Response to Aunt Maria
Power has often been something of
double-edged sword, while it grants us pleasures beyond our wildest dreams. It
can also shape the more ugly parts of a person and transform them into
something that people can easily despise or fear. This is the case with Diana
Wynne Jones book Aunt Maria that centers on themes of Tyranny, Control and
Individualism. The story centers around two children “Mig” and her brother
Chris who along with their mum go to a mysterious seaside town to visit their
Aunt Maria.
Who on the surface seems like a
cuddly old aged pensioner of an Aunt, however she is slowly unraveled as a
tyrant who wants to stomp out individualism and equality with an iron fist
through a convent of witches who turn out to be the real power behind the
village. All of the men are blank faced zombies without a will of their own and
most of the children of the village are kept in an orphanage. With no families
of their own. The society of the village is matrilineal to a fault, they are
very much rooted in the beliefs of the traditional gender roles but at the same
time, Maria and her convent are destroying lives in order to get what they
want.
Aunt Maria’s regime seems somewhat
similar to that of Josef Stalin’s. Along with the whole Communist party, Stalin
wanted to also get rid of individuality, he was also very power hungry to the
point where anyone who disagreed with him ended up dead. Like Stalin, Aunt
Maria keeps the village under further control through her convent of elderly
women, a secret police whose motivation is to keep people in line.
Behind the fantasy story setting, as
well as it’s seemingly child friendly appeal is a story with some
socio-political undertones as well as questions behind the empowerment of
gender in society.
While your comment about her power structure is a very applicable, interesting metaphor, I feel like you're understating the point of such a thing.
ReplyDeleteAunt Maria was a bit of a wake-up-call in terms of her position, as it's much more common for brutal antagonists to be male figures, as well as utilize the intense, dictatorial ways she did. She was a role-reversal meant to point out how reliant literature can be on the formula of power allotted to each gender. Not only is she like the worst dictators of old, but she's their sex's opposite, and that's why she was so horrible; women weren't meant to do such cruel things or be as powerful, which is why Aunt Maria is such a strange and unnerving character.