Marion Zimmer Bradley Revisited

Back in January, I wrote a blog entry wondering why Marion Zimmer Bradley wasn't a bigger dealing of academic critics -- she was a feminist, a combo SF&F writer, an analyst of male and female sexuality, a massively influential editor, and several other awesome things. She wrote a lot of forgettable novels, as any pulp-writer does, but I wrote that entry after finishing The Heritage of Hastur and being blown away by it. After recently finishing the follow-up, Sharra's Exile, the question occurred to me again, so I did some digging, and found something that I'd originally glossed over: the fact that Moira Greyland has accused her mother, MZB, and her father Walter Breen of raping her as a child.

• Greyland's blog post is here.
• The Guardian covering this story.

I had known that Walter Breen, to whom MZB had dedicated several of her novels, died in prison on multiple accounts of child abuse (and he had even written publicly on the legitimacy of man-boy relationships). Yet Bradley's involvement is something I hadn't really thought about. Greyland paints a truly harrowing picture -- "My mother was an icy, violent monster whose voice twisted up my stomach." According to Greyland, both Bradley and Breen were gay, pagan, and apparently believed that everyone was "naturally" homosexual; early exposure to sexual activity as a child would allegedly help eliminate homophobia and other such things.

Obviously, reading this in the wake of the Kavanaugh confirmation process, the idea of believable accusations hasbeen often in my mind. But, after having just finished the two Darkover novels mentioned above, I'm also seeing some uncomfortable ideas in MZB's own books. Both novels have positive gay characters (Regis Hastur most notably), but there's also Dyan Ardais -- a grown man who clearly favors sex with boys in their early teens. His forcible rape of Danilo, which took advantage of Dyan's status as the boy's commander, is presented as horrific . . . but, significantly, Dyan is protected by nearly every powerful male around him, including allegedly admirable men such as Regis's grandfather and Kennard Alton. Although Danilo eventually comes to terms with his abuse (and eventually identifies as homosexual himself), Dyan is never punished . . . and, strangely, actually adopts Danilo as his heir at the end of The Heritage of Hastur, which is presented as a form of restitution, even though the texts gives no indication that Dyan ever stops molesting other little boys. It was disturbing to read that in Heritage, and it was disturbing to see that same theme continued in Sharra's Exile: Dyan, though never heroic, ends up dying a hero's death.

I'm still not quite sure how to think of the lifetime's work of MZB. In my monsters class, we were talking about Lovecraft's racism, and very, very few of the students were willing to not read a writer because they hold now-discredited and immoral views. Still, what MZB seems to have did exists on another category than scientific racism entirely. . . . and might be a legit reason why current academics avoid her work.