Beauty and Freedom: The Chronicler rants some more

I could be writing the write up for Knight of Darkness, but I'm again enraged... the book is incredibly repulsive on a great number of ways, but the one I'm wanting to focus on is this: The idea of beauty.

The heroine's desire to be beautiful, or at least, unrepulsive, is understandable. After all, being treated with distain and disgust from every front for several centuries is unpleasant. To be in a form that encourages kindness is certainly an attractive prospect.

On the other hand, there is no middle ground. She must either be gorgeous or hideous. She doesn't desire to be unrepulsive as much as her original, most-beautiful-woman-in-the-world self and yet her angst never centers on that that is her true self.

First I’m tortured by an evil bitch and her minions. Then I try to make myself pretty so that others will at least look at me without cringing and what happens...

She desires to be beautiful so that others won't cringe at her. This is understandable, admittedly, but seeing as she herself is disgusted by her own appearance, it never occurs to her to think of her bargain in terms of being unrepulsed by herself. She exists to be seen, to be admired and that is the purpose of her beauty, not to be at peace with her own skin.

Lastly, I can't imagine it being comfortable to be hunchbacked, possessing of a lazy eye, limping and the half a dozen other physical complaints she must have when in "crone" form. Never does she think of the benefits of being attractive in terms of not having back pain and the ability to run and jump. She marvels at the ability to stand straight when first she is transformed, but never again does it cross her mind. It can be that only her appearance changes and being a crone is as comfortable as being her young and sprightly self, but this is never explained.

Merewyn comes off as being obsessed with her ability to attract. She isn't concerned with her physical appearance in any other way. She is solely concerned with her ability or inablity to gain male attention and to a lesser degree. Her own perception of herself is unimportant. She has no desire that her appearance reflect her inner self (whatever that may be) or that she be in a state capable of youthful bounding. In her many, many monologues about her appearance and what it means to be ugly, her primary and often only concern is how it affects those around her.