Today we’re joined by Heather Rose Jones. Heather is the author of the Alpennia historic fantasy series: an alternate-Regency-era Ruritanian adventure revolving around women’s lives woven through with magic, alchemy, and intrigue. Her short fiction has appeared in The Chronicles of the Holy Grail, Sword and Sorceress, Lace and Blade, and at Podcastle.org. Heather blogs about research into lesbian-relevant motifs in history and literature at the Lesbian Historic Motif Project and has a podcast covering the field of lesbian historical fiction which has recently expanded into publishing audio fiction. She reviews books at The Lesbian Review as well as on her blog. She works as an industrial failure investigator in biotech pharmaceuticals.
So often the focus on women in fantasy novels is on the exceptions, the extraordinary women who break past whatever limitations are placed on their gender within the setting of the story. And we need those larger than life women to change boundaries and expectations. But what of the women who challenge gender limitations by pushing forward, day by day, in more ordinary lives? Women whose support for each other is what enables the world to keep turning?
Each of the central characters of my Alpennia series so far has been exceptional in some way. But there is one way in which they follow the expectations for women in early 19th century European society: they have lives that are primarily populated by other women. For the most part, their friends, their enemies, their allies, their rivals, their closest loved ones are all other women. In every age when the genders have lived segregated lives, this has been the case. Men might have influence over the larger course of your life, but women were the heart of your existence.
When I began creating the social world of the Alpennia stories, I embraced this concept and promised myself to write as if women mattered. As if they could build communities and social networks and power structures that could drive the plot of an entire series without ever needing to center men in the narrative.
Some of them are directly challenging male institutions in the process. Margerit Sovitre’s frustration with begging for scraps of learning at the university drives her to found her own women’s college. Antuniet Chazillen pushes past the barriers to women in science by hard work and stubbornness. Luzie Valorin recognizes the subtle ways in which her male mentors have discouraged her work and stops letting them hobble her dreams.
None of them could have succeeded without alliances to other women whose work might not challenge power as directly, but does it just as effectively. Jeanne de Cherdillac is my archetype of the “social fixer”–the woman who knows all the undercurrents in society and knows how a word here and a hint there can move mountains. A woman who knows what people want and how to use those desires to build bridges. Barbara Lumbeirt knows exactly which rules can be effectively broken and which must be subtly bent. Over them all, Princess Anna Atilliet knows how to turn these women’s talents to her own advantage in ways that a prince couldn’t have commanded.
But in the newest Alpennia novel, Floodtide, we see women whose alliances and concerns operate at a more immediate level and can be a matter of life and death. For laundry maid Rozild Pairmen, her enemy isn’t the footman who is jealous of her relationship with her fellow maid, but the housekeeper who holds the power to dismiss her at a whim. Her second chance comes not from the priest whose judgment she fears, but from the dressmaker who understands her desperation and knows what favors to call in–favors carefully collected and hoarded from the women who are her clientele.
Roz cements her position in her new household via the other female servants–men are a hazard and unreliable. Her dream of learning dressmaking would be far more difficult if not for weaving a friendship with Celeste, the dressmaker’s daughter, and Roz in turn sets herself to fulfill Celeste’s dearest dream.
When women matter, it isn’t only by riding out on quests or fighting battles or breaking rules. Sometimes it’s being a confidante, knowing who to turn to for help, and holding the lantern for another’s work. The heart and the core of the Alpennia series is that thought: that whatever women do matters, and that they can change the world.
Bella Books: http://www.bellabooks.com/Bella-Author-Heather-Rose-Jones-cat.html
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Heather-Rose-Jones/e/B00ID2LQE6
Website: http://alpennia.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Heather-Rose-Jones-490950014312292/
Twitter: @heatherosejones