after mentioning I’d read it! Oops.
And yes, that’s a really good point about Katsa still *liking* children, just being unwilling to make the sacrifices to her freedom that being a mother would necessitate. At the end of Nobody’s Son, Gail’s line is, “…I looked at my sister with her new baby, and she didn’t look like her life was over, and I thought, I can do that! I mean, what if I want to travel about and be a wife and be a mother and have a wonderful time? Who is going to stop me?” Which is a totally valid perspective, and I wish her all the best… but being a mother *will* place limitations on her traveling about, and it will change the sort of wonderful times she has. No book can be every book, but I was so pleased to see Katsa look at those issues and come to a different conclusion.
(Of course, Gail’s a future queen, unlike Katsa, so she ultimately didn’t have much of a choice. I’m relieved that Graceling addresses the fact that heirs — like Raffin — can’t avoid marriage and children.)
6 Michael // Aug 23, 2008 at 2:09 pm
It’s probably been two decades since I read C. S. Friedman’s superb In Conquest Born, and I suppose it falls on the SF side of the F/SF line, though not emphatically so. But your question brought it to mind immediately. The purebred upper caste of Braxian society has a hard time reproducing. At one point, protagonist Zatar receives a note:
Instead of someone on the list, Zatar seeks out L’resh, a woman who, at the tender young age of 50, has already borne her obligatory four living children in eight pregnancies, though she almost died in the process. Zatar plies her with a rare and expensive liqueur and tries to seduce her; she is obviously moved by sexual desire, but denies his “How long since you’ve tasted a man?” advance with “I almost died, Zatar. What pleasure is worth death?” And then he reveals that the liqueur was actually contraception:
Having just copied that out by hand, I have to say that I think it’s one of the weaker passages in the book. But there’s your non-idealized birth control as plot device. Even if she does, yes, agree to bear him a child afterwards — but only after an offer that includes “Give me a living child and I’ll keep you supplied in contraception for the rest of your life.”
7 Graceling, by Kristin Cashore // Sep 2, 2008 at 7:49 pm
[...] shown here as a question to be considered. They finally Do It in the heat of the moment, yes (using fantasy birth control, of course), but it’s clear that both Katsa and Po have weighed the options and made a [...]
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