Unearthing

In Matrix, the author Lauren Groff manages to beautifully carve out for the novel’s historically-inspired heroine a feminine, divine space untouched by the overbearance of patriarchal domination. Groff’s work feels anomalous to me, because whenever I read novels that deal with a strong female protagonist of the past (either an imagined/ fantastical past or a historical past) she is strong and progressive because she is contrasted against the oppressive forces of patriarchal standards. Our inability to imagine a past without the hegemony of patriarchy is, in itself, a limitation of the ways in which we interpret and understand the past and its many oppressive forces. My own work with this thesis, a novel, is a bid to follow in Groff’s footsteps — a bid for a hierarchal reimagining, in which women have a culture, family, and religious practices all of their own untethered from the historical assumptions of patriarchy… Three sisters — Katla, Inverell, and Ayrne — live their lives walking hand-in-hand with their isles’ magical forces; they are children of seafoam and fertile earth, of forest glens and green mountains. Their ways are different from our: women live according to earth magic on the western isle, men live according to sea magic on the eastern isle, and the Morag, sexually fluid kelpie-horse folk, travel in between facilitating trade and running wild on the sea cliffs. As the sisters grow, they realize the balance of their world is skewing. Soon, an impenetrable night falls — plants wither, the seas empty, and fear grows. As the seemingly perpetual night stretches on, it threatens the lives and livelihoods of everyone on the isles. Despite the growing panic, the sisters find allies with a half-selkie boy, a pair of Morag horse traders, the tree folk, and the very Day herself to find the source of the isles’ chaos.