Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman Read online

  Is this what she wants? Is this what she wants? She always wanted to be with Hector ... but she must have wanted more than that. Mustn’t she? But Hector’s dreams came first. They always did.... Why did she do that? Become a cheap copy of her vanished mother? ... And, after the wedding, she came to live in this house. And she was very happy. They were all so very, very happy [12:9].

  Lyta’s life is frozen in the Dream Dome with her husband, very literally, “frozen in a showcase”: like many women, she has been “misinterpreted, forgotten, variously frozen in show-cases, rolled up in metaphors, buried beneath carefully stylized figures, raised up in different idealities” (Irigaray Speculum 144). Having sealed both Lyta and her husband’s soul in their alternate dream world, Brute and Glob play with Lyta like a doll in a dream house. Lyta’s value and role is imposed upon her by her husband, her life is held secure by Brute and Glob, and she has no other narrative options.

  Upon entering the Dream Dome, Lyta is six months pregnant. Her pregnant body mirrors the societal stereotypical representation of femininity, and because she exists in the Dream Dome outside of time, she is perpetually with child. Lyta thus in her frozen prenatal state embodies the patriarchal notion that “better than a mother, then is the working out of the idea of the mother, or the maternal ideal. Better to transform the real ‘natural’ mother into an ideal of the maternal function which no on can ever take away from you” (Irigaray Speculum 81). Lyta represents the patriarchal fantasy of the mother “as a volume ... as ‘the support of (re)production.’ ... But man needs to represent her as a closed volume, a container; his desire is to immobilize her, keep her under his control, in his possession, even in his house. He needs to believe that the container belongs to him” (Whitford 28). By keeping Lyta frozen in time, Brute and Glob keep her as an image or ideal of motherhood without ever allowing her to actually become the mother: for as long as she is in the Dream Dome, she will remain six months pregnant. These immortals keep Lyta as a “closed volume,” completely immobilized in their frozen showcase of “her” home. Lyta looks the part of (re)production without the means to ever actual (re)produce. She remains cut off from every means of production and (re)production as the plaything of the Immortals.

  Despite the vague recollection that she at one time wanted something more, Lyta cannot remember exactly what that was and can barely hold on to much of a thought of her own. She briefly recollects at one point wanting to be a superhero like Hector,2 but she reminds the reader that Hector’s dreams came first, so now she exists solely in the role as pregnant housewife, the ultimate dominant fantasy of motherhood, completely cut off from any other identity, unable to access even her own body through birthing a child. Through his depictions in The Doll’s House, Gaiman offers the reader an image of woman existing as the plaything of men while being defined and created by men despite woman’s efforts to be otherwise. It exists as an explicit critique of the male hegemony, but Gaiman offers little hope of a newly integrated normative language.

  The construction of woman in masculine language and voice repeats in Gaiman’s 1989 comic Black Orchid, in which we see an identity-less protagonist searching to find who or what she is. In the opening scene of Black Orchid, the superhero and comic’s namesake is captured and immediately killed. In the comic book realm and the superhero story arc, the bad guy wins in the first few pages, a hazard of Black Orchid’s modus operandi: “infiltrating and working for criminal organizations in human guise and, once inside, taking them out as Black Orchid, [who] is capable of flight, feats of superhuman strength, apparent invulnerability to bullets, and more” (Wagner et al. 196–7). But this death is not the end of Black Orchid: she is reborn. “Sylvian [develops] a plant human hybrid capable of surviving the planetary environmental apocalypse he considered inevitable in his creation of the Black Orchid” (Wagner et al. 200). The birth of this Susan actually constitutes her second rebirth. Originally, Susan Linden, a childhood friend of Phillip Sylvian, dies at the hand of her gangster ex-husband, Carl Thorne. However, Dr. Sylvian takes Susan’s DNA and uses it to create a hybrid human life out of an orchid, birthing a second, fully grown and developed Susan with all of original Susan’s memories and the addition of superhuman strength and power. This second Susan becomes the superhero Black Orchid, who dies in opening sequence of Gaiman’s comic. The third iteration of Susan awakens upon the death of Black Orchid. Second Black Orchid’s rebirth arrives prematurely, so she lacks the completed memories of the original and second Susan. This third Susan, the central character of Gaiman’s narrative, bears the physical resemblance to Susan, but lacks any semblance of cohesive identity.3 This woman does not know who she is and the narrative consists of her identity quest. Throughout this quest, she learns of her former selves, being defined thereby and answering her continual question, “Who or what am I?”

  Many of the other characters in Black Orchid work as the voices through which Gaiman defines and shapes the constructed identity of this latest Susan. She begins her quest for the meaning of self in the place of her rebirth by asking Dr. Sylvian very plainly, “Who am I?” (1:25). Sylvian “begins to explain the riddle of her origins and being, and mentions his former classmates [Alec Holland and Pamela Isley, both superpowered individuals in the DC Universe]” (Wagner et al. 200). After listening to his story of her previous incarnation, Susan asks to call Sylvian “father,” and he agrees because he attributes himself as her creator.4 He is literally the scientist who “grew” her body and, perhaps prematurely, figuratively through his identity delimiting conversations. Through their conversations, Black Orchid tries furtively to formulate an understanding of who he says she is. She is a stranger to her own identity construction process: she neither understands nor has access to tools to aid in her own identity creation. In one sense, her identity already exists before her: the man merely needs to tell her what it is. She is literally defined by the father and his language: “The woman neither is able to give herself some meaning by speech nor means to be able to speak in such a way that she is assigned some concept” (Irigaray Speculum 229). Black Orchid remains a blank slate upon which the masculine characters pencil in the details of her being.

  Another voice the reader and third Susan hear answering her identity inquiries is that of original Susan’s father who appears to her in a dream: “He just sits me down. And he talks to me. He explains everything. Who I am. Where I’m going. The whole thing. The meaning of it all” (2:3). Even in her dreams, Susan’s self-awareness pieces together through a masculine voice. Susan’s own thoughts “are monopolized by men” due partly to the fact that “all thought, all language ... all discourse is masculine” (Irigaray Sex 121). Transgressing the masculine discourse and identity creation appears beyond woman’s reach. Gaiman highlights this process, forcing Black Orchid to define herself for or against a type and identity defined and controlled by men who pre-exist her awareness, and yet she continues to resist their definitions as complete and fails to maintain her complicity in the structure of their narratives.

  In her identity quest, Black Orchid must then seek others to tell her who she is, including Sylvian’s former classmates: Poison Ivy and Swamp Thing.5 Black Orchid speaks with Pamela Isley, also known as Poison Ivy, in Arkam Insane Asylum. Black Orchid questions Poison Ivy: “I came to you because I need answers. What am I? Who am I? Are there more like me? ... Do you really know what I am? Will you help me?” (2:39). But Isley provides no help. Her sentences and words make no sense to Black Orchid. Although readers are familiar with Ivy’s character from the DC Universe, to Black Orchid, Ivy’s words are fragmented and appear as ramblings disconnected with her uninitiated reality. Ultimately Poison Ivy kicks Black Orchid out of her cell, leaving her to continue her search elsewhere. The only woman that Black Orchid speaks with does not help her and appears to refuse aid in her identity search. The information that the readers garner from Poison Ivy bypasses Black Orchid: Black Orchid is unable to access the information Ivy is trying to convey. The failure
of communication is due to Black Orchid’s inability to access the language: “woman does not have access to language except through recourse to ‘masculine’ systems of representation which disappropriate her from her relation to herself and to other women” (my italics added for emphasis—Irigaray Sex 85). Ivy’s discourse appears chaotic and irrational to Black Orchid precisely because it exists liminally, on the margins of comprehension because it perpetually attempts to deconstruct the frameworks of the dominant masculine language, and interpreting it requires both a comprehensive understanding of that discourse and the project to which it is subjected. Of itself, the phallocentric discourse disallows true dialogue between women: one woman cannot help another woman because the discourse or language necessary to construct their own identities remains not only inaccessible to them but as yet undeveloped in any extant discourse. Black Orchid’s identity resides within the voices of men because she is trapped within the language limits of the question itself. She can ask only “Who am I?” within the phallocentric discourse because the reconstructed framework of a genuinely feminine language exists only in its most rudimentary form: the discoordinated rambling of a feminist icon whose existence has been relegated to the basement of a madhouse.

  Shut out from viable alternatives, Susan seeks out the remaining voice to aid her quest, Alec Holland, otherwise known as the Swamp Thing. Out of options, he is “the only one who could help” (3:3). In the form of Swamp Thing, Holland helps Black Orchid. She calls him a “god” as he delineates the story of her creation and assigns her one complete origin narrative. Swamp Thing weaves a story for Black Orchid, completing the cycle in which every aspect of her creation and identity is “assigned meaning through auto-representation of the male” (Irigaray Speculum 233). This final masculine voice fills in the missing pieces of third Susan’s identity by inscribing her identity upon/within her. Then, he “completes” her in yet another way by which patriarchy defines woman: he impregnates her (3:9). Seemingly out of nowhere, Swamp Thing knows exactly what Black Orchid “really wants” and he gives her babies in the form of seeds to sow. Nowhere in the text prior to this moment does Black Orchid mention wanting babies, though Dr. Sylvian foreshadows this problematic resolution by defining the original project as a kind of ecological restitution project; she only mentions needing to discover her true identity. Peculiarly, sexuality never enters the narrative. In this phallocentric discourse, the female libido or sexuality never explicitly enters the conversation. It simply never occurs to the men involved that this is an issue of sexuality, though Holland’s wife, Abigail, recognizes this fault as Black Orchid departs.

  “Alec?” Abby intrudes at the bottom of the page. “Who was that?”

  “She was ... is ... an old friend ... of an old friend. I was ... giving her ... babies,” he states in paused, broken response.

  She looks at him: “Uh. Right. Y’know, Alex. I, uh, I think we’re going to have a talk about this” [3:9 fr. 6–8].

  Clearly Alec’s wife understands the implications and potential violations of his act, and though she is understanding (given the context of her husband’s existence) she implies that certain boundaries are not his to transgress. Gaiman intentionally abides within the phallocentric discourse by creating a female hero who needs to reproduce as a part of her identity quest without ever mentioning her sexuality and makes apparent the dissociative break that discourse creates. The phallocentric language disallows for feminine sexuality and merely represents reproduction of the male within the female form. Ultimately, Black Orchid, like all women according to Irigaray, “must inscribe herself in the masculine, phallic way of relating to origin that involves repetition, representation, reproduction” (my italics added for emphasis—Speculum 78). The act of mothering will re-subjugate woman within hegemonic norms and “again she will be inscribed or will inscribe herself in this way, in an in-finite genealogical process/trial, an open count of the discount of origin ... with no closure of the circle or the spiral of identity” (Irigaray Speculum 76). Thus Gaiman weaves Black Orchid’s identity through the phallocentric, hegemonic, dominate voice, placing her in a predetermined role that according to patriarchy satisfies her deepest desire (desires defined and assigned by patriarchy). As Christine Holmlund points out, for Irigaray, “time and time again, ... phallocentric discourse equates female identity with motherhood.... Because phallocentric discourse emphasizes motherhood and reproduction, the mother is deprived of her identity as a woman” (Holmlund 290). As the Swamp Thing provides Black Orchid with the details of “who she is,” he assigns her the role of motherhood, depriving and limiting her identity as anything else.

  Through the act of reproduction, Black Orchid’s identity forms and solidifies. Thereby, through (re)production, Black Orchid becomes her own origin, or at least “the place where origin is repeated, re-produced and reproduced” (Irigaray Speculum 41). By bringing forth a child, woman becomes the place of origin where (re)production and (re)iteration take place. For her identity to be counted, it must be repeated: repetition must take place for a sign to be a sign, for identity to be formed. Black Orchid, like all the Susans before her, must reproduce or be reproduced for her identity to be validated. For Black Orchid to truly be Black Orchid she must “divide her own identity a priori” (Derrida Limited Inc 53). Likewise, for Black Orchid to become the sign, she “must be able to function in the absence of the sender,” and she shows she can function without her creator after Sylvian’s death, because “this possibility is always inscribed” (Derrida Limited Inc 54), and the trace of her discourse, now lost, is nonetheless iterated in her being. Because she is always already Black Orchid, the possibility of her functioning without her creator and reproducing or reiterating her identity always already exist. In spite of the differences between herself and original Susan or other Black Orchids, all of these women add up to one sign, one identity: Black Orchid. Their differences constitute simply “the ever-changing ‘life’ of signs” (Halion 3). Hence, “a woman becoming a mother will be the Mother” (Irigaray Speculum 76). The identity of the sign, thereby the identity of Black Orchid, depends on two things: the similarities to the sign, despite the differences, and the repetition, (re)production, or iteration of the sign.

  In Black Orchid, Gaiman creates for his readers, men and women alike, a feminine hero who observes the terms of her own narrative, but whose story and identity comes from the mouths of his male characters and a patriarchal, phallocentric language, which limits and confines her within the constructs of this limited, already existing identity. Despite having super-human powers, Black Orchid remains limited and narrowly defined, repeating this identity through reproduction and fulfills the narrative of the phallocentric discourse, at which point she dismisses it. After delivering and defending her young, she decides to leave her role as mother. Admitting to the knowledge of her past, she says: “I have too many of Susan’s memories to be truly happy here ... and it isn’t paradise any longer. If it ever was” (3:45). She departs, returning to the world but in her own language: “The flight will be long, and tiring; but I can caress the updrafts of the wind with my form. I am alive in the colors of the leaves, and in the sunset, and in the moist tropical air. I have never been more alive” (3:46). In this comic, as in all phallocentric discourse, no room abides for a language for women to speak, no room for women to create themselves until the framework of the discourses is fulfilled or dismantled, so woman’s identity and her deepest desires are assigned to her until she can deconstruct, deny, or erase the structures of language that imprison her potential. Finally, a woman can speak for herself when she transcends the expectations and possibilities defined by her male progenitors, those who would define and limit her to the expectant and identifiable roles of mother and caretaker.

  Gaiman repeats this similar sort of masculine narrative in creating other characters beyond those in Black Orchid and The Doll’s House. In Death: The High Cost of Living (1993), Gaiman gives his readers a closer look at the hugely popula
r character of Death. As Dream’s older sister and mentor, the female character of Death first appears in the coda of the first arc of the Sandman series in the story “The Sound of Her Wings.” In Death: The High Cost of Living, the beautifully simple premise is that “once a century Death spends a day as a mortal, simply living life, to better understand the nature of mortality” (Wagner et al. 151). In her single day as mortal this century, Death interacts primarily with a suicidal teenage boy, Sexton Furnival. Like Susan in Black Orchid, the reader of Death: The High Cost of Living sees and learns more about Death through the thoughts and words of Sexton’s narrative.

  The structure Gaiman creates around the dialogue comes from Sexton’s point of view. His voice very literally narrates Death. He constructs her for the reader: the male voice defines this woman. At the points in the text where Death defines herself, explaining who she is, the male narrator repudiates her claims upon her identity. Even though the reader knows Death to be telling the truth about who she is, Gaiman still shows the way the male voice continually attempts to put woman into a role of his own understanding, defining her by his own terms, those accessible to him through the masculine discourse. When Death, in the form of Didi, reveals her true identity to Sexton, he tells her she is crazy and storms out of the scene. His narrative refutes her claims to self-identify through a discourse of rational logic and cultural types: “First, there’s no such person as Death. Second, Death’s this tall guy with a bone face, like a skeletal monk.... Third, he doesn’t exist either. Fourth, I’d say ... you’re nuts.... You’re temporarily unhinged” (Death: HCL 1:24). From a suicidal boy, the accusation of being unhinged rests on questionable authority, as does the rest of his denial in the face of the reality presented. In the realm of the phallocentric discourse, Sexton reclaims and renames Death, by designating her as something he understands. He disallows her the ability to name herself utilizing the discourse of reason and logic, which does not allow the impossible (in this case, an anthropomorphized representation of Death, who is alive and breathing and standing in front of him. He states that this is an impossible state of being, much like the sentence “I am dead” is impossible to say truthfully in the hegemonic discourse). In this way, woman (here Death) “does not enter a discourse whose systematicity is based on her reduction into sameness” (Irigaray Sex 152). Gaiman displays how the phallocentric discourse traps all women, including the character of Death, and for Sexton to hear Death’s voice and her truth, he “would have to listen with another ear, as if hearing an ‘other meaning’ always in the process of weaving itself, of embracing itself with words, but also of getting rid of words in order not to become fixed, congealed in them” (Irigaray Sex 29), denying the framework of logic and reason that carefully traps him away from the possibility of the reality before him. Thwarting Death’s attempts to enter into the discourse of identity construction, Sexton reduces her to a reproduction of the sameness—the self-representative of a masculine subject. The dominant, masculine, phallocentric discourse of society cannot hear her and therefore disavows her identity, reassigning her a meaning he understands—“nuts.”6