The Tiffany Aching books are so important.
They’re about a girl, in a professional hierarchy created by women, growing into her own power, and growing as a person. At the end of each book, her good work is validated by the most powerful witches. For Tiffany’s success, she’s rewarded in an almost Mary-Sue like fashion (and I use that term in the most positive way). Granny Weatherwax bows to her. Granny Weatherwax takes off her hat to her. This lifts Tiffany’s spirits and reassures her that she’s on the right track, and it’s treated as SO IMPORTANT, and, like – how many other books do that?
The prizes at the end of the story – Tiffany becomes a better person, she protects people, she gains the respect of her superiors (who are also women).
Can you imagine that in another novel? The joyful moment of heartwarming, the cherry on the ice cream sundae of the adventure, the heroine’s crowning glory, is that some old women bow to her in respect.
The books are so positive towards women, it’s unreal. Sure, the witches don’t always get along (they’re witches, they’ll always argue), and Tiffany has to deal with some petty one-up-man-ship, but it’s so fucking mature, how it’s handled. Tiffany winds up helping her enemy, Annagramma, who slowly learns to become a decent human being, and is revealed to have her own problems. She also becomes friends with the woman her childhood crush marries, even though they were initially antagonistic towards each other. It would have been SO EASY for these women to be one-note villains, the “bitches” for Tiffany to triumph over, but they’re not, and that’s fantastic. Pratchett does not go for the low-hanging fruit, and tear other women down to build Tiffany up.
I once had the incredible privilege to speak to Terry Pratchett in person at the Edinburgh Fringe. I thanked him for the Tiffany Aching novels, which had helped me and my husband bond during our year of long distance. And I asked him how he, as a male author, was able to write such well-rounded women.
“Well, my mother was a woman,” he said, and the audience laughed, but basically he said that his life had been filled with just as many interesting women as interesting men, and it felt natural to reflect that in his novels.
The Tiffany Aching series is a gift for girls. It’s a gift for just about anyone who reads them, but girls in particular NEED stories like this, stories about a world of women helping and challenging each other. Stories where they get to be powerful.
Tag: Terry Pratchett
The Meaning of Life, Hot Chocolate and a Bun.
University was by and large a horrible time for me, I didn’t enjoy the “learning” experience, but I do have some fun and lovely memories. Like my friend K and I racing each other to the top of the Literature Tower (20 flights) and almost passing out/vomiting at the top, my professor trying to bum a smoke from all of us standing outside on a regular basis, and then there was the refectory at the base of the Literature Tower, a little hole in the wall which you had to go through narrow twisting corridors to get to and was rarely busy as a result, but once you where there it was warm and the food was good.
One day my class “Scottish Lit” (an elective, rather than a compulsory, which is more than a little odd considering I was in Scotland, but this is not the time or place to talk about the inherent bigotry in British academia towards the other three countries in the “United” Kingdom) had to be cancelled at the last minute. A bit of a blow considering it was an 8am class and I had to get up at 6 to get there only to find an apology scrawled on the door. It was also my only class of the day. But rather than go home where I would inevitably go back to bed and sleep for the rest of the day, I decided to drop into the refectory for some breakfast before I went. It also just so happened that the new Terry Pratchett book, Going Postal, had just come out that morning, and I’d dropped into Waterstones on my way past to uni. So off I went, traipsing my way through the halls until I found the back alcove where the uni had set up the eating nook. Unfortunately, because I hadn’t planned on eating there I didn’t have enough money for actual food, having spent my last ten quid until pay day on the book and stupidly left my bank card at home. I did however have enough money for a hot chocolate so I got that and told the server to cancel the tattie scone in a roll (good balanced Scottish breakfast that, fried potato scone slathered in butter and served in a morning roll with ketchup, om nom nom)
So I found myself a nice little spot out of the way, made myself comfortable and pulled out my book and started to read. It took me a while to realize that my hot chocolate kept magically
refilling itself- about 4 hours later- when I was starting to feel slightly sick from the milk overdose on an empty stomach. It was then that I also noticed the iced bun in front of me, and looked up at the server, who gave
me a nod and wink and waved his own copy of Going Postal at me from
behind the counter and promptly went back to his own reading.It was a really lovely moment that stayed with me, and always comes to mind whenever I reach for Moist Von Lipwig to cheer me up. Not just because the book is thrilling and funny and sparkles with pure Pratchett wit and poignancy, but because of that moment, that little quiet moment in the back eating room of a tower named for books, another human being wanted to be kind and fed someone else, even though they didn’t have to. And I can’t help but think that’s what Pratchett tried to teach us.
We’re not superheroes, we can’t stop a bullet and we can’t
turn back time by flying really fast, hell we can’t even fly. But we can be kind. And despite what the cynics believe, the people who profess it’s a “dog eat dog world” when what they really mean is “it’s a dog eat rat world and you’re the rat” and say things like “that’s just the way it is”, kindness is
our greatest strength. Kindness and doing what is right in small little ways, until they make up the whole.Everyone says the meaning of life is 42, but to me it’s 41.
41 books that tried with all their might to impart the importance of kindness to others, that one small deed can indeed change the world. In the grand scheme of things hot chocolate and an iced bun doesn’t mean much. But it meant something. It still does. It meant empathy, compassion, and in it’s purest form it meant love.
And there’s no greater power than that.
I think maybe, just maybe, the number really is 42. Because he left a space for everyone to write their own story.
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