a DIACHRONIC study of the IMAGE of the POWERFUL FEMALE in POPULAR (and maybe other) CULTURES
Thursday, March 7, 2019
HEROINE HEADCOUNT: JAELITHE
Andre Norton's 1963 WITCH WORLD provides a female's take on the John Carter trope, wherein Earthman lands on a medieval-style world whose people have strange powers and/or weapons. But whereas Dejah Thoris was not a character equal to her paramour Carter, WITCH WORLD concerns both the Earthman Simon Tregarth and the witchy woman he meets on the titular planet.
Jaelithe-- whose name sounds to my ears like a combo of two Biblical females, Jael and Lilith-- is a witch whose limited powers are largely explicable by then-contemporary ideas about psychic powers. She's no "sorceress supreme," but she does bring some power to stand alongside that of her more martial partner, though the two of them are only the stars of this book and its immediate sequel, WEB OF THE WITCH WORLD. They appear as support-characters in the third novel, THREE AGAINST THE WITCH WORLD, which concentrates on the couple's three grown kids, and to my knowledge Simon and Jaelithe never assume positions of narrative stardom again.
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