When Women Were Dragons

“I think, perhaps, none of us ever really know our mothers, not really.”

In a reflective comment on her own mother, Alex Green suggests that mothers possess some unknowable quality they keep from their children. In Alex’s case, this conviction arises because she never sees Bertha Green as being a true individual until much later in life. This quote represents the complex and fraught relationships that mothers sometimes have with their children: one of self-abandonment and self-sacrifice, both of which are key themes throughout the novel.

“And yet.”

Recurring at key moments throughout the novel, this innocuous phrase comes to represent the possibility that contradictory realities exist simultaneously—a theme that pervades the novel as dragons both do and “do not” exist, depending on how firmly one follows the societal compulsion for denial, or how deeply one believes that mothers could both love and leave their children. In this case, Alex uses the phrase to say that Bertha loved Marla but was tired of Marla tending to her and her family while she recovered from cancer.

“She took a spot at the university that could have gone to a smart boy with a bright future who would likely have gone on to produce something of value.”

Mr. Green’s speech represents a prime example of the sexist rhetoric that pervaded the American psyche in the 1950s (and sometimes continues to the present day) when he makes this comment about Bertha’s education. In Barnhill’s novel, women hold more value to society as wives and caretakers; men, after all, are the earners and the scholars. Alex encounters this ideology throughout her life from her father and her various male teachers and principals.

“How can I ever know what my mother meant? Even now, after all these years, she is a memory of a memory of a memory—her own kind of unsolvable, inscrutable knot.”

In the despairing tone of this quote, Alex expresses the complexity of personhood and conveys the idea that the long years of silence and censorship have prevented her from knowing who her mother truly is as a person. Once again, the imagery of Knots is invoked to reflect this concept and express Alex’s residual bewilderment over Bertha’s hidden desires and choices. By describing her mother as “inscrutable,” she acknowledges the harsh truth that people, at their core, are unknowable by those around them, even those to whom they have dedicated their lives and sacrificed much of what they yearned to do in life, as Bertha has for her daughter.

“It was, for almost everyone, like any other taboo subject—cancer, or miscarriages, or menstruation—spoken of in tight whispers and vague innuendos before changing the subject.”

Alex describes dragoning as a taboo topic, comparing it against other topics that are similarly denied voice within the restrictive society that raised her and stunted her own personal growth. This comparison provides evidence for the idea that dragons collectively represent all the aspects that society fears and cannot fully control—namely, the raw, inner power of people to embody their deepest desires in defiance of social restrictions. And what society cannot fully control, it shames.

“It remained unmentionable and therefore unclassifiable, which meant I had to carry it, every day, no matter how much it hurt.”

This quote highlights the uncomfortable truth that the things people refuse to acknowledge do not disappear just because they are ignored. Eventually, these secrets and contradictions that Alex carries find their way out of her through anger and a deep yearning for change. This quote supports the novel’s argument that repressing feelings and facts doesn’t make them go away; on the contrary, such suppression only delays and intensifies the eventual expression of forbidden desires and actions.

“Just because people won’t talk about something, it doesn’t mean that it’s any less true or important.”

In this quote, Marla affirms for Alex that silence cannot negate experience. This is a revolutionary thing to say in an age of repression, and because Marla is the first to say such a thing to Alex, this idea forms the foundation for her later internal transformation as she actively seeks out research even when it is hidden and deliberately rendered unavailable to the general public.

“Embarrassment, as it turns out, is more powerful than information. And shame is the enemy of truth.”

This quote supports the theme of Emotional Repression and Censorship of Taboo Topics because embarrassment and shame restrict people from understanding the complexities of nature—and of each other. As a result, people find a release through means that prove to be more disastrous and violent than if their needs had been openly acknowledged.

“Was my body still my body if I couldn’t control what it did?”

Alex wonders if the inner transformations of her body imply that she herself has no agency in who or what she will eventually become. This is a smaller inquiry into the larger mystery of dragoning and whether transformation is the better choice—or if it’s even a choice at all.

“As Beatrice and I grew, my mother seemed to diminish […] I didn’t know what it really meant until it was too late.”

Bertha grows physically smaller as her children grow up, and this dynamic becomes a symbol for her sacrifice to diminish her own sense of self in the service of her children. While this was Bertha’s choice in the end, she made it because of the Familial Responsibilities and Gender Roles that are placed upon her by society to be a good mother and a good wife.

“We were good children. We kept our eyes on the ground.”

Alex frequently uses the term “eyes on the ground” to contrast obedience to society’s limitations with the secret desire to gaze—and fly—skyward in pursuit of one’s true self. In the eyes of society, looking to the freedom that the sky represents is dangerous; thus, good girls must keep their eyes down. Only dangerous, dragonish women choose to look up, seeing a life beyond their predestined roles in society.

“Her name was only ‘Mother.’ What else had been taken away from her, I wondered, besides her name?”

When Alex learns her mother’s name, she realizes that Bertha had an entire personality she knew nothing about. Upon learning her name, Alex understands that, through motherhood and marriage, Bertha lost essential parts of herself to become what her husband and children needed, further supporting the idea that women in this society are expected to sacrifice themselves for their families.

“Your mother did it. Without anyone showing her how, your…you know. Your mother’s sister did too, after your grandparents passed, she finished raising your mother all by herself. It’s not that big of a deal. Anyone can do it. It’s just, you know. Nature [...] you have, as they say, instincts for this sort of thing.”

Mr. Green quotes another piece of rhetoric from the time period of 1950s America, implying women are natural caretakers whose sole purpose is to conceive and care for children. Alex contradicts this assumption, stating that it is society, not nature, that forces women to deny the pursuit of their own goals in life.

“It’s remarkable how quickly a person can get used to an impossible situation. How terror and panic can start to feel familiar, even ordinary.”

Alex writes this statement when she forces herself to become accustomed to the unfair burden of acting as a mother to her cousin Beatrice when the adults in her life abandon their child-rearing responsibilities. Her sentiments in this quote also suggest why many women remain bound in loveless or abusive marriages, as Bertha does despite her potential to become an entirely different person.

“The silencing or obscuring of any aspects of nature—due to cultural taboo or fear or general squeamishness—harms science.”

Dr. Gantz advocates frequently for the free exchange of knowledge, something that doesn’t happen readily in the world he lives in. Society’s compulsion to repress knowledge of natural phenomena only ends up causing irreparable harm to the community, since dragons who transform out of rage often destroy homes and kill people once they’ve grown out of their oppressive circumstances.

“[T]here is a freedom in forgetting.”

As Alex grows and matures, she finds a dismal form of comfort by actively embracing the attitudes of denial that she was raised to perpetuate. To Alex and to Bertha, forgetting or denying uncomfortable truths serves as a form of protection for both themselves and their loved ones. However, such psychological shielding comes at a heavy price, for that which is denied does not disappear; instead, it grows in power until it must be expressed at any cost. For Alex, the cost is uncontrolled rage; for Bertha, the costs are diminishment, physical illness, and an untimely death.

“How do we remember the moments when we fall apart? Time doesn’t work the same when we are frightened or frustrated or enraged. Moments loop over themselves and split apart, like a knot fraying from the inside out.”

Knots come to symbolize the elusive nature of time in this instance, both as something bound together and as something that can easily unravel. In this moment of contemplation, Alex posits that memory and time are fragile. Similarly, the metaphorical knots that form societal and familial connections also have an inherent fragility, an idea that suggests that bonds are never permanent, no matter how tight they may seem.

“It felt good to be uncontained, the way a bird must feel when it realizes that the thing constraining it was nothing more than an eggshell—delicate and fragile, and just waiting to be cracked open.”

Alex acknowledges the freedom she feels when walking alone after Beatrice goes to sleep. This moment marks the first time in her quasi-motherhood that she acknowledges her long-suppressed yearning for freedom outside of studying, or at least a moment in which she feels unfettered by the roles that have been unfairly imposed upon her by others’ lack of responsibility.

“So what should a town do when the mother who once escaped into the sky, in a scream of rage and fire, decides to return?”

Dr. Gantz reports that mothers who have dragoned will return and hints that when they do, society itself will undergo a profound upheaval in order to negotiate new ways for such individuals to blend in and contribute in ways that far exceed the traditional roles they once abandoned. This quote suggests the opportunity to reexamine how mothers can be a part of their family while retaining their whole selves.

“Was I the immovable object, or was I the unstoppable force? Perhaps I was both. Perhaps this is what we learn from our mothers.”

The contradiction inherent in this discovery is representative of the complexity of motherhood, womanhood, and personhood. The lesson Alex feels she learns from mothers is one of complexity and dimensionality: that a woman can become all things to confront the challenges she faces in a world that seeks to stifle and control her.

“They were dangerous women, after all, who had succumbed to dangerous things.”

The women who dragoned are considered dangerous, thereby affirming society’s collective understanding of Dragons as a symbol of all that is terrifying, powerful, and uncontrollable within the individual. Yet this fear is belied by the fact that the dragons who have returned are now rebuilding societies and helping those in need, thus negating the prejudice and ignorance that abounds once dragons return.

“The woods decay, the woods decay and fall.”

This is a quote from the poem “Tithonus,” and is one that Alex repeats often. The quote represents Bertha’s withering and eventual decay into death. Once plentiful and strong, like a forest, eventually her strength withers under the hands of a possessive lover until, eventually, she falls into sickness and death. This oft-repeated quote supports the theme that possessive love (as opposed to unconditional) love only serves to destroy the beloved.

“I saw a dragon when I was four years old and, on that day, I learned to be silent I was given no context, no frame of reference, no way in which to understand my experience, and the adults in my life hoped I would forget, and by doing so, nearly forced me to forget.”

In this quote, Alex has a reckoning with her past. She announces for the first time that she saw a dragon at four years old, but through the systemic erasure that both society and her family imposed upon her, she grew to deny this memory and therefore also denied a vital part of her reality and of herself.