i've been (VERY VERY SLOWLY) making my way through the original french version of tobie after reading the polish translation as a kid and absolutely adoring it. it's an interesting experience!
on one hand, i'm surprised by how much i remember loving it and how strong the emotional reactions are that it elicits after more than a decade. tobie was not a massive obsession of mine the way harry potter was, or even the inkheart trilogy, and yet i must have been REALLY strongly compelled by it as a kid! because when i reread certain passages i can feel the emotional reactions bubbling even when i don't remember what exactly happens next!! yesterday i read the scene in eyes of elisha where sim, maia and the other prisoners hold their prison evening school, and the very brief mention of nino and tess alamala made me choke up with emotion - even though i don't actually remember what their importance to the plot was, exactly.
i picked these books to read because i thought i'd remember enough of the plot to make it easier to guess even when the language is unclear to me - but i really didn't expect it to work so well. many times i have started a paragraph and not remembered how it ends exactly, but remembering the emotions it evoked in me as a kid. and that's not to mention the many plot points i DID remember. for example, i very clearly remembered tobie's winter spent in a cave and how daunting it felt, especially the weight and significance attached to his painting, and the frustrating futility of elisha's attempts to dig him out - but when the description of the painting transitioned into tobie's memory of that day when he escaped jo mitch, after his grandmother's funeral, the feelings of dread and tense anticipation returned to me incredibly vividly even though i didn't quite remember what happened in that scene.
some elements i'm even more appreciative of than i expected! for example, while i do find the tree-earth metaphor quite heavy handed, i'm surprised by how well it works and how impactful i find it. having started volume 2, i'm also impressed by leo blue as a villain - jo mitch has some... interesting nuances in his depiction as the planet-exploiting businessman, but leo blue as the charismatic authocrat rallying the country against an outside enemy really works. his young age combined with his authority and ruthlessness lends him such a ghoulish quality, i really adore his early scenes in volume 2, and especially this one early illustration where instead of his face you just see his strong silhouette with the boomerangs on his back.
because he is set up as such a cutthroat dictator at the beginning of vol 2, his love for elisha manages to come accross as a twist, a different side of him - even as his imprisonment of her remains the most direct cruelty he commits on page.
i'm also getting a lot of open borders rhetoric from the whole tree-grass allegory, which is bittersweet to see as the uk and the rest of the world are rallying so openly against immigration and asylum seekers.
howeeeeever. what prompted me to write this post were the various elements i wasn't as happy with at 25 years old as i'd been at 12.
de fombelle's treatment of female characters is a big one. this one took me aback because as a little girl i was totally enchanted with elisha's character - she joined characters like san and nausicaa in my canon of badass free wild girls with fierce moral backbones that i completely idolised as a kid. the image of her running up the sides of her egg prison is another plot point i remembered incredibly vividly from back in the day. and i do still love elisha! i love her strangeness, her quick wits, her connetion to nature and her love of the lower branches, i love her bond with her mother and her fierce "no. never!" to leo blue. i love her little moments of pettiness, like when she gives tobie a hard time for temporarily leaving the lower branches. i love that she crushes that prisoner's hand under her heel and i love that she almost vomits with disgust at herself for doing that. buuuut... now as i read i cannot help noticing that, especially in volume 2, so much of her role in the narrative is relative to the male characters around her, rather than existing in her own right.
i think it'll be easier to start with the other female characters. maia is an easy example. sim and tobie are both strongly motivated by lofty moral goals - protecting the tree, advancing knowledge, helping the grass people (side note, are they just called grass people in english?? in french they have a specific name...). maia, by contrast, is entirely defined by her role as wife and mother. only once, briefly, does she act on a motive unrelated to the men in her life - when she insists on attending her grandmother's funeral. and i do love that scene! because it very pointedly informs the reader that despite her sweetness maia absolutely does not stand for sim ordering her around! but i do think that one scene pales next to the vast amount of text where maia and sim form an incredibly stereotypical patriarchal family unit - it is always maia who cooks and takes care of the home, and sim who works for a living, who later works physically to build their new home, and who concerns himself with knowledge, invention and the aforementioned moral goals. he is also the one who acts as protector and guide of the family unit, repeatedly reassuring maia, giving her information and finding solutions whenever a dangerous situation arises. sim is very much the head of the family, and maia is, well... a tradwife
ilaya is another character whose whole existence within the text revolves around men - as that guy's fiancee, as moon head's maternal older sister, and of course the most impactful thing she does is fall destructively in love with tobie. the asseldor girls are heavily defined by their shared love for lex, and while lex gets to heroically rescue his parents, the only thing mia does is become his loving wife and the mother of his daughter. and when we see mai again her storyline is about the soldier who pursues her.
isha is the one character who does not oscillate around men - her primary relation is to her daughter. she's still very traditionally maternal, but as a single mother she's also a provider and the head of her family unit, which makes her pretty unique. i don't want to speak to much about isha because i think she has some important scenes that i don't entirely remember and that i have yet to get to, but i do think she escapes the confines of de fombelle's women the most.
coming back to elisha... she IS strong, and free, and unafraid to speak her mind, and smart and a badass who almost saves herself multiple times. she's so, so important to the narrative - in terms of emotional weight, the second most important character after tobie, featured on the volume 2 cover and in its title. and YET. in a novel full of male characters with their own goals and internal lives... elisha exists only in relation to tobie. leo blue pursues his goal of avenging his father, sim tries to save the tree, lex saves his parents, mano pursues wealth and independence, moon head wants to prove himself, and elisha... just hangs out with her mom whenever a boy is not nearby. she's very reactive. i was most taken aback when i realised that, much like penelope, elisha's value in vol 2 rests so heavily on whether she holds out for tobie or gives in to leo blue's demands... i don't know, something about this feels off to me - this valuing of a woman's romantic loyalty. it left a bad taste in my mouth.
honorary mention to the evil women of tobie: mme alnorell who's obsessed with money, mme olmech who's a #workingwoman and bernique whose violence is inextricably tied to her unladylike ways. shoutout also to nils, who's a disappointment because he's too much like his weak, dainty, feminine mother <3
this is getting ridiculously long so i'll be quick - the treatment of the grass people also felt well meaning, but ultimately in slightly poor taste. the noble savage trope is strong here! i understand why de fombelle would want to portray the grass people as peaceful, but their lack of resistance and the way they don't even consider harming tobie are a bit jarring, as is the assertion that they do not lie (jo mitch's scheme to implicate sim in a grass plot). there's a fine line between protraying a culture shock between peoples from different societies with differnet values and painting an entire ethnic group with a broad stroke, and i don't think de fombelle is all that graceful while toeing this line. the description of elisha's appearance also feel a bit fetishistic - describing her as ageless while as young as thirteen, emphasising the "strangeness" of her features etc. the "wise beyond her years" element also feels like part of the noble savage trope.
lastly, while jo mitch is on the surface such a one-dimensional, caricatural villain, i was surprised at some of the tropes he was pulling from. the capitalist businessman image is what stayed with me most strongly from childhood, and it is a very strong image - the cigar really seals that one, and i'd guess the very american sounding name isn't a coincidence either. but i was very taken aback at the short backstory exposition where such an emphasis was placed on jo mitch exploiting the idea of solidarity, and on him starting out by a kind of neighbour organising (generous term, i know). maybe this is my polish bias showing, but the word "solidarity" is so tied in my mind with concepts of worker unions that it made me consider the jo mitch neighbourhoods in a new light. is de fombelle using the shorthand of commie blocks to gesture at the ussr with jo mitch? i can't be sure but the thought has been bugging me since that scene.
anyway, that's it for today! i might write more tobie thoughts as i read, or maybe once i finish vol 2.
