#donna tartt having internalized misogyny after she smacked you in the face with just how complex these characters are

[cithaerons]

there’s a huge difference between authors problematizing something through writing an obviously biased and unreliable viewpoint and an author inadvertently perpetuating the views of said biased viewpoint by, just, thoughtless sloppy writing. and i think donna tartt’s a perfect example of this, because she does both.

for the first example, we have kitsey and pippa - two white women who theo sees through the male gaze, as the simple one-dimensional people he wants them to be. by the end of the book, both of these characters have been turned inside out and on their heads. we realize that they are not remotely the people theo thought they were. as a reader, this smacks us (and theo) in the face. the revelation is shocking and forms a major point in the narrative & emotional force of the final part of the novel.

for the second example, we have cinzia, theo and his mother’s housekeeper. she doesn’t seem to have any agency whatsoever, aside from adoring theo and his mother. theo’s mother can’t afford to continue to hire her, and what does she do? she offers to “stay and work for free.” this is inexplicable. this might be donna tartt writing theo’s biased perspective. but, unlike pippa and kitsey, we never see a hint of the other side of that. repeating this theme, we also have etta, the barbours’ housekeeper, who “rushes to hug” theo, saying “I had the night off but I wanted to stay, I wanted to see you.” 

in this category, we also have essentially every other character in domestic worker, “lower class” positions - they are characters who seem to exist only to serve theo and the family/friends, they lack interiority to the point of being inexplicable, they are one dimensional caricatures of “the help.” these characters are also, coincidentally, essentially the only PoC to feature in the novel. this could (and perhaps is intended to be) donna tartt writing from the perspective of a privileged white boy. but it ultimately comes off only as sloppy, borderline offensive, writing - it problematizes nothing and propagates only the privileged-white-boy perspective it imitates.

this is an excellent brief article on the second point: https://www.salon.com/2014/06/13/donna_tartts_multicultural_fantasy_how_the_goldfinch_got_away_with_its_disgraceful_racial_politics/