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Well, I'm back! I helped run an event for Baraka Umm Ayman Foundation (where I'm a contributor), I got married, went on a mini-moon (a precursor to our honeymoon - which has to happen later because of work), moved, and poked out a few words onto a few pages. Laying it all out like that...ok so maybe there's good reason I haven't written much. But that's not what this post is about! This post is about a book I read which was captivating if not strictly enjoyable. To find out what I mean, read below!  Deerskin by Robin McKinley I thought I'd read Deerskin a long time ago, though now I think I actually read a different adaptation of the fairytale Donkeyskin. Still, when I chose to start Deerskin, I did so knowing I'd read and enjoyed other McKinley works, so I borrowed the e-book from Libby and got to reading. I got through part one and put it down, fully intending to DNF it. It's such a dark story (which I was prepared for, given the horror of the fairytale it's based on, but not prepared enough, as it turns out). And its lyrical sort of prose makes it both engrossing and dizzying to get through if you don't focus. It's also written very much like a fairytale, with elaborate descriptions, poetic repetition, and in a narrative style with little traditionally structured dialogue, which can make it difficult to parse without dedication. But I wanted to know how things would work out for Lissar, our main character, and some of the mysteries that were presented in part one niggled at me...and then I read some reviews. And so many of the reviews seemed to just not get this book. Disliking it because it's not your sort of read is all well and good, but far too many reviewers really showed that they didn't understand the point of Deerskin, and had questions about plot points that I thought were clear, if you just critically engaged with the text. So out of a sort of spiteful determination to review this book and do it justice, I picked it up again and finished reading it. And I loved it - not because it's necessarily an enjoyable read - but because it's an engrossing, moving, aching read. So here are my thoughts, semi-structured. Spoilers abound. Content warnings for discussion of rape, incest, miscarriage, violence, and abuse. Lissar's ParentsWe’re introduced to the king and queen through Hurra, Lissar’s nursemaid, who tells her (and the readers) their story - a grand fairytale romance in itself. At least, until it becomes clear that they’re selfishly and ruinously obsessive, and it makes them monsters. “The brief battle with the dragon brought other images to [Lissar's] mind; glimpses of—she knew not what. It was as if a door had opened and closed again too quickly for her eyes to recognize anything behind it; a brief stab of horror assailed her, like a clap of thunder might strike her ears.” (278)
Lissar's parents are draconically obsessed with each other. Or rather, the king is obsessed with the queen and the queen is obsessed with his obsession with her - so really she's obsessed with her own beauty and its effect on everyone (as the king sought to marry her only because she was the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms). The impression I got was that the queen married him because he was the most devoted to her, fulfilling her father's impossible task while being utterly focused on winning her and pleasing her. Evidence: he accepted and pursued the most impossible of all the tasks that her father had set her suitors at the risk of death (while another king decided against doing so and happily married a distant cousin instead), and threw the apple from the tree of sorrow and leaf from the tree of joy, which he'd nearly died to earn, into the fire "for the love of [Lissar's] mother". (21) And though other suitors successfully completed their tasks, she waited for him, specifically. One thing of note: neither of Lissar's parents are named. I think this is partly a fairytale element wherein characters are unnamed because they’re archetypes, but I also think it represents their relationship with Lissar: dysfunctional in the extreme. For most of her life she's completely neglected by them, so to her they’re the king and queen of a grand story and only incidentally her parents. And then later, they're emblems (archetypes) of horror and suffering, and not really people anymore. The Function of BeautyThere's something innately horrific about the queen’s beauty. In fact, it seems to drive people to terror as much as destructive adoration (see: the "very pretty girl" who fell at the queen's feet sobbing and for whom another character felt fear, "and wondered at [it]", when the queen bent to her). (110) There's a strong suggestion that the queen's ‘mysterious wasting sickness’ is really just old age. She became ‘a little duller’ and she’s so self-obsessed—and her whole identity revolves so wholly around her looks—that she wastes away from despair. Her obsession with her beauty is like dragon-sickness (to borrow a Tolkien reference); it infects everybody who focuses on it/her. It's as if she's infused her own beauty with horror, or that her beauty has been twisted into something horrific by everyone else's obsession with it. The queen's not entirely a victim of her beauty: she is rotten underneath it all. She completely neglects Lissar, and she doesn't care how tormented her husband is by her sickness. She barely tolerates him as he weeps over her on her deathbed. She's completely consumed with her fading beauty and with trying to preserve it. When her character in the story becomes that of a portrait, she seems to haunt it the same way she haunts Lissar, who has terrifying visions and/or hallucinations of her mother maliciously regarding and attacking her, right up until the end, when she overcomes the spectre of her mother (literally and figuratively) and the portrait spontaneously combusts. (628) Still, it's implied that the queen’s father was (like the queen's husband will be towards Lissar) obsessed with his daughter's beauty and utterly possessive of her. In fact, their relationship may have been abusive and incestuous as well, which would make Lissar the victim of a perpetuated cycle of violence. The evidence for this is that the last reference to the queen's father - of premature and sudden aging - mirrors the fate of Lissar’s father. This suggests to me that the queen might have been groomed into becoming this horrible person, and taught/internalized that the only thing of value to her is her own beauty and the power it gives her over others. This is further, if obliquely, implied when one of the ministers tries to curry favour with Lissar and put her entirely under his influence. "Had Ash not come to her, [Lissar] might have discovered greed instead, for her world as she understood it had ended with her mother's death; and what she had learned by that death was that she was alone, and had always been alone, and had grown accustomed to it without knowing what she was accustoming herself to." (82) Now imagine if the queen, alone with her father (as there's no mention of her own mother) had felt the same way Lissar had? Only she had no Ash to focus on, only her own beauty and loneliness. It would explain her greedy attachment to her husband, who is obsessed with her to the exclusion of everything else (his own daughter and kingdom included). Remember, greed and dragons are associated with each other, and the queen herself is a creature of greed. "...one of the flame-women put out only one hand while the other reached out with both of hers; and...the watchers saw that the beauty of one who held out both her hands was the greater, but that the greater beauty was of the kind that stopped hearts and did not lift them or bring them joy." (625) This person is revealed, in the end, to be Lissar's mother, while the 'flame-woman' who holds out only one hand is Lissar. I think it can be argued that two hands outstretched is associated with taking, grasping, keeping, and holding - and thus greed, while one outstretched hand suggests giving, reaching, offering, pleading. This would be in line with both Lissar and her mother's characters. So the queen's beauty is horrific both for what it masks and also inherently. For example, the artist who wins the commission to paint the queen's portrait begins to feel trapped in something awful, and that whole section of the book reads as frightening. He's utterly unable to stop painting, nearly to his detriment, but he doesn't want anything to do with the final work and flees as though escaping a monster the moment that he finishes it. And it's said to be a true painting, capturing the queen and her beauty more truly than in life. The painting then becomes like Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray or like a horcrux from Harry Potter; it contains the queen's spirit, and her spirit is an awful, jealous, cruel creature. I'm reminded of this quote from Donna Tart's The Secret History - "Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it." Also, "Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” I found a great article about the intersection of beauty and terror here. I especially liked the idea that "[o]ne appreciates as beautiful that which one perceives as superior to oneself" because, when applied to Deerskin, it brings another dimension to the queen's beauty: that of superiority. And it neatly explains why she would command her husband to never remarry unless it's to someone who is her match; i.e., someone who is as superior to all others (because again, all she values is her own beauty). She is secure in the belief that no one is as beautiful as she (that she is superior), and that she will remain the queen of her husband's heart, and the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, and never lose her preeminence, not even in death. * Lissar's father is also, outwardly, beautiful. For one thing, he's a king and the wealthiest in the seven kingdoms. That inherently makes him attractive, in-universe. And as king, his subjects look up to him as sort of divine (see: the divine right of kings), or at least as divinely blameless. When he's consumed by grief and neglects his kingdom after his wife's death, his subjects don't consider him a bad king. They don't think anything of his neglect of his daughter either, and when he declares he'll marry her, they blame her for taking advantage of his grief and choose to believe she manipulated him. I saw some confusion as to Lissar's father's fate in many reviews. Careful reading explains what happened to him: when she confronts him, she strips him of the veneer of his beauty/kingliness to reveal who he is: an awful, violent, spiritually decrepit, "broken old man where a proud king had once stood." (628) By exposing him, by telling the truth about him and what he did to her and who he is, Lissar strips the veneer of kingliness from him, magically tearing that mask away. The magic ritual is a literary vehicle for her expunging the trauma of what happened to her, which she is no longer repressing or hiding. It's why she bleeds. She's letting go of something that doesn't serve her and that she doesn't need to keep inside anymore, and she can let it go. That's the function of menstruation, literally and (textually) magically. * As for Lissar; she's as beautiful as her mother, nearly identically so. The only difference (outwardly) is in their spirit/how they conduct themselves around others/how they're perceived - no one realizes Lissar looks like her mother for a long time, simply because she's so shy and quiet and withdrawn. And yet, even when they do see her beauty, they still don’t see her, just as they don't see the reality of the king and queen, blinded by their beauty. Lissar’s beauty returns to her twice - first, when the goddess disguises her and thus conceals her physical and emotional scars and second, when she confronts her father. Then, her appearance (aka identity, as that is how she's recognized) returns to her. I saw someone write that they thought this was a cop-out, that for her original appearance to be returned to her undermines her story. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of Lissar and Deerskin as a whole. The point is that it doesn't matter what she looks like (i.e. like her mother or like the moon goddess), she has innate value as a person and, crucially, her appearance doesn't change who she is in herself. It's simply an aspect of her. The return of her original face is also symbolic; it represents that she is now accepting/confronting what happened to her. Part of her coping with her trauma was amnesia - she forgot what happened to her, but also forgot who she was. The goddess giving her a new face and assisting with the repression of her memories was to give Lissar time to heal and grow strong so that eventually, she could deal with what happened to her and reclaim her identity - the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. So we have Lissar (beautiful but unseen), the queen (beautiful but horrifying), and the king (beautiful and awful) and, eventually, the prince - who is not beautiful at all, except for how he is, because he's got a lovely soul even if his face is plain, and it makes him beautiful to those who love him. Elsewhere, we have the one suitor to the queen who marries a "plain girl...with a heavy jaw and thick legs" who is said to be "very kind, and loves her husband" - and this is not valued at all by Hurra or, it can be assumed, by anyone else in Lissar's kingdom (16). The Heart of DeerskinDeerskin is about Lissar and how she grows as a person - not just after the assault she underwent, but after the neglect of her parents and the way she was raised by Hurra. That's the point of the story - her character developing and healing and growing. That's also why, I think, her father's ultimate fate, and her romance with Prince Ossin, might feel underdeveloped to some readers, and why the ending might feel rushed/abrupt. It's not; it only feels that way if you're reading for a resolution to the plot, rather than the resolution to Lissar's character arc. Take the final scene: Ossin doesn’t trap Lissar, he doesn’t close his arms around her, he doesn’t keep her. He acknowledges her; her past, her trauma, and the fact she might leave/might not stay/might run away or keep running or never come back - i.e. that she will always carry the scars of what happened to her, and that it will always have some impact on her and thus on their relationship. He accepts that all she can do is try and stay, and to love him. It is consummate romance. It's also not really the focus of Deerskin. The point is that there is gentle, real, good, and true love out there and that Lissar is worthy of love and of loving despite what happened to her. The point is that she doesn't have to be beautiful (healed, unaffected, virginal), she doesn't have to be a princess in the way her kingdom wanted her to be (dutiful, a reflection of her parents), she doesn't even have to stop being Moonwoman or minding the puppies - regardless, she will be loved. And so when she goes to Ossin, she is choosing - once again - to live and to try. Not just for Ash, and not just for him - but for herself too.
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30/12/2025 05:21:27 am
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