You know, sometimes I like to think that LB wrote Shadow and Bone from genuine concern for young girls. She allegedly had abusive relationship behind her and she to comfort her own emotions wrote this little fairytale to make herself feel better. And then this little fairytale became world-wide bestseller.
But at its heart it forever stayed a little comfort fairytale.
LB makes this mistake of... I don't want to use "overrating" but it feels like it, like she overrates her work. She created this narrative that this is a warning tale for young girls to not fall for the tall dark handsome guy with power who will manipulate her, use her and leave her, heartbroken. She put herself on this pedestal of a preacher for fair maidens and she seems to be very upset when her audience shows her that this narrative is false.
It's 2021. We live in era of Internet where information spread fast and world-wide. We have tumblr articles, twitter threads, tiktok series, youtube series. Now girls at age 13, 14 and 15 watch things like "how to spot a sociopath?", "three signs you date a master manipulator!" and "make your marriage happier than the one your parents had". And I'm not joking because I was watching materials like this, mostly to amuse myself, subconsciously learning things about this topics. Now more youth than ever is interested in psychology. More often I hear 20 y/o women speak about how to get out of abusive relationship rather than 40 y/o.
It's 2021 and young girls don't need warning tales about how handsome men potentially can be abusive. They know that from real life. Their mother just divorced her abusive husband. Their sister ended relationship with toxic boyfriend. Their best friend is in therapy because of horrible parents. Their favourite celebrity just made an interview about their evil ex and now shares "tips" how to escape from situation like this.
They don't need little fantasy fairytales to teach them that. It's no longer 1820s and they don't need to chose between marrying their poor childhood friend whom their love since they met or 10 years older man with 10 villages and 20 servants, who can help her family. They don't need next Jane Austen teaching them about risks of those choices.
Shadow and Bone has its flaws but if it would be treated (also by its author) as light-hearted fairytale about defeating evil instead of real life allegories to abusive relationships, no one would feel the need to mercilessly bash it in this whole hashtag. Because on one hand we have LB yelling at her readers about how to read her books, what interpretations are the only true ones, that this is the evil one and those are good guys, but on the other the same author pairs her heroine with a boy that feels belittled and endangered by powerful heroine, so she makes the moral of the story that its better to have husband who whines when you eat too much, than powers able to save the whole world.
LB tries very hard to push her own narratives on her readers, but she isn't doing it through her storytelling, but interviews and social media.
And I'm just tired of the next "I need to tell young girls that handsome men can be abusive and manipulative, because they don't know better and they will end up in toxic relationships!". It feels very vicitim-blaming to victims of abusive relationships. Because the truth is that sometimes you don't know that you are dealing with manipulator and you are in toxic affair before it's too late. And this whole "you should know better!" thing is just another way of patriarchal society pushing the blame of "naive young stupid girls" instead of their abusers. At the end of the day, I know S&B is just fiction.
And I don't mind the fiction. I didn't like the ending? Fuck it, I will read fanfic or find a better book. But I do mind belittling and moralising young women, especially when it comes to such a delicate topics like abuse.
