Literature / When Women Were Dragons

When Women Were Dragons is a feminist Alternate History novel by Kelly Barnhill. It takes place in a world mostly like our own, only women occasionally transform into dragons and fly away. This fact of nature has historically been erased and never discussed because, well, it's an uncomfortable subject. Like many "female" things, it's considered inappropriate and lewd to discuss. It's better to just Un-person the women or say they died.

Then, on April 25, 1955, more than half a million women across the United States dragon. It's hard to disguise a loss of that size, so over the next decade or two, the world faces a reckoning with the reality of dragons.

The story is told as a memoir by Alexandra "Alex" Green, a bright girl growing up in Wisconsin in the 1950's and 60's. Alex is a little girl when the Mass Dragoning happens. In the chaos, her Aunt Marla transforms and flies away, causing Alex's cousin Beatrice to be recast as her little sister. The two sisters grow up with a stern but sickly mother and an emotionally-absent father, all keeping the secret of Beatrice's biological mother under wraps. Alex loves her sister deeply but becomes increasingly concerned with Beatrice's fascination with dragons, especially after their mother dies of cancer and their father leaves them to fend for themselves. On top of all that responsibility, Alex is determined to go to college to study mathematics. How can she continue to care for Beatrice while still pursuing her own dreams?

The novel provides examples of:

• Berserk Button: Dragons are a taboo topic in this world, but Alex's mother is angered by any mention of them. The one time she raises a hand to her child, it is because Beatrice has yelled about becoming a dragon and she blames Alex for not keeping her little "sister" in check. Alex adopts these attitudes for herself and becomes truly angry at Beatrice for the first time in her life when Beatrice gets in trouble for drawing dragons at school.
• Book Smart: Alex gets good grades all-around, but is especially gifted at math.
• Butch Lesbian: Marla fell in love with her fellow WAC member Edith. She also dresses and behaves in a masculine fashion: she's loud and confident, dresses in dungarees rather than skirts, and works as a mechanic. She stands out like a sore thumb in 1950's small-town America.
  • Alex is a lesser example. She cuts her hair very short and insists on her androgynous nickname, but seems to enjoy wearing feminine clothes.
• Ceiling Banger: The girls live in an apartment with very thin walls and floors. At one point, their neighbor in the unit below has had enough of Beatrice's noise and bangs on the ceiling/floor with a broom.
• Cheerful Child: Beatrice is full of energy and enthusiasm. She is always smiling, laughing, and dancing. When she becomes moody after school, Alex knows something is wrong.
• Control Freak: Alex's mother keeps her house spotless, is always neat and put-together, and clings rigidly to social norms. She loves her daughters and her sister but discourages their abnormal behavior.
• Cool Old Lady: Elderly Mrs. Gyzinska has been running the local library system and a nationwide secret research collective for decades. She is too indispensable to depose and uses her influence to protect researchers whose work is being silenced by congress and to support promising children like Alex who want to follow an unconventional path.
• Correspondence Course: This example is less shady than most examples, since the mail comes from the University of Wisconsin. Alex starts accruing college credits via correspondence when she's still in high school.
• Delicate and Sickly: Alex's mother is very petite and has suffered at least two bouts of cancer in her lifetime. As her cancer worsens, she becomes thinner and weaker.
• Delightful Dragon: Though dragons have variable personalities the way humans do, many use their power to better the world. Some dragons start guarding pods of whales and other endangered species, others use their sense of smell and flight to defuse minefields, and others defend civil rights protesters. Beatrice forms an international pacifist organization which defends civilians from the effects of war and encourages peacemaking. It's very hard to stop them, since they are enormous and invulnerable.
• Drag Queen: Drag queens can also become dragons, as demonstrated by a short scene depicting different transformations.
• The Disease That Shall Not Be Named: Nobody wants to say that Alex's mother has cancer. It's too horrible to admit, even as Bertha lies dying in the hospital. This is accurate to the time period, as cancer was never mentioned in polite company in the 1950's.
  • In a fantasy sense, dragoning is also unmentionable. Most of the public see it as something between a disease and an embarrassing lapse of morals.
• The Dragons Come Back: Newly-transformed dragons normally hide away in remote places on Earth or take to the stars, but in the 60's they return to their homes en masse. The human world cannot get rid of them (it's very hard to move a giant, fire-breathing reptile without their consent), so they need to accommodate them. Soon dragons can attend school, own businesses, and even run for office.
• Family Relationship Switcheroo: Beatrice was born to Marla and her deadbeat husband. After Marla dragoned, her sister Bertha adopted Beatrice, who was still an infant, as her own.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Parent: Alex's father does not want Alex to go to college. He wants her to settle down with a husband, or maybe enter the workforce directly after high school. Her mother shuts down any questions about dragons. She snaps when Beatrice takes her "inappropriate" interest in dragons too far. Her attitude rubs off on Alex, who strongly disproves of Beatrice drawing dragons.
• Fiery Redhead: Beatrice has curly orange hair and an irrepressible spirit. She is full of energy, totally fearless, and not bound by the same cultural taboos as other characters.
• First Love: Alex and Sonja develop feelings for each other as young teens. They are separated but resume their relationship in college. An older Alex muses on how happy she was in those days, even though she ended up with someone else.
• Genki Girl: Beatrice loves running, shouting, and bossing around the neighborhood kids. She's usually cheerful and unafraid to share what she likes with other people.
• Giant Flyer: Dragons are huge but can fly with ease.
• Good with Numbers: Alex is consistently at the top of her class in mathematics, to the point where the teacher fudges her scores to make the boys in the class feel better. She begins taking college courses via correspondence as a high schooler. She rocks those classes to. She takes after her mother in this regard.
• Hauled Before a Senate Subcommittee: Several passages are transcripts of Dr. Gantz speaking to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and explaining why his research is essential and not secretly promoting Communist ideals.
• Horrible Housing: The girls live in a cramped apartment with thin walls and a rude landlord. The largest room of the apartment is only eight paces across and holds the kitchenette, a table with chairs, and Alex's bed/sofa. Their old home, which was always lovely when their mother was alive, falls into disrepair as their father's life unravels.
• Housewife: Bertha, Alex's mother, is fiercely determined to be a perfect housewife. Her house is spotless, her children go to school with well-tailored dresses, and she is always neatly made-up. She serves homecooked meals at the same time each night and never (publicly) contradicts her husband. She even resists the life-long urge to dragon because she is too dedicated to her family.
• Hulking Out: Some dragonings are accompanied by joy, but others are the result of rage. For example, a young woman named Stella dragons when a group of male colleagues starts harassing her. However, unlike the classic example, dragonings are irreversible. Unless someone is special like Beatrice.
• Information Wants to Be Free: The Wyvern Research Collective, championed by Mrs. Gyzinska and Dr. Gantz, is dedicated to researching and sharing information about dragons. The House Un-American Activities Committee tries on numerous occasions to suppress them for threatening the American way of life. Known members are fired and blacklisted from academia. However, they succeed in the end.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Alex is wicked smart, but she is also very lonely. Part of this is because her responsibilities leave no room for socialization, but even before she started caring for Beatrice, her only friend was Sonja. There are not many students in her school with a similar interest in math, after all, and her intense studiousness is off-putting for students and staff alike.
• Leaving You to Find Myself: When women choose to dragon, they must necessarily leave their loved ones to chase their own goals (at least, until they start coming back). Marla leaves her infant daughter behind to pursue her life as a dragon, and Alex has trouble forgiving her. Sonja dragons at the end of the book and leaves her lover behind to explore the universe. Alex is invited to follow, but she cannot bring herself to leave her other connections behind.
• Mrs Degree: Alex's father thinks the only good reason for a woman to go to college is to find a good husband.
  • To the outside observer, it looks like Mrs. Gyzinska did an MRS, since she met her wealthy husband in university. However, she is actually very passionate about education and was a strong enough student to secure a scholarship to a top school.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: In-Universe. While our world might consider it normal for a child to draw dragons obsessively, in Alex's world, this is very troubling. When she sees that Beatrice has drawn a folder full of dragons, complete with a sheet scrawled with I AM A DRAGON, she is horrified. She compares it to Beatrice having drawn bloody sanitary napkins or naked breasts.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Dragons in this universe are women who have transformed. They still have a human mind and are capable of speech. They also tend to be benevolent, though they can be as good or bad as any human. They live longer than the average human but can still die of disease.
• Parental Abandonment: After his wife dies, Alex's father packs his daughters off to a little apartment. He pays for their upkeep, but only communicates with them through irregular phone calls and terse letters.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Alex has some attachment issues, being first abandoned by her aunt (who dragoned), her first love (who moved away), her mother (who died) and then her father (who kicked her out). Whenever she fears she might lose Beatrice as well, she starts pleading for Beatrice to stay with her.
• Promotion to Parent: When Mr. Green kicks them out, Alex functionally becomes Beatrice's mother.
• Red Scare: The principal at Beatrice's school has a poster reading "Better Dead Than Red!" on his wall. It is mid 20th-century America, after all. Dr. Gantz and his colleagues are under suspicion of being Communist agents because of the secretive nature of their work.
• Remarried to the Mistress: A month after his first wife dies, Mr. Green starts living with his secretary, who is already visibly pregnant with his child.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Mrs. Gyzinska is wealthy enough to support a ring of underground researchers and fend off any legal trouble. Thanks to her, members of the Wyvern Research Collective who have lost their jobs find themselves hired into library positions across the country. She is also the largest donor to her county’s library, hypercompetent and very well-connected. In short, nobody can touch her because if she were to be removed from her post, the county's library system (and those of other counties, and also probably a few other public services) would fall apart.
• Sex Miseducation Class: We don't get a look in on the boys' class, but the girls are given nothing useful to work with. The teacher just goes on a tangent about butterflies and frogs and changes. The girls learn nothing about their bodies or sexual health, and certainly nothing about dragons.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Dragons break out of their clothes. Some thoughtful women, sensing the change, took off their dresses in advance of the change and left them sitting neatly on the curb.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Beatrice is a major character who has curly red hair and green/green-blue eyes.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Alex's mother tries to be the perfect 1950's suburban wife and mother. She keeps herself, her children, and her house impeccably clean, observes all the social niceties, and serves up her homecooked meals at 6:15 on the dot. But underneath her soft and waifish appearance, she has an unshakeable resolve. She survives at least one bout of cancer and spends her whole life resisting the urge to dragon.
• Stay in the Kitchen: It is 1950's American suburbia, after all. Alex's father discourages her from pursuing a college education, unless she's out for an Mrs Degree. He would much rather she forget the whole math thing and marry right out of high school. Alex's mother takes her role as a housewife very seriously and sometimes punishes other women who will not conform. For example, she briefly cuts off communication with her sister until the latter agrees to take a husband.
  • The suppression and diminishment of female agency is actually one of the driving forces behind dragoning.
• Strong Family Resemblance: A friend of Bertha's tells Alex that she is the exact image of her mother. In fact, Alex even has a build like her mother and can wear her old clothes. Alex also wonders if the similarity extends to developing cancer.
• Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person: All women can become dragons, regardless of their assigned gender at birth. Dr. Gantz has found a large proportion of dragons are women by choice. It makes sense, since dragoning appears to be related to women pushing back against a strongly conformist and patriarchal culture, one which alienates trans and gender-nonconforming people.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: Alex is amazing at math, to the point where her exam scores make her (male) classmates feel insecure. Her teachers intentionally fudge her scores to make them seem more average. One benefit of Alex using her androgynous nickname for her correspondence courses is that she gets to dodge the sexism.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: Alex's mother expresses her feminine domesticity through her sewing, knitting, and knotting skills. However, the knots also have a greater significance apart from gender expression. They are important to her mathematical work and family traditions.
• Tragic Dropout: Marla gave up her dreams so she could go to work and pay for her sister's college. Alex fears she will also have to sacrifice her ambition to care for Beatrice, since her father has promised to cut them off once Alex comes of age.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Most dragonings are voluntary, though a woman may feel the urge to change so strongly that it feels more like a compulsion. If a woman does not wish to change, like Mrs. Green, they can suppress the urge. Beatrice is an unusual dragon/girl since she can alternate forms and partially transform at will.
• Weredragon: Women (cis- and transgender) can transform into dragons. The phenomenon is under-researched and little understood, but it seems to occur most often in women who resist the suppression and social constraints placed on women.
• Wrench Wench: Marla is a skilled mechanic, dating back to her time in the military.