Non-sovereign agency in the Wheel of Time
What I get when I read Sharon Krause and Robert Jordan concurrently
Themes of lack of trust and of failure to communicate in Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time series are well trod. But Jordan also uses subtler mechanisms that prevent his characters from working together, beyond just brute distrust. One I want to explore here is social uptake distortion. I’ll also briefly mention at the end a case of hermeneutical injustice.
In A Crown of Swords, the seventh book of the Wheel of Time, there are a couple interesting cases of frustrated agency, or characters acting to achieve some effect on the world consistent with their self-understanding but achieving some altogether different outcome inconsistent with their self-understanding because other characters interpret those actions very differently. This is an application of Sharon Krause’s concept of non-sovereign agency, discussed in this post.
Spoilers through Book 7 follow, but I start writing in code to give you a chance to retreat from spoilers later on.
Non-sovereign agency and real Aes Sedai
The Supergirls (I’ll use their names below) are in Ebou Dar searching for the MacGuffin of Climate Change when they discover the Kin, a group of women channelers (magic users; male magic users eventually turn crazy and violent) who secretly take in Aes Sedai (society of official channelers) rejects from the White Tower. Our Supergirls really are full Aes Sedai, having been raised in exceptional circumstances by the Amyrlin Seat herself. But they’re impossibly young to be full Aes Sedai (as opposed to novices or Accepted) and they have not acquired the “ageless” look characteristic of Aes Sedai. Readers will know this is because the Supergirls haven’t sworn their vows on the Oath Rod. The women of the Kin naturally assume these two girls are runaways from the Tower and, worse, they are posing as Aes Sedai, an unforgivable transgression as far as the Kin are concerned, one that requires them to be brought to the attention of “real” Aes Sedai as soon as possible.
The Kin live in fear and awe of Aes Sedai, but none of that matters because they cannot see these two young women as Aes Sedai. The Kin women shield Nynaeve and Elayne from being able to channel and tell them to leave the city immediately, and just to be sure their demands are heeded, the Kin declare they will begin circulating their names and descriptions around the city so that eventually the “real” Aes Sedai in the city will learn of them.
By approaching women they have reason to believe may know where the MacGuffin of the Moment is, Elayne and Nynaeve are just acting as what they perceive themselves to be, Aes Sedai, doing Aes Sedai work. But because the Kin and, soon, the entire city, disaffirm that understanding, what Elayne and Nynaeve actually achieve in the world is their own humiliation and certainly what they fail to achieve is finding their MacGuffin.
Non-sovereign sexual agency in Ebou Dar
Mat, one of the ta’veren Superboys, also suffers frustrated agency both social uptake misfiring as well as by hermeneutical injustice. As has been discussed ad nauseum in the WoT fandom, Mat in Book 7 is a victim of ongoing sexual assault by the Ebou Dari Queen, Tylin. What makes the assault worse is that his ostensible allies, Nynaeve and Elayne, cannot shake their understanding of him as a scoundrel and a womanizer. Mat is definitely flirtatious and has no hang-ups about going to bed with many an inn-and-tavern woman. The reader knows these are all consensual relationships—Mat’s just charming and there’s no shortage of women who find him appealing. Nynaeve and Elayne assume Mat’s attentions are generally unwanted.
Incidentally, Elayne and Nynaeve also understand Mat as a fundamentally immature and irresponsible good-for-nothing. The greatest character arc in Book 7 is Elayne’s gradual realization that she’s misunderstood Mat this entire time and owes him amends. It takes her girlfriend who is teaching her the Aiel honor code and her Hero warder to … forcefully convince her that there is more to Mat than meets the eye.
So when Queen Tylin begins her coercive relationship with Mat, Elayne and Nynaeve first believe it is Mat who is forcing his attentions on the Queen. The reverse is unthinkable. This is despite Mat’s protestations. Even when they begin to understand that the Queen’s attentions are unwanted, Elayne and Nynaeve view the whole affair as Mat “getting a taste of his own medicine.”
Feminist readers will recognize this dynamic. Mat is an ethical, sexually liberated being. He knows what he wants and pursues his sexual ends without shame, but to the reader’s knowledge always in a way that treats his romantic partners as ends in themselves. But because he sleeps with many women, sexist observers (like the Supergirls) think he has forsaken the right to say No. By apparent definition, in the Wheel of Time and in real world rape culture, sluts can’t be raped.
So Mat’s sexual agency is undermined by the social interpretation of his actions, which present an image of his character that he does not see as authentically his own.
But Mat also suffers from what Miranda Fricker has called hermeneutical injustice. Mat himself also doesn’t entirely understand himself to be a rape victim, because he has no awareness of the concept of a male rape victim. Indeed, the concept doesn’t really exist in the social pool of available ideas. Even if he could overcome his shame and confusion to seek help from his friends—Thom and Juilin, or his officers in the Band—they wouldn’t be well equipped to help him either. That Tylin’s own son (and Mat’s uninvited drinking buddy) Beslan informs Mat this is just how romance is done in Ebou Dar compounds the hermeneutical injustice. It’s just like how before sexual harassment or marital rape were named, they were spoken of in the available terms, flirting and wifely duties, respectively.
The Wheel of Time is really replete with non-sovereign agency when you start looking for it. The social and political power of the Aes Sedai rests on bedrock of persistent social understanding of Aes Sedai as literally awesome. Even those who hate the Aes Sedai stand in awe of them. Aes Sedai depend on this systemic understanding. But the consistency and persistence of this social uptake gradually breaks down throughout the story, first as Rand pulls away from Moiraine’s apron strings, then as the White Tower fractures, and later as the Aiel Wise Ones, the Kin, and even the Asha’man see the Aes Sedai as all too human, fallible, and sometimes even pathetic. The social power of all Aes Sedai corrodes as these groups become … better acquainted.