#terapsina's tmolt rambles

[terapsina]

This here shows a little bit of why I really like the use of Lady Trent's voice for the writing of A Natural History of Dragons.

Lord Hilford was, of course, correct; but his insight did not go far enough. I envied Mr. Wilker, for the simple fact that our society made it easier to transcend class than sex. Which was not only unfair of me, but in some respects inaccurate: there is sometimes a greater willingness to make an exception for a woman than a man, so long as her breeding is good enough. But at the tender age of nineteen, I had not yet seen enough of the world to understand that.

The book is full of such occasional asides and they make me remember how much I like Isabella even in scenes which otherwise show her being a bit of a snob. Because it immediately shows that this isn't who she's always going to be, that she will grow through the years ahead.

Nineteen year old Isabella still thinks herself 'better' than those below her station (not to say she didn't show any ability to sympathize with the people of the working classes even young, as there had already been moments where she had used her privileged background to protect the livelihood of someone who would have been sacked without her interference (of course she only gets partial credit for that one as it would have been her fault if said person had been fired)). But by the time she is older, when her memoirs are being written, a lot of that early day snobbery has been reexamined and abandoned.

Isabella is immediately a very likeable character. Her complete fascination with dragons, her seeming abandonment of all self preservation whenever the possibility to study them gets within reach. And I do like her.

But because we're hearing the story from the point of view of her when she's decades older and with a lifetime of adventures, losses, successes and discoveries behind her, all the things that could have been really frustrating about Isabella are smoothed over by Lady Trent's own view of her memories.