Iron Widow

“There’s no such thing as karma […] Or, if it does exist, it sure doesn’t give a shit about people like me. Some of us were born to be used and discarded. We can’t afford to simply go along with the flow of life, because nothing in this world has been created, built, or set up in our favor. If we want something, we have to push back against everything around us and take it by force.”

Zetian believes that discomfort, sacrifice, and action need to be intentionally chosen in order to change the world. Zetian’s speech before leaving for Kaihuang thus divides the world rather simplistically into people who actively resist and those who passively accept the world as it is, and this black-and-white thinking dominates her worldview until Xiuying challenges her with a much more nuanced perspective of how people choose to navigate the forces that compel them to commit distasteful actions against their will, often sacrificing certain principles in order to protect something much dearer to them.

“I hate the way I’ve contorted myself into what people think a girl should be, ready to please, ready to serve. Yet I love the power it’s given me, a power that lies in being underestimated, in wearing assumptions as a disguise.”

Though Zetian struggles to identify with the gender expectations imposed upon her by the dystopian society in which she is embroiled and bristles at the unjust obligations placed on her by others, she paradoxically embraces the roles she is given and uses them as tools with which to compel world around her to serve her own rebellious needs. Zetian’s dissociation from being a girl thus allows her to navigate the social expectations of the men around her and gain the upper hand.

“Infinite possibilities open to me at once. That’s right, I’m no longer human. I’ve been set free from my broken body, that husk of flesh and bone that has been prepared all its existence to be used for the whims and pleasures of men.”

Zetian’s physical disability and the pain it causes her daily serve as powerful sources of her anger for the injustices of Huaxian society. Ironically, embodying the powerful forms of the Chrysalises is much more in accordance with Zetian’s authentic sense of self than is her own broken body, for the mechas ultimately become the instrument through which she is able to impose her own strong will upon the world that seeks to control her. This mindset also frees her from the gendered expectations imposed upon her human body.

“I imagine the struggles that went down in the air around me. The voices that refused to be silenced, the hands that refused to be bound, the spirits that refused to be broken. […] It’s hilarious. Men want us so badly for our bodies, yet hate us so much for our minds.”

With this quote, it becomes clear that Zetian is likely not the first Iron Widow, and that her holding cell in Kaihuang has been home to many other Iron Widows who were silenced and scrubbed from history. The notion that men want women solely for their bodies is also portrayed in the most literal sense in the novel with the cruel convention of using women’s bodies as nothing more than batteries to power the mysterious Chrysalises. In Huaxian society, any woman who does not fulfill that limited role is labeled dangerous and quickly removed from the public eye, for the mind is the one part of a person that cannot ever be fully controlled.

“I could die. I could really die with one twitch of the soldier’s finger. Bang, and then nothing. But if I don’t detach myself from this fear, they will pummel me with it, choke me with it, enslave me with it. What would be the point of sticking around then?”

Zetian’s ability to grab power and control the men around her is based on her ability to detach from the fear of failing to meet societal expectations. In this quote, she has calmly and dispassionately evaluated the deadly costs of succumbing to fear, and thus her detachment becomes the ultimate source of her power over the men of Huaxia as she firmly and coldly pursues her plots of revenge at both the personal and the societal level.

“And, in the end, isn’t that all dignity is? The boundaries and values you decide for yourself? I know what matters most to me, and it has nothing to do with any semblance of ‘purity.’ I will not make myself small and crumple into a sad creature of fear that lives to please Li Shimin in hopes of earning his mercy.”

Dignity is core to Zetian’s identity, and she ultimately finds it in the unlikeliest of ways: by detaching from the injustices of the world around her and preserving herself and her ultimate goals of power and revenge while doing whatever she must in the moment to obtain those goals. Zetian’s ability to let go of societal expectations and value her own sense of dignity allows her to escape from the restraints put on her by the army, even as she seems to acquiesce to them.

“I am what the worst kind of hope looks like. The kind that has driven group after group of girls here to be prettied into concubines. Families will point at me—this tamed, airbrushed image of me—to calm down their daughters about being sold to the army.”

Even while Zetian succeeds, her success is twisted and redefined by the military, who seek to convince other women that they, like Zetian, will not die like every other concubine-pilot and should therefore dedicate themselves to this same tired cause. Thus, in her quest for rebellion, Zetian inevitably has a certain brand of cognitive dissonance, for in order to destroy the pilot system that she so despises, she must first be complicit in creating further propaganda designed to praise its existence and perpetuate its use.

“We were doomed from the beginning. The world will never forgive us for what we’ve each done, and there will always be those who will love to make us suffer. Not like we would’ve gained any respect by lying down and letting them do it.”

Above all else, Zetian’s outlook on life remains cynical, for she believes that no matter what she does, she is destined to lose. Yet with this mindset comes an odd type of freedom, for if Zetian truly has nothing to lose after her sister’s death, then there is no limit to how far she can go to achieve her chosen goals.

“When you cherish someone for how amazing they are, you don’t pluck them from their roots just to watch them wither in your hands. You help them bloom into the incredible thing they’re really meant to be.”

In this quote, Yizhi’s poetic metaphor compares Zetian to a flower or plant struggling to blossom in difficult circumstances, and it also encapsulates his deep and abiding love for her and his ultimate wish to help her to thrive despite the poor “soil” in which she has been planted. Displaying a wisdom far beyond his years, Yizhi understands that love, in order to be authentic, cannot be inherently possessive or controlling. The metaphor of a blooming flower suggests that love and control are polar opposites, for if, like other men, Yizhi were to seek to control Zetian, the relationship would not function. Similarly, a flower cannot be forced to bloom or flourish. Instead, it must be nurtured and coaxed to do so of its own accord.

“[Xing Tian] and the other pilots must also be terrified of you. You could kill any of them by dragging them into a Chrysalis, something that has given them nothing but power up until now. They have no idea how to handle that.”

This quote reinforces the degree to which Zetian’s continued existence threatens the social code of expectations and interactions between male and female pilots. The male pilots have suddenly been disabused of the notion that they are invincible and must confront the possibility that the Chrysalis pilot arrangement is in fact artificial and is not proof of their inherent superiority as males.

“This is exactly who I am. But…it was never the alcohol that I decided was worth more than those girls. It was me. I let them die to save myself. Every. Single. Time.”

Shimin believes in personal accountability for every action he and others take, even when those actions involve substance abuse. Shimin’s commitment to personal accountability is a testament to the true strength of his underlying character, and this ultimately causes Zetian’s opinion to shift in his favor and facilitate the eventual blossoming of the three-way relationship that sustains the main characters throughout their many challenges. His very grief and remorse for his prior deeds speak not to his contemptibility, but rather to the nobility of conscience that allows him to feel such anguish for his unwitting role in causing the deaths of so many.

“He should be the Iron King, and I should be the Iron Queen. Yet Iron Demon and Iron Widow is all they’ll let us be. This will not do. I will not let this power go. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned so far, it’s that brute strength means nothing on its own. It just makes everyone else want to strike you down.”

Zetian’s political maneuvers are necessary due to her marginalized and stigmatized existence. The military men (and the entity of the military itself) are allowed to use brute force to achieve nefarious ends, and this is evidenced by their callous discarding of so many concubine-pilots like herself. Thus, her need for allies is due to the unequal treatment that she will receive if she resorts to employing the same kind of brute force that is used against her.

“How do you take the fight out of half the population and render them willing slaves? You tell them they’re meant to do nothing but serve from the minute they’re born. You tell them they’re weak. You tell them they’re prey. You tell them over and over, until it’s the only truth they’re capable of living.”

Women in Iron Widow reinforce the patriarchal order of Huaxia as often as the men do. Zetian believes this is because their spirits have been broken, and she uses the metaphor of prey and predator to personify the arbitrary distinctions that Huaxia makes between the capabilities and roles of men and women, for if women believe themselves to be the prey, then they are fundamentally incapable of seeking to become the predator.

“I’m so dazed by everything that I have to make myself remember Yizhi’s tales of how the dazzling lights are only a surface glamor, like the perfumed silk shoes that girls wear on their bound, festering feet.”

Zetian is awestruck by the sight of Chang’an, the capital city. The simile of the bound feet allows her to understand through her own bodily experience that Chang’an is just as much a part of her oppression, and that the spectacle of its beautiful appearance is but a shiny veneer that conceals a dark and ugly reality. And just as Zetian can barely hobble about on her mutilated feet, this beating heart of Huaxian society is similarly diseased in function, although the hypocrisy of its bright and attractive appearance will never allow it to admit the corruption that seethes within.

“Gao Qiu was right about one thing: there’s not a stratum of the world that doesn’t need girls. Maybe we’re devalued precisely because we’re so valuable. The world is too afraid of not being able to obtain and control us to respect our true worth.”

This quote emphasizes the inconvenient reality that Huaxian society desperately needs women in order to function. As Qiu points out, women do everything from cooking for and feeding the men to raising the next generation of people. The exploitative colony of Huaxia and its genocide against the Hunduns thus relies on the constant exploitation and oppression of women so that they will complete these vital tasks, while obscuring the reality that without women’s essential labor, the very society that oppresses them would fall apart at the seams.

“What’s holding them back is that they don’t believe there’s any way for a woman to live a meaningful life other than by rearing a family. I’ll show them; I’ll prove to them that it’s not true. We can live for more. We can live for justice. Change. Vengeance. Power.”

As with the male pilots, Zetian’s very existence illustrates to the women around her that another way of existing is possible. By exploiting this dynamic in the course of her quest, Zetian ultimately conflates her desire for vengeance and power with the need for justice and change, suggesting that her own personal quest is bound up in larger needs for societal revolution.

“[Love] can be infinite, as much as your heart can open.”

Yizhi’s ideas about love are integral to the polyamorous relationship between the three main characters, and they also directly contradict mainstream ideas of love in Huaxian society, which views women as something to be controlled and thus defines love itself as a finite resource to be fought over.

“Wende, who should’ve been his Match, yet caved under his spirit pressure. It wasn’t because she was weaker after all. It was because the pilot system didn’t physically let her pilot at full potential.”

Wende’s title of “Balanced Match” is an ironic foreshadowing of the truth about the Chrysalis seats. It is ironic because Wende and Shimin were truly a Balanced Match, unlike the other Balanced Matches of the book in which the woman actually has stronger spirit pressure than the man. If the seats were truly balanced, Wende would still be alive. Had Wende sat in the yang seat, as Zetian does with Zheng, she would have lived as well, but women are traditionally forbidden from piloting in the more dominant seat.

“I think this whole concept of women being docile and obedient is nothing but wishful thinking. Or why would you put so much effort into lying to us? […] [Girls] like me are everywhere, barely putting up the façade of wives and daughters and concubines.”

Huaxian society is portrayed as a powder keg of women waiting for an equitable future. The great lengths that the Huaxian government goes to in order to cover up the truth about the Chrysalises and Zetian’s existence suggest that they are afraid of society tipping in a more equitable direction, and thus Zetian’s personal quest for revenge becomes the spark that lights the proverbial tinderbox ablaze.

“Not for the first time, I question if being born inside Huaxia was as lucky as everyone claimed it was. If I’d been born to these left-behind Zhou folk instead, I could’ve been raised by this stunning, unbound woman. How different would I be as a person?”

Huaxia, as a colonizing force, deliberately instills a sense of national pride in its citizens to ensure that they stay focused on the task of fighting the Hunduns. This can be seen in how the Chrysalis battles are broadcast as sports-like entertainment, with the pilots having ranking scores like sports teams. It also echoes the ancient Roman concept of “panem et circenses” (“bread and circuses”), which posits that if those in power can keep the populace fed and entertained, then they can do what they please with the structure of society itself because the masses who might otherwise revolt will be content to eat well and gawp at the spectacle provided to amuse them.

“My deep-rooted notion of the pilot system rises to resist the idea—boys go in the yang seat, girls go in the yin seat—but why does that have to be the way things work? Why would the army have felt compelled to install an artificial difference to the seats if there were any inherent ones? It’s all an illusion. Another arbitrary, made-up illusion.”

Zetian, despite all of her rebellion, still struggles with the very idea of claiming the “male” seat of the Chrysalis, and her cognitive dissonance on this point—despite all that she has survived and overcome—truly brings home the extent to which she has been indoctrinated by the ingrained gender roles of Huaxia. Even at the height of the novel’s climactic action, her hesitation illustrates that defying cultural norms is an incredibly difficult undertaking.

“It’s just a change of seat, yet everything feels different. For a moment, I feel distinctly male, or what it’s supposed to mean to be male. But it doesn’t matter. Male, female, it doesn’t matter when piloting.”

Zetian’s detachment from her female nature leads her to momentarily inhabit what she has been taught is the epitome of being male: dominating others and claiming the seat of power. As she takes control of the Yellow Dragon, she decides that both of these terms are ultimately meaningless to her, and she is thus free to pursue her own personal goals.

“‘You know gender has nothing to do with spirit strength, because I exist.’ […] I pop open the Dragon’s cockpit, showing all of Huaxia the arrangement inside. Me in the yang seat, subjugating a boy who is clearly Emperor Qin Zheng.”

Zetian has repeatedly stressed that her existence is proof enough that the gender roles of Huaxia are restrictive and artificial. By revealing the seating arrangement with Qin Zheng, she practically demonstrates their artificiality. If the Yellow Dragon, the most powerful Chrysalis, can be piloted by a woman, then it stands to reason that the seating arrangement itself—and by extension, the “weakness” of women in relation to men—is in fact an artificial construct.