67 pages • 2 hours read
Sarah J. MaasA Court of Silver Flames
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Overcoming Male Abuse
The series and the book are set in a fantasy universe based on a medieval social model. As might be expected, the status of women in cultures driven by warfare is not very high. Even by medieval standards, the males in this series are particularly reprehensible in their treatment of females. Multiple female characters have suffered rape, torture, or disfigurement at the hands of males. The court library in the House of Wind has become a refuge for those most mistreated during the previous war and was established by Rhys to provide a sanctuary for the traumatized. Even the head librarian, Clotho, did not escape persecution: “Nesta didn’t want to know what had been done to Clotho, the library’s high priestess, to render her thus. To have her tongue cut out and then deliberately healed that way so the damage might never be undone. Males had hurt her” (77).
Another young priestess, Gwyn, talks about the trauma she suffered because of one of the King of Hybern’s generals. Her sister is beheaded right before her eyes, and she is raped multiple times before Azriel kills her persecutors: “‘He beheaded Catrin right there, along with two other priestesses. And then he told his soldiers to go to work on us. He claimed me. I spat in his face.’ Tears slid down her cheeks. ‘And then he…went to work’” (695). Other characters suffered trauma unrelated to wartime. Nesta’s friend Emerie had her wings mutilated by her own father: “My father was a…traditional male. He believed females should serve their families and be confined to their homes. I disagreed. He won, in the end” (108).
Aside from the shame and degradation these female characters feel, they also experience a sense of self-loathing for being unable to defend themselves. Nesta feels the same way because she couldn’t stop the King of Hybern from killing her father or prevent Elain from being thrown into the Cauldron, much less save herself from the same fate. Learning about the Valkyries and reviving their fighting skills offers Nesta and her friends a way out of the physical limitations imposed by males and a way out of their self-hatred for being powerless. As Nesta learns to handle a sword, she thinks:
Every hated enemy, every moment she’d been powerless against them simmered to the surface. And with each movement of the sword, each breath, a thought formed. It echoed with every inhale, every thrust and block. Never again. Never again would she be weak. Never again would she be at someone’s mercy. Never again would she fail. Never again, never again, never again (402).
Mastering Emotions
Throughout much of the novel, Nesta pushes away everyone who tries to help her. She does this because she feels unworthy of their love and support. No amount of external reassurance can help her because she refuses to confront her inner demons. Early in the story, she says:
To settle that writhing darkness that had simmered inside her from the moment she’d emerged from the Cauldron? Sex, music, and drink, she’d learned this past year—all of it helped. Not entirely, but it kept the power from boiling over (13).
Nesta’s solution is to suppress her negative emotions, but this does little to solve the problem. She drowns herself in sensation to numb herself and is particularly cruel to those who are able to raise the strongest emotional response in her—especially Cassian and Feyre. Cassian wisely tells her that the only way out of her internal hell is by walking straight through the middle of it. “What you feel, this guilt and pain and self-loathing—you will get through it. But only if you are willing to fight. Only if you are willing to face it, and embrace it, and walk through it, to emerge on the other side of it” (505).
Nesta isn’t able to achieve the balance he suggests until she accidentally learns about Valkyrie mind control techniques. Gwyn tells her, “They trained their minds to be weapons as sharp as any blade. To be able to keep their composure, to know how to access that place of calm in the midst of battle, made them unshakable opponents” (397). Nesta immediately recognizes meditation as a technique to fight her inner foes and uses it just as adeptly as she does a sword. In fact, she names her magical sword “Ataraxia,” which means inner peace.
Even after achieving a sense of calmness, Nesta’s journey isn’t over until she can accept the ongoing existence of feelings that are less than ideal. In an internal conversation with the spirit of the Mother, Nesta has an epiphany in which she recognizes the necessity of such feelings. Only then is her emotional self-mastery complete:
I want to feel everything. I want to embrace it with my whole heart. Even the things that hurt and hunt you? Only curiosity laced the question. Nesta allowed herself a breath to ponder it, stilling her mind once more. We need those things in order to appreciate the good. Some days might be more difficult than others, but…I want to experience all of it, live through all of it. With them (734).
Alienation and Connection
To the degree that Nesta is alienated from her own deepest feelings, she also alienates herself from everyone in her circle. Rather than taking responsibility for how she feels, she is eager to project her rage onto Feyre as the cause of all her problems: “Nesta erupted. ‘You dragged me into this mess, this horrible place. You are why I am like this, why I am stuck here’” (30). Not only does she hate Feyre for dragging the Acheron family into the Fae world, but Nesta becomes paranoid about the reaction of everyone surrounding her sister in her found family:
Nesta held her spine ramrod straight, back aching with the effort. She had never hated anyone so much as she hated all of them now. Save for the King of Hybern, she supposed. They’d all been discussing her, deeming her unfit and unchecked (32).
While she feels alienated from her biological kin and all their associates, she feels equally alienated from the human world that she left behind:
She had no desire to return to the human realm. Had never felt at home there, not really. And this strange, new Fae world … She might have accepted her different, altered body, that she was now permanently changed and her humanity gone, but she didn’t know where she belonged in this world, either (33).
Staying in the House of Wind offers Nesta a literal timeout from both worlds. It is situated high above the Fae city, and she can only access that realm by climbing down 10,000 steps. In addition, the house offers her comfort without ever telling her what to do. In a rare moment of receptivity, Nesta appreciates the kindness of the house when she might never accept such gestures from a human companion: “‘Dinner, bath, and a book,’ Nesta said aloud, shaking her head in something close to awe. ‘It’s perfect. Thank you. […] I think you might be my only friend’” (167).
Slowly and painfully, Nesta crawls back from her self-imposed emotional isolation. One of the initial signs of her recovery is her willingness to participate in a court party held at the House of Wind. “Nesta looked back at her friend. Amren smiled, and her face became as lovely as Cassian’s, as the stars arching past. ‘Welcome back to the Night Court, Nesta Archeron’” (633).
Her relationship with Cassian forges a permanent mating bond that helps reconnect her to everyone she had previously left behind. By the end of the story, having mastered her emotional turmoil, she is ready to participate in the world again: “None of it frightened her. None of it left her with that pit of despair. Not with Cassian at her side, her friends at her back, the House of Wind” (749).
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By Sarah J. Maas
