Arabella of Mars - Q1

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Arabella is obviously not destined to fit within the societal norms of the Georgian age she was born into. Is she a proto-sufferagette? A feminist? Or is she just an oddball who made a separate place for herself? Do you think the treatment afforded her after the revelation that she was a woman made sense within the mores of the age?

Comments

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    I don't think she is intended to be part of a "movement" as such, in that I didn't read any suggestion that she thought that women at large ought to have equal rights etc. It seemed to me that her wants and wishes were entirely personal in that regard - she wanted her own liberty of action and operation, and acted so as to accomplish this, but didn't try to form or join any sort of collective action.
    The revelation of who she was made a fascinating part of the book, I thought - the mutineers who were quite happy with the thought of punishing her when she was a man, completely lost momentum on discovering she was a woman. I suppose you could think of it as illustrative on the actual power (as opposed to the socially acknowledged power) of women in a patriarchal age.

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    She was there as a sop to some modern sensibilities while embedded in a book that took pains to glorify imperialism and colonialism. Of course colonialism is good if you're one of the few that owns the colonies. Just don't look at all the rest of plebs, gawd-bless-'em-guvnor. (I didn't like this book. It may colour some of my responses.)

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    I don’t think we know the ‘mores of this age’, being a completely made up nonsensical setting in which the discovery of alien beings hasn’t made a jot of difference to earthly society, so it seems a bit pointless to wonder how Arabella fits in or not. She fits in to the needs of the story just fine, which I think is the important part.
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