Allons-y!

A Post-Mary Sue Mary Sue in an Anti-Sue World

08 Aug 2011 9 Comments

by Melissa in Living the Dream

Note:  this is an essay I wrote for a YA fiction class.  We read Tithe, by Holly Black, and I hated it and loathed the main character so much I knew I had to write my final paper on her.  Unfortunately, it started off as a scathing rant and ended up with me defending both the author and the character.  Fuuuuu-

Mary Sue has no singular origin. Just as modern medicine has helped identify illnesses that previously went unnamed throughout history, the Mary Sue character, generally considered a recent phenomenon, can be traced through literary history. The Mary Sue, who can be male but is largely identified with female characters, is the strongest, bravest, cleverest character. She is more beautiful than any other woman in the land, and has striking features not often found in nature, such as purple eyes combined with red hair. Men would– and frequently do– die for her. Whatever skill another character may possess, she does it better. Terrible circumstances usually befall her (most often because others are so jealous of her perfection), but she is always able to rise above them. Her flaws are advantages in disguise—perhaps she has a bad temper, but it is only roused by injustice and cowardice; she may be too sensitive, but only because she is so empathetic that she feels the world’s pain.

The Mary Sue archetype was first isolated and named in the world of Star Trek fan-fiction. The show’s near-cancellation in 1967 gave rise to a letter-writing campaign, which soon provided a way for fans to communicate with each other and pass on their own written or drawn versions of the show’s stories. Letters turned into fan-created magazines and newsletters, which turned to chat groups when the internet first became available. Now there are thousands of websites dedicated to fan interpretations of various media, also known as “transformative works” by academics seeking to legitimize the field. Lieutenant Mary Sue came into being in 1974, when Paula Smith wrote a parody of the typical Star Trek fan-fiction called “A Trekkie’s Tale.” At fifteen-and-a-half years old, Mary Sue is the youngest Lieutenant in the fleet. She is half-Vulcan, Captain Kirk falls in love with her, and when the main characters are kidnapped, she rescues them with a hairpin and mans the ship when the others are sick. The story, however, ends tragically:

“…the disease finally got to her and she fell fatally ill. In the sick bay as she breathed her last, she was surrounded by Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Scott all weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth and youthful beauty, intelligence and all around niceness. Even to this day her birthday is a national holiday aboard the Enterprise.” (Enterprising Women, 94-95)

After Smith’s parody, this archetype was referred to as a Mary Sue, and eventually just a Sue, and although the term is most often used within fannish contexts, published media is sometimes examined for traces of Sue disease as well. Is Elizabeth Bennet of Pride & Prejudice a Mary Sue? She is beautiful and feisty, and captures the heart of a handsome, rich man who disapproves of everyone and everything. What about Mary Magdalene? Jesus defies his apostles to keep her around, and only she is allowed to take care of him. These characters, however, are part of a canon with huge literary merit, and that saves them from the Sue label.  Characters who might otherwise be considered indulgent or stereotypical are credited with more complexity.

Because Mary Sue is usually considered an author’s idealized self-insert, authors who write Mary Sues are considered sloppy at best and ridiculous at worst. Anupam Chander and Mudhavi Sunder say Mary Sues are “[d]erided as an exercise in narcissism” in their article “Everyone’s a Superhero: a Cultural Theory of Mary Sue Fanfiction as Fair Use” (California Law Review, 597), an accusation which appears almost solely when the author and character are female. It is likely not a coincidence that the scoffing at the idealized authorial self-insert began with female-driven fiction and female characters—moreover, female characters who are overtly successful. Occasionally there are male counterparts, called Marty Stus or Gary Stus. The most notorious in the fandom world is Wesley Crusher, from Star Trek: the Next Generation. The creation of Eugene Wesley Roddenberry, Wesley is, of course, a prodigy in all the sciences, and in music. According to David Gardner’s essay, “Mary Sue Gives Birth, Baby Undergoes Sex Change,” Wesley “saves the Enterprise from destruction more than a dozen times…twice in the first five episode.” Wesley Crusher is not alone in his Gary Stu-ness; if examined, most male protagonists might be considered Gary Stus as well. Who are Holden Caulfield and Buddy Glass but idealized forms of JD Salinger’s ego? What, in point of fact, is Captain James T. Kirk but a representation of total ID?

So, after this (understandably lengthy) introduction to the Mary Sue/Gary Stu trope, the question remains: how can we analyze a character after the Mary Sue phenomenon has already been identified? In the character of Kaye Fierch, from Holly Black’s Tithe, we can see the female representation of the post-Mary Sue “Sue” character. Black published Tithe in 2002, well after Paula Smith’s essay on the Mary Sue and its widespread use as a derogatory term for perfect female characters, and Black is certainly involved in online fandoms, as she is friends with (and reportedly helped publish) infamous fan-fiction-writer-turned-published-author Cassandra Clare (known as Cassandra Claire online). It is unlikely Black is unfamiliar with Sues, and yet where do we begin with Kaye Fierch? One of the first scenes in Tithe has Kaye talking about fairy friends who appear only to her. Already this is verging on Sue territory, but is pretty typical of fantasy novels, so perhaps we could overlook it if it were not immediately followed by her friend Janet scolding her because “guys don’t like weird” (99, Kindle edition). Kaye cares not for what men think, because she is special. Too bad for Janet, who does care, because Janet’s boyfriend wants Kaye. Like most men, he simply cannot help himself around Kaye, who is not only half-Japanese (exotic!) but blonde. Not content to point out Kaye’s exoticness once when fifty times will suffice, Black writes Janet saying, “Do you know how many girls would die to be Asian and blond?” (569).

However, her looks are not all that is special about Kaye Fierch, for she can also move things with her mind. She saves a faerie and earns three wishes from him, and is clever enough to use them to ask the faerie’s full name. Soon she realizes that not only can she see faeries, she is herself a faerie changeling, meaning she not only has your average faerie attributes, like green skin and wings (which, of course, she can hide when she wants to, because they are ugly), but can control kelpies, and incidentally is capable of bewitching all men, mortal or faerie. She helps dethrone the Queen of the Seelie Court, and, of course, is now the lover of the King of the Seelie Court. Is there anything Kaye Fierch cannot do? Are there ideal traits she does not possess? Does she have faults? She is beautiful, “exotic,” bewitching, likes non-mainstream music (as represented by the author, whose musical taste seems to be stuck in 1992), loves to read and has “read more books than most girls her age” although she does not attend school (1822), and can travel back and forth between the real world and the faerie world. Her problems are external—she must be used as a pawn in a faerie war—and she overcomes them through her own bravery and cleverness and, of course, through the love of a handsome man. Kaye Fierch is an irredeemable Sue.

The criteria thus satisfied, we have to ask the post-Mary Sue question: should Tithe be dismissed simply because its main character is the embodiment of perfection?  As mentioned before, characters who have no flaws, or whose only flaws are actually positive characteristics, appear in fiction all the time, especially in male-oriented fiction with male protagonists. Looking at Harry Potter, for example, Harry has many attributes that characterize a Gary Stu. He is unusual-looking, suffers during his childhood and is generally persecuted by those who are either jealous of his fame or want to kill him because he is special, and is gifted in both magic and sports. Girls throw themselves at him, and not only does he ultimately best all his obstacles, he winds up with arguably the most beautiful girl in the series. Harry, however, is rarely called a Sue character. He is part of a respected, Campbell-hero tradition. If Harry were female, however, he would certainly be considered a Mary Sue (he has green eyes! A famous scar! He is the youngest and best Seeker who ever existed! He is the only person who has ever survived the Death Curse!), and JK Rowling would be accused of self-insertion. Perhaps, then, rather than deriding Holly Black and Tithe because the main character is a Sue, we could congratulate her for daring to make her main character as unique and perfect as similar male protagonists, in the face of almost certainly knowing she and her character would be mocked. Tithe has many other problems (bland, unconvincing world-building and derivative narrative, unrealistic actions and reactions from all the characters…I could go on, but it feels cruel), but strictly focusing on the main character, she is no better or worse than her male counterparts.

When you accuse a female author of wanting to write herself, only better, you’re essentially saying this: “There’s no way a female character can be this good at everything.  Or maybe she’s allowed to be good at everything, if she’s not conventionally attractive.  Or maybe she could be beautiful, too, as long as there’s not a romantic side story.  Romance is for silly little girls and de-legitimizes adventure stories because it’s clear the author and the readers just want to live vicariously through the young, beautiful, adventurous character, and that’s not what literature is for.”  Hate on all authors who utilize the ancient art of self-insert, or hate on none; criticize Black for writing what is, in the end, a pretty terrible book, but don’t criticize female authors for writing idealized female characters. It’s like when people say “I don’t like most girls,” because they think it makes them look good in comparison.  It doesn’t. We can do better than that.