
Terry Prachett: Why Gandalf Never Married (1985) - iamelgringo
http://www.ansible.co.uk/misc/tpspeech.html
======
derefr
The obvious, technical reason for all this was skirted by Prachett, but never
addressed directly: a "witch" is, by the oldest definition, a woman who is "in
communion with" or "consorting with" (sleeping with) a devil or demon, and
that is wherefrom she takes any power she may possess. A wizard has no such
requirement--his magic is actually of an internal nature.

To put it another way: all magic--all power, really--actually comes from men,
and more specifically, from their "wands" (ahem.) A woman doing magic is just
serving as an avatar or proxy for her boyfriend's "will." Further, because she
is committing a carnal sin by not being _married_ to this creature (by
definition: you need a priest, and no priest will marry you to a devil), she
starts off on the "evil" side of the line, even if she wants nothing to do
with it.

Then there's the whole matter that she's "draining his willpower for her own
purposes"--mythology tends to discretize single creatures into multiple over
time, so "witch" and "succubus" were likely the same idea. Even if she was
sleeping with a perfectly good Wiz, she'd still be a vile temptress.

That all seems more in line with medieval European folklore to me.

(Of course, the question of what happens when someone _marries_ a wizard is
left unanswered; it's usually assumed that wizards are too ingrained in their
world of rites and formulae to go a-courting, but what if a girl were to just
love them anyway--like I'm sure the wives of many mathematicians today do?
Would she gain "legal" access to his magical energies, or is there some sort
of biblical clause against that? In fact, would the wizard be allowed to marry
at all? Would a priest condemn Merlin in his time, even in his role as the
king's advisor?)

~~~
jacoblyles
It seems to me that the character of the wizard borrows a bit from the clergy.
If you sit through a Catholic or Episcopalian mass, with its incense, music,
communion, and ritual incantations, it certainly has the feeling of a magical
rite. Also, believers do think that these rites have the ability to effect the
world in extraordinary ways outside the normal rules of cause and effect (heal
the sick, cast out demons, etc.); so the rites could be said to be magical.

The fact that priests do not marry also adds to the case.

~~~
patio11
Little known fact: some Catholic priests are permitted to marry.

Theology, like programming, has edge cases. Here's an example: you're an
Anglican. Anglicans have apostolic succession -- i.e. if you're a priest, you
were admitted by a bishop, who was in turn once a priest admitted by a bishop,
who was in turn ... by St. Peter who was chosen to lead the Church by Christ
Himself. Despite the fact that Anglicans are not Catholics, and do things
differently (such as permitting priests to marry), under Catholic theology
their claim to holy orders is good if a little misguided.

But what if one who is married converts to Catholicism? They're still a priest
until they forsake it. Their marriage was licit when they entered into it.
We're famously touchy about dissolving marriages -- either it was illicit when
it was entered into (perhaps due to reasons that were not discovered yet) and
thus requiring an annulment, or its good and binding until death.

Which means married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism (slightly more
complicated -- you need the bishop to sign off on it) are now married Catholic
priests.

~~~
cpr
Actually, Anglicans don't have apostolic succession; all Anglican ordinations
were declared null and void in the late 1800's by the Pope at the time. (They
did examine the case very carefully--note that there are plenty of non-uniate
Christians who have succession.)

~~~
patio11
Oof, I stand corrected.

------
patrickg-zill
Gandalf was one of the Istari, a race or order of Men sent by the Valar to
serve as opponents to Sauron.

It is strongly hinted that Gandalf took on the form of a Man, but was actually
one of the lesser Valar, called Maiar.

The Silmarillion explains much of the background of all this.

In a time before Viagra, the significance of Gandalf appearing as an old, wise
man would necessarily preclude sexual activity.

~~~
demallien
Oh, Gandalf definately wasn't human - even the LotR itself was surprisingly
clear on this point, considering how much magic was presented obscurely in the
book.

On the otherhand, I would have thought that LotR was the perfect refutation of
Pratchett's thesis - I mean Galadriel was one of the bad-asses on the White
Council, with ambition to boot! She was one of the holders of the three elven
rings, marking her a peer of Gandalf's, and it was she that was tempted by the
One Ring's power.

And then, in that other grand fantasy series, The Belgariad, there was of
course Polgara, another strong female magic-using character, even though she
ended up playing second fiddle to her father any time some direct application
of power was required.

Overall, I can't help feeling that the speech was in response to Pratchett's
own innate tendancy against female magic-users, as a close examination of most
of the major series shows that many, if not most, had strong female magic-
using characters, both good and evil. At least Pratchett was able to see that
he had a bias, and apparently fought against it to create Granny Weatherwax -
full marks to the man :-)

------
endtime
It's interesting to see how Pratchett thought about this over two decades ago,
given that I have read most of his Discworld books. There is a sharp contrast
between witches and wizards in his work. While in many ways his witches do the
"dirty work" and the wizards sit in the university, the way it's presented is
such that the witches are about helping people and getting things done,
whereas the wizards are a bunch of doddering old windbags in slippers who
don't really do anything at all...and when they do, they usually screw
something up pretty badly.

Granny Weatherwax (a witch) is easily one of Pratchett's best characters. (She
shows up in Equal Rites, and then again in Wyrd Sisters, which is a sort of
retelling of Macbeth...and in several books since.)

------
GavinB
_"Let's talk about wizards and witches. There is a tendency to talk of them in
one breath, as though they were simply different sexual labels for the same
job."_

This is one of the many reasons that Harry Potter is so subversive. Witches
and Wizards are just words for the same thing in different genders, and it's
ingrained in every kid's head.

~~~
Rawsock
If you want _real_ subversive fantasy, I recommend Andrzej Sapkowski's _The
Last Wish_ and the other of books from the saga. It has everything: The main
character is a male witch (or witcher), the female wizards have formed a
secret society to take over the world and nonhumans (elves,dwarfs) are
subjected to human racism and bigotry.

~~~
whatsreal
If you are just looking for fantasy that equalizes male and female
practitioners of magic Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series levels the playing
field. In fact, it is seriously tilted towards women for the first part of the
series.

~~~
Avshalom
in the first part yes. unfortunatley in the second part all the men are just
naturally more powerful and everytime a women is exposed to the male side of
the onepower they freak out because oh it's so violent and hard to control,
while the men have no problem dealing with the womens side.

not to mention that about half of the problems in the series are caused by
women scheming and interferring because they're all thus so convinced that men
are incompetent.

I remember being dumbfounded when I read an intervew with Jordan and the
interviewer asked how he wrote such strong women. ... yeah if you assume
strong women are all horrible humans sure I can see thinking he writes strong
women.

~~~
Herring
You think they're horrible bc you see the world from rand/mat/perrin's eyes.
If you were aes sedai & a bunch of ignorant kids with that much power popped
up you'd do anything to control them. Brandon Sanderson said that as he gets
older he finds himself thinking more like Moiraine. I feel the same way.

link: [http://www.brandonsanderson.com/blog/599/WoT-Read-Through-
EY...](http://www.brandonsanderson.com/blog/599/WoT-Read-Through-EYE-OF-THE-
WORLD) ( _running off to shadar logoth without telling anyone!_ )

~~~
Avshalom
Well I mostly agree with Brandon, and frankly even as I was writing my post I
felt that Nynaeve and Moraine were the best of the bunch, Nynaeve
particularly.

But the arguement of "but they ARE reckless ignorant kids" only works for the
first couple books. 8 books in women are still running around saying
Rand/Mat/Perrin is a wool headed moron who will only make things worse if left
to his own devices, despite each having shown their competence time and time
and time again, while the women's meddling caused things to go pear shaped
just as often.

~~~
Herring
Rand still does insanely stupid things. At the end of ACoS he runs off alone
to kill Sammael & nearly dies half a dozen times before Moridin(!) intervenes.
That retinue of Aes Sedai was probably the best thing to happen to him. He
nearly died numerous times without them in APoD. He would have died at the end
of winter's heart if he tried that alone with Nynaeve like he originally
planned. He'd never have left Far Madding.

The other two also do stupid stuff (well, Mat more than Perrin), but it's easy
enough to argue they shouldn't be running around loose either, not this close
to the end. They have no real protection.

------
Eliezer
University of the Island of Gont? FAIL. He is thinking of the school at Roke,
not Gont. In Gont they herd goats, which is what Ged did as a kid. Boy, you
sure can tell the old Pratchett beats the young Pratchett for domain
knowledge.

Female wizard ( _not_ witch): Herald-Mage Savil. That book was 1989, though.

------
Silentio
A well done feminist critique of fantasy, literature, and "real life," and he
pulled it off with a sense of humor.

Read "The Colour of Magic" if you get the chance, it's hilariously funny in
spots, especially if you're a little bit of a fantasy geek.

~~~
jimm
Equal Rites, which came after that book, deals with this topic more directly.
A seventh son has a seventh son...no wait, a daughter. She has raw magical
power, and with some help gets to the wizard university. I'm not going to say
any more; I don't want to spoil anything.

~~~
keenerd
It is also worth noting that Equal Rites was published 1-2 years after this
speech. Was Prachett trying to gauge the reaction to his satire by explicitly
stating it?

~~~
unalone
I doubt he was thinking in those terms. More likely this was a concept that
he'd already started to think of, and so the things he wrote about concerned
things of that nature.

It's like how programmers designing registration systems become obsessed with
talking about registration forms and CAPTCHAs. It's just where their minds
dwell as they work.

------
AndrewO
I wonder how his same talk would be given today. In a post-Harry Potter, World
of Warcraft world, the idea of a female wizard no longer raises eyebrows in
the same way.

Still, interesting and entertaining.

~~~
donaq
Way before Harry Potter, there was Polgara the Sorceress and her mother
Poledra. While both of them could be said to have played second fiddle to the
preeminent Belgarath, there was no doubt that their power was of the same
nature as that of his. There was also Sephrenia and her goddess Aphrael, but
then I guess David Eddings wasn't as popular as J.K. Rowling is.

~~~
unalone
One of J. K. Rowling's truly great accomplishments (that is, one of the things
that if anything isn't praised _enough_ ) is that she takes a very liberal
worldview and she portrays it in such a straightforward manner that very few
people think to argue with the things she's talking about.

She describes a world where there's no difference between men and women. There
are heroes and villains on both sides. Furthermore, women aren't made out to
be fundamentally superior or inferior in terms of emotion versus ration. She
makes the difference _apparent_ \- you get dumb guy moments and giggly girl
moments - but at the same time, every character has dumb blind emotional
moments, and moments where a clear head prevails.

She does similar things with racism and libertarianism. (That's not to say
Rowling is ultralibertarian, but she expresses certain views - like the
fallibility of government and the acknowledgement that people aren't created
entirely equal - that promote the agenda, while _simultaneously_ being mature
enough to acknowledge that government isn't inherently bad and that people are
defined by more than just their talent.) The funny thing is that the one thing
she's accused of - promoting witchcraft - is the least radical of the various
things she tries to do. Combine that with a very adult understanding of death
couched into a book series that, for the first few books, was considered fluff
kid fantasy, and you realize that Rowling is very underrated as a kid's
author. People ignore her merits for her popularity, which is a shame.

Eddings, from all I've heard, is a talented writer, but he's not good at
reaching out to a wide audience. He's a niche writer. Rowling, meanwhile, has
a talent for making people fall in love with her writing that I've rarely seen
in any writer, and she combines that with surprisingly mature plot
development.

~~~
tjic
> She describes a world where there's no difference between men and women.

Reminding us that if you want an escape from reality, fiction is your ticket.

~~~
unalone
Yeah, Harry Potter's definitely an escape. There's a psychotic mass murderer
who leads a fanatic cult into a school and has them killing droves of people,
an 18-year-old attempts to kill a group of students just to take a treasure
from them and ends up burning alive, a man spends a lifetime obsessed with a
woman only to lead to her death and get killed by a snake.

For what it's worth, I've got quite a few female friends who _don't_ get
treated necessarily like stereotypical females because they quite clearly
_aren't_. Maybe I'm just in a lucky part of the world, but I haven't seen
females get discriminated against much unless they invited it on themselves.

------
jodrellblank
For more Wizardry / Hacker tales you could read Wizard's Bane (available
online here: <http://www.baen.com/library/rcook.htm> ) a tale of a programmer
transported to a world where magic exists.

~~~
sketerpot
I prefer Diane Duane's Young Wizards series. Wizardry is hacking. Oh, and
teleportation spells can take you to other planets. It's excellently written,
and as addictive as Harry Potter. More information:

<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YoungWizards>

