Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman Read online

  In the final Sandman story arc, “The Wake,” Delirium continues to be an active participant, showing her ability to maintain composure in times of necessity. Joining the rest of her family to make preparations for Dream’s funeral, her behavior is relatively reserved, as she comments upon her sorrow and her desire that Destruction would have come (70:4–5). She is also the first member of the family to begin building the Envoy out of mud and grants him his name, Eblis O’Shaughnessy. Throughout the story, she wears a pink dress, with wings attached to the back, resembling a young girl. Though her leggings are tattered and the wings seem out of place for the formal occasion, the outfit still stands in stark contrast to her typical multicolored clothes. During the funeral ceremony, Delirium reveals the depths of her pain, including yelling at Desire for mocking Destiny’s manner of speaking at the funeral (72:5). Before she begins her own speech, Barnabas offers to comfort her to get her through it. “He was my big brother. He really was. I was always a bit scared of him. But I’m not scared of him anymore. I’m a bit sad of him instead. Okay. That’s all,” she says amidst a small field of flowers and lawn decorations (including an octopus) that she has created (72:12). Though brief, her words reveal the pain she feels at his loss. In a brief panel below her talk she is shown walking off with her head bowed. With the exception of Death, Delirium spends the most time with Dream than any other member of the Endless throughout the series, and her words speaks volumes to the grief she feels, in spite of her initial fear of her daunting, brooding older brother.

  Conclusion: “I am hope”

  When asked to summarize The Sandman in twenty-five words or less, Neil Gaiman remarked, “The Lord of Dreams learns one must change or die, and makes his decision” (Intro. EN). The nature of change and one’s ability to cope with its repercussions is the dominant theme of the entire Sandman series. While the Sandman’s subtle changes after his decades-long imprisonment do ultimately open his eyes to realize that a new, kinder, more humane facet of Dream is necessary moving forward, his death comes as a result of his inability to reconcile himself with the world around him. Delirium, on the other hand, who, through unnamed and unidentified trauma and hardship, had change forced upon her, is one of the series’ strongest survivors. As Hy Bender points out, Dream in many ways is the opposite of Delirium, a being “who’s forgotten the wonders of childhood, who’s become so stuffy that he’s lost his sense of play” (208). While “neither of the extremes represented by these two Endless is a practical way to live,” “Delirium had the wisdom to reach out for a balancing influence, first via Destruction and then via Barnabas” (208).

  In one of the most memorable sequences of the early issues, Dream engages in a battle with the demon Choronzon. Playing “the oldest game,” the pair announces identities that must be countered. When Choronzon moves beyond animals and announces he is anthrax, Dream announces he is “a world, space-floating, life nurturing.” Choronzon counters with a planet destroying nova, before Dream counters with another burst of optimism: “I am the Universe—all things encompassing, all life embracing.” Choronzon’s final play, “anti-life ... the end of universes, gods, worlds,” is defeated by Dream’s simple statement “I am hope” (4:18–9). The sequence is remarkable in its affirmative qualities, which in retrospect seem somewhat surprising for the normally steadfast and morose Dream. By the end of the series, Dream is no longer able to proclaim himself as hope, and must die in order for a new aspect of Dream that can. Delirium, however, a character who so often seems utterly helpless and hopeless, resides in optimism. From her first appearance in “Brief Lives,” where she dances in place chanting “change change change” (41:9), the narrative has hinted that her identity as Delirium may not be permanent. Gaiman himself makes this point: “She’s been one thing, she’s become something else, and eventually she’ll change into something else again” (Bender 241). Shortly before departing, Destruction tells her, “I trust that when your next change comes, it proves easy on you” (48:17).

  In her earlier incarnation of Delight, she was arguably the only wholly positive aspect of the Endless; while Destruction allows for new creation and Death is a reprieve for many, Delight is in stark contrast to Despair, eternally hopeful, optimistic and joyous. Her transformation comes in part due to the realization that untarnished delight and happiness is impossible in the universe, and her inability to maintain that state is part of why she becomes Delirium, fractured and lacking unity. Though this change seemingly removes any positives from the Endless entirely, Delirium does reveal an inner strength and resiliency that is necessary for survival in the world. In stark contrast to stereotypical female victims in comics, the series ends on an optimistic note for the character. While her future remains uncertain, The Sandman ends with the contention that her ability to endure will lead her out of her fractured state of Delirium into a brighter, more stable future.

  NOTES

  1. All references will be made to the issue number followed by the page number.

  2. Marston wrote under the pen name Charles Moulton, which combined his and All American Publications founder Max Gaines’s middle names.

  3. According to David Hajdu, romance comics accounted for “nearly a fifth of the more than 650 comics published” in 1950 (157).

  4. Quoted in The Sandman Companion. Interestingly, before Sandman, Gaiman was working on Black Orchid, and ultimately stopped because his editor Karen Berger told him “Black Orchid is female, and female characters don’t sell” (Bender 22–3).

  5.  I will refer to Desire with the feminine pronoun throughout for continuity, though this does not encompass her various range of genders and bodily forms.

  6.  It is worth noting that, due to Desire’s ambiguous, shifting gender, the Endless are equally divided with three and a half males and females.

  WORKS CITED

  Bender, Hy. The Sandman Companion. New York: Vertigo, 1999. Print.

  Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949. Print.

  Chute, Hillary L. Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Print.

  Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980. Print.

  Gaiman, Neil. The Absolute Sandman Volume I. New York: DC Comics, 2006. Print.

  _____. Quoted in The Sandman Companion. Print.

  _____ (w), Sam Kieth (a), Mike Dringenberg (i). “A Hope in Hell.” The Sandman #4 (April 1989), New York: DC Comics. Print.

  _____ (w), Mike Dringenberg (a), Malcolm Jones III (i). “The Sound of Her Wings.” The Sandman #8 (Aug. 1989), New York: DC Comics. Print.

  _____ (w), Mike Dringenberg (a), Malcolm Jones III (i). “Season of Mists: Prologue.” The Sandman #21 (Dec. 1990), New York: DC Comics. Print.

  _____ (w), Jill Thompson (a), Vince Locke (i). “Brief Lives.” The Sandman #41–49 (Sept. 1992—May 1993), New York: DC Comics. Print.

  _____ (w), Mark Hempel, D’Israeli, Mark Estes, Glyn Dillon, Charles Vess, Tim Truman, John Muth, Richard Case (a, i). “The Kindly Ones.” The Sandman #57–69 (Feb. 1994—July 1995), New York: DC Comics. Print.

  _____ (w), Dave McKean, Michael Zulli (a, i). “The Wake: Chapter Three.” The Sandman #72 (Nov. 1995), New York: DC Comics. Print.

  _____ (w), Bryan Talbot (a), Marck Buckingham (i). “The Song of Orpheus.” The Sandman Special #1 (1991), New York: DC Comics. Print.

  _____ (w), Craig Russell, et al. (a, i). The Sandman: Endless Nights #1–4. New York: DC Comics, 2003. Print.

  Glicksohn, Susan Wood. The Poison Maiden and the Great Bitch: Female Stereotypes in Marvel Superhero Comics. Baltimore: T-K Graphics, 1974. Print.

  Goodspeed-Chadwick, Julie. Modernist Women Writers and War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011. Print.

  Hajdu, David. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. New York: Picador, 2008. Print.

  Horn, Maurice. Women in th
e Comics. Vol. 1–3. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001. Print.

  Iser, Wolfgang. Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Print.

  Knight, Gladys L. Female Action Heroes: A Guide to Women in Comics, Video Games, Film, and Television. Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2010. Print.

  Laity, K.A. “Illusory Adversaries? Images of Female Power in Sandman: Kindly Ones,” in The Sandman Papers. Ed. Joe Sanders. Seattle: WA: Fantagraphics, 2006. Print.

  McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. Print.

  Murphy, B. Keith. “The Origins of The Sandman,” in The Sandman Papers. Ed. Joe Sanders. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2006. Print.

  It’s Pretty Graphic

  Sexual Violence and the Issue of “Calliope”

  BY TARA PRESCOTT

  “Actually, I do tend to regard myself as a feminist writer.”—Ric Madoc, “Calliope”

  Calliope truly is a writer’s goddess. Her Greek name, Kαλλιόπη, means “beautiful-voiced,” and not only is she the source of eloquent speech herself, but she also has the power of inspiring poetry in others (OED). Like any dedicated writer, Calliope is almost never seen without a tablet to jot down ideas, and her beautiful words, either written or spoken, define her as the muse of heroic poetry. She comes from a beautiful tradition as well—but also a terrifically violent one. In “The Myth of the Heroic Rapist,” Susan Brownmiller catalogues several rape narratives that appear in Greek mythology. “People often ask what the classic Greek myths reveal about rape,” she adds, but “it is far too easy to retell a Greek myth to fit any interpretation one chooses” (283). While male gods “raped with zest, trickery, and frequency” their (often) mortal victims “rarely suffered serious consequences” (283). But what if the tale of a god raping a mortal was told in reverse? The result is Neil Gaiman’s “Calliope.”

  Gaiman insists on telling the stories of people who are traditionally marginalized, missing, or silenced in literature in general and in comics in particular. He acknowledges his conscious decision to include women’s narratives, noting that story arcs within the Sandman series were written “about women, and men’s attitudes to women” (Bender 41). The disturbing 17th issue of Sandman, “Calliope,” continues to force us to question our role as readers, our assumptions about women and romanticized concepts, and the degree to which we are responsible for those around us.

  Although Sandman’s female characters sometimes follow a more traditional or narrow view of feminine beauty (tiny facial features, large breasts, tight-fitting or skimpy clothes, unnaturally thin bodies), they are far closer to looking like “real” women than their freakish superhero contemporaries. Gaiman’s female characters that have depth and range are too numerous to fully list here. It is particularly hard for female Sandman characters to receive their due attention while in the shadow of the series’ most popular character, Death. One way of approaching Gaiman’s feminism is by focusing closely on a single character, a single story, and tracing the ramifications. A self-contained issue, Sandman #17 (“Calliope”), from early in the series, offers a glimpse into a specific part of Gaiman’s feminist oeuvre, as well as his broader connections to women’s voices and women’s experiences.

  In his introduction to the stories collected in the Dream Country trade paperback, novelist and critic Steve Erickson writes, “In ‘Calliope,’ a once successful novelist who’s become so impotent in his art he can no longer write makes a bargain to enslave a muse, devouring her for his inspiration when he isn’t ravaging her for his pleasure.” Erickson’s word choice—“impotent,” “enslave,” “devouring,” “ravaging,” and “pleasure”—emphasizes the dual tension in the story that takes the common clichés and metaphors of writing and literalizes them. “Calliope” is a story of sexual and creative energy, enslavement and release, consumption and violence.

  The story begins in May 1986, with Richard Madoc in profile, stating, “I don’t have any idea” (Sandman 17:1). This seemingly casual declaration at the start of the story eventually repeats at the end, bookending Madoc’s terrible life story. In the opening scene, Madoc is in the middle of purchasing an item for someone else. He doesn’t “have any idea” what the object is or what it is for. In addition, Madoc is a frustrated writer, so he doesn’t “have any idea” of what to write. He is clueless in all aspects of his life and does not realize what he is getting into when he purchases an imprisoned muse for his own inspiration.

  The market economy of “Calliope” presents several questionable financial, social, and spiritual transactions. The first exchange involves a trichnobezoar, or calcified ball of hair. What makes this object particularly interesting and gruesome is that it was procured from the stomach of a “young woman” with “lovely long hair” (17:1). This gross currency is Madoc’s means to a very specific end: purchasing artistic inspiration. By the third panel of the story, Gaiman establishes that this is a world where a woman’s body is a source of unparalleled wealth to men, particularly at the woman’s expense. The surgeon Felix Garrison procured the bezoar by cutting it out of the host’s stomach and offered it to Madoc in exchange for a signed copy of Madoc’s novel, The Cabaret of Dr. Caligari. The source of the bezoar was a woman who suffered from the aptly-named “Rapunzel syndrome,” and as the reader will soon learn, Calliope also suffers from an amalgam of fairy tale syndromes. Calliope is a flaxen-haired beauty trapped in a tower, spinning the thoughts of straw-men into gold.

  The repugnant token transferred, Garrison next asks Madoc the inevitable fan question: “Where do writers get [their] crazy ideas?” (17:2). “It’s research, really,” Madoc responds with false modesty. “Calliope” is the tale of Madoc’s twisted “research.” In true Wordsworthian fashion, “Our meddling intellect / Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things,” but rather than murdering to dissect, Madoc is raping to write (136).

  The business transaction completed, Madoc fields a call from his agent, checking on a manuscript that is nearly nine months late. This is a novel that, Madoc admits to the reader, he has yet to even begin. The pressure mounting, Madoc takes his hairy treasure to the successful writer, Erasus Fry. Fry is crippled with age, haphazardly dressed in a green smoking jacket creepily reminiscent of Hugh Hefner. From his first few lines, Fry establishes and builds a sexual undercurrent to his conversation with Madoc. The senior writer jokes that he doesn’t “give a toss” about what others think and inquires if Madoc has written anything “stirring” recently (17:3–4). In these examples, Gaiman not only draws the reader’s attention to the already sexually-charged metaphors commonly used to describe writing, but he also capitalizes on them by turning the metaphors into literal description. “Calliope” takes the sexual power implied by descriptions of artistic creation and literalizes them. In this story, Gaiman erases the analogy between artistic creation and procreation and draws a direct correlation between the physical act of sex and the physical act of writing. In the case of Madoc, then, he aligns writer’s block with sexual frustration; tortured Madoc hasn’t “written a word in a year—nothing” and agonizes, “Do you know what that’s like?” (17:4).

  As Madoc wallows in self-pity and frustration, the reader notices what Madoc cannot: that he is standing directly in front of a great potential source of ideas and creation. Fry is a pun-dropping philologist (“Rapunzel, let down your hairball”) who discusses the etymology of “bezoar” and spins lustrous tales, but Madoc is too self-involved to hear or interpret the clues as anything other than prattle. Not only does Madoc miss a potential muse, but he also misses clear signs of danger. Fry’s crazed greed should be an obvious warning that to follow him is to follow madness. Clueless Madoc, however, does not pay attention to the warnings that are obvious to the reader.

  After accepting his hairy “present,” Fry reveals his secret: in 1927 he captured the Greek muse Calliope. “They say one ought to woo her kind, but I must say I found force most efficacious,” Fr
y reveals, foreshadowing the terrible methods Madoc will also enact upon Calliope (17:5). Fry emphasizes her difference as an immortal by using the phrase “her kind.” Yet there is a double tension in this phrase, as it also calls attention to another difference: in her human aspect, Calliope is a woman. At the bottom panel of page 5, Fry is poised to open the door to Calliope’s chamber. He holds the key with his right hand and pushes against the door with his left. The last speech bubble on the page announces, “Here she is.” The door in the image, like the page in the comic, is hinged on the left, and in preventing the reader from seeing Calliope until the next page, Gaiman constructs a situation where the reader momentarily becomes Fry, on the verge of turning the page and opening the door.1 The escalating tension and anticipation make the reader, like Madoc, yearn to see what lies behind that door, behind that page. It forces the reader to participate in an act which is both innocent and complicit.