Reflections: How we are Tessa, and the purpose of GOTSM (meta)
Cassandra Clare said in her latest IG live that the reason the epilogue of Clockwork Princess is forever beautiful but bittersweet is not because we know that the characters, save Jem and Tessa, die. It’s because we know that there will always be people who have to deal with their loss too and live on: a bittersweet concept, seeing someone die and having it remind you of how beautifully they lived. Think of the shared vision Will and Jem had in Learn About Loss when they went to Shanghai - Jem thinks of the fact that Will is about to die soon, but yet Will’s memory is constantly associated with the emotions he suscited as he lived. That’s overwhelming, beautiful, and sorrowful all at once.
There are those of us who have to go on living knowing these characters’ stories, now immortalized in memory- that’s the reader, but it’s also Tessa.
It was easier to die protecting the people you loved than to watch them die in your stead. What horrific choices mortality had to offer.
Tessa lives on through the century and the different stories of all the characters. She’s the chronological inception of the five families’ stories: the Herondales, the Fairchilds, the Carstairs, the Lightwoods and the Blackthorns. She does not die when Will does, nor when her children do. She lives a beautiful life but it’s still a pain to bear her own existence and bear the knowledge of the stories of all the people that she has known and loved over time. Furthermore, their stories live on in her, with her, through her.
Likewise, the stories of the characters live on in us. We as readers in the real world hold the stories we read in books in our minds and hearts dear as we go on with life, and we feel incredibly sad when our favorite characters die. That is the fundamental en-soi of stories: for them to be read and for them to touch our hearts.
The lives of all the characters and all the decades that Tessa has lived, the passage of time, are a literary symbol for the worlds that readers live in when they read books. She has to see what has occurred yet move on and keep living despite her attachment. Thus, Tessa is a stand-in for the reader as she lives on perusing time yet holds these stories dear too. This is incredibly incredibly meta to a level that has me like yooo. She is a living commentary on the relationship between readers and fiction. Moreover, Tessa herself is a reader and finds solace in stories meaning that her meta-ness is twofold. (This has links to the meta-commentary on literature in TID and TLH.)
“It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.”
Now, this is why Ghosts of the Shadow Market feels like an opened wound. (Yes, Jem has been immortal too but now he’s human again, so I won’t put him in the same category as Tessa. Magnus, while we’re here, is objectively not the main character and most of what I’m saying is in fact applicable to him, but in terms of the main plot of the series, Tessa is more relevant.) Clockwork Princess is designed to be read either directly before or after City of Heavenly Fire. In this way, as soon as the reader learns Jem is shipped off to be a Silent Brother and has to battle the beast of time, he immediately gets saved from our perspective based on the way the books were released. We didn’t have to live all the years between 1880 to 2008 and live Jem’s life (or Tessa’s). We learned about The Jem Situation but then we got the outcome quite quickly in terms of the books’ publication order - we didn’t have to wait in suspense for too long to hear Jace’s heavenly fire saved Jem eventually.
Nonetheless, Ghosts of the Shadow Market does in fact give us all the hard parts of immortality: experience. It doesn’t in any means mitigate the value of TID or TMI, yet develops the story of an incredibly important character. If anything at all feels like a sequel to TID, it ain’t TLH, it’s Ghosts of the Shadow Market. We get Jem’s adventures but also his emotions. These stories in GOTSM break that sacred unspoken “happy ending” rule where we now have see the reality of what living is like: we don’t get that “running into the sunset, happily ever after” feeling. Instead, we grieve with Jem and Tessa, we mourn Will, we feel hope like Jem does and it’s all quite overwhelming given how much Jem feels. Yet this pain is again another example of meta-commentary on what time is like and what experiencing stories entails: it’s angst, but to a beautiful end. We get another bittersweet ending at the end of GOTSM: Jem and Tessa finally have their moment, a marriage and a family after 150 years and thus, all of Jem’s pain and living is finally comes to fruition: he is happy with his love. The 150 year old story that began in Clockwork Angel gets a new conclusion. Another layer to the conclusion that the epilogue of Clockwork Princess gave us, and we truly feel like we lived through those 150 years with Jem as he goes through many pivotal changes in his emotional arc. It reminds us that the Herongraystairs story is immortal. Hence, the payoff is amazing as we get to see Jessa thrive, just like got to see Wessa thrive in TLH. Talk about equality amirite.
“There will be no separation between us. Where you are, I am. Where we are, Will is.”
The meaning is twofold here too: Will’s spirit lives on as Jem and Tessa live, and Will Herondale the literary character lives as long as readers keep reading and remembering how he touched them. Again, the en-soi of books is reiterated too: books live on only when they touch us, and thus memorable stories always have more value on a wider scale in the literary canon. In fact, there’s an even bigger meta value of TSC in this regard, and it’s the way Cassie plays hommage to classic literature, classics, art, and religion and makes meta commentary on art and literature but that is a whole ass essay by itself lmfao (spoiler, but my thesis would be that the meta value of these motifs helps render the classic lit canon relevant yet simple among young people or some shit like that idk).
But anyway, all this to say that we see the story the way Tessa sees it. In the Romance Languages, “history” and “story” are the exact same word, and TSC effectively explores the phenomenon that makes the two one and the same using narration as it concerns the human experience. All of this has great significance as it reiterates the role of literature in our lives and the use of chronological structuring to develop such an extensive story.
