When Women Were Dragons

Barnhill explores the many ways in which the issues of personal agency and unconditional love are related. The idea of self-sacrifice in the interest of one’s beloved is a tried-and-true literary theme, and one Barnhill investigates throughout her novel by way of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Tithonus.” In the poem, a goddess becomes so infatuated with her lover that she grants him immortality in an attempt to keep him for herself forever. In this way, his life is taken from him and given in service to another—a concept with which Bertha identifies until the day she dies. The line “The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,” is often repeated throughout the text. That this poem, and Bertha’s explanation of it, comes so early in the novel frames each relationship within the dual context of sacrifice and duty.

“If you love something, let it go,” says the adage, but in many family systems, love is often so deeply intertwined with duty that love itself becomes tainted, transforming instead into suppressed rage, resentment, and spiritual misery. Thus, the decision to dragon is presented in the novel as an either-or choice, for the restrictive society in which the protagonists live has decreed that love and sacrifice go hand-in-hand. Dragoned women are therefore given no third option: to be true to both themselves and their families. For many women in the novel, they must let their families go in order to live for themselves. Alex comes to understand that this is also what she must do—for Sonja Blomgren, for Marla, and for Beatrice. And she also understands that the power of choice lies at the very heart of dragoning. In this realization, she accepts that sometimes, people who dragon must choose themselves, fleeing their homes and their families. Sometimes, as is the case with Marya Tilman (the original “dragoned” woman), this is a matter of safety. Other times, as is the case with Marla, dragoning is a decision that does not come easily and exacts a heavy price, for ultimately, the burden of familial duty must be taken up by someone; if Marla abandons her child, someone else must parent that child. This is why, when Alex and Dr. Gantz discuss dragoning and the freedom of choice, he replies, “That’s the thing about dragoning—it doesn’t solve everything. The body changes, but the self is still the self, with all its original problems and consternations” (276). People are complex, intricate systems made up of their hopes, dreams, communities, and responsibilities. But this complexity is never served by repression or homogenization—and certainly not by the assumption that a woman’s natural duty is to love and nurture both their children and husbands at the expense of themselves.

To love people authentically also means embracing this complexity—a lesson Alex learns through the presence of dragons in her life. Women in the 1950s (and still today in some variation) were socialized to be natural caretakers, inherently responsible for nurturing their loved ones and children. But what is natural for one person is not natural for another, and in some circumstances, love requires more pain than pleasure. Unconditional love, especially, sometimes means letting go of the exact person one wishes to hold onto. As Alex says, “Sometimes, I feel that we are all tricked by love, and its rigid requirements of pain. We find the love of our lives and cleave to our beloved when we are still quite young and do not yet understand that we must, by our nature, die someday” (360). Natural love then, is not the inherent duty to nurture and caretaker as a woman, but instead to acknowledge that everyone we love may someday die or change or outgrow us.