Week 5 - Aunt Maria

In the beginning, Aunt Maria appears to be an old friendly woman who just oozes out patience and love. But there is a harsh mean, iron side to Aunt Maria that can hardly be believed at first because it is cushioned between all of her layers of pure kindness and heart feltedness. But gradually the Lakers realize that they are expected to keep house, look after Aunt Maria, and provide the cakes (home-made, not store-bought, mind!) for the tea parties that Aunt Maria has every day with other women from the village. She is not the most exciting character; it’s mostly dull with a few spots of light here and there. I think Jones’ point ran away with her quite a little bit and ended up just overshadowing most of the book in general. Mig’s mother was quite great through.  Definitely a lot better than other books written out there, but Jones has written better books. The whole male/female magic thing was quite strange. It was all, “No, men and women are the same, really! It’s when they’re treated as different that things go wrong! See, look, we shut away all the men’s virtue in this box because that’s not manly! And all the women dress like they’re from the Victorian era because patriarchy rant rant!” That just wasn't the best way to make an argument, because it ended up just shadowing the book as a whole. Third, what would the characters when learn from this? Nothing at all. Everything stays the same. if the point was to make it obvious, show some kind of difference.