Margery Hourihan writes according to the typical story that has been told over and over again that ”..white European men are the natural masters of the world because they are strong, skillful, rational and dedicated.” and further “…women are designed to serve them.. (the men i.e.)).
Silverfin is about a young white male. He is confronted by enemies which he must overcome. He is good at fighting. He fights the “others”. The women in the story appear only in relation to the hero.
Is Silverfin by Charlie Higson just another book to confirm the superiority, dominance and success of the white European male?
First of all, one must remember that the story is set in the past, equality between the genders has changed to the better over the last years. Higson makes Wilder Lawless a girl of today set in the past, which makes Bond seem dull and stupid to the modern reader of today, when he tells Wilder Lawless that a girl cannot be a part of solving the mystery. Wilder herself lets Bond know there and then that she is strong by wrestling him down. Bond leaves her out when he and Red Kelly goes to solve the mystery, but it is Wilder Lawless who saves him, saves his life and she helps him to succeed in his mission Wilder has a mind of her own, she dislikes the Hellabore and has a personal reason why.
Bond still has his old fashioned way of treating women when he tells her he will be back to visit her one day, but lets the reader know that he probably will not. Lawless, on her behalf, answers in a modern way that she has no intention to sit there to wait for him but is going to see the world herself.
James Bond, however, guards his old reputation in being successful with women. Lawless is falling for him, is kissing him, Red Kelly is really trying hard to impress on Lawless but without success, she only has eyes for Bond.
In naming Wilder Lawless Higson makes her a modern girl.
Bond is confronted by enemies. But who are the enemies? It is not the communists not the Middle East nor the Muslims but the Americans and the Germans. Science is the enemy, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Higson is stepping away from the stereotyped enemy and make the enemy ourselves i.e. white western male.
Higson is white, he is male, he is European therefore it is not strange that his protagonist is as well. Higson makes Bond familiar with modern values he challenges in a way the old way of thinking. Rome was not built in a day and one has to change values little but little and Higson has taken a step in the right direction.
Hi! Has Higson really taken a step in right direction? I'm not so sure. You can break down this book from first till last page and you will found a lot off stuff to discuss.(In case if that's what you really want)Many novels are written in the same way today and we enjoy reading them! Isn't so? I do. This business of writing in this typical genre generate lots of money so why switch over? This is perhaps an issue we would discuss with our pupils. As Margery Hourihan says in her article: Analysis of narrative point of view,focalization and narrative voice can show the reader's sympathies and perceptions are manipulated. Interesting...
SvaraRaderaMona, still Charlie Higson is white and male, yes it is an action story with all it's ingredients, a part from that I think the issue is that we need to see more authors being women, more books from differnt continents being translated into Western languages. I don't think we can blame Higson.
RaderaWe can see female writers using female protagonists being very succesful today, Läckberg and Marklund for example. Although their books are nowhere near as well written as Higson's book, they write criminal novels with women being the heroines. Even Stig Larsson uses a woman as a protagonist. Although I sometimes feel that all writers does not succeed in having a protagonist having another gender or culture than him- or herself, as we have previously read there are some criticism in white's narrates the voice of the "other".
One must look at the genre. We actually learn quite a lot about British society in reading the book as a by-product as the same time as we get a great read.
Lina, I agree with you in that I also think that Charlie Higson has taken a step in the right direction. I have been reading the reviews of the new Bond film "Skyfall" and I find it interesting that most critics praise the film because they think it shows a more human Bond, who has feelings and a soft side, compared to his predecessors. Maybe the small changes in values that we can see in young Bond, also has reached the big screens? The story of the hero and his quest simply has to change. Not everything, but small parts of it, to be able to interest people. The hero has to show a human side and not be invincible, otherwise the story becomes boring and does not interest anyone anymore.
SvaraRaderaI highly agree with Lina that it is interesting who the enemies are in Silverfin - the white western male, ourselves.
SvaraRaderaMore often we see or think the enemies are foreign people from different cultures and countries. This is unfortuantely human - to be afraid of the unknown.
But it is wise and enormously important to be able to see the bad and wicked in our own society. This is what we experience in Silver fin