Recent Reading: When Women Were Dragons

This week I finished When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill, a low-fantasy pseudo-historical novel where women occasionally and spontaneously become dragons.

Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.

Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.

 

I have mixed feelings on this book. On the one hand, I think the metaphor does work well and the theme of reclaiming power is rewarding. On the other, I think the book loses the plot partway through and I didn't find the author's prose particularly engaging.

 

Within the book, "dragoning" as it's called serves as an analogy for basically anything about women that society, historically, has not liked to discuss. This can be brutal things like domestic abuse, sexual assault, and harassment, but it can also be more seemingly mundane yet equally "uncomfortable" topics like ambition, lack of motherly sentiment, queerness, and menstruation/women's bodies generally. One woman dragons because she feels trapped in a marriage to an unpleasant and ungrateful husband. Another dragons because she realized she was in love with another woman. Thus, while dragoning can be analogous to female rage, it can also be analogous to female joy, expressed in a way that society finds unbecoming.

Some spoilers below.

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Ultimately, I agree with the conclusion that this book would have worked better as a concentrated short story focusing only on the Mass Dragoning of 1955. There's just not enough here to fill out the 340 pages in a satisfying way.

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