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William Morris, Tolkien and The House of the Wolfings · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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creative brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and
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today I am joined by my good friend and also a lecturer in English Literature at University
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of Manchester, Dr Ingrid Hanson and we're going to be discussing William Morris and in
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particular his fantasy novel The House of the Wall Things which I think will absolutely
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fascinate you Lord of the Rings fans out there. So first of all Ingrid hello tell us a
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little bit about who William Morris is. Some people may have vague ideas that he's
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something to do with furniture and fabric but there's much more to him than that. That's a very
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good point and yes when I tell people that I work on William Morris's work people know that I'm
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in English Literature at the scholar and they sort of go you mean the wall paper man which seems
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a bit surprising to people and I do mean the wallpaper man but indeed Morris is much more than
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the wallpaper man so in his own time he was most well known as a poet actually the poet of the
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earthly paradise is how he became known in the sort of mid-19th century around about when he
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published that in the late 1860s. So he yeah he was first of all was a poet he got to know the
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pre-afflight artist Antigabra Rosetti when he was a student and under his influence started painting
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as well which he only did for a very short time but went on to found what became known as the firm
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with the number of different friends which then produced wall papers and stained glass windows
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fabrics for furnishings with which people are really familiar but at the same time Morris was
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all the time writing poetry and particularly writing poetry reaching back to the past he was an
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avid reader of medieval and early English texts he was an avid reader of early Icelandic and
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wrote Icelandic sagas he did a translation of Beowulf towards the end of the 19th century but he
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also in 1883 encountered socialism having become disillusioned with the liberal politics to which
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he started in which he'd started to get involved he converted as he saw it he crossed the river of
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fire and became a socialist and became a very active campaigner for what he called the cause which
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earlier in his life he used to refer to the idea of beauty of life and he saw beauty of life as
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something that was inherent in art by the people for the people a joy to the user and maker as he
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described it in a lecture of 1883 that that cause then became him coterminous really with the cause
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of socialism that is you know a kind of equality for people as he said that there should be no
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brain sick brain workers nor hot sick hand workers but equality of condition that's Morris's thinking
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and meanwhile he continued all the time as well as setting up a socialist newspaper and going up
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and down the country preaching to try to convert people to the cause of socialism getting really
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involved in that he also continued to write poems and long long poems narrative poems shorter poems
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stories and in the 1880s then he started to write kind of proto what I would call proto socialist
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romances including the House of the Woolfings in 1888 yeah so when we think about where he fits
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in respect to the inklings CS Lewis and talking we're talking about someone who would be in their
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grandfather's generation or a very old father his his his written work was what they were reading
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when they were growing up so he fed into the 20th century fantasy writers so the reason why
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we've talked about William Morris in the broader strokes before if you want to dig back through the
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the myth makers archive but this particular story the House of the Woolfings
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and it also has a a follow-on doesn't it it's just to give you a flavor of what it's about it's
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re-imagining the lives of the Germanic Gothic tribes resisting the Romans so it's not
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real but it's set in a vaguely real historical moment and we're in the middle of the European
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continent in the vast forest of guess what Merkwood so do you want to tell us a little bit more about
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the characters who are the sort of central thread of this story yeah so the story starts with
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it's important from my perspective it's important to say that I am going to tell you about
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the central characters but but characters is really important this is a text that is about
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community and that's really important to Morris is writing always he's not about we do have
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lone heroes we have the central hero Theodolf in this text and you'll see from that name the kind
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of way Morris is reaching back to earlier forms of old English but Morris is interested in the
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community of the Woolfings that's why it's called the House of the Woolfings he tells us at the
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beginning about where they live about the way that they fish the local rivers and they consider
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the rivers to be their friends it's actually a book that's really interested for those of you
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who are interested in questions of ecology it's a book that's really interested in the relationship
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between people and the land on which they live people and the earth and Morris sees that relationship
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as one that is kind of two way it's a reciprocal relationship in this text so it begins with the
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call to war of the Woolfings and it's a kind of war in which then there needs to be a sort of
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gathering of the tribes against the incursion of the Romans and the the sort of war leader is Theodolf
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and his love interest who is also in her own right a powerful prophetic leader is Hallsun so we
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have these two really. Hallsun is the daughter. Yes. Woodsun is the lover. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Is two female
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characters have similar names so we've got in the hall Hallsun who acts like a sort of priestess
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guarding the Vestal flame that's in Roman term I shouldn't use that and then we've got out in the
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woods the more nature's demigod figure of Woodsun. Yes. Yes. So that's the kind of the beginning
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of the story and the story unfolds telling the story of the battle in which Theodolf in the end
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has to kind of make a choice about sacrificing himself so there's a you know it's so far a kind
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of classic war tale and a classic war hero story it's worth just noting that other characters in
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this tale are for instance people's swords which have names like War Babe so it's just worth noting
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that that Morris is interested too in what he sees as a kind of organic relationship between people
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and their weapons and I think part of that is because this is a text which is written at the
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height of Victorian industrialism Morris is very disgusted with the kind of alienation of
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labor that he sees all around him and the way that people might be working in a factory just putting
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a glass bead making one glass bead with no sense of their belonging to the community or what the
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outcome is going to be and so in a sense this is a text that that imagines a different kind of
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community working together in order to defeat an enemy and when he describes the kind of movements
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of battle of the wolfings they're always organic versus the kind of rigid structures of the
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Romans which he borrows from Gibbon the decline in fall of the Roman Empire which he had read as a
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young man so he's very well versed in the kind of histories of the conflict of the Goths and the
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Romans but he brings to it his own yeah fantastical elements and elements which are about a kind of
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organic relationship between people dependence between people and dependence between men and women too
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yeah so there is something interesting to note as well about the style of the novel which is a
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mixture of narrative and then poetry people often speak their thoughts in poetry
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what's he the first person to try this in the Victorian period is he blazing a trail here
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he's doing something really quite unusual yeah and it didn't go down very well he received quite a
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lot of critique for this novel various people felt that it was a sort of pastiche his style he has a
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kind of it's not written in sort of contemporary language he's trying to reach back to an older
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kind of Anglo-Saxon idiom really and yes and that combination of prose and verse allows people
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to sort of move in and out of kind of yes the storytelling of the story in prose and people's
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expression of their feeling in verse which again so it reaches back to that older idiom
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yes he doesn't use a literary verse in the way that Tolkien does for his this is similar to
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the bit in the battle of the Pellano fields where you go from battle to poetry and back again some
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of the strongest parts though are the battle poems I just wanted to read a little bit to give
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everyone a sense of what it's like to read this book so Halson the daughter who is one of the
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sort of powerful figures in the community at an absolute key point just before they have the
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showdown at the end with the Romans she gets this wonderful moment to speak so now she lifted up her
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voice and sang so that many heard her for at this moment of time there was a lull in the clamor of
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battle both within the gath and without even as it happens when the thunderstorm is just about to
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break on the world that the wind drops dead and the voice that the leaves is hushed before the first
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great and near flash of lightning glairs over the fields so she sang now the latest hour
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cometh and the ending of the strife and tomorrow and tomorrow shall we take the hand of life
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and winder down the meadows and skirt the darkling wood and reap the waving acres and gather in
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the good it's a longer poem but I just want to pop to the end of it because it's got a very
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Tolkienian end and she says does it they're about to fight in so is the tale now fashioned that
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many a time and oft shall be told on the acres edges when the summer eve is soft shall be harkened
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round the hall blaze when the midwinter night the kindries kindreds mirth besetth and quickenith
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man's delight and we that have lived in the story shall be born again and again as men feast on
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the bread of our earning and praise the grief-borne grain so she's already imagining herself as part of
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a story in the future which anyone who is keen on Lord the Rings knows this is often a sort of
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theme within the story that the characters are aware that they may also be themselves heroic
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figures of a kind later on and but it's given here to Hall's son so yeah I think reading it coming
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to it for me it was I've never read it before some of the narrative poetry because it's in couplets
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does fall a bit flat but there are times when it really does rouse like that particular speech so
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I can imagine he had his detractors for it anyway so where does it fit in morris's life and work
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and was this his first fantasy novel or proto novel or did he what did he do with it where did he
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go with fantasy as a genre yeah I mean this was so this was 1888 he had as a young man I mean his
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first venture the Oxford and Cambridge magazine in 1856 he had written some kind of short
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romances really which I suppose you might see as kind of four runners to fantasy but this is
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really his first venture into what we would kind of identify I guess as fancy I think in a full
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scale novel and after this he goes on to so I think just to pause and mention you know it features
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an enchanted hall berk and yeah but get on to that yeah all kinds of sort of yes
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yeah mythical moments in the text which is which is you know obviously I guess one of the ways
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in which that ties into people like talking but he he also then goes on very shortly after
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is 1889 he publishes the roots of the mountains which is kind of a a sequel another kind of tale
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of the of the sort of battle of the folk and then he doesn't really go on to publish another he
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has a few years before he publishes the rest of his romances and then he publishes five romances
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across the last few years he dies in 1896 and the last one the Sundering flood is in progress he's
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almost finished it as he dies so he has five romances across sort of 1890 then to 1896 and there's
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some you know debate among people who are thinking about Morris about whether this was kind of a sort
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of moving away from that really active period of socialist agitation across the 1880s there are
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others in his own time who were trying to find in these fantasies are kind of a sort of allegory
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and all of them about socialism and Morris was fairly dismissive of that but I think he is
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working out in these romances some of his own he's always interested in alternative worlds
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in 1890 just after the roots of the roots of the mountains he publishes news from nowhere
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and an enduringly wonderful utopian fiction of the future which is one of the really few
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utopian texts in which people who disagree in the utopia don't have to be ejected the usual
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the usual process with the utopias you can have this wonderful world in which all kinds of things
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are transformed into into kind of a good space but if people disagree they must in some way be
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kept out in order that it retains its perfection Morris manages to have a kind of imperfect but good
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utopia where people are allowed to disagree which is really quite radical so that idea of people
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being able to disagree and that's very much a socialist vision of the future in which people are
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again people are equal there is equality of condition people are able to produce art with
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their own hands and they produce imperfect cups and plates and sources you know made in small
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quantities in banded workshops rather than you know perfect things made in a in a factory so
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he's always interested in those alternative worlds he also publishes in 1886 forgot about this
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a dream of John Ball which is a kind of harping back a tale a sort of as it were a medieval dream
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narrative of a dreamer who goes back to the peasant's uprising of 1381 and watches what happens
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and gets into dialogue with John Ball the sort of rabble rousing priest of the 1381
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peasant's uprising and that one of the key moments in that text is when you know John Ball
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tells him that men fight and they lose the battle and then the thing that they fought for turns out
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not to be what they thought it was and other men have to fight for it under another name so that
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sense of a kind of trans-historical battle for a life of communal wholeness is really important
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in Morris's thinking and a life a life of equality and so even in this kind of ancient tribal
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society he sees that equality where women and men both have really active powerful roles to play
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and yeah that's really important part of his thinking yes so just talking about I think the role
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of women is one of the most fascinating parts of it it's not just full sun with her battle song
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wood sun who is the demigodess lover figure she dresses as a man and rides as a messenger at one
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point she provides one of the heroes with this enchanted dwarven you mentioned it
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whole book which those of you who know you're talking we'll be thinking is that like the
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mithril coat that Frodo wears sort of but it's also cursed so it's interesting that she gives it to
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Theodore because she knows it will keep him safe it's from a good desire to keep him safe but it has this
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curse within it and she's lied about it so the the the logic of the story is he has to put it
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aside and make the sacrifice so her and she has to admit what she's done and reconcile herself to
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his sacrifice so that's it's sort of main psychological climax really is that is around this
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whole book you mentioned the importance of the tangible goods that's one of them
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but there are lots of little little women that's the wrong word there are lots of minor characters
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who do good things as well so horse on is very active in the defense of the realm and she sends
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off messengers who are largely women so they're very much an equal society shown to be active
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all the way through the story so I think for many people listening they'll be wanting to say well
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okay that's all very interesting but did it really feed through to the 20th century well yeah
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in a 1960 letter talking wrote that though the dead marshes and the approaches to the Moranon
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owe a lot to northern France after the battle of the psalm they owe more to William Morris and his
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huns and romans in the house of the wall things or the roots of the mountains so he was aware
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that when he read this it fed into his imagination and produced his version of
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well landscapes of middle earth here he's talking about the gates of Mordor area
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but you can also see the connection to particularly the Rohan culture I just I think it's also
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interesting though to unpack what he does that is different because I was just talking about
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Morris's characters being the female characters in particular being very active
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um it's notable that in the Rohan culture and in most of the female characters in Tolkien
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is that they are isolated and they're not in community with other female characters
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which is you could see the the chain you know how someone else does it differently he was not a
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socialist in the William Morris vein there's definitely an echo of hall sun in airwin and wood
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sun for those of you who like to dig back into the sawmarillion she is very like million
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who is a Maya figure who's a half semi-divine mother of Luthian so it's very interesting to
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sort of see what he does with these characters and threads them into similar characters in his own
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middle earth narrative um what about the evocation of landscape in it so we've talked about
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the community aspect but I think the landscape itself is a character too isn't it yeah absolutely
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so important the sense what the strength of the gods in this text comes from their knowledge of
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the landscape their ability to use the woods and the trees their their sense of friendship with
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the river their sense of of the natural world being their ally they're so closely associated with
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and all the time when they're you know when they're fighting when they're living at the beginning
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when they're sending messages to one another that that sense of being in in community with the
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landscape is really important so the and the the senses are really important in this text I
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I would be interested to know how that feeds over into talking but certainly in this text
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Morris's characters are always willing to express themselves they're willing to be emotional both
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men and women so we have the singing and you know theodore kind of swooning when he's got the
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holbocon in a way that's that's not helpful he has to put that aside but but a sense of kind of
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embracing life as something that is full of full of feeling full of the senses as well ties in both
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to human relationships and to relationships with the non-human world so that people's um you know
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at one point it talks early on in the text about how the the people of the wall things drew out of the
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river driftwood and other matters I love that I love that use of other matters you know matter we
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might use as a singular to kind of go out other sort of random matter that was in other matters it's
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like they drew stories out of them out of the river you know which has all these different names at
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different times you know people give it different names sort of nicknames almost as the people change
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so the landscape as well is full of story and is part of the story and you're right in that
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wonderful bit that you read about the sense of the characters themselves being aware of being part
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of a story and that goes back to what I was saying about a dream of John Ball I think Morris is
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really strong sense of of a kind of trans historical story of of people and land and community
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yeah so once I will come to your um your point about the emotion um but just on the location I
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mentioned its murkwood um and the geography is very very similar to Rohan except flipped um so when
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you're reading it if you just flip it in your head and turn the middle earth map around a bit
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ends up at the same and the hall of the wall things is very like Ederas um which is of course like
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you know that's because it's like the real great halls that were built by the Anglo-Saxon and the
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early Goths and what have you so here's the um what they call the roof of the wall things it was a
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great hall and goodly after the fashion of their folk and their day not built of stone and lime
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but framed of the goodliest trees of the wildwood squared with the ads and betwits and acts
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and betwits the framing filled with clay wattled with reeds so there's an interest here in the actual
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physical how do you make a house long was that house and at one end and I the gable was the man's door
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not so high that a man might stand on the threshold and his helm crest clear the little
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for such was the custom that a tall man must bow himself as he came into the hall love that detail
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architecture forcing sort of subservience to the community it's just wonderful um so can I
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interject there for a minute just to say that's so important that question of architecture for Morris
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he you know in the many many things he did in his life I didn't mention that when he first um
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graduated from Oxford he worked for an architect called George Street and he intended to go into
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first of all when he was an undergraduate he intended to go into the church then he decided not
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to do that he decided to become an architect and he didn't stay very long with George Street but
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he was always interested in architecture really observant about it from his young age he used to go
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in doing brass rubbing in churches he was interested in the sort of tactility of buildings but
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also really interested in gothic architecture and he read John Ruskin's work about gothic architecture
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as a young man and became really interested in that and for him always that sense of environment
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is really really important um and the way in which environment does shape what happens to people's
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lives in it so again in the um lecture that he gives in 1883 called the Beauty of Life he says for
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instance um no one who cuts down a tree wantingly or carelessly especially in a big town or
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its suburbs need make any pretence of caring about art i love that it's very more a statement it's
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very large statement but actually he's thinking and then he goes on to talk about the sort of
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terrible housing in the slums in London um and and what he sees as the kind of showy ostentatious
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and unbeautiful houses of the wealthy and these things are sort of partners to each other
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whereas what he wants is for people to have houses that are kind of you know fit to live in and
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and you know his sort of famous dictum in that same lecture um the Beauty of Life in it for people
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to have houses where they don't have anything that they don't you know know to be useful or believe
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to be beautiful um but there's a kind of that that it's not just about everything looking pretty
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that beauty is about it is about what he calls the Beauty of Life so a sense of coherence between
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people and their environment and and and the kind of justice in that that people should have the
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right to enjoy their environment um that's really important in Morris's thinking and I think
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that comes through in here so he's interested in architecture yes he's interested in the technical
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details of how taller you know a doorway has to be in the way in which the roof is constructed
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and and the materials from which it's constructed so all of that you know he's interested in a kind
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of in a kind of what we would see now as a sort of ecologically whole way of that's important in
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the way in which different parts of an ecosystem are working together and there's been I've just
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even this week I saw an article about how William Morris's designs have to have ruled the world
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they sell them in waitros you know it is the the furniture fabric is so familiar now people have
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forgotten who was behind it once upon a time it's in fact probably far too industrialized for his taste
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I'd have thought but anyway um going back to your question about the passion and the emotion
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expressed I think when we're looking at Tolkien there are two people that these
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Goths are like and that is the ones who already mentioned the Rohan people but also the Hobbits
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and both the Rohan people and the Hobbits sing spontaneously in the similar ways to this
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the the the the wall things do oh the Huns the Goths do and I'm thinking in particular of
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well the Hobbits just sing it a drop of a hat they will make things up at key moments of passion
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as well as to entertain them while they're walking but the closest resemblance is the songs of war
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and lament and battle cries that the Rohan people sing and both the Hobbits and the Rohan are
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referred to as being young cultures um compared to some of the older slower cultures of like
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Ents and Elves and even Gondor which is older the men of Gondor they've got a longer lineage
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the fierce intense appetites is a good way of putting it are the Rohan people and the Hobbits
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sort of make them the closest and it's interesting it's the Rohan people who knew of or
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had stories about Hobbits in their culture and everyone else has forgotten them.
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Treebeard has no idea they exist um whereas Rohan did know and so for example just so you can get
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the the sense of where they converge in the house of the wall things um at the end there's this
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final celebratory funeral feast where whole sun again um gets to do the sort of elegy it's a longer
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elegy but i'm going to read you a bit because it imagines the reward for the war leaders
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the adult and his fellow warduke otter who both sorry folks it's not happy ending for them they
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have both died in battle and so they're getting their reward in the afterlife and so she sings
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war father gleams where the white light streams round kings of old all red with gold and the gods
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of the name with joy a flame all the ancient of men grown glorious again till the slain's father
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cry at the loud at last here is one that belayeth no hope of the past no weapon no treasure of earth
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that he bear no gift for the pleasure of god home to share but life his hand bringeth well cherished
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most sweet and hark the horse singeth the folk wolf to greet so all that the adult takes
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into the afterlife is his name he can't take his dwarf whole book but he gets so greeting because
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he's gone there um having lived up to his name and his forefathers which is very very similar to
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the sort of laments and elegies that you get and if they're done as he dies on the battlefield says
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he won't be ashamed to be in the house of his fathers so there's a connection there for this
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um yeah they are both very you can see that they are related to each other in that sort of
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young tribal passionate quite close to the land full of horses by the way I haven't mentioned
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the horses yet but they've got a very similar cultural background so that's where I would see it
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lying in Tolkien um but they're it's not really don't really mean this to be where should only be
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interested in it in it because it leads to Tolkien because I think it's much more interesting than
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that it's looking at what Morris is doing about reimagining a prehistory um for this part of
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Europe because if you think of the um the real Roman Empire this is where it stops in the woods
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of Germany never goes any further it's met its frontier so it's like the frontier wasn't asterix
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it was over here uh and so this is where the old tribes meet the new people arriving
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and I'm interested looking at what Morris does with real enemies like Romans when they meet these
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frontiers versus Tolkien who also thought about history as a kind of prehistory but he's
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frontier people are orcs and people that you can immediately sort of feel oh yes there must be
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bad so what did you get there is one Roman Romans are mainly described as a group aren't they and
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they're very dastardly they burn people alive and do all sorts of terrible things but there is one
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Roman leader at the end who gets his moment um what did you think of the you were talking about
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the Romans being mechanized and part of the sort of incoming is can you unpack that a bit more for
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us so we can understand what's going on there yeah I think that's really important for Morris he writes
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elsewhere he has an essay uh that he writes with a fellow socialist called Ernest Belfort Bax
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called the development of modern society and they look back at the the kind of goths and the Romans
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and they're encountering what happens and they see Morris sees the Romans very much as he's kind of
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imagining them at least as kind of proto-victorian capitalists so he's you know this is not it's quite
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important to say you know this is not a text that is a kind of patriotic nationalist text Morris
32:52
not interested in patriotism or nationalism um he's really against a kind of um sort of um
32:59
gung-ho nationalism he's very against colonialism which he describes as Jinan Bible and
33:04
Dunham Bible he's not interested in that in his newspaper that he um that he edits that's the
33:09
the kind of language that's used about colonialism um and Morris isn't interested in that he's not
33:13
interested in a kind of um yes so he's not interested in a kind of patriotic battle for the land
33:20
but he is interested in thinking about a kind of wide trans historical community in some ways
33:28
I think Morris is kind of thinking we might see it as more akin to what um present day anarchists
33:33
would see as bio-regionalism i.e a kind of association of different groups of people with the kind
33:39
of environment in which they live um so he's very interested in that and his sense of battle is
33:46
battle against yes so the Romans they're sort of formations their battle formations are described
33:51
very clearly most of the you know they're absolutely sort of um unbreakable they are so they're
33:57
seen as against the organic lives of the Goths they are seen as the kind of the kind of incursion
34:04
of industrialization mechanization a kind of um forced loyalty which is that the kind of text makes
34:13
clear to us their loyalty is not about love and passion but it's about um obedience um and Morris
34:19
is very much against that um so I think that's that's an important part of the text so I think the
34:23
text is not uncomplicated in some ways and um for myself as a reader of Morris who is also um
34:29
you know very much against war I think it's interesting to to see the way in which he uses it
34:34
and and he changes over his life it's sort of sense of the extent to which he is against war but
34:38
his imagination of battle is almost always an imagination of um kind of struggle that the continuing
34:45
struggle against what is wrong um and so he he constructs this enemy that is an enemy who
34:50
who yes certainly um is is powerful and um yeah not he doesn't he doesn't other than in a sense
35:01
and they're they're sort of accessible you see and know who they are and he does allow yes
35:05
for the odd exception in if that's always the case that's always the case for Morris whatever
35:09
the situation there's there's room for the exception there's room for the person who makes a
35:12
different decision yeah and and he makes in terms of the battle plan the war things and their allies
35:18
come unstuck when they try and fight like the Romans but they win when they come out of the forest
35:24
and so that sort of has the they go around the edges of these geometric shapes that have to sort
35:29
of turn to face them but they can creep round and get at them at different areas and in the in the
35:35
battle I mentioned um where wholesome sings her song to encourage everybody um it's very clear
35:44
that it's everybody in the community is fighting it's a defensive battle for their homes not a
35:49
battle of expansion um so the great company is made up of the men of the stay at homes
35:56
and the homeless uh and the women so it's not just the warriors everybody fights in this community
36:04
and that's how they eventually win because the conventional arm is afailed or been outnumbered
36:11
it's not fair to say they were failed but they were overwhelmed um fascinating stuff so I hope
36:17
that this will encourage people to go away and look at the house of the wall things and have a
36:21
think about its connections to uh politics and the way war is presented in fantasy and um also get
36:31
to delve deeper into the fascinating figure that is William Morris just to pick up on something you
36:36
said um lord the ring sometimes gets misused to be applied to present day conflicts but actually
36:44
talking himself said that he was an anarchist and his ideal community is something like the shy
36:50
which has no kings the kings king stay on the edge they're not allowed inside the shy without
36:56
their permission so I think he and Morris would have had a lot in common when it comes to the future
37:01
of politics so we've described a world in grid where we've had lots of very powerful female leaders
37:09
particularly my fave which is all son so we're going to end with our question about all the fantasy
37:17
worlds that you have access to um be it on film or in a book or in poetry where do you think
37:26
is a good place to be a whole son type a female leader who steps forward particularly in times of
37:32
conflict where would you go and it can be anything from bitrix potter if you can imagine that um to June
37:40
the choice is yours where would you think it'd be good to be a female leader
37:44
great um I do have a great place to be a female leader just before I go there I'm going to urge people
37:51
who are interested in get interested in Morris who read the House of the Wolfings also to read his
37:55
final romance the sundering flood I think people who are interested in this text will love that
38:01
really great about landscape and all kinds of other things um however in terms of a good place to
38:06
be a female leader oh my goodness where I would go is into a world called Ladyland which is
38:13
dream world um of a writer called Racheosako Hasein writing in the Indian Ladies magazine in 1905
38:21
she publishes this world um is a kind of utopian fantasy in which the author wakes up and finds
38:28
herself in Ladyland so in a society in which women are often imperter and kept away from society
38:35
now a war a war arose now women so let's go back now in this society women are out on the streets
38:43
and men are kept away and the history of this is that a war arises and men do all the usual things
38:50
and want to fight and want to battle and want to assert their warrior skills and their failing
38:55
and so the women say look you're exhausted the thing isn't working why don't we come up with
38:59
that idea so they use all their fantastic scientific skill and they conjure up a kind of a solution
39:06
which I won't spoil since it's a very short story please do go and find it you should be able to find
39:10
it online and they they use their scientific skill to conjure up a really nonviolent but wholly
39:17
successful way of winning the war after which they decide really you know we might as well get on
39:22
and run things women can go to universities develop their knowledge come up with all kinds of
39:27
different scientific solutions to the world and we'll just leave the men behind doors for the moment
39:32
so we might I'd like to say that fantasy thinking in my view particularly utopian writing is often
39:38
thinking about what's wrong with the world and imagine a big way in which we might fix it so I don't
39:43
think that it would be a good idea for men to be shut up behind doors but I think the moment of this
39:47
world just thinking for a minute about the liberation of women in this moment it's a wonderful way
39:52
of constructing an idea of what what the world might look like if women were allowed equal opportunities
39:58
with men yeah so I suppose it's very easy to think of the places where it would be bad the dystopian
40:05
places like in Hamadon's tale where there isn't such a really a thing as a female leader
40:15
but I also then thought of places where if you wanted to be a really autocratic female leader
40:21
unreasonable one of which there are some in the world at the moment something like Alice in Wonderland
40:28
you know you can be completely off with their heads there so that and with no consequences so
40:34
if that's your your preference that a bigger place to go but whereas thinking of a place where
40:41
gender no longer matters which I suppose is the ideal where we're just people
40:45
and we can be fully female fully male whatever we want to be and and also be leaders I was thinking
40:53
well basically the Star Trek universe they were for many years ahead of the game putting on television
41:03
and on film sort of versions of female leadership which wasn't about the fact they were female
41:09
it's like post gender in many ways so so maybe that is the best place to be a female leader
41:15
because it doesn't matter that your female you're just a leader thank you so much Ingrid for
41:21
taking us through the house of the war things and I will put a link to Ladyland for those of you
41:29
who wish to find and what was the name of the writer again? Rokaya Sakawata Singh okay so I'll
41:35
find that and put a link so you can follow that up if you wish to find out more about that
41:39
fascinating story from India thank you very much brilliant thanks to you dear
41:49
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