Pratchett's Women: Unauthorised Essays on Female Characters of the Discworld

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  By the time Feet of Clay comes along, the third City Watch book, Sybil has disappeared entirely. Like Mrs Colon, she has become an invisible wife, referred to when relevant, but staying out of the plot. The only consolation for this is the development of a far crunchier and more interesting relationship between Carrot and Angua, the long-awaited matter of DWARF SEX and the introduction of one of my favourite female friendships of the Discworld series.

  Feet of Clay is an excellent novel—certainly better in plot and emotional depth than the previous City Watch books. It has a clever police procedural plot concerning a not-quite-assassination attempt on Lord Vetinari, and the community of golems in Ankh-Morpork. Along with the twists and turns of the mystery, the narrative contains a meta-commentary on police work in general. Everything Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms did well, Feet of Clay builds upon, almost perfectly.

  The uneven characterisation of Angua in Men at Arms contrasts sharply with her portrayal here—we learn who she is and what kind of life she comes from, in telling details that don’t detract from the main plot. Her central concern at the beginning of the novel is pretty much the same as it is by the end—she believes her relationship with Carrot has no future, and that she has to leave him soon, before it becomes too hard to break up. But she can’t. It’s never clear whether the reason she can’t is because she loves him (as a woman), or because she is loyal to him (as a dog), and this is not resolved.

  This would have been immensely frustrating, if that was the only thing Angua contributed to the novel. But along comes Cheery Littlebottom, whose friendship with Angua lights up the pages in between the golem angst and Vimes-related plottery.

  We are introduced to Cheery as a male dwarf. Even the pronoun ‘he’ is used, which is not a cheat, because we have learned in previous books that all dwarves say ‘he’ as their default. But Cheery, as Angua with her werewolf nose spots instantly, is female. (It’s not clear why Angua decides to make a thing of this for this dwarf in particular when there are other female dwarves in the Watch, nor why Cheery is terrified people might know, when there are other female dwarves in the Watch, but I don’t care because it kickstarts my favourite ever sub-plot.)

  Cheery is an alchemist hired by Vimes to be his forensics expert, a job they are making up as they go along. Cheery is deeply unhappy when we first meet her, because of her own perceived failures as a dwarf. She doesn’t fit in with traditional dwarfish culture, and feels alienated from them because she is drawn to traditionally feminine pastimes. Female dwarves are equal to male dwarves in every possible way—but only because they look, act and appear exactly like male dwarves. Which, of course, is not equality. Angua draws a parallel to being a woman in the City Watch—you are allowed to be one of the boys, but only if you act just like them (or, rather, just enough like them to be part of the group, but not so much like them that they get intimidated).

  With Angua’s help and assistance, Cheery begins the process of coming out as a female dwarf. She experiments with gender presentation, which is largely played for laughs as the bemused male characters like Carrot and Vimes react to her jewellery, makeup and/or the wearing of a skirt. Still, there’s a serious theme behind the humour. Cheery, or Cherie, or Cherry, as she sometimes chooses to be called, is deadly serious. There’s a quite wonderful scene in which she faces off against a group of her fellow dwarves for the first time, bravely dealing with their disgust and disapproval, only for one to hang back afterwards and beg to try her lipstick. Because, of course, she’s not the only female dwarf in the Watch,. By leading the way and taking the flak, she is able to give other dwarves the opportunity to present as female, if they want to.

  She never contemplates shaving off her beard, of course. Because…it’s her beard. She wants to present as female on her own terms, not just mimicking what human women do.

  There’s a running theme about the strength of women—another favourite scene of mine in this book shows a gang of angry, violent criminals in a tavern who grab Angua as a hostage. The tavern is full of her fellow Guards, who calmly watch, trusting her take care of herself. Even Carrot, who loves her, only reminds her not to kill anyone. It’s a relief that Carrot has learned to overcome his natural chivalry because of Angua’s strength and competence—and we see him begin that struggle again with his concern for Cheery in the field, where he would not have been so protective of a dwarf who presented as male.

  Cheery’s dwarfish aversion to werewolves, and Angua having to keep the secret from her despite knowing it is inevitable she will find out, makes sense in so many ways (it works much better than Carrot’s prejudice in Men at Arms) and I liked that there is plenty of time devoted to the outcome of this deceit. This female friendship has to overcome serious obstacles and it is given the kind of narrative priority in the story that is usually devoted to a romance. Sromance, people! There should be more of it.

  I love that the first forensic scientist of the Discworld is a woman—and along with the issues to do with her coming out story and gender performance/presentation, we witness her high level of competence at her job. Vimes quickly learns to rely on her for her alchemical skills and her flexibility. She’s constantly coming up with new tests and techniques to match his crazy and inventive ideas about new police work. The running gag about Cheery/Cherie wearing earrings, or a skirt, or so on, could have detracted from this, but it never does. Vimes takes her experiments in his stride, and I get the impression that he would have done exactly the same if it were Sergeant Colon or Nobby who turned up to work in a frock.

  The first three City Watch books feature three interesting, complex and thoroughly different female characters. Not bad for a series that is primarily about the agency of male characters— the push-pull of Vimes’ relationship with the city and the Patrician who rules it; Carrot the uncrowned king, who is genuinely interested in everyone and wants to help them, but doesn’t seem aware of the power of his own charisma; Nobby and Colon, Shakespearian clowns if ever there were any, and many more.

  These are not books that were intended to be about women. But the women in them have so much potential and so much to say. I am heading now into less familiar territory, with several City Watch books I never read more than once (I loathed both Jingo and The Fifth Elephant the first time around, and don’t remember a word of Thud) but I am hoping to find a book which gives me Sybil, Angua and Cheery all at once. Possibly it doesn’t exist, but we’ll see!

  4

  His Henpecked Voice

  Jingo (1997)

  The Fifth Elephant (1999)

  Both Jingo and The Fifth Elephant missed their mark entirely with me when I read them on first release, so I had low expectations for my reread.

  Jingo fared much better for me this time around. The prose is clever and tight, and there are crunchy themes about war, patriotism, etc. It’s one of those Discworld books that transcends comic banter and set pieces to reveal a deeper philosophical meaning, plus as many Leonardo Da Vinci jokes as any sane person would ever want in one place.

  However, the thing it doesn’t have is much in the way of…you guessed it, women.

  Sybil appears in a few scenes, in the role of nagging wife. I do like the bit where she chides Vimes for treating her as if she is nagging him and how unfair it is, but that’s Sybil for you, grasping any attempt to be awesome, in the face of a book that is working against her. She is mostly here to react to how awkwardly/effectively Vimes is assimilating into the upper classes, and to wave a few warning flags that his workaholic lifestyle is unsustainable. This at least will be followed up in later books.

  Cheery barely appears at all, with little follow up on her interesting debut back in Feet of Clay. Again, this will be addressed later.

  Angua’s role in Jingo is the greatest disappointment, as Pratchett does that thing where he introduces her POV early on and sets her character up with intriguing issues to deal with, and then largely forgets about her for the rest of the book. This is not the only time he does that
thing. Worst of all, she is forced into the position of Captured Damsel, which is just insulting. I can see how the Watch and Carrot’s attitude to Angua’s invulnerability is the kind of complacency that begs to be challenged. However, when you start out with a subversively powerful female character, subverting her a second time to make her vulnerable and a captive is not actually all that revolutionary when she is, in fact, a blonde girl.

  Angua rescues herself, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that she is treated so badly for most of this story, and that we don’t get enough of her point of view.

  The most poignant and/or problematic treatment of women in Jingo is the sub-plot where Nobby Nobbs has to (well, ‘has to’ is perhaps too strong a phrase…) dress up as a woman as part of his spying activities for the Patrician. He is so stunned to see what life is like from this different perspective (especially how he is treated by the men around him, including those who know exactly who he is) that he turns into a radical suffragette and refuses to let go of his feminine identity.

  I still haven’t decided if this storyline is hilarious, offensive or a smart bit of characterisation. It’s an oddity. It’s also something Pratchett doesn’t let go of, returning in later books to the cross-dressing (and occasionally feminist) tendencies of Corporal Nobbs.

  Which brings us to The Fifth Elephant. I have no idea why I wasn’t keen on this one the first time I read it, because while the story and writing isn’t as tight as in Jingo, the book features major plotlines surrounding Angua, Sybil and Cheery, plus OTHER female characters, and that kind of awesomeness needs to be encouraged.

  Sybil’s role in this novel looks unpromising at first. The story revolves around the team going on a diplomatic junket to the mysterious Übervald, a country loosely based on Translyvania by way of Germany, France, Wales and judging by Stephen Briggs’s voice performance (I’m still on the audiobook kick) basically anywhere with an accent. For the first part of the story, Sybil’s role involves packing, unpacking, and settling in at the embassy. But while the idea of Vimes as a diplomat is a colossal joke, Sybil turns out to be really, really good at it. Her deep appreciation of dwarf opera is essential in a moment of diplomatic crisis, which is a wonderful turning point for her character, and her mighty heroics at the end are splendid.

  Finally we get deeper appreciation of who Sybil is as a person. The very unpleasant Baroness von Überwald (AKA Angua’s mum) sees her as a foolish, overly friendly person, and we later see her perceptions of Sybil’s behaviour sharply deconstructed through Sybil’s own point of view. It’s important to get these scenes through Sybil’s eyes, and indeed through those of the Baroness as well, because we were in danger otherwise of her character being largely presented to us through the eyes of Vimes.

  The story of the Sybil-Vimes marriage gets some further development. Their obvious problem is that Vimes is married to his job first and to Sybil second, but we also witness some lovely scenes that show why their marriage works, and how it has improved life for both of them. My favourite is the scene told mostly through dialogue in which they, in bed at night, hear the various bumping noises happening in the embassy below them, and take turns guessing which of the appalling stuffed heads are being removed (at their request) based on sound alone.

  There’s also the running almost-joke about Sybil having something to tell Vimes, which she is finally able to do only at the end of the story: they are having a baby! This is telegraphed quite clearly and hardly likely to be a surprise to the reader, but that’s not the point of this reveal. After a rather adorable exchange in which Vimes tries as diplomatically as possible (so not his strong point!) to ask how safe the pregnancy is considering her age, Sybil puts him down sharply by insisting that breeding is what her family were designed for, and he should stop asking silly questions. But now Vimes has to make a new choice about how to live his life, which we will see reflected in his later books. When they leave Übervald, rather than racing right back to his work at home, he offers Sybil a real holiday by suggesting they travel back by the slower, touristy route (as Nanny Ogg would put it, they went the long way and saw the elephant). Vimes as a father is going to try more strenuously to achieve a work-life balance than he did in his early days of marriage, and this is the first sign that he is willing to make that change.

  I am glad for all the Sybil awesomeness in The Fifth Elephant because I wasn’t happy with how Angua’s storyline was handled. This is the book that takes us to Angua’s home, and shows us her family. I find it really bizarre, then, that so much of her story is told without her own involvement. She disappears from Ankh-Morpork, leaving the focus of the story on Carrot and Gaspode’s quest to find her. When she and Carrot finally get to talk about why she left, how this ties in with her family history, and their relationship, the whole scene is told from the point of view of Gaspode the freaking Wonder Dog.

  Now, I’m a big fan of Gaspode. And this ties into Pratchett’s traditional method of using the omniscient point of view—he has the choice of his characters, so usually chooses the one whose take on the scene is most likely to be funny. Fair enough. But it’s only since I started these essays looking specifically at the portrayal of female characters in the Discworld that I realise the downside of his technique. Pratchett sometimes uses a character’s point of view only a few times, and doesn’t always follow up on them—Angua is a constant casualty of this.

  It could be argued that this works just fine. There is a theme running through the book that Angua is not talked about amongst her family, as Vimes notices when he tries to mention her to her mother. Angua is also a private person. There is no denying that, by the end of the novel, there is a great deal of resolution about her problems with Carrot (I am giving her the benefit of the doubt and suggesting that her complaints about him being too nice and tolerant are masks for her real concerns about the unsustainable nature of their relationship, otherwise she does come off as pretty damn unreasonable in their fight) and her feelings about her family.

  But…yeah. There are gaps in the story that could only be filled by a little more Angua. Considering that one of the main bad guys is her brother and fellow werewolf, and that trying to kill him so that he stays dead is a main thrust of the final act of the story, it’s disappointing that we get to see so little of that story through her eyes. This was not the satisfying Angua book I wanted it to be, and I think that Feet of Clay remains a better showcase for her character.

  Thank goodness for Cheery! Our favourite feminine dwarf has some wonderful scenes, and while she doesn’t quite have a full storyline of her own, her subplot is dealt with so cleverly and with such thoughtfulness that it brings me joy. She also steals the scene at the end when the dwarf politics storyline turns out to be far more relevant to Cheery’s gender choices than anyone suspected.

  Basically, if you found the ‘coming out as a female dwarf’ plot strand in Feet of Clay interesting, then The Fifth Elephant has it in spades, if you hang in there until the end. We experience Cheery’s discomfort and rebellious bravery in returning to her homeland of Übervald as an openly female dwarf. The Ankh-Morpork dwarf community, which has fast adapted to the trend of femininity despite some resistance, is far more liberal than those dwarves back home. Dwarf culture is something Pratchett has put a lot more thought into since Guards! Guards!, and I love the idea that their greatest romantic opera is between two DWARVES, making it culturally important not to question which of the two dwarves was female.

  Which leads to the double whammy reveal at the end of the story. The dwarf who perpetuated a key crime is a woman, partly motivated by frustration at how the changing times has allowed other dwarves to reveal and revel in their own femininity. Then we discover that the quietly liberal king they have managed to keep on the throne is, say it with me, ALSO A WOMAN.

  Pratchett loves a juicy gender reveal, challenging default assumptions. Later (and I will get there eventually) he structures an entire novel around that reveal, over and over again. This trope allows
him to say (and not say) a great deal about gender politics, and I find that fascinating because for the most part these kind of gender-bending tricks are found in the literature of hardcore feminist writers.

  It started out as a joke, but as with many Pratchett jokes, it’s a soft centre wrapped around a sharpened axe.

  I want to squee more about Cheery, but I’m running out of space. Suffice to say: I love that she fills the role of Sybil’s lady’s maid with enthusiasm; I love the scene at the end where she decides to dress ‘as a dwarf’ (ie: present as male) in front of the king because while she knows she will have the support of her friends and allies if she wears a dress, she has moved past feeling the need to do so for every single occasion; and I LOVE the fact that her first response to the reveal about Dee (the villain dwarf) is to comfort her, one girl to another.

  Most of all I love that, as Cheery is only a little embarrassed about, that she used that comforting gesture to give Dee a chance to hand over really important information. She’s a dwarf, and a woman, but she’s also a damn good copper, and that comes before all the other things.

  Cheery Littlebottom may well be my favourite Discworld character now. I so didn’t see that coming.

  Other female-character-highlights of The Fifth Elephant include the glamorous vampire-on-the-wagon Lady Margalotta, and Angua’s bitchy Baroness mother. Nice to have some antagonist characters in these books who are female from the start, rather than only being revealed in the last five pages.