Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman Read online

  _____ (w), Chris Bachalo, Mark Buckingham, and Dave McKean (a, i). “A Night to Remember.” Death: The High Cost of Living (March—May 1993), New York: DC Comics. Print.

  _____ (w), Sean Phillips (a), Kent Williams (i). “Death: A Winter’s Tale.” The Absolute Death. New York: DC Comics, 2009. 220–225. 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), Michael Zulli (a), Steve Parkhouse (i). “Men of Good Fortune.” The Sandman #13 (Feb. 1990), New York: DC Comics. Print.

  _____ (w), Colleen Doran (a), Malcolm Jones III (i). “Façade.” The Sandman #20 (Oct. 1990), 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), Shawn McManus (a), Pepe Moreno (i). “Three Septembers and a January.” The Sandman #31 (Oct. 1991), New York: DC Comics. Print.

  Glenn, Cheryl. Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997. Print.

  Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Trans. Thomas Burger. Cambridge: MIT University Press, 1998. Print.

  Lauer, Janice M. “Graduate Students as Active Members of the Profession: Some Questions for Mentoring.” Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. Eds. Gary A. Olson and Todd W. Taylor. Albany: SUNY, 1997. 229–235. Print.

  Agency Through Fragmentation?

  The Problem of Delirium in The Sandman

  BY JUSTIN MELLETTE

  Over the course of its 75-issue run, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman presents myriad characters who rebuke the gendered criticism often leveled against comics and graphic novels. From Rose Walker in the “Doll’s House” story arc to Barbie in “A Game of You,” The Sandman presents female characters that acquire a sense of agency that has generally been denied to them in comics. Instead of presenting the damsel in distress and fetishistic heroine archetypes commonly associated with the medium, Gaiman creates characters grounded in a reality that acknowledges women as more than victims or objects of sexual objectification. The Sandman, also known as Dream, is a member of the Endless, seven siblings who serve as anthropomorphic embodiments of fundamental ideas. Death, the Sandman’s older sister, has become one of the most popular comics characters in decades, with Gaiman himself admitting that the issue introducing Death (#8, “The Sound of Her Wings”) was the “first story in the sequence I felt was truly mine” (Absolute Sandman Volume I 609). Considering the prominence of the series’ female characters, proclaiming Gaiman as a “feminist” author who complicates normative stereotypes regarding women in comics certainly appears warranted.

  Delirium, the youngest member of the Endless and originally known as Delight, stands in stark contrast to the slew of independent and unique heroines in the series. Unlike the majority of Gaiman’s other female characters, Delirium appears to hearken back to the weak, feeble women of past comics with the added elements of neuroticism and madness. Often unable to sustain a prolonged idea in her mind, and with a physical appearance that constantly varies, sometimes several times on a single page, Delirium is a stark contrast to the other women in The Sandman. Her narrative role also seems ambiguous; in the limited issues she appears in she often acts as comic relief with her array of colorful fish and endless non-sequiturs, such as discussing “chicken and telephone ice cream” (48:15).1 At first glance, her chief purpose in the series seems to be as the initiator of the “Brief Lives” story arc, where she accompanies Dream on a quest to locate their prodigal brother. While it would be easy to read Delirium chiefly as a victim to be pitied and nurtured, doing so privileges the patriarchal structure and reading practices that have long plagued comics. Though Delirium appears to be the most unstable member of the Endless and a modern representation of the madwoman trope, I argue that Gaiman’s portrayal of a character haunted and scarred by an unseen psychological trauma problematizes the way in which readers and critics have treated depictions of female victims and presents a unique examination of new possibilities regarding women in comics.

  Damsels in Distress and Men with Tits: Women in Comics

  “The world of comics is unquestionably male-dominated because on the one hand society at large is unquestionably male-dominated, and on the other hand the public of the comics is unquestionably male-dominated,” writes Maurice Horn in a useful summary of one of comics’ oldest stereotypes (12). The earliest female characters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were little more than matronly archetypes, always performing domestic tasks such as cleaning, washing, and child-raising. Rudolph Dirks’s Mamma Katzenjammer, the first recurring female character in a comic strip, had little personality beyond what was required to watch over her children. Young girls, in comics such as The Yellow Kid, were seldom more than “stupidly grinning child-shrews,” subordinate to their male counterparts (Horn 17). As the industry slowly matured, giving rise to more fleshed-out characters, women retained their second-class status, with characters sharing “an acceptance for their social role as the weaker sex” (Horn 18). While more assertive women, such as Positive Polly in Polly and Her Pals, achieved popularity before and during the Jazz Age, comics almost universally reflected a male-dominated society.

  Depictions of flappers and working girls in 1920s comics were certainly a positive step in comics equality, but the modern perception of women in comics derives largely from the (disproportionately) buxom heroines of superhero comics. Wonder Woman, who first appeared in 1941, was drawn as something far more than a female vigilante; her creator, psychologist William Moulton Marston, endowed her with a skin-tight outfit and exaggerated feminine shape to explore themes of sexual dominance and submission.2 Indeed, her two primary weapons, a golden lasso and the bracelets of submission, allowed for numerous stories with “scenes of men or women tied up, chained, manacled, or otherwise trapped in fetishistic paraphernalia” (Hajdu 78). Interestingly, reading Wonder Woman comics reveals that the heroine herself, rather than the villains, is the general victim of bondage. The sexual implication—that women were fit to be submissive and tied down by more aggressive men—helped fuel criticisms leveled against comics at the time by the Catholic church, sociologists, and, eventually the U.S. government.

  Romance comics, which began appearing in abundance in the late 1940s, also added to the stereotypical representation of women as sexually submissive and passive recipients of male attention.3 The protagonists in the comics, with titles such as My Love Story, My Love Life, My Love Affair, My Love Secret, and My Secret Affair, were generally presented with little more than a choice between two suitors, one rugged and disreputable, the other dull and secure. As one of the few genres written with a female audience in mind, the tales were often platitudinous and attempted to reinforce societal constraints of the postwar era. The Comics Code, released by the CMAA (Comics Magazine Association of America) in 1954, included amongst its requirements a promulgation of the stereotype: “the treatment of love-romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage” (Hajdu 292). Later comics also fed into the stereotypes surrounding a women’s supposed domesticity. Spider-Man, for example, “is a superhero who’s always fretting because he needs money, money to take his girl out before she ditches him for a more generous escort” (Glicksohn 8). The image of the self-centered, greedy girlfriend, not privy to her boyfriend’s alter-ego, sets a line of demarcation that proliferates in superhero comics: women are, at best, passive and in need of rescue and, at worst, shrewish, fickle, and insensitive.

  By the time Neil Gaiman first published The Sandman in 1989, comics were just beginning to address women’s liberation and feminism through characters such as Ms. Marvel. There was no reason to know that the characters in Gaiman’s new series would offer anything different from decades of sexist portrayals. B. K
eith Murphy suggests that, being raised in England rather than America, Gaiman had an easier time breaking the “mold” of American comics because his “exposure to the books and their generic expectations/restrictions was limited, whereas American children who were inclined to become comic-book creators had been inundated with the powerful imagery and storytelling of the Silver Age of American Comics” (Murphy 10). Gaiman himself notes the typical sexist disparity regarding women in comics, claiming “the really progressive thing” about Sandman was its ability to “represent any sort of woman, regardless of sexual orientation, as nice, cool, and sensible, when the tradition in comics was to portray a woman as either a damsel in distress or a man with tits” (Gaiman 124).4 Though Gaiman was not the first comics writer to treat women as more than one-dimensional over-sexualized heroines or meek damsels in distress, The Sandman’s complexity allows for a more nuanced and mature discussion regarding feminism in comics.

  Delirium, Who Was Once Delight

  Considering the well-known male demographic of the comics industry at the time, Gaiman’s willingness to spend a great deal of time with female characters in The Sandman is both surprising and potentially problematic, if Marston’s fetishistic tastes are kept in mind. Still, Gaiman’s characters generally veer away from the demeaning stereotypes of earlier heroines. While Rose and Barbie, each protagonists of an entire story arc, ultimately require the Sandman’s aid, neither is drawn nor represented in an overtly stereotypical manner. Barbie, in defiance of her namesake, covers her traditionally good looks with checkerboard face paint early in the “A Game of You” storyline. Later, to the disgust of her transvestite friend Wanda’s elder family members, Barbie draws on a veil, masking her looks with a tribute for her deceased friend. Claiming that “Sandman was always designed to move from male stories to female stories,” Gaiman reveals a desire to combat a male-dominated narrative (117). He notes that “A Game of You” “deals with girl versus boy fantasies, and the idea of gender versus the reality of gender” (118). Barbie’s final act in the storyline, crossing out the name “Alvin” and replacing it with “Wanda” in vibrant pink lipstick, shows that, in spite of a namesake suggestive of heteronormativity, Barbie is willing to acknowledge the complexities of gender and celebrates her departed friend’s individuality.

  Enter Delirium. Her first appearance, in the prologue to “Season of Mists,” is a visually jarring moment. Destiny’s hall contains portraits of each of the Endless, each depicted in formal garb. As befitting his stoic, unchanging personality, he retains a portrait of Delirium’s earlier incarnation, Delight. Also, unlike several of the other members of his family, he refuses to call her by name, referring to her as “youngest of the Endless,” revealing his unwillingness or perhaps inability to accept his sister’s altered state (21:7). Also, by referring to her as the youngest, he positions her as inherently inferior in relation to their family. At a family meeting called by Destiny at the beginning of the “Season of Mists” story arc, Delirium wears ripped and tattered leggings, a stark contrast to the formal attire worn by the rest of the family. Her appearance is also markedly different from her own portrait, where, as Delight, she wears a light blue dress and bonnet, standing before rolling hills of green. Her first lines, “Yesterday I did some really bad stuff. I mean real bad. You know. But today I did some good things. I don’t know. You know” reveal a disparate, fragmented personality, marred by self-consciousness (21:8). Throughout the meeting, Delirium struggles to maintain her composure; she absent-mindedly creates butterflies before Desire coldly and cruelly uses her influence to send them into a candle. Desire, who appears male or female depending on the situation and an individual’s perception, frequently utilizes her powers to influence or goad others into uncomfortable and difficult situations.5 She continuously needles Delirium, calling her by her former name. “Delight was a long time ago,” Delirium quietly responds, followed by an impassioned outburst: “Don’t laugh at me, Desire. Don’t make fun of me. I know what you think about me” (21:17). In the frame where Desire calls her Delight, Delirium is cloaked in shadow, accentuating the tragic fall from her original form. While Desire frequently shows malice towards Dream, who responds to her with derision of his own, her treatment of her sister exacerbates Delirium’s condition.

  In contrast to the forceful, independent-minded members of the Endless, Delirium appears as a fragmented, neurotic, young woman. The other female members of the Endless are assertive and strong-willed; Death, in ironic opposition to her title, is free-spirited, exuberant, and energetic, Despair appears to handle her often unseemly duties competently and Desire is aggressive enough to plot Dream’s downfall.6 Delirium, on the other hand, appears to be a character with little influence, constantly pitied, patronized, and at the mercy of stronger-willed characters such as Desire. Considering the lack of voice for women in comics for decades, why would Gaiman make his most overtly troubled and seemingly voiceless representative of many aspects of the victimized, helpless female archetype? Though calling them male or female is somewhat misleading since the Endless are embodiments of ideas, the gendered appearance of the various members often correlates to their personas. That Destruction is male comes as no surprise, and Desire’s dual sexuality / gender also makes sense considering the need to appeal to either men or women, depending on the situation. Making Death feminine and cheerful, as opposed to the gloomy Grim Reaper stereotype, is a surprising though welcome approach to the character. Making Delirium female, however, could imply to readers that the mental instability and neuroticism she represents is somehow more applicable to a female rather than male character. In keeping with his references to the madwoman trope throughout Sandman (through characters such as Chantal and Zelda in “A Doll’s House”), Gaiman gestures towards stereotypes against women and mental instability with the character of Delirium. His treatment of her, however, is more complex than merely classifying her as a victim of mental unbalance. Over the course of the series, Delirium comes to stand as a vessel for reader identification, open to numerous interpretations of her bizarre mental state.

  Though she frames her discussion in terms of autobiographical graphic narratives, Hillary Chute’s examination of the feminist concerns can also be used to better understand Gaiman’s use of a problematic character such as Delirium. Claiming that “some of today’s most riveting feminist cultural production is in the form of accessible yet edgy graphic narratives,” Chute examines authors such as Marjane Satrapi and Alison Bechdel that have chosen stories that require both showing and telling (2). This of course is hardly unique to the nonfiction narratives Chute focuses on and applies equally well to a comic like The Sandman; Delirium’s fragmented, chaotic appearance, coupled with her loopy, psychedelic word balloons adds an indispensable visual aid to her internal struggles. Like the women in the narratives Chute discusses, Gaiman presents Delirium as both a “looking and looked-at subject” (2): in addition to following her narrative function in the story, readers are free to project their own insecurities and concerns onto her unnamed and unexplained transition from Delight. Delirium’s youthful appearance and more approachable nature make her an enticing vessel for reader identification in comparison with the stolid, unflappable Dream.

  The most notable aspect of Delirium’s supposed victimhood is that readers are never privy to the knowledge of why Delirium, who was once Delight, altered her self-identification. While much of The Sandman’s plot is ambiguous, such as Dream’s complex plan in the “Kindly Ones” arc that ultimately results in his own death, Delirium’s alteration is one of the few mysteries that remain deliberately unanswered. Inviting readers to hypothesize as to her condition is hardly a novel element in comics. As Scott McCloud points out, comics universally make use of closure, which he defines as the “phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole” (McCloud 63). Though McCloud is referring to the way in which the brain processes the juxtaposed images of comics and what occurs between panels (the gutter), the elements of reader-r
esponse take on a new meaning when applied to comics. As McCloud describes it, “every act committed to paper by the comics artist is aided and abetted by a silent accomplice. An equal partner in crime knows as the reader” (68). The reader, then, not the artist, determines how hard an axe falls or other such grisly details that occur between panels, to use McCloud’s example. In Delirium’s case, readers must imagine the violence or tragedy that befell her and led to her transformation from Delight since it is left deliberately ambiguous.

  By intentionally leaving Delirium’s tragedy unresolved, Gaiman invites readers to assign their own rationale for her fragmented status and prevents pigeonholing Delirium’s transformation into one form of trauma. Such an approach invites individual interpretation, hearkening back to the hallmarks of reader-response criticism. In Stanley Fish’s words, “it is the structure of the reader’s experience rather than any structures available on the page that should be the object of description” (152). Thus, in the case of Delirium, why she has changed in the Sandman universe is not as important as how readers approach her condition. Wolfgang Iser also points to the importance of the reader’s reaction to a text, maintaining a work is “composed of a variety of perspectives, which outline the author’s view and also provide access to what the reader is meant to visualize” (35). Rather than depicting Delirium as, say, the victim of a spurned lover or a family catastrophe, her tragedy is universal, all-encompassing and open for readers to see her or his own experiences in her character. In the opening description of Delirium, the narrator posits that “some say the tragedy of Delirium is her knowledge that, despite being older than suns, older than gods, she is forever the youngest of the Endless,” but this explanation is merely one possibility (21:10). What makes her unique in comics is that her tragedy is unseen by the audience; as Fish points out, a reader’s own experience can color his or her reaction to the character. The closing line of her opening description forces the reader to consider her state of existence: “Who knows what Delirium sees, through her mismatched eyes?” (21:10). For all of her seeming inadequacy in comparison to her siblings, Delirium represents a universal tragedy in which readers can project their own anxieties and societal concerns.